Nationalism & Populism
1. Populism & Nationalism:
The (Peculiar) Case of Italy
Alberto Martinelli
Populism is one of the most widely used terms in public debate and media reports, a catch-all word that is applied to dierent empirical realities. Nationalism is a more established concept of the political lexicon that is often associated with – and some
times wrongly absorbed by – populism, the most politically rel evant of the two. is volume intends to explore the linkage between populism and nationalism in countries where national populist parties are in power. Most chapters focus on Europe, one on the United States, and another one on Latin America, in order to show analogies and dierences on the two sides of the Atlantic. e aim of this introduction is to outline the key features of both populism and nationalism and the main causal factors of their rise in contemporary Europe, to discuss the spe
cial case of the Italian coalition government between the League and the Five Star Movement (FSM for short), and to reect on the role of national populist parties in the future of the EU.
Nationalism
Nationalism is a key concept in the political lexicon of moder nity1. Although polysemic, ambiguous, changing in time and
1 J. Breuilly, Nationalism and the State, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1982.
14 When Populism Meets Nationalism
space, the concept connotes a dened and well-structured ide ology with a strong emotional appeal; it has been a powerful factor in shaping mass political behaviour and has characterised the political struggles of the last two centuries. Nationalism can be dened as the ideology, or discourse, of the nation. It fosters specic collective movements and policies promoting the sovereignty, unity, and autonomy of the people gathered in a single territory, united by a distinctive political culture and sharing a set of collective goals. e concept of nationalism is strictly related to that of the nation-state; on the one hand, nationalist ideology coordinates and mobilises collective action in nation-building through the sentiment of belonging to the nation as a primary identity, while, on the other hand, the cen
tralisation of power in a sovereign state (i.e., the unication of territory, language, culture, and tradition) allows nationalist ideology to prevail over the many regional/local cultures and identities of pre-modern societies. Nationalism is the political principle that arms the necessary congruence between polit
ical unity and national unity and helps to achieve the political project of the fusion of state and nation. e conception of the nation-state as a natural state was successful in mobilising the people for defense against foreigners, but also for legitimising aggressive expansionism.
Nationalism is historically specic. It is a basic aspect of the culture and institutions of modernity, although, both as an ideology and a political movement, re-elaborates pre-modern symbolic materials, such as ethnicity, with the aim of forming a new collective identity and solidarity in a modern society of individuals. By performing the three key functions of legitima
cy, coordination, and mobilisation, nationalism has played a key role in responding to the crucial question of how modern societies can establish an eective state-society connection and reconcile the public interest of citizens with the private interests of selsh individuals.
Nationalism is a modern phenomenon also because it is closely related to the interconnected set of economic, political,
Populism & Nationalism: e (Peculiar) Case of Italy 15
and socio-cultural transformations that characterise the various roads toward and through modernity (industrialisation, bu reaucratisation, democratisation, mass communication). e role of nationalism varies in the dierent roads to moderni ty2, but there are common processes and recurrent features3. Modern industrial societies require in fact the free movement of labour, capital, and goods throughout the national community, universal schooling and a standardised national language, in tensied social and geographical mobility. By stressing the idea of common citizenship (i.e., the nation as the body of citizens who participate in liberal-democratic institutions), nationalism meets the need of securing cohesion in the face of fragmenta tion and disintegration caused by rapid industrialisation. It is reinforced by the development of mass politics when the in sertion of hitherto excluded social groups into politics creates unprecedented problems for the ruling elites, who nd it in creasingly dicult to maintain the loyalty, obedience, and co operation of their subjects and try to secure the support of the masses by providing a common cultural identity for members of dierent social groups. Moreover, nationalism helps to de velop a national culture by destroying both the exclusiveness of elite high cultures and the parochialism of local cultures4. And it grows through the development of primary education, the invention of public ceremonies, the mass production of public monuments, to the point of becoming a new secular religion.
e XIX century and the rst half of the XX century were the age of the irresistible rise of nationalism. e nationalistic fever did not decline among the peoples of Europe after the useless slaughter of the Great War; to the contrary, it reached a new apex with the advent of totalitarian regimes and the global conagration of the Second World War. Only the death of tens
2 L. Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1992.
3 A. Martinelli, Global Modernization. Rethinking the Project of Modernity, London, Sage, 2005.
4 E. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, Oxford, Blackwell, 1983
16 When Populism Meets Nationalism
of millions, the shame and horror of concentration camps, and the enormous destruction perpetrated by the war induced peo ples that had fought against each other for centuries to put an end to the “European civil wars”, establish peaceful relations, and outline the supranational regime of the European Union.
After the end of the Second World War, nationalism did not disappear in the world but took other forms, rst of all in the anti-colonial independent movements of Africa and Asia. At the twilight of the 20th century, it strongly re-emerged in Europe as well, where the collapse of the USSR caused the explosion of ethnic, religious, and national conicts and tensions that had been latent and to a great extent absorbed into the Cold War confrontation between the two superpowers. e surfacing of these old conicts got linked with the new conicts stemming from the economic and political changes which took place in the post-Soviet world.
Nationalist parties and movements in Eastern Europe are not, however, the only instance of resurgent contemporary na tionalism in the Western world: in the early XXI century, na tional populism is growing in the US – as testied by Donald Trump’s victory – and in many European countries – as showed by the upsurge of national populist, anti-EU, parties – as a re action to the threat of deterritorialisation and uprooting caused by globalisation and as a response to the problems raised by the economic nancial crisis and the poor functioning of represent ative democracy both at the Union and at member state levels5.
Populism
Even more polysemic and controversial than nationalism is the concept of populism, which refers to a wide range of empirical phenomena. It has been dened as a rhetorical style of political communication, a thin-centred ideology6, a form of political
5 A. Martinelli, Beyond Trump: Populism on the Rise, Milan, Epoké-ISPI, 2016, p. 15 6 C. Mudde, Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe, Cambridge, Cambridge
Populism & Nationalism: e (Peculiar) Case of Italy 17
behaviour, and a strategy of consensus organisation. Although present in the language of almost all political leaders as a rhe torical style and an attempt to connect empathically with the masses, populism acquires the features of a full-edged ideology when the political discourse is organised around a few core dis tinctive features: the two concepts of “people” (as the legitimate source of power) and “community” (as the legitimate criterion for dening the people), the antagonistic relationship between two homogeneous groups, We (the pure, virtuous people) and
em (the corrupt, inecient, and negligent elite or establish ment); the absolute right of the majority against the minority; the denial of pluralism and intermediation.
e linkage with nationalism can be explained by the fact that the vagueness and plasticity of this ideological core, thin and strong at the same time, allows the populist rhetoric to be combined with a variety of more elaborated, “thicker”, ideol
ogies, such as nationalism7 or leftist radicalism, that add more specic content to it. In other words, conceiving populism as a thin ideology illustrates the dependence of populism on more comprehensive ideologies that provide a more detailed set of an
swers to key political questions8; moreover, it allows to account for the variety of political content and orientation of populist movements (right and left), while simultaneously stressing a set of common features. e right or left orientation depends on: dening who are the “people” (the sovereign “demos”) – that is, the legitimate foundation of the political order; the people-mass, the common people – that is, opposed to the oligarchy; the peo ple-nation with its ethnic roots9; and on deciding who should be included or excluded from the people and on which elites or minorities put the blame, besides traditional party leaders (for
eigners, asylum-seekers, specic immigrant groups for rightwing
University Press, 2007.
