Brothers of Italy: A New Populist Wave in an Unstable Party System 3031261313, 9783031261312

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Brothers of Italy A New Populist Wave in an Unstable Party System

Davide Vampa

Brothers of Italy “Sophisticated, well-argued and based on a wealth of data, Vampa’s book tells you everything you need to know about the trajectory of Giorgia Meloni’s party in light of the mainstreaming of Europe’s populist radical right today. Its detailed analysis of the party’s ideology, organisation, electorate, alliances and policies will shape debates on Brothers of Italy for years to come.” —Professor Daniele Albertazzi, University of Surrey, UK “Vampa’s new book is a fascinating attempt to put Giorgia Meloni and her Brothers of Italy into a wider historical and European context. The result yields important insights that extend far beyond Italian politics. Anyone interested in contemporary Europe should read it.” —Professor Erik Jones, Director of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Florence, Italy “The rise of Giorgia Meloni and her Brothers of Italy party has been one of the most remarkable recent phenomena of European politics. Vampa’s book masterfully explains how, in just under a decade, Meloni’s party has marched from the margins of Italian politics to the centre of power.” —Professor Duncan McDonnell, Griffith University, Australia

Davide Vampa

Brothers of Italy A New Populist Wave in an Unstable Party System

Davide Vampa School of Social Sciences and Humanities Aston University Birmingham, UK

ISBN 978-3-031-26131-2 ISBN 978-3-031-26132-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26132-9 © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Melisa Hasan This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

About This Book

This volume examines the origins, ideology, organisation, leadership, political alliances, electoral performance and institutional role of the rightwing party Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia, Fdl). FdI’s meteoric rise is only the latest in a series of shocks that have hit Italy’s unstable political system in recent years. However, it would be a mistake to brand FdI as yet another Italian anomaly. Indeed, the party stands at the crossroads between an established political tradition, that of the post-fascist and conservative right, and the more recent populist waves that have affected many mature democracies. By placing Giorgia Meloni’s party in a comparative analytical framework, the author shows that its success stems from a mix of past legacies and current developments seen in much of Europe (and beyond): the growing role of right-wing female leaders and their reliance on new media; the mainstreaming of the far right mixed with populist repertoires; the de-alignment and (partial) re-alignment of voters; the reconfiguration of electoral geographies; and ultimately the emergence of an illiberal model of democracy. In short, rather than being an exception, FdI can be seen as one of the most recent and advanced manifestations of a broader process of political change sweeping the West.

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Contents

1

2

3

Brothers of Italy, the Radical Right and Populism in Italy Brothers of Italy: Between Past, Present and Future Re-Igniting the Flame: From the Post-Fascist Tradition to the Populist Turn A Multi-Dimensional Framework of Analysis Structure of the Book References

1 2 4 8 10 12

Ideology and Policy Positions FdI’s Ideological Diamond: Nativism, Authoritarianism, Populism and Sovereignism FdI’s Programmatic Positions FdI’s Programmatic Development (2013–2022) Conclusion Postscript: FdI’s Ideological and Programmatic Profile in Comparative Perspective References

15

Organisation and Leadership A ‘Presidential’ Party Organisational Structure Party Membership and Resources Giorgia Meloni’s Leadership Conclusion

39 40 41 44 47 53

15 18 26 33 34 36

vii

viii

CONTENTS

Postscript: FdI’s Organisation and Leadership in Comparative Perspective References 4

5

6

54 58

Political Friends and Foes Exiting the Political Mainstream to Become the New Mainstream Domestic Allies: League and Forza Italia Domestic Opponents: Democratic Party and Five Star Movement International Connections: From the European Conservatives and Reformists to Trump’s Republicans Conclusion Postscript: Right-Wing Populist Integration in Other European Countries References

61

Winning Votes A Meteoric Rise Analysing FdI’s Electoral Success: Where? How? Who? Multi-Level Electoral Success: The Local, Regional and European Arenas Conclusion Postscript: The Electoral Success of FdI in the Western European Context References

81 82 83

Winning Seats (and Government) Translating Votes into Political Power Who Was Elected? In Government Local, Regional and European Levels Conclusion Postscript: FdI and the Institutional Role of Populist Radical Right Parties in Other Western European Countries References

