The establishment of the Greek state in 1833 constituted a break with the past and an unprecedented experience not only for the Greek people within and beyond the newly-established kindom but also for all the peoples of the Balkans. It was a national state and as such it could not be anything but modern. In the south part of the Balkan peninsula, where only the dominance of the multinational empires had existed until then, a state with national homogeneity was established for the first time. In fact, it was a state that considered itself, from the very beginning, the forerunner of a greater territorial state entity which would extend over a large part of the Ottoman possessions in Europe and Asia Minor, that is, the places where massive Greek populations existed.
At the same time it was a modern state, which means European, Western, or at least it intended to become one. This was also proclaimed in the political declarations and especially in the constitutions of the years of the Revolution. Consequently, the establishment of a centralized government model and of Western institutions was inevitable but also urgent. At the same time it was a difficult venture. The composition and consolidation of administrative and repressive state mechanisms was followed by processes of violent unification and homogenization of a society that remained traditional, that is, a society split into many regional and relatively independent political centres. These local political centres had to be disbanded, enfeebled and eliminated, as the central power in the modern state is the only legitimate source of political power.
In all modern states, politics is where society meets and interacts with political power, or the state itself. In the case of the Greek state, politics was the field where a political power with all the features of a modern state met a society which remained intensely traditional. The formation of the field of politics on the basis of modern authorities of function affected the terms of social reproduction of the regional social elites. In the first years, in the 1830s, the reaction of these local elites was expressed through traditional ways of protest and mainly through regional insurrections. However, from the beginning of the 1840s the constitution and the elections - both modern institutions and procedures - comprised the basic claims of these traditional groups. Their objective was nothing more than the redefinition of the political field in the direction of a more favourable redisposition of the power correlations. This was achieved with the movement of 1843. The Constitution of 1844 and the first elections do not show the victory of the traditional element over the modern. They signify the incorporation of the traditional political leaderships of Greek society in a modern political system, the acceptance of its terms and the consolidation of its institutions. In a sense, in 1843 the central political scene becomes the chief point of emergence of the socio-political conflicts. From then on, and for the entire 19th century, the consolidation and extension of the parliamentary institutions, the type of the regime and the limits of royal intervention in politics, would virtually monopolize every aspect of domestic political life.