7 P.A. Taguieff, “La doctrine du national-populisme en France”, Etudes, Janvier 1986, pp. 27-46.
8 B. Stanley and P. Ucen, The Thin Ideology of Populism in Central and Eastern Europe: Theory and Preliminary Mapping, unpublished, 2008.
9 Y. Meny and Y. Surel, Par le peuple, pour le peuple, Paris, Fayard, 2000.
18 When Populism Meets Nationalism
populists; global nancial oligarchy, transnational elites, for left wing populists; Eurocrats for both). But boundaries are blurred, and several ideological elements cross the left/right cleavage, like the mistrust of any elite (rst of all the political elite), the emphasis on the people as the true legitimate actor of public decision-making, the rejection of pluralism and institutional in termediation, the stress of communitarian bonds – which goes often together with the didence and refusal of others (immi grants, strangers, ethnic minorities, worshippers of other reli gions); the defense of localism against cosmopolitan culture and sometimes the sheer rejection of modernity; the lack of ethics of responsibility (in Max Weber’s sense) as far as the consequences of ideological claims are not taken into consideration; the down playing of expertise, scientic knowledge, and complexity in fa vour of simplistic solutions.
e ideology with which populism is more often linked is na tionalism; it is also the riskiest for liberal-democracy since it can imply violent conicts and an authoritarian drift. Although not present in all forms of contemporary European populism, the link with nationalism reinforces and organises the populist ide ology around the key questions of inclusion into/exclusion from the community and of the re-armation of national sovereign ty against the EU “super-state” in opposition to the project of “an ever-closer union”. ere is a widespread belief that some immigrant groups are culturally incompatible with the native community and are threatening national identities; the EU in stitutions are blamed for fostering this threat by upholding the free movement of people. Nationalism and populism in today’s Europe have a lot in common (the demonisation of political op ponents, a conspiratorial mindset, the search for scapegoats, the fascination with more or less charismatic leaders), but, rst and foremost, they share the anti-EU stance. e hostility toward the European project of greater political integration, the opposition to the euro, and anti-Europeanism in general, are the connect ing link between populism and nationalism, where nationalism and populism merge. e national-populist strategy of collective
Populism & Nationalism: e (Peculiar) Case of Italy 19
mobilisation and consensus formation makes an instrumental use of the popular resentment against the establishment and the allure of anti-politics and pits national sovereignty against European governance. EU institutions are often the main scape
goat and critical target; but national elites are criticised too, for being unable to oppose Europe’s supranational technocracy or even for being their accomplices, arming that they must, there
fore, be replaced by the true defenders of national interest10. e relationship between the national principle and the democratic principle has evolved in a complex and sometimes contradictory way. Populism is against political pluralism and is the permanent shadow of representative politics11. In contem porary Europe, national populists are not anti-democratic and actually claim to be the true interpreters of democracy; but they have an illiberal conception of democracy that stresses the dem ocratic component (“government of the people, by the people, and for the people”, the absolute power of the majority) at the expense of the liberal component (division of powers, constitu tional guarantees, institutional checks and balances, minority rights)12. Populists uphold a notion of direct democracy that attributes absolute power to the majority, thus opening the way to what Tocqueville dened the “dictatorship of majority rule”.
National-Populism in Contemporary Europe
I have already analysed13 the main causal factors of the rise of national-populism in contemporary Europe; I will only briey summarise them here. e causes of the upsurge of national
10 A. Cavalli and A. Martinelli, La società europea, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2015. 11 H.W. Muller, What is Populism, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. 12 N. Urbinati, “Democracy and Populism”, Constellations, vol. 5, no. 1, March 1998, pp. 110-124.
13 A. Martinelli, Mal di nazione. Contro la deriva populista, Milan, Università Bocconi Editore, 2013; Idem (2016); Idem, “Sub-national Nationalism and the catalan Puzzle”, in A. Colombo and P. Magri (eds.), Big Powers Are Back. What About Europe?, Milan, Ispi, 2018.
20 When Populism Meets Nationalism
populism in Europe are only partially similar to those at work in other regions of the world, as the second chapter by Eliza Tanner Hawkins and Kirk Hawkins and the last one of this volume by Carlos de la Torre and Federico Finkelstein show. European national-populist leaders – from Hungary Fidesz’ Viktor Orban to Poland PiS’s Jaroslaw Kaczynski, from Italy Lega’s Matteo Salvini to France Front National’s Marine Le Pen, from Ukip’s Nigel Farage to Alternative fur Deutschland’s Frauke Petry, from Dutch Freedom Party’s Geert Wilders to Swedish Democrats’ Jimmie Akesson – have been encouraged by Donald Trump’s victory, ey welcomed his victory as the sign of new times and new opportunities for the majority that has been betrayed by globalisation, and they agree with Trump’s protectionism and demagoguery (“made in America”, “buy American”, “power back to the people”). One cannot, howev er, exaggerate the similarities between European and American politics, since European populism also has specic features that combine in dierent ways in the various EU member states.
e diusion of national-populism has been favoured by past long-term processes, like modern nation-building, the advent of mass politics, colonialism, and decolonisation: but some interrelated causes have contributed to its strong come
back on the political stage in contemporary Europe. e rst group of causes that favour the rise of national pop ulism concerns the pathologies of representative democracy and the crisis of its main actors: political parties. Representative de mocracy works well when a government, legitimised by the free vote of the majority and accountable to all citizens, can eective ly manage complex issues. Today, both legitimacy and eciency are in crisis: on the one hand, mainstream political parties are less and less able to mobilise voters and structure political con- ict; on the other, globalisation erodes national sovereignty and limits the capacity of national governments to implement eec tive policies, while the EU governance system does not have yet the legitimacy and scope of action necessary to deal with prob lems too big to be coped with at the national level.
Populism & Nationalism: e (Peculiar) Case of Italy 21
is double crisis has been going on for decades. Traditional mass parties have been losing consensus and inuence as a re sult of dierent, interrelated processes of change: rst of all, the declining appeal of great ideological narratives, the failure of communism with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the help lessness of social democracy in the face of growing inequalities, and the boiling down of liberalism to a self-regulating market doctrine. e great cleavages – both political-cultural (state vs. church, centre vs. periphery) and socio-economic (land vs. in dustry, capital owner vs. worker) – that marked the formation of the modern European society and gave birth to traditional parties were weakened by the combined impact of secularisa tion, the growth of the service economy, the feminisation of the workforce, and the extension of welfare. Together, these pro cesses lessened class and religious conicts and undermined the traditional bases of mass parties. en, economic and cultural globalisation deepened and amplied the transformation.
