https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2174-6579
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ABSTRACT
The rise of populist parties in Europe and the increasing salience of religion in political discourse are two relevant, sometimes discussed as interrelated, phenomena of recent decades. While most analysis focuses on right-wing populism, this does not exhaust all possible relationships. This study addresses the role of religion in populist parties by focusing on the Italian case and adopting a comparative cross organisational perspective shedding light on how left-wing and right-wing populists use religion for different purposes. Drawing on interview data with party representatives and analysis of organisational documents and speeches, we explore the presence and the uses of religious appeals in the two populist Italian parties in recent years. We show that their use of religion varies on three dimensions: i) hierarchy of identifications, ii) salience, and iii) frame. The League represents ‘cultural populism’: religion is used as an ‘identity marker’ that is highly salient and an instrument for framing specific topics. Conversely, the Five Star Movement exemplifies ‘political/economic populism’, in which religion as an identifier is present but less salient and used to frame citizenship in juridical/legalist terms. These different usages of religion lead to different definitions of the ‘people’ and therefore in-group constituencies.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
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Notes
1. Lega Nord or Northern League changed its name upon Salvini´s leadership. In this contribution we use its most recent formulation.
5. The interviews were conducted with informed consent from the participants. A full list of the interviewees is available in the appendix.
6. Frames are defined as cognitive instruments that allow making sense of the external reality (Benford and Snow Citation1992). They provide the necessary background within which individual activists can locate their actions (Snow et al. Citation1986).
7. The PopuList project and data can be found via the following link: https://popu-list.org/
8. Every classification of parties is likely to raise objections. We prefer ‘hybrid’ to ‘left-wing’ or ‘inclusionary populism’ in relation to the 5SM, although many comparative studies adopt this terminology (Font, Graziano, and Zakatika Citation2019; Ivaldi, Lanzone, and Woods Citation2017). Despite its initial left-wing position, the current ideological nature of the 5SM is ambiguous and eclectic (Ceccarini and Bordignon Citation2016; Corbetta et al. Citation2018; Mosca and Tronconi Citation2019; Pirro Citation2018). The party is also described as a ‘valence populist party’ (Zulianello Citation2020).
9. According to a 2016 Eurostat survey, 49% of Italian respondents chose immigration as one of the two most important issues facing the EU (vs. 45% of European respondents overall).
10. Census, ‘Immigrazione in Italia 2016: i numeri dell’appartenenza religiosa’, ismu.org 18 July 2016. Moreover, a report from Caritas (2020) shows that between 2000 and 2019 the number of international migrants in Italy rose from about two thousand to six thousand, which represents an increase of 10.4%. For 2019 alone the Ministry of the Interior counted about 41,000 irregular immigrants at the border.
11. ‘Roma Ladrona’ is a derogatory term employed by the League to refer to the corruption in Rome (Italy’s capital and centre of government) that ‘steals’ resources from the well-organised northern part of the country.
12. Welfare chauvinism refers to a position taken by radical parties whereby welfare should only benefit native and deserving citizens at the expense of underserving immigrants (see Schumacher and van Kersbergen Citation2016).
14. To investigate the religious attitudes of Italian citizens we relied on the ITANES (Italian Election Studies) survey, which was based on a representative sample of Italian voters (http://www.itanes.org/dati/).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Manuela Caiani
Manuela Caiani is an associate professor of comparative politics at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa. Her research interests focus on: social movements and Europeanisation, radical right politics (and the Internet), populism, qualitative methods of social research. Currently she coordinates a project on ‘Populism and pop music’ (Volkswagen foundation). She has published in, amongst others: Mobilization, Acta, EJPR, WEP, Government and Opposition, EUP, RISP, Current Sociology; and with the following publishers: OUP, Routledge, Palgrave, Il Mulino.
Tiago Carvalho
Tiago Carvalho is a political sociologist interested in social movements, political parties, and social classes. He holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Cambridge and he is currently a researcher at Centre for Research and Studies in Sociology, Lisbon University Institute. He is also a member of Centre on Social Movement Studies in Florence. His forthcoming book Contesting Austerity: Social Movements and the Left in Portugal and Spain (2008–2015) will be published by Amsterdam University Press.