62 64 69 71 73 74 78

96 98 99 103 105 106 108 111 116 118 120 123

CONTENTS

7

Conclusion: Ten Lessons from Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy Radical Legacies and Populist Innovations The Growing Importance of Sovereignism in a Multi-Dimensional Ideological Framework Leaders and Followers: Old Organisational Imperatives and New Media Strategies Female Leaders in Männerparteien Systemic Integration and the Importance of Establishing Alliances (And Finding the Right Opponents) An International Network of Nationalists The Complexities of Electoral Geography Education: The New Political Divide? Populists Competing for Votes Between Inclusion-Moderation and Democratic Backsliding References

Index

ix

125 126 126 127 128 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 137

About the Author

Davide Vampa is Senior Lecturer in Politics at Aston University, Birmingham, and was co-convenor of the Italian Politics Specialist Group of the UK Political Studies Association between 2018 and 2021. His work focuses on the links between territorial party politics and public policy. He has also published extensively on recent transformations in democratic representation (at local, regional and national levels), rising populism and the crisis of social democracy. He published a monograph with Palgrave Macmillan, The Regional Politics of Welfare in Italy, Spain and Great Britain (2016). More recently, he has co-edited a book entitled Populism and New Patterns of Political Competition in Western Europe (2021, with Daniele Albertazzi) and co-authored a monograph on the Italian Northern League under its former leader Umberto Bossi, Populism in Europe: Lessons from Umberto Bossi’s Northern League (2021, with Daniele Albertazzi).

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Abbreviations

Abbreviation AfD AN DC DF EL FdI FI

Original party name Alternative für Deutschland Alleanza Nazionale Democrazia Cristiana Dansk Folkeparti Elliniki Lisi Fratelli d’Italia Forza Italia

FN FPÖ FrP LFI LN—Lega

Front National Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs Fremskrittspartiet La France insoumise Lega Nord—Lega

M5S MSI PCI PD PIS PS PVV

Movimento 5 Stelle Movimento Sociale Italiano Partito Comunista Italiano Partito Democratico Prawo i Sprawiedliwo´sc´ Perussuomalaiset Partij voor de Vrijheid

RN SD SVP UKIP

Rassemblement National Socialdemokratiet Schweizerische Volkspartei United Kingdom Independence Party Vlaams Belang

VB

English party name Alternative for Germany National Alliance Christian Democracy (Italy) Danish People’s Party Greek Solution Brothers of Italy Forward Italy (not used in the text) National Front (France) Austrian Freedom Party Progress Party (Norway) France Unbowed Northern League—League (Italy) Five Star Movement (Italy) Italian Social Movement Italian Communist Party Democratic Party (Italy) Law and Justice (Poland) Finns Party Party for Freedom (Netherlands) National Rally (France) Social Democrats (Denmark) Swiss People’s Party United Kingdom Independence Party Flemish Interest (Belgium)

xiii

List of Figures

Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig.

1.1 2.1 3.1 3.2

Fig. 3.3

Fig. 3.4

Fig. 4.1

Fig. 4.2

Fig. 5.1

From the Italian Social Movement to Brothers of Italy FdI’s ideological diamond The multi-level organisation of Brothers of Italy FdI income from 2013 to 2021 (Source Author’s own elaboration based on party budgets, available at https:// www.fratelli-italia.it/) The popularity of Giorgia Meloni and other Italian leaders from 2018 to September 2022 (Source Author’s own elaboration based on data provided by Demos and Pi, www.demos.it) Mapping social media following of the main Italian party leaders and organisations (Source Author’s own elaboration based on Facebook and Twitter follower numbers on 25 September 2022) Changing equilibria within the right: share of right-wing vote controlled by FdI/AN, League and FI/PdL from 1994 to 2022 (Source Author’s own elaboration based on data from the Italian Interior Ministry) FdI’s (AN in 2003–2007) electoral alliances in regions and regional capitals (capoluoghi) (Source Author’s own elaboration based on data from the Italian Interior Ministry) The electoral performance (in %) of FdI and the other main Italian parties between 2013 and 2022 (general elections) (Source Author’s own elaboration based on data from the Italian Interior Ministry)