Contemporary globalisation has put a heavy strain on the institutions of representative democracy, governments, parlia ments, parties. Globalisation is characterised by the contradic tion between growing economic interdependence at the global level and persistent political fragmentation of the world system into sovereign nation-states. Globalisation creates new tech nological and economic opportunities, but also growing ine qualities; by distributing costs and benets unequally, it fosters new cleavages in society between those social groups that are (or perceive to be) favoured by the global economy and a mul ti-ethnic society and those that are (or perceive to be) harmed; and these new cleavages exacerbate a misalignment between traditional parties and their voters. Traditional parties seem less and less capable of channeling, ltering, and processing the in creasingly uid and heterogeneous demands coming from civil society, with the result that the proposal of coherent govern ment programmes becomes more and more dicult. Until the 2008 global nancial crisis, the opportunities of globalisation seemed to outweigh the costs, not only for the United States
22 When Populism Meets Nationalism
and Asia’s big emerging economies but also for the EU; but after 2008, the balance has reversed with economic stagnation, unemployment, and sovereign debt severely aecting EU coun tries, which recovered only recently.
Globalisation has created problems not only for represent ative democracy but for performing democracy as well. More than three decades of globalised economy have eroded the sovereignty of the nation-state (which has been the context in which modern democracy has developed); reduced the range of government policy options and their eectiveness (thus fur ther enlarging the gap between what is promised by leaders and what is delivered); implied a shrinking and redenition of the welfare state; jeopardised the traditional intermediary role of parties, unions, business organisations, and professional associ ations; and fostered citizens’ distrust of leaders and disaection for democratic institutions. In the European Union, the ero sion of the national sovereignty of member states could be com pensated by supranational governance, but this happened only to a limited extent because the Union is still unaccomplished and suers from a democratic decit.
e second set of causes stems from the impact of the post Cold War scenario that brought to light old cleavages and old nationalisms and created dicult problems of regime change, thus fostering the political career and access to power of na tional-populist leaders and parties in those Central and Eastern European countries that in the 45 years after the Second World War had experienced limited sovereignty, authoritarian regimes, and planned economies. e implosion of the Soviet Union has reopened cleavages and conicts that during the long Cold War had been absorbed into the bipolar confrontation between the USA and the USSR. e end of the struggle between two alter native Weltanschauungen helps explain the resurgence of national, ethnic, and religious identities – with the related geopolitical con-
icts – that had been anesthetised and hidden behind the rhet oric of universalistic ideologies (free society and communism). Old cleavages inherited from the past intersect, and partly
Populism & Nationalism: e (Peculiar) Case of Italy 23
overlap, with the new conicts stemming from the political, economic, and cultural transformations of the present and the new global processes. With the collapse of the ancient regime, when the planned economy and social security system break down, traditional social relations are in ux and sentiments of general insecurity grow, ethnic groups are brought to rely on their cultural and linguistic communities. Where society fails, the nation seems the only guarantee, and national populism prospers. Moreover, the Eurosceptic attitude of many lead ers and citizens of countries like Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia can also be traced to the reluctance to give up (if only partially) their recently regained national sover
eignty to supranational institutions. e four countries forming the Visegrad Group share a notion of the EU “à la carte”: they gladly accept the nancing of the EU’s social cohesion policy but refuse to accept the agreed quotas of asylum-seekers within their national borders.
e third main root cause is the global nancial crisis and economic stagnation that amplied globalisation’s negative impact on given social groups (low-skill workers in traditional industries with diminishing wages, unemployed and underem
ployed youth nding only precarious jobs, and other “globali sation losers”) and fueled the opposition against migrants who compete for jobs with the natives and against transnational corporations that cut jobs at home through oshoring (a ma jor propaganda item in Trump’s electoral campaign). e pro longed economic-nancial crisis and the growing unemploy ment and underemployment fostered a climate of psychological uncertainty, fragmentation, and precariousness that favours re sentment and protest.
Mainstream government parties, already under stress, have become the target of national-populist propaganda that por trays them as the docile instruments of supranational techno cratic and nancial elites. For Marine Le Pen’s Front National, for instance, “mondialisme” is the new contemporary slavery, and the vagrant, anonymous bosses of international nance are
24 When Populism Meets Nationalism
the “new slave-traders”, who in the sacred name of prot want to destroy everything that tries to oppose their tyranny – rst of all, the identity and sovereignty of the nation. e euro is involved in the condemnation and dened as treason not only to France but Europe at large since it implies the forced in
tegration of European economies into a US-dominated world market. Together with global elites, the EU superstate, and the euro, immigrants are easy scapegoats: the protracted crisis re vives the denunciation of migrants stealing jobs and welfare subsidies from the indigenous population. National-populist parties in many European countries – like the Ukip, Italy’s Lega, the Finns Party (formerly known as the True Finns), the Dutch People Party, the Flemish Vlaams Belang, and Austria’s Freedom Party – uphold policies of welfare state chauvinism that restrict social protection only to natives14.
e anxiety related to the long economic crisis intersects with the implications of Middle Eastern wars and African failed states (the pressure of asylum-seekers who escape from war, po litical instability and social disintegration, the terrorist attacks of Islamic fundamentalism against European cities), fosters a dif fuse sense of insecurity and fear for the future, and creates a fa vourable ground for anti-establishment parties and movements.
Fourth, the rise of national populism can be traced, last but not least, to the cultural dimension of globalisation – namely the explosion of digital communication, which has amplied the role of mass media in the political space. Traditional media, and commercial television, in particular, have exerted a signi-
cant inuence in politics, in so far as they contributed to increas ing the costs of electoral campaigns and strengthening political lobbies, personalising leadership, weakening internal party di alectic, and depoliticising mass protest. Communication spe cialists have replaced party cadres. e marketisation of mass media dictates its own logic, to which political actors have to
14 H. Kitschelt (with A.J. McGann), The Radical Right in Western Europe, Ann Arbor, Michigan, University of Michigan Press, 2000.
