The Long Italian Transition: Populist Leaders & Movements between 1983 and 2018

• In Event: Populism, Italian Style

Abstract

Significant changes in Italian politics have been quite well distributed since the early eighties of the twentieth century: in particular, it dates back to 1983 when the secretary of the Italian Socialist Party, Bettino Craxi, became Prime Minister (in Italy, President of the Council of Ministers), introducing a different leadership in a country whose previous habits were concerned with maintaining the status quo inherited from the post-WW2 period.
Although commonly shared with the European countries’ political landscapes at the time, more relevant differences did appear with the new populist messages generated by center-right and territorial parties, such as Forza Italia and Lega Nord, in the late eighties and early nineties.
Then, after 2009 (but with important roots in the previous years), with the top-down creation of a political movement from the digital world, Italian politics entered a new era, that is still in need of much in-depth research (besides excellent exceptions as Tarchi 2003, 2015 and Biorcio 2015): however, this is only one of the events which contributed to increase the substantial distance with the European political landscape.
In fact, shortly after the official birth of the MoVimento 5 Stelle, founded by the former Italian comedian Beppe Grillo, a critical action started within the Partito Democratico, with the mayor of Florence as its main leader: the “rottamatori”, whose harsh and clear proposals reached the public opinion, becoming part of the national political debate without any internal filter from their own party.
Following the formation of the all-populist government in spring 2018, the aim of this paper will be answering the main research question, whether or not Italian populism should be addressed as a style or a syndrome, analyzing the key discursive elements adopted by the most prominent national political leaders and movements over the last 35 years, proceeding with historical order and communicative testing.
Considering the period of coverage, a nested analysis (Lieberman 2005) nicely fits as a comparative strategy for this paper, due to the collection of quantitative and qualitative data.

Author

• Dario Quattromani