6 16 43

47

51

53

65

68

82

xv

xvi

LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 5.2

Fig. 5.3

Fig. 5.4

Fig. 6.1

Fig. 6.2

Provincial vote (−) versus urban vote (+) for FdI (and predecessors) and the other four main Italian parties (Source Author’s own elaboration based on data from the Italian Interior Ministry) Voting intentions (%) from 2013 to 2022 (Source Author’s own elaboration based on data from Demos and Pi [www.demos.it]) Best electoral performance of existing populist radical right parties in Western Europe (Source Author’s own elaboration based on data from the Political Data Yearbook [https://politicaldatayearbook.com/]. Data refer to general elections or, in the case of France, presidential election; country and year of best performance in brackets) Share of seats won by FdI and other main parties in both Chamber of Deputies and Senate (2013–2022) (Source Author’s own elaboration based on data from the Italian Interior Ministry) Largest share of seats won by existing populist radical right parties in Western Europe (Source Author’s own elaboration based on data from the Political Data Yearbook, https://politicaldatayearbook.com/. Data refer to the lower chamber of parliament; country and year of best performance in brackets)

89

91

100

107

121

List of Tables

Table 2.1

Table 2.2 Table 2.3 Table 3.1 Table 4.1 Table 4.2 Table 5.1a

Table 5.1b Table 5.2 Table 5.3

Table 5.4

Ideological dimensions and policy issues (salience and position) of FdI and other main Italian parties (2014–2019) FdI’s key (top 20) programmatic categories and comparison with other parties (2018) FdI’s CHES scores in 2019 compared to those of other key populist radical right parties in Western Europe Leadership, organisation, social media communication: comparing five populist radical right parties AN/FdI, League and FI: consistent electoral allies, (increasingly) inconsistent governmental partners National and international integration of five populist radical right parties Electoral results (%) of FdI and the other right-wing Italian parties by region (general elections from 2013 to 2022) Electoral results (%) of PD and M5S by region (general elections from 2013 to 2022) Vote shifts from the 2019 European election to the 2022 general election (%) Partisan distribution of voters (%) by socio-economic and demographic characteristics (comparing 2018 and 2022) Performance of FdI and the other main Italian parties in local, regional and European elections

20 23 35 55 67 76

84 85 92

94 97

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 5.5 Table 6.1 Table 6.2 Table 6.3 Table 6.4

FdI and other key Western European populist radical right parties in the electoral arena Characteristics of elected MPs by group (% of the group in the Chamber of Deputies) Elected representatives (share of the total) by territorial level and by party Characteristics of regional councillors by party (2018–2022) FdI and other key Western European populist radical right parties in the parliamentary arena

102 110 117 118 122

CHAPTER 1

Brothers of Italy, the Radical Right and Populism in Italy

Abstract This chapter places the case of Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia, FdI) in the Italian and European context, also discussing its origins. The analysis presented in this volume is based on the general argument that FdI represents a new populist wave in Italy, which is not only disruptive but also characterised by considerable complexity. The party stands as the latest representative of recent trends that make populism a fundamental new dividing line in the political landscape of ‘mature’ democracies. At the same time, however, FdI is part of a long political tradition, the post-fascist one, which has its roots in twentiethcentury Italian history, well before today’s crises. The continuous work of mediation between past, present and future, carried out by an entire political community and its leadership, has thus given rise to an original project, which has proved successful but not without contradictions. Keywords Brothers of Italy · Origins · Populism · Post-fascism · Radical right

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Vampa, Brothers of Italy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26132-9_1

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D. VAMPA

Brothers of Italy: Between Past, Present and Future Late December is not the ideal time to found a new party. Voters are too distracted by preparations for the upcoming festivities: family, friends and the domestic sphere become the main sources of interest and concern. Election skirmishes and bombastic promises of radical change are not supposed to draw much attention in the peaceful and conciliatory atmosphere sweetened by the smell of panettone. Yet Italian politics is accustomed to precipitating crises during periods destined for tranquillity: long summers and festive winters have marked most of the turning points in the country’s recent political history. Thus, confirming this pattern, a few days before Christmas 2012, the sudden break-up of the supermajority that had backed a technocratic government for just over a year plunged the Italian political system towards new elections. Against this backdrop of confusion and rapid electoral repositioning, Giorgia Meloni—a young former minister in the last government led by Silvio Berlusconi and a member of his party (The People of Freedom—Popolo della Libertà, PdL)—posted a tweet on 20 December: ‘It’s official. Guido Crosetto and I are leaving the PdL. Fratelli d’Italia, a centre-right movement, is born. Honesty, participation, meritocracy’. (author’s translation)