Populism & Nationalism: e (Peculiar) Case of Italy 25
adapt. Televised talk shows treat politics as any other message, fullling the need of capturing the viewers’ attention by turn ing everything into something spectacular, oversimplifying and overdramatising every issue, stereotyping and demonising ri vals, reiterating scandals and personal accusations. Commercial TV appears in line with the populist rhetoric of glorifying the common sense of the average person, even when it equals prej udice, disinformation, and false messages.
e new digital media turned out to be even more inuential than television15; they have further weakened political parties’ capacity to mediate and intermediate and undermined the au thority of scientists and intellectuals. Authority based on knowl edge and experience is challenged daily by millions of web users who pretend to be experts on everything and are perennially indignant. e refusal to listen to the opinion of experts or to verify the reliability of a presumed scandal is part and parcel with the populist distrust and hostility toward any type of elite, including the intellectual elite, with the consequence that many people are victims of false news, covered manipulations, con spiracy theories, and post-truths. An alarming picture: the dig ital revolution oers many opportunities but also raises worries for the quality of public discourse. Blogs and social networks are seldom used in order to better the knowledge of reality, to develop the critical mind, to experiment with forms of delibera tive democracy, to educate citizens to respect dierent opinions and be open to dialogue, debate, and compromise. e Internet is, on the contrary, more often used for naming and shaming, making up scapegoats, expressing frustrations and prejudices, complaining while putting the blame always on others for mis doings and failures in a game of collective rejection of personal responsibility. e eld is thus open for the diusion of messag es with a strong and immediate emotional impact, such as those of nationalism, populism, and anti-Europeanism
15 H. Kriesi and T.S. Pappas (eds.), European Populism in the Shadow of the Great Recession, Colchester (UK), ECPR Press, 2015.
26 When Populism Meets Nationalism
National Populism in Italy
is volume is about national populism in government. What happens when populist parties get to power? Do they show a clear discontinuity from their electoral/opposition past? Do they set an ephemeral agenda? Do they emphasise core populist topics (polarisation people/elites, scapegoating, conspiratorial beliefs, simplism), or do they strengthen their nationalist com
ponent, compensating for their weak populist one? Populist parties in government, becoming the new elite, tend to under play the core “people versus elite” ideological item or to shift blame on previous governments and traditional elites. But there is more. Populists display strong ethics of conviction but weak ethics of responsibility (in Max Weber’s sense), i.e., they un derestimate the consequences of their ideological claims and government policies. is attitude can help winning elections insofar as allows to make promises although knowing that they can hardly be fullled, but it cannot hold in government poli cy-making. e complementary attitude of simplism is also un der strain when these parties are in power. For leaders who pro claim that the key problems of the country are not complex and dicult to manage but just require simple, univocal solutions, that experts are useless since people wisdom is enough, that for problems to be solved voting the “right” people is enough, it is hard to explain to voters, once elected, that their promises have to be watered down, delayed, or utterly forgotten, that proclaimed party “values” no longer apply and external con straints (like the reaction of nancial markets or the criticism by the European Commission) must be taken into account, and technocrats have to be recruited. A common way out from these contradictions is blame shifting; national populist parties, when in power, try to persuade supporters that election promis es cannot be fullled because of the negative legacy of previous governments, narrow-minded Eurocrats, selsh international investors, and envious foreign countries, often adopting con spiracy theories of various kind. e linkage with nationalism
Populism & Nationalism: e (Peculiar) Case of Italy 27
plays an important role in this respect since potential scapegoats are often foreigners and the appeal to close ranks against aliens reinforces the shaking consensus due to unfullled promises. In the following pages, I will focus on the special case of the Italian coalition government between the League and the FSM.
In Italy today populism is more evident than nationalism; the latter is strong in the League but rather weak in the FSM. After the advent of the so-called “Second Republic” in 1994, there were three main instances of populist parties: Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, Umberto Bossi’s Lega Nord, and Beppe Grillo’s Five Stars Movement. Forza Italia has been the forerunner of populism through the widespread use of pop ulist rhetoric in speeches, newspaper articles, and television talk shows, but Berlusconi has now become himself a victim of a more updated, aggressive type of populism. e new Lega (League) led by Matteo Salvini, who has transformed Bossi’s separatist Northern League into a nationalist party is attracting many of former Berlusconi’s followers. I will focus my attention on Salvini’s League and Luigi Di Maio’s FSM, after briey dis cussing to what extent Berlusconi can be considered a populist leader.
Berlusconi and his “Forza Italia” party presented some of the distinctive characters of populism but lacked others. Berlusconi entered Italian politics presenting himself as a newcomer, eager to get rid of the baroque rituals of existing mainstream parties, which were either disappearing under the blows of judicial inves
tigations – like Christian Democracy (DC), the Socialist Party (PSI), the Republican Party (PRI), and the Social Democratic Party (PSDI), or deeply transforming themselves – like the former Communist Party (Partito Democratico della Sinistra PDS). Berlusconi promised to change Italy for the better, as he had successfully done with his business, and simplify and speed up government decision-making, by adopting a mana gerial style. However, although opposing the old political elite and competing with the economic-nancial elite, he never took a clear anti-elite stance; on the contrary, he co-opted the elites
28 When Populism Meets Nationalism
into the new power system. It was not the “people” against the establishment, but his supporters against his political oppo nents. His media empire contributed to polarise and antagonise public debate, as well as personalise political competition but, at least in the rst phase, Berlusconi built his consensus on the Italian citizens’ hopes for a more prosperous future rather than on their frustrations and fears. Only afterward, after the poor performance of Forza Italia-led governments in the early XXI century and under the impact of the economic recession, the sovereign debt crisis and immigrant pressure, the propaganda of his party changed and started exacerbating feelings of fear and insecurity, searching for scapegoats and relying on blame shifting. However, this consensus strategy was, in the end, more eectively and ruthlessly pursued by the new League of Salvini. One could say that Berlusconi contributed much to the upsurge of populism in Italy but is no longer its primary beneciary.
e March 4, 2018 election marked the success of populism in Italian politics, although its rise started earlier and was pre pared by structural and cultural transformation in Italian soci ety: rst, the crisis of mainstream parties as the key aspect of the more general crisis of representative democracy16 that can be traced – among other things – to a generational change in the electorate, i.e., the gradual substitution of old voters (with strong ideological attachment, stable party aliation, and a more structured position in society) with younger voters (who are more volatile, ideologically uncertain, and live a more pre carious social condition). Second, the increasing precariousness of working and family life, that aected not only the young but a growing number of people, as a result of the uneven dis tribution of the costs and benets of globalisation, with the related feelings of uncertainty and resentment among the “glo balisation losers”. ird, precariousness and resentment were intensied by the global nancial crisis and the scal austerity measures required by European institutions and implemented
16 A. Martinelli (2018).
Populism & Nationalism: e (Peculiar) Case of Italy 29
by member states’ governments to cope with it. Fourth, a grow ing feeling of insecurity, related to immigrant pressure, that, on the one hand, was exaggerated by populist propaganda, but, on the other, was largely neglected and misunderstood by leftist parties as a key factor in shaping voters’ preferences. Fifth, the impact of judicial investigations on corrupted politicians and of citizens’ protest against the political class’ recurrent scandals, intolerable privileges, and detachment from ordinary people’s problems (as it is shown by the very low level of public trust for parties and parliament members in opinion polls). Popular pro
test was fostered by a pounding “anti-caste” media campaign that put the blame of ineciency and corruption on the po litical class as a whole and was transformed by the League and the FSM into a radical antagonism between the “people” and every type of elite. Finally, the impact of the new digital media, Facebook and Twitter, that proved to be even more powerful than television in changing the style of political communica tion and inuencing voters attitudes.
