Italian politics: resisting the right-wing populist tide in 2020

At the beginning of 2020, as we were going to press, the Italian government was looking increasingly fragile. Frist, mid-September had seen the birth of Matteo Renzi’s Italia Viva with a ʻmodernizationʼ narrative built around the ideas of equal opportunities; embracing the challenges of globalization; cosmopolitanism, and further European integration. Given this – and given that the former Prime Minister is well known for inhabiting a ʻpost-ideologicalʼ world in which pragmatism (the construction of whatever tactical alliances are necessary to solve immediate-term problems) is one of the trademarks of his approach to ʻdoingʼ politics – his ‘political project’ seemed clear. It was, against a background of increasingly personalized politics, to increase his own, personal, political room for manoeuvre and at the same time to grow, by what looked like an appeal targeted especially at the metropolitan elites with their above-average propensity to support the Partito Democratico (Democratic Party, PD). The problem for the Government was that Renzi, having launched the party, had not been able to take support for it above single figures; and therefore, to avoid political marginalization, he had been forced to seek visibility at every turn, supporting the Government, yes, but being critical and goading its partners at every opportunity. Second, the Movimento Cinque Stelle (Five-star Movement, M5s) following its miserable 7.4% at the October regional elections in Umbria, had suffered the predictable internal divisions, made worse by its character as a protest party with very weak ideological roots, now a party in government, and therefore one seeming to be increasingly assimilated by the very political institutions whose promised overhaul had allowed it to triumph in 2018. Its brand of anti-establishment politics had led its leader, Luigi Di Maio, to attempt to manage the internal tensions by taking positions (on matters such as the Taranto steel plant, Ilva, reform of the justice system and the European Stability Mechanism) which only increased tensions with his governing partners. Finally, the PD, as an amalgam of left-leaning ex-Christian Democrats, and former Communists, and therefore lacking a clear narrative to replace the largely defunct ones of its parent parties, found itself unable to resist the pressure to spend most of its time firefighting, obliged, as it was, to mediate between a modernizing Renzi and an anti-establishment Di Maio, both in search of visibility.

The article by Vincenzo Emanuele and Alessandro Chiaramonte, in this issue, analyses the underlying obstacle in the way of government stability, namely, the ‘process of party-system de-institutionalization, meaning a context in which the interactions of inter-party competition remain unstable and unpredictable over time’. The context reflects the partiesʼ weakness: the fact that they are increasingly personalized entities appealing to an increasingly mobile electorate; with a declining presence on the ground; in constant search of visibility, and with increasingly short time horizons – with the result that they lack the public authority that would enable them to develop agreed-upon long-term strategies, in a vicious circle. Consequently, at the beginning of 2020, with the League continuing to ride high in the polls, Italyʼs capacity to resist the European-wide, right-wing populist tide was looking extremely shaky.

The leitmotif of this phenomenon, as of the remaining four articles in this issue, is the politics of fear: the erection, by people perceiving themselves as under threat, of walls and borders, physical and otherwise, which deny human rights – whether to migrants, the LGBT+ community or even non-resident citizens – and so reflect the populist assumption that electoral majorities and ‘the will of the people’ trump constitutional constraints and the upholding of universal rights. The assumption is apparent in Matteo Salvini’s sympathies for Vladimir Putin’s Russia with (as Andrey Makarychev and George Spencer Terry point out in their article) its opposition to liberal values; its criticism of the EU, and its role, as the right sees it, as a potential ally in the defence of ‘Christian Europe’. It is apparent, despite the 2016 Cirinnà law, in the continuing discrimination against LGBT+ people in matters of surrogacy and adoption, as analysed by Luca Ozzano in his article. It is apparent in the growing debate on the continuation of representation for non-resident citizens, discussed by Simone Battiston and Stefano Luconi. The issue of non-resident citizens has as its counterpart the issue of representation for residents without citizenship, that is, the growing number of residents denied the vote because their parents are not Italian citizens – a problem which jus soli seeks to resolve but which is strenuously opposed by the populist right. Finally, the assumption is apparent in attitudes to migration where, as Nicolò Conti and his co-authors point out, the issue actually underpins public support for the EU (in the form of demands for greater EU involvement in the matter) unlike elsewhere (such as the UK for example) where the reverse effect is found.

Against this background, the arrival of the New Year saw the sardine continuing to occupy a high profile, as well as the usual raft of pundits’ predictions about what would happen during the year ahead. According to Luciano Floridi (2019), writing in the magazine, l’Espresso, the sardine were a ‘shoal’ seeking ‘to defend the Constitution as well as a style of politics capable of reaching necessary compromises without compromising itself – this through honest, informed, competent, educated and reasonable debate about the real issues worrying people: from education to health; from employment to pensions; from social security to protection of the environment. They are calling on the political class to perform their tasks decently in order to improve the present and plan for the future’. Thus described, the sardine are, it is fair to say, a movement of protest against populist politics. According to the journalist, Marco Travaglio (2020), it was difficult to predict whether the sardine had a future in 2020 as they had emerged suddenly, undergoing explosive growth, but without organizational roots and without any signs of wanting to acquire them. This too seemed a fair description.

What did seem certain was that much would depend on what happened within the M5s and the PD, many of whose supporters were opposed to the populist right but who had been lost to abstention, as the May European Parliament and the October regional elections in Umbria had revealed. Given this, the verifica di governo widely expected to take place once the regional elections of 26 January had been held, seemed likely to reveal much about the parties’ and the political system’s capacity to resist the growing right-wing populist tide. Given the doubts it was legitimate to harbour about the commitment of right-wing populism, in Italy and abroad, to principles of liberal democracy, the stakes, it seemed, could hardly have been higher.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.