ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Elections are supposed to determine the will of the people, to set a nation on a new course with a government that enjoys the mandate of the majority. In splintered Greece, the vote on Sunday is shaping up as a challenge to this time-honored rule of democracy.

For Greeks are in a collective state of depression, burdened not just by the shriveling of their finances, but also political divisions with deep roots in history and confusion over their identity and the very concept of statehood. And yet an anxious world is looking to this tiny actor on the international stage for clues to whether the global economy will cling to a path of gradual recovery, or veer toward another destructive scenario like the one that followed the 2008 collapse of the Lehman Brothers investment bank in the United States.