Mainstream parties did not adequately interpret these chang es. On the centre-right of the political spectrum, Forza Italia could not fully exploit the anti-EU, neo-nationalist sentiment because of its ties with the European People’s Party. On the cen tre-left, the Democratic Party neglected the pleas of the poorest social groups, focused on upholding civil liberties over tradi tional class interests, and, until recently, did not eectively cope with the immigrant question. Moreover, mainstream parties stubbornly resisted to relinquishing their privileges and control of key resources and became increasingly disconnected from so ciety, although they continued to look very powerful in the eyes of citizens, as key components of the state apparatus, which use public media to recruit personnel from the state bureaucracy and distribute public resources and benets to their supporters, thus fostering the populist “anti-caste” propaganda. All these factors contributed, in dierent combination and to dierent degrees, to the rapid upsurge of the FSM and the League, that were able to present themselves as new political actors through
30 When Populism Meets Nationalism
skillful use of social media and a renewal of grassroots politics. e March 4, 2018 election had two clear winners, the FSM (with 32.68% of the vote in the Chamber and 32.2% in the Senate) and the League (with 17.37% in the House and 17.62 in the Senate). Voters showed a high volatility: more than one fourth of them (26.7%) made an electoral choice dierent from the one they made in the previous 2013 national election (when an even higher percentage of voters, 37%, had changed their preferences), despite the fact that the competing parties were almost the same.
e two winners are both similar – as instances of populist politics – and dierent – in terms of voters, ideology, and pro gramme priorities17. When Salvini took control of the party, he made a complete turnaround from the Lega Nord – a region al party that demanded greater autonomy for Northern Italy within a federal state (and, from time to time, even threatened to secede from Italy), targeted Southern Italians as assisted cli ents of patronage welfarism, and blamed Rome as the site of political corruption (“Roma ladrona”) – to the League, a right wing nationalist party designed on the model of Marine Le Pen’s Front National, with strong ties with the Visegrad Group countries’ governments, that builds its consensus on the secu rity issue, the promise to stop immigration, and the opposi tion to the European Union. e ideology of Salvini’s League is a mix of the three classical components of the political right: nationalism, neo-liberalism, and moral/religious conservatism.
e League, like other national right-wing parties, is nationalist in the sense of “putting the interests of Italians rst” both with regard to immigrants and European institutions. e inow of immigrants should be stopped or strongly reduced since they are considered a threat to security and competitors for jobs and welfare. e EU should be deeply downsized – in the sense of renationalising policies, strengthening national borders, and
17 P. Corbetta (ed.), Come cambia il partito di Grillo, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2017; G. Passarelli and D. Tuorto, La Lega di Salvini, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2018.
Populism & Nationalism: e (Peculiar) Case of Italy 31
without excluding the option of restoring the national curren cy, and leaving the Union (Italexit). e League, as a national populist party, is Eurosceptic and sometimes Europhobic: EU institutions are easy scapegoats for both the crisis of eciency/ eectiveness and the crisis of legitimacy of European democ racies. A decit of democratic representation surely exists in European governance, and communitarian treaties do put con straints on the autonomous policy choices of member states. But it is an illusion to think that, in the globalising world, separate nation-states have the resources of power necessary to govern the complexity of the present crises and mitigate their eects, whereas they can deepen cleavages and stir new infra-European conicts, with the risk of following a path already tragically traveled in European history.
e second component of Salvini’s League’s ideology is eco nomic neo-liberalism with the key corollary of tax reduction. It implies a conict with the FSM’s propensity for state inter ventionism. It also contradicts the previous, anti-EU compo nent, since the single market is a basic feature of the European Union. e third component, moral and religious conserva tism, is more controversial: on the one hand, Salvini proclaims himself a Christian, and his party supports conservative posi tions on civil liberties matters, like abortion, same-sex marriag es, and advance healthcare directive; on the other, the League strongly opposes Pope Francis’ attitude toward immigrants. It is a conservative religious position close to that of the Evangelical Protestant and Pentecostal churches, a brand of Protestantism that plaid a very important role in the victory of Donald Trump in the US and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. e top programme pri orities of the League – included in the “government contract” with the FSM – mostly concern the rst two components: a) securitisation and anti-immigration and b) tax reduction and
scal benets (like workers’ earlier retirement). Except for the last issue, i.e., the dismantling of the Monti-Fornero pension reform, these are not the top priorities of the FSM; this is not a surprise since voters’ attitudes and social characteristics strongly
32 When Populism Meets Nationalism
inuence programme priorities. In today’s electoral tactics, pop ulist party leaders, even more than their competitors, look more like party followers, in the sense that they pay feverish attention to the short-term, volatile moods of the electorate. e core of the League electorate was traditionally made of self-employed workers, artisans, small entrepreneurs, residents in small and medium-sized towns of the most economically developed re gions of the country. However, the recent huge vote increase is due to the outreach towards other social groups by building on the fact that security is a general, transversal, interclass issue. Currently, the League is still a Northern party (rst party with 30% of the vote in Veneto and Lombardy, and well ahead of Forza Italia in Piedmont), but has already made big progress in Central Italy and is growing in the Mezzogiorno as well (in fact, it is here that one can found a clear correlation between immigrants’ presence and the vote for the League). e League is a nationalist, but not yet a national, party18, since it is by far the rst party in the North but much behind the FSM in the South. e analysis of electoral ows shows that the traditional electorate of the League in the strongholds of North-East is increased not only by former Berlusconi’s supporters (who are sociologically rather similar and account for about one third) but also by people who abstained in the past and by former FSM voters. e key dierence between the two types of pop ulism is, therefore, a growing geographical polarisation: the League is strong in the North and the FSM in the South.
e Five Star Movement is a manifestation of populist poli tics, only moderately nationalist. It is a movement-party19 and, more specically, the outcome of a recombination of grassroots single-issue movements, born on the initiative of a comedian, Beppe Grillo, who was able to express the growing sentiment against the privileges of the political “caste” and the widespread demand for moralising political life and renovating democratic
18 G. Passarelli and D. Tuorto (2018).
19 D. Della Porta, J. Fernandez, H. Kpouki, and L. Mosca, Movement Parties Against Austerity, Malden, Polity Press, 2017.