The logo chosen for the new party was rather simple—there was no time for graphic experiments: a circle dominated by the colours of the Italian flag (green, white and red) and an inscription with the first verse of the Italian national anthem ‘Fratelli d’Italia’ (Brothers of Italy) in the top half on a blue background (the colour of the Italian national football team and most other sports teams). In the general election in late February 2013, less than 700,000 Italians would draw a cross on that new symbol, not even two per cent of the voters, electing only 9 representatives out of 630 in the Chamber of Deputies and no senator. Ten years later, Georgia Meloni’s name would appear in large letters in the party logo, above a tricolour flame (again, green, white and red)— a revived symbol of the neo- and post-fascist right-wing tradition. But even more importantly, Meloni would become Italy’s first female Prime Minister, after winning the 2022 general election.

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The meteoric rise of Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia, FdI) is remarkable but not so surprising in a European context that has accustomed us to the rapid success (and sometimes equally rapid decline) of populist parties. FdI thus appears to be yet another populist wave in the already disrupted Italian political landscape. However, it would be reductive to focus on the populist profile of Meloni’s party without considering its ideological core, which can be traced back to the political tradition of the post-fascist right. In light of historical legacies and the long path taken by important sectors of the Italian right, the rise of FdI appears less sudden. It is instead the result of a long process of mediation between past, present and future political paradigms. The past, as already mentioned, refers to the post-fascist right and its attempts to carve out a space for itself in the democratic electoral arena; the present is characterised by the increasingly sharp dividing line between ‘people’ and ‘elite’ that shapes contemporary political debates and partisan competition; the future may see the construction of a new model of illiberal democracy (which is already a reality in some countries). In this chapter, therefore, the case of the Brothers of Italy will be placed in the Italian and European historical/political context so as to prepare the ground for the analysis developed in the following chapters. The next section looks at the ideological and organisational origins of the party and how they relate to its current place in Italian and European politics. Next, the various analytical dimensions addressed in the individual chapters will be briefly presented: ideology, organisation, leadership, alliances, electoral strategies, key constituencies and representation. Generally, the purpose of the book is threefold: 1. To show the ideological, organisational, strategic and electoral similarities between FdI and other populist waves in recent Italian political history and in contemporary Europe; 2. To highlight FdI’s peculiarities and the novelties its success brings to the Italian and European political landscape; and 3. To shed light on developments that are emerging not only in Italy but, more generally, in mature democratic systems: the growing role of right-wing female leaders and their reliance on new media; the mainstreaming of far-right political repertoires; the de-alignment and (partial) re-alignment of voters; the reconfiguration of electoral geographies; and ultimately the emergence of an illiberal model of democracy.

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Re-Igniting the Flame: From the Post-Fascist Tradition to the Populist Turn FdI stands at the crossroads between a well-established political tradition, that of the post-fascist and conservative Italian right (Ruzza and Fella 2008), and the more recent rise of anti-establishment movements that have generally been described as populist (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017). We begin with the first part of the story, the one with the deeper roots. We will then focus on its connections with the populist phenomenon and the emergence of a political orientation that some have termed ‘sovereignist’ (Basile and Mazzoleni 2021). A crucial moment in the history of the Italian right occurred in the early 1990s, with the collapse of the Italian party system after the end of the Cold War (Morlino 1996). From the fall of the fascist regime until then, Italian politics had been dominated by a large centrist party, the Christian Democrats (Democrazia Cristiana, DC) with its government allies (from liberals to social democrats, from republicans to socialists). This coalition faced the opposition of the Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI), the largest communist party in Western Europe. In this context of ‘blocked’ democracy (Rhodes 1997), the radical right, which had regrouped after World War II in a new party called the Italian Social Movement (Movimento Sociale Italiano, MSI), had been systematically kept on the margins of the political landscape. The legacy of fascism was too heavy and painful to allow a full integration of its heirs into normal patterns of party competition and coalition building. A timid attempt to include the MSI in the government majority in 1960—when the executive was led by Christian Democrat Fernando Tambroni—provoked great protests and had the opposite effect as it paved the way for the creation of the moderate centre-left alliance that would hold power for another three decades (Pinelli 2010). The MSI, however, was not a pure continuation of the old Fascist Party, which was outlawed after the war. Rather, it marked a process of adaptation and modernisation within an ideological platform that sought to mix strong nationalist sentiments with deeply conservative values and a focus on social justice (from a paternalist and statist perspective). Additionally, there was no general consensus among the leading activists of the radical right on how the party should deal with the fascist legacy and this in turn resulted in ideological and programmatic tensions between different factions and groups (Ignazi 1989; Gallego 1999; Parlato 2008).

