It Takes Two to Tango: The Technocracy-populism Nexus in Italy and the EU from a Critical-realist Perspective

ABSTRACT

The nexus between technocracy and populism in Italy can be better understood from a long-term perspective. Adopting a critical-realist approach to the explanation of political change, it is possible to identify the main contextual factors that favoured, from the early 1990s, the rise of these two alternative yet compatible logics of politics, which can be conceived as both causes and symptoms of the fatigue of representative democracy. This also allows (i) a better understanding of the entanglement of populism and technocracy after the global crisis of 2008, and (ii) the conceptualisation of the position of the European Union (EU) as a catalyst of these processes within a multi-level spatial nexus.

KEYWORDS:

• technocracy
• populism
• Italy
• European Union
• critical realism

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Matilde Rosina, Marianna Griffini and Leila Simona Talani who organised this group of articles titled “Right Move? Populist Radical Right Parties and Europe”, and the anonymous reviewers.

The author conducted this research as principal investigator in the project Tr.I.Dem (Transformations of Italian Democracy). The project was made possible thanks to a grant of the University of Campania ‘L. Vanvitelli’ (R.D. 639 of 17/07/2023), here gratefully acknowledged.

Notes

1 The conception of populism as a ‘thin’ ideology refers to Cas Mudde’s (2004) ideational approach. This approach conceives populism as primarily characterised as a struggle between the corrupted elite and the (pure) people. Building on this basic core premise, populism can be integrated with a ‘thick’ ideological component along the left/right political axis (for instance, pro-redistribution on the left or anti-immigration on the right).

2 Tangentopoli is a term used in Italy since 1992 to define a widespread system of political corruption. This system was based on pervasive corruption with systematic exchanges between private business cartels, politicians and members of the public administration. The term tangentopoli emerged with the investigations known as ‘mani pulite’ (‘clean hands’).

3 The thesis of the vincolo esterno was defended by an Italian technocrat, Guido Carli (Governor of the Bank of Italy from 1960 to 1975 and Minister of the Treasury from 1989 to 1992) in an essay published in 1993. Carli emphasised the importance of tying Italy to a set of constraints, that of European rules in particular, with the aim of forcing the country to respect parameters and a rules-based macroeconomic order. Otherwise, Carli (1993, 4-5) noted, the “animal spirits” of Italian society would prevail.

4 The stenographic report of the speech is accessible at: https://legislature.camera.it/_dati/leg11/lavori/stenografici/stenografico/34736.pdf (accessed on 30 May 2024).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Adriano Cozzolino

Adriano Cozzolino is Assistant Professor in Global Politics at Università della Campania ‘L. Vanvitelli’, Caserta, Italy.