Populism & Nationalism: e (Peculiar) Case of Italy 33
practices. After a “phase zero”, in which local grassroots lists certied by Grillo were presented in local elections (January 2008), the FSM went through three phases20: in the rst, from its foundation upon the initiative of Grillo in October 2009 to 2013 national election, it kept an informal, movement-like character, with constant interactions on the web between the leader and a small, but growing, number of activists. With the entrance of the rst movement representatives in local assem blies, more traditional tactics like mass rallies were added to the use of the web; the movement started to institutionalise, although keeping its self-denition of horizontal association (with such slogans as “one is worth one”, “non-movement”, “non-statute”, or using the word “speaker” instead of presi
dent or secretary), in order to stress its diversity from tradi tional parties. e second phase started with the decision to participate in the 2013 national election. New problems had to be addressed: rst, the need to outline a government pro gramme (Grillo’s “20 points to get out of the dark”– which included the so-called “reddito di cittadinanza” (basic income guarantee), measures for SM rms, improvements of public health and public schools, anti-corruption law, the abolition of public nancing for parties, the introduction of the proactive referendum – beyond other issues raised in mass rallies (like a referendum on leaving the EU and the euro and tax reduc tion measures); second, the need to dene more precise criteria for selecting candidates (through web voting in the so-called “parlamentarie”, which were at rst reserved to those who had previously been elected in local assemblies). e outcomes of these innovations were a hybrid, party/movement organisation al structure, the emergence of new leaders, and some downsis ing of Grillo’s – until then – one-man leadership. e success of the FSM was large and quick: it reached 25.5% in the Chamber (almost equal to the Democratic Party that got most of the vote
20 R. Biorcio and P. Natale, Il Movimento 5 Stelle dalla protesta al governo, Milano, Mimesis, 2018.
34 When Populism Meets Nationalism
of Italians abroad). e success had been anticipated in the mu nicipal election in Parma (May 2012) and in the regional elec tion in Sicily (October 2012). After the sharp decline in 2014 European Parliament election (when many PD voters who had shifted to the FSM went back to Matteo Renzi’s PD that won with 40% of the vote), the growth resumed with the victories in the municipal elections in Rome, Turin, and other cities,
paving the way for the nation-wide success of March 2018. e third phase initiated in the 2018 election campaign and was very successful, making the FSM the relative majority party in both chambers. e process of institutionalisation moved on, with the election of Luigi Di Maio as both political leader and candidate Prime Minister, the direct selection of several candi dates by the party leadership, and the presentation of the min isters’ list including outside experts. Grillo kept for himself the role of guarantor, while the new party statute gives a key role to the Rousseau platform – the web platform where a large part of the FSM political activity takes place, from the registration of new members to the selection of candidates, from web “direct democracy” consultation to communication and accountability by elected MPs (who must nance the platform with 300 euros a month). Some journalists exposed as unclear the links between the Rousseau platform and the Casaleggio Associates – of which Davide Casaleggio (the son of Gianroberto, friend and co-initi ator of the movement with Grillo) is President, CEO, and treas urer. Inroads made by hackers into the platform has prompted the Data Protection Authority to make checks of its safety. In a few years, the FSM greatly broadened its electoral base: the early activists and sympathysers were newcomers – who found in the movement for the rst time an opportunity for political participation – and disappointed leftist voters. With the leap forward of 2012, these two groups were joined by “rational” voters – who saw in the FSM the only force that could transform Italy’s political life –, “emotional” voters who despised the caste, and former PD voters who had been dis appointed by Matteo Renzi’s rst attempt to change the party
Populism & Nationalism: e (Peculiar) Case of Italy 35
(defeated by Pierluigi Bersani in the party primaries for party secretary) and had a signicant impact on the outcome of the 2013 election by shifting their preferences in the last week be fore the polls. e further growth in consensus in the 2018 general election is largely due to voters who greatly appreciated the promise of implementing the basic income guarantee (the so-callled “citizenship income”) mostly in the South, compared to a moderate increase in Central Italy and a slight decline in Northeast Italy. e resulting key change with regard to 2013 is the growing meridionalisation of the party. e analysis of elec
toral ows shows that almost ¾ of those who voted the FSM in 2013 conrmed their choice, while the increase came from former centre-left voters (mostly in Central Italy) and former centre-right voters and previously non voting people (mostly in the Mezzogiorno). e 2018 FSM electorate was made for 59% of voters who conrmed their 2013 choice, for 14% of non voters, for 18% of former centre-left voters (14% PD and 2% each Monti’s party and the radical left), for 9% of former cen tre-right voters (7% Forza Italia and 1% each Lega and Fratelli d’Italia).
e growth of the party added new claims and implied a partial reset of programme priorities, adapting them to the de mands of dierent segments of the electorate (and to the specif ic type of election), a tactic which works well for an opposition party but much less so for a government party (the more so in a coalition with another party having dierent priorities). Among Grillo’s “20 points to get out of the dark”, the basic income guarantee has become the top priority; other original proposals like an anti-corruption law, the reduction of privi leges for the political class, tax reduction, and measures for SM
rms were kept, while others like more funds for public health and public education were downgraded, and the referendum on Italexit was conned to Grillo’s shows.
Given the dierences between the FSM and the League, the formation of the new government was long and dicult but looked like the only option, since neither the centre-right
36 When Populism Meets Nationalism
coalition nor the centre-left coalition had the majority, and the PD rejected an FSM proposal to form a coalition. After three months, an agreement was nally reached by the two winning parties, despite their ideological dierences. However, two minorities do not make necessarily a majority and can hardly guarantee a stable government with a coherent programme.
One might wonder on which basis this coalition is built and how long will it last. e government coalition is strength ened by the two parties’ common will to remain in power long enough to build a new power system in the many government agencies, state-controlled rms, and political bodies that are led by government nominees. e election of the presidents of the lower and upper chamber and many parliament committees before and after the forming of the coalition, the partition of posts among party supporters, and the distribution of benets to party clients, show that the League and the FSM are ca
pable of making compromises. Moreover, each party tries not to interfere with the other’s declared programme priorities and seems willing to divide the scarce public resources needed to implement them. Conicts appear, however, inevitable and are already taking place on issues like the new security law and the reform of criminal proceedings. Also, their strategies for achiev
ing economic growth diverge: for the FSM, the driver is the domestic demand that should be boosted by the basic income guarantee, for the League, the driver is tax-free corporate invest ment in innovation and infrastructures. Hence the conicts on implementing industrial projects like the control of Taranto’s Ilva by Arcelor Mittal and the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), and on nancing infrastructures like the high-speed railways between Turin and Lyon and Brescia and Venice, or the third railway crossing between Genoa and Milan.