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The MSI even incorporated elements of the old monarchist and conservative traditions that had never been fully absorbed into the fascist project but were nevertheless alien to the new democratic mainstream (Ungari 2008). The end of four decades of post-World War II political equilibrium—in the wake of corruption scandals—thus opened up new opportunities for a political movement that, despite the symbolic warmth of its tricolour flame, had in fact remained frozen for four decades, almost completely untouched by the heated political debates and alliances involving the main democratic parties. Being the party least close to the levers of power, the MSI was spared from the political crisis of the early 1990s. The year 1993 saw the beginning of a period of success and electoral growth, but also divisions and continuous reshuffling on the Italian right (Tarchi 2003; Ignazi 2005). The transformation of the MSI into National Alliance (Alleanza Nazionale, AN) under the leadership of Gianfranco Fini was accompanied by several splits with the more radical (but clearly minority) components of the so-called ‘social right’, which tried to keep various versions of the old MSI alive, as shown in the lower part of Fig. 1.1. It is therefore not only the Italian left that has displayed a continuous tendency towards fragmentation and infighting. Even the right was torn by dilemmas and identity crises, albeit in a period of growth and greater political centrality. However, at least from the mid-1990s until the late 2000s, AN would be by far the leading force in this sector of the political spectrum: a strongly patriotic and conservative right-wing party, which, at the same time, was no longer excluded from power—given its participation in various governments in 1994–1995 and from 2001 to 2006. It is precisely the rise of Silvio Berlusconi with his ‘neo-liberal populist’ party Forza Italia (FI) (Mudde 2007: 47), of which AN would remain the most loyal ally, that favoured the emergence of a ‘bipolar’ system of party competition (Bartolini et al. 2004) allowing the post-fascist right to reinvent itself and occupy a more mainstream position in the Italian political landscape (Ignazi 2005). In becoming more moderate, AN gradually abandoned the symbols of its radical past. The flame itself, which would remain in the party logo, would become smaller and smaller, first placed under the party name and then further down, dominated by the name in big letters of Gianfranco Fini, whose leadership was never seriously questioned in the period of the party’s existence. The flame was finally extinguished at the 2008 general election, when AN and FI merged into the People of Freedom

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D. VAMPA

Freedom and Future for Italy (Futuro e Libertà per l’Italia) 2010-2015 Forza Italia

Forza Italia 1994-2009

The People of Freedom (Il Popolo della Libertà)

Italian Social Movement

National Alliance

(Movimento Sociale Italiano)

(Alleanza Nazionale)

2009-2013

2013-

BROTHERS OF ITALY (Fratelli d’Italia)

1995-2009

1946-1995

2012-

Social Movement Tricolour Flame

Social Action (Azione Sociale) 2003-2009

(Movimento Sociale Fiamma Tricolore 1995-

The Right (La Destra)

Social Alternative

2007-2017

(Alternativa Sociale) Social Idea Movement

National Movement for Sovereignty (Movimento Nazionale per la Sovranità) 2017-2019

2004-2006

(Movimento Idea Sociale) 2004-

Fig. 1.1 From the Italian Social Movement to Brothers of Italy

(Popolo della Libertà, PdL), giving birth to a large centre-right party winning almost 40 per cent of the vote (Wilson 2009). This led to the gradual marginalisation of Fini and, at the same time, to the assimilation of important sectors of the dissolved AN into Silvio Berlusconi’s ambitious personal party project. Fini then attempted to regain the autonomy he had lost in the PdL, leaving the party and creating an even more moderate and centrist force than AN (and also the PdL), Future and Freedom for Italy (Futuro e Libertà per L’Italia, FLI), which however failed miserably at the polls (Hine and Vampa 2011). Giorgia Meloni, who at the time of the merger with FI and the creation of the PdL, had already been president of AN’s youth organisation (Azione Giovani) and would later become minister of youth in the new Berlusconi government (2008–2011), decided not to follow Fini and remained in the PdL. However, it soon became clear that staying in Berlusconi’s party in a weak position did not guarantee much room for political manoeuvre. The right, damaged by the rifts with Fini, risked once again being pushed to the margins of the political system or, in any case, losing the political visibility it had gained with difficulty at the end

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of the twentieth century (Boezi 2020). Thus a battle began to determine the future direction of the PdL—a party itself in crisis after the fall of the Berlusconi government and the birth of Mario Monti’s technocratic cabinet in the 2011 financial storm. Meloni and other former AN representatives who had not followed Fini began to call for greater collegiality in party decisions and, in the face of Berlusconi’s political weakening, went so far as to demand greater openness in the selection of the party’s leadership. An opportunity seemed to have opened up in the autumn of 2012 with the calling of primaries to decide the new leadership of the PdL, an unprecedented step given Berlusconi’s tendency to treat the party as his own business firm (Hopkin and Paolucci 1999). However, Berlusconi’s ‘democratic’ move was short-lived and the precipitous turn of events in December 2012, with the fall of the Monti government, led to the cancellation of the primaries. We have thus come to the point from which we started in the introduction of the chapter: Giorgia Meloni, unable to compete for the leadership of the PdL (which, within a year, would go back to being Forza Italia), decided to create a new party, Brothers of Italy. She was followed by numerous (but not all) ex-members of AN and also some representatives of the more ‘liberal’ sectors of the PdL, including Guido Crosetto—mentioned in the Tweet quoted above—who, despite not coming from the MSI tradition (Puleo and Piccolino 2022), would later hold important roles in the new party. Thus the Italian right entered a new phase. The beginning was not easy as the Italian political system had been hit by a new populist shock triggered by former comedian Beppe Grillo and his Five Star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle, M5S) (Tronconi 2015). It was a time of great crisis, in some respects comparable to the early 1990s. Accusations of corruption, bad governance, in a context of strong economic turbulence, stoked the fire of discontent that was skilfully exploited by the M5S. In this scenario, FdI did not seem to occupy a privileged or particularly visible position. Meloni and the tradition she represented had little populist credentials. Italy’s radical right was certainly nativist and nationalist, and even authoritarian—not in a necessarily anti-democratic sense—but it did not fully espouse that vision of popular revolt against the elites that is fundamental in a populist movement (Giubilei 2020). In fact, on the right, both Northern League (Lega Nord, LN) and Forza Italia had certainly drawn on the populist repertoire far more than FdI did (and AN had done before the creation of the PdL) (Albertazzi and McDonnell 2015).

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The aim of the heirs of the MSI and AN was to (re-)launch a conservative rather than populist project (Giubilei 2020), but this had to come to terms with a new political reality increasingly dominated by anti-elitist rhetoric and the centrality of the ‘will of the people’. The concept of ‘sovereignism’ would thus enrich the nationalist tradition of the radical right with a new emphasis on the principle of ‘popular re-empowerment’ (‘taking back control’) that connects the people to the nation state (Mazzoleni and Ivaldi 2022: 306). Giorgia Meloni herself would be much more comfortable being called a sovereignist rather than a populist (Tarallo 2018), even though the two concepts are strongly intertwined and under her leadership the political community orphaned by the MSI and AN has in fact shifted to more populist positions. In the following chapters we will investigate in more detail how Giorgia Meloni’s project has reinterpreted some of the historical themes of the Italian right in the light of emerging contemporary populism. What is already clear is that under the umbrella of sovereignism, most of the different political tendencies that had split in the aftermath of the changes in the early 1990s could finally be reunited—the lower and upper parts of Fig. 1.1 converge into FdI.

A Multi-Dimensional Framework of Analysis The overview of FdI’s origins already suggests the existence of a complex and not entirely linear story. To this we should add that FdI, in its current form, cannot be studied as a purely electoral or ideological phenomenon. Nor is it merely the expression of a leader’s will. Instead, there is a multi-dimensionality in the birth and development of this political party— and any other political party for that matter. Thus, for instance, FdI’s ideological-programmatic profile should be linked to its organisational dimension, as already emphasised by classical theories on parties and party systems (Michels 1968; Panebianco 1988). Parties that aim to achieve deeply transformative programmatic goals—e.g. radical institutional reforms or economic redistribution—have traditionally invested significant resources in the creation of mass organisations to mobilise large sectors of the electorate. At the same time, however, changes in society and the emergence of new communication tools have also brought about a transformation in political parties’ internal structures (Katz and Mair 2018). The role of leadership, another pillar in the ‘internal supply side’ of party politics along with organisation (Mudde 2007), has also