Divergent opinions and conicts between the two partners make it hard to predict how long the government will last, if un til the European election or after. What it is not hard to forecast is that the coalition between two populist parties with dierent priorities implies a much heavier burden for the public budget
Populism & Nationalism: e (Peculiar) Case of Italy 37
than it would have been if one of the two had reached a parlia mentary majority alone. As I already remarked, each party tries not to undercut the achievement of the other’s electoral goals, with the result of adding expenditure to expenditure (basic in come guarantee and early retirement) and of reducing the scal income (at tax). e collision course with the European gov ernance (that accuses Italy to violate agreed budget rules), the growing risk of isolation of Italy in the EU and, even more wor risome, the negative reaction of the nancial markets appear in evitable. One could, however, argue that the policy choices of the yellow-green government are not new, since also in the past quite dierent policy priorities had been jointly pursued. e political proposal actually reminds us those of past DC-led governments (although in a quite dierent political context).
e “government contract” between the FSM and the League is, in this respect, a mix of old and new. Old is the double strat egy of tax reduction and scal leniency (at tax, tax amnesty) for those voters who belong to the better-o social groups and/ or live in the richer parts of the country (most of the North), on the one hand, and patronage welfarism with signicant state aid for those voters who belong to the worse-o social groups and/or live in the poorer parts of the country like vast areas in the Mezzogiorno, on the other. is dual strategy was a key component of the consensus organisation of the Christian Democratic Party and, to a lesser extent, of its government partners (PSI, PSDI, PLI) in the 1970s and 1980s. is strate gy clearly had a cost, i.e., the huge increase in the public debt, but was for many years an eective and viable strategy, until the Maastricht parameters of scal austerity and the “Clean hands” investigation – exposing corrupted lobbying and party clientelism – forced government parties to give it up (at least temporarily). In a country like Italy, where many citizens claim the right to get help from the state but forget their civic duties such as respecting the law and paying taxes, the combination of poorly regulated private business and generous state assistance has often been an eective way to win consensus, although it
38 When Populism Meets Nationalism
has hardly provided good governance.
e government contract underwritten by the FSM and the League contains election promises which remind of the double strategy outlined above: “scal peace” – as it is called the wide tax amnesty proposed by the government – and “at tax” – that tends to favour high- and middle-income groups – will be more welcomed by League supporters, which include many autono
mous workers, small businessmen, and public bonds holders, whereas the basic income guarantee will mostly be welcomed by the M5S electorate, which includes large numbers of unem ployed and underemployed. e social divide is also a territorial divide, since the League – although extending its reach, has still its electoral strongholds in the North, while the FSM is signicantly more voted by those living in the South. However, the attempt to rehash the old compromise – which was at the core of Christian Democrats’ electoral consensus in the “First Republic”– raises a two-fold problem: rst, these promises are not made by a single party but by two dierent parties which share government power in a complex and dicult relationship of competitive cooperation. e Christian Democratic Party could manage the North/South dualism through a complex system of mediation, intermediation, compromise, checks and balances, between dierent “currents” and regional bosses, who were united by the common goal of keeping their party in pow er. e present yellow-green coalition, on the other hand, has an inherent contradiction which can explode if certain condi
tions take place, as I argued above.
e second problem is that the same factors that contributed to ending Christian Democracy-led governments in the “First Republic” – i.e., EU constraints on member states’ monetary and scal policies (the Maastricht parameters) and the reactions of globally interconnected nancial markets which did not al
low this type of free-wheel public nance – are still present. Italy is exposed to EU infringement proceedings for disregard ing European regulations, and the cost of renancing the debt is rising due to the declining trust of nancial investors. e
Populism & Nationalism: e (Peculiar) Case of Italy 39
FSM and the League face the problem of rising expenditures if they want to deliver what they promised during the electoral campaign. All opposition parties face it once they get to power, but the problem is even more acute for populist parties since they run campaigns which exaggerate promises and simplify the ways to fulll them in very short time (such as ending poverty in a few months with a single law, i.e., the “citizenship income”); and it is even more acute in Italy now, since there are two pop ulist parties in power, not just one, each striving to implement its own set of priorities. After the government decision to raise to 2.4% the decit/GDP ratio for the next three scal years in 2019 budget law, the FSM’s ministers celebrated it as a victory, arguing that the resources needed to implement programme priorities had to be found despite EU “unreasonable” budgetary constraints, because those priorities are the reasons why vot ers chose their party. To experts – like the INPS president Tito Boeri or former spending review commissioner Carlo Cottarelli – who warned that the nancial burden resulting from basic income guarantee, pension law reform, and at tax would be too high for a country with such a huge public debt, the lead
er of the League answered by inviting them to stop criticising and forming instead their own parties. e reaction of nancial markets (the rising spread between Italian and German bonds, Italian banks’ losses in the stock exchange, the downward revi
sion of Italy’s GDP, the downgrading of Italy sovereign debt by rating agencies) prompted a limited change of the budget law (a lower public decit increase in 2020 and 2021) but, on the whole, the Italian government is keeping his decision, while EU institutions are making clear that violations of the common rules cannot be accepted. Despite goodwill declarations from both sides that an agreement will be nally reached, no signif icant changes in the budget law are likely to take place unless the economic situation worsens very much. If this is the case, the two populist parties will likely resort to the well-known tac
tics of putting the blame on others; they will argue that the government did its best but was prevented from doing what it
40 When Populism Meets Nationalism
wanted by external powers, such as the unreasonable EU politi cal elites and wicked global nancial elites, all acting against the interests of Italian people. If, on the other hand, the deteriora tion of Italy’s economic situation is kept within tolerable limits, the government parties will celebrate victory over an impotent EU. In both cases, the national-populist campaign against the EU in the European Parliament election will be strengthened, although blame-shifting and scapegoating work only up to a certain point.
From the analogy with the Christian Democracy-led govern ment of the “First Republic”, one should not draw, however, the impression that the FSM and the League are not innovat ing Italian politics as instances of neo-populism, coupled in the case of the League with neo-nationalism. Several elements jus tify dening them populist parties and help explain why they won the election. First, the illiberal character of populist rhet oric that manifests itself in many statements; just to mention a few, the frequent reference to Art.1 of the Italian Constitution (“Sovereignty belongs to the people”), forgetting to mention its second part (“that exercises it in the forms and within the boundaries set by the Constitution”); the post-election post ers celebrating the victory of the League that state “the People won”, thus drawing a sharp line between “us”– the good citizens who support the party – and all others, who are not consid ered part of the political community. Second, attacks directed at institutions that should ensure that checks and balances re main in place, and that are key components of a liberal de mocracy: in the FSM case, the party attacked Italy’s President when he refused to agree on the nomination of Paolo Savona, a Eurosceptic minister; in case of the League, the party crit icised judges arguing that judges have not been elected and should not interfere with those who represent the will of the people; both parties threatened to cut funds to the press be cause is too critical of the government. ird, the skillful use of social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) and the tendency to react immediately to dramatic events – like the collapse of
Populism & Nationalism: e (Peculiar) Case of Italy 41
the Genoa bridge – identifying scapegoats and fostering blame shifting on past governments, to disseminate misleading news and data (like the ones on the nancial contribution of Italy to the EU), to make party leaders familiar gures by showing their private lives. is use of new media has successfully changed the political discourse and reframed political debates. Fourth, the ability to perceive the frustrations and resentments of many citizens at the local level, in urban peripheries, small towns, the countryside, and politically exploit them. Fifth (for the FSM), a strong inclination toward “web democracy” through perma nent online consultations between elected representatives and followers. By reverse, distinctive populist characteristics like anti-technocratic feelings have been softly downgraded be
cause the transition from anti-elite opposition to government requires to rely on technocrats and take “pragmatic” decisions about previously ideologically loaded issues, even at the price of stirring criticism and protest among supporters.
e key problem of the League is how to become a nation al party, increasing consensus outside its traditional strong holds; to this purpose, it will likely emphasise a nationalist and Eurosceptic anti-EU discourse. e key problem of the FSM is the institutionalisation of the movement, the transition from a loose federation of territorial and web communities into a party organisation, with the related problems of the succession to Grillo’s leadership and the denition of a model of society that could replace the present heterogeneous set of “post-ideo logical” narratives. e inherent diculties of those problems are aggravated for both parties by the fact that solutions must be pursued in the context of erce competition within the odd couple in government.
National Populism and the Future of the EU
Italy is a special case of national populism in today’s Europe. However, the diusion of both nationalism and populism goes well beyond Italy. e convergence of nationalist ideology
42 When Populism Meets Nationalism
and populist rhetoric and the rise of national-populist leaders, movements, and parties is the main symptom of the crisis of democratic representation in contemporary Europe and the major challenge that the European Union faces since its birth, a challenge that can be eectively countered only by developing the political project of a truly democratic supranational union21.
e risk exists that the rationalising power of parties and insti tutions might be severely reduced by the ebbs and ows of vol atile and ephemeral political moods, thus triggering a vicious circle between weak and short-sighted governments and pro test populist movements without perspectives, right at the time when the need for legitimate and ecient governments, able to face a series of intertwined crises (low economic growth, high unemployment, massive migration, terrorism) is stronger than ever. e supporters of populist anti-EU parties criticise real pathologies of democratic life and sincerely wish to cure them, but their conception of democracy is often rudimental and in complete and fosters the rise of intolerant, plebiscitarian leaders who, once in power, prove incapable of governing complexity.
National populism can provide an answer, although limited, to the legitimacy crisis of contemporary democracies insofar as it oers an identity basis to many globalisation losers, who pin point transnational elites and the EU bureaucracy and technoc racy as the root of all their problems of unemployment, precari ousness, declining income, and generalised insecurity. But their strategy for restoring full national sovereignty and renationalis ing policy-making cannot respond eectively to the interrelat ed crises of unequal development, poverty, terrorism, and war because the constraints on sovereignty imposed by globalisation do not disappear but are, on the contrary, even stronger and more pervasive for political entities that are smaller and weaker than a supranational union.
e coming election of May 2019, the rst after Brexit, will likely bring signicant changes in European politics. For the
21 A. Martinelli (2016).
Populism & Nationalism: e (Peculiar) Case of Italy 43
rst time, the key issue will be the future of the Union and its institutional reform; and the key confrontation will be between those who support a deeper political integration and those who are in favour of restoring national sovereignty. A simulation of the 2019 outcome on the basis of the results in recent nation
al elections in member countries shows that votes for nation al-populist parties will increase but not to the point of reach ing a majority in parliament; these parties could, however, get enough votes to form a blocking minority, since most decisions – beyond those requiring unanimity – are taken by a quali-
ed majority vote, including the election of the Commission President. In his 2018 State of the Union speech, Jean Claude Juncker urged each major party federations to renew their decision to nominate their own candidate (Spitzenkandidat) for Commission President and select the one who gets more votes. e pro-EU coalition that elected him four years ago – Christian-Democrats, Socialists, and Liberals – only had 45 votes more than necessary. e two Eurosceptic groups in the EP can count now on 45 EFDD (Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy) and 35 of ENF (Europe of Nations and Freedom) MPs, but this time the populist wave will be stronger. If the 45 votes more than the needed majority vanish due to the increase of votes for populist Eurosceptic parties, new scenarios open up: either a stalemate in EU politics or a new enlarged coalition, including the Greens.
If one takes into account not only the relations of force among party federations but also their internal dynamics, it is worth noting the eorts of the EPP (European’s People Party) and ALDE (Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe) to keep their Eurosceptic components challenging their mainstream pro-EU position, like Orban in the EPP and, to a lesser extent, the German FDP (Free Democratic Party) in ALDE. At the same time, keeping the unity of the federation runs the risk of shifting the axis of these parties to the right on key policy choic es, rst of all, migration and borders policies. is intention was clearly stated by CSU’s (Christian Social Union) Manfred
44 When Populism Meets Nationalism
Weber, the President of the European People’s Party group in the EP, who has been nominated as the ocial candidate for the top Commission job at the EPP congress in November 2018 despite his party decline in the last Bavarian election. In a September 2018 interview, Weber described himself as a “bridge builder” and called on conservatives to “listen” to pop
ulist leaders and “nd compromises” in order to avoid another Brexit; but he added that the “identity question” would dom inate the electoral campaign and that a European identity and way of life does exist, which includes secular values, democracy, the rule of law, and press freedom. e internal dynamics of the EPP is relevant for the future of the EU, a complex game that will be inuenced by the already ongoing competition for re placing Angela Merkel as CDU (Christian Democratic Union) leader in 2021. A rst test of this conict was the yes vote of the European Parliament on the motion calling for triggering Article 7 against Hungary over the alleged rule of law breaches; even though Orban’s Fidesz party is still part of the EPP family,
the internal struggle in the EPP is far from over. Similar tensions and struggles are taking place, in various ways, within the other major EU party federations in what will be the most crucial election since the birth of the EU. e cleavage between pro-EU and anti-EU parties is at the core of the campaign for the 2019 European Parliament, a fact that proves the exceptional foresight of the Manifesto that Eugenio Colorni, Ernesto Rossi, and Altiero Spinelli wrote in conne ment on the island of Ventotene, during the darkest hour of the second World war:
[…] the dividing line between progressive and reactionary par ties no longer coincides with the formal lines indicating a more or less advanced democracy, a more or less developed form of so cialism, but rather with a very new, substantial line: on one side are those who see the old objective of struggle, in other words the conquest of national political power, and who will, albeit involuntarily, play into the hands of the reactionary forces, by allowing the incandescent lava of popular passions to set in the old molds with past absurdities resurfacing, while on the other
Populism & Nationalism: e (Peculiar) Case of Italy 45
side are those who see their main duty as the creation of a solid international state, who will direct popular forces towards this goal, and who, even if they gain national power, will use it above all as an instrument to bring about international unity.