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changed dramatically. In general, a weakening of intermediate party elites and organisational bodies has been accompanied by a strengthening of the leader: a process that has also been defined as personalisation or ‘presidentialization’ of politics (Poguntke and Webb 2005). The internal dimension of a party is closely connected to the external one. Leadership is often the link between the two because, after interpreting and channelling the preferences of members and activists, a leader is crucial in shaping the outer face of the party and determining its position in the wider political space through coalitions with some actors or opposition to others. This strategic dimension—deciding how to respond to challengers and potential allies (Albertazzi et al. 2021)—is then linked to the electoral dimension, which in turn determines the party’s role in institutions. A party’s success in the competitive electoral market— achieved by emphasising key issues, establishing effective alliances and choosing the right opponents—can translate into greater representational weight in policy-making fora. Applying this framework to the study of Brothers of Italy means considering first of all the ideological-programmatic evolution of the party—with the tensions and synergies between neo/post-fascist tradition and populism—and how this relates to the organisational question: what structure should be given to a party with deep roots in the twentieth century that, at the same time, must embrace the new populist zeitgeist (Mudde 2004) to succeed? It is also interesting to note that the few books (published in Italian until 2022) on FdI—apart from having a rather journalistic tone and more or less explicitly advancing a political agenda—do not focus so much on the party, but rather on its leader, Giorgia Meloni, and her entourage, following an increasingly widespread tendency among observers to analyse politics as a struggle between personalities. Instead, in this volume the certainly important figure of Meloni is placed in the broader discussion of the party’s organisational set-up and then linked to its political and electoral strategies. FdI also stands out as an intriguing case when analysing its relationship with other parties. Indeed, in the multi-level context of European politics, it is not only its interactions with other Italian players that generate interest but also its international positioning within European transnational alliances (McDonnell and Werner 2019). FdI has in fact emerged as one of the pillars of the European Conservatives and Reformists Party, of which Giorgia Meloni became president in 2020 (Giubilei 2020).

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Moreover, the analysis of the relationship between elections and representation can reveal new aspects of the tension between representative and responsible government (Mair 2009) and highlight the existence of dilemmas not only for so-called ‘mainstream’ parties but also for populist and radical ones getting closer to power (van Spanje 2011). To this we can add the growing gaps between economically dynamic and backward regions, between large cities and provincial areas, which call for a more in-depth study of territorial electoral dynamics (Rodden 2019). On these points FdI offers another set of interesting insights in a country like Italy where strong social and territorial divisions intersect. In short, a number of important questions and issues arise in light of FdI’s electoral triumph. Hence the multi-dimensionality of the framework adopted here. Italy can be regarded, once again, as the political laboratory of a broader process of political re-structuring and re-alignment that is sweeping Europe. The aim of this volume is to present a brief overview of the origins, ideology, organisation, leadership, political alliances, electoral performance and institutional role of a party that could mark the beginning of a new phase, not only for Italian politics—by now accustomed to multiple shocks—but also for the increasingly fragile and interconnected European liberal democracies.

Structure of the Book The book is structured on the basis of the multi-dimensional framework presented above. Chapter 2 explores the key programmatic positions of the party (mainly on the socio-economic and socio-cultural dimensions) stemming from its ‘ideological diamond’, which combines nativism, authoritarianism, populism and, the latest addition, ‘sovereignism’. It includes a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the party’s manifestos from 2013 to 2022, looking at how positions have evolved over time—in particular, programmatic shifts are assessed on issues such as immigration, moral values, law and order, functioning of institutions, European Union and the economy (trade and globalisation). The quantitative analysis is based on the most recent data from the Chapel Hill expert survey (Jolly et al. 2022) and the Manifesto Corpus (Burst et al. 2021). Chapter 3 focuses on the organisation of the party from the national to the local level and also considers the role and personal appeal of its leader, Giorgia Meloni. The first part is based on the framework provided by Reinhard Heinisch and Oscar Mazzoleni (2016) and includes an analysis

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of the party’s statute (outlining the territorial structure of the organisation and defining the role of party members) and the party’s budgets from 2013 to 2021 (showing how the party financed its activities through membership subscriptions, state resources and private donations). This strictly organisational analysis is followed by a discussion on how the party reaches out to the electorate using traditional tools and more innovative forms of communication. This point is then linked to the role played inside and outside the organisation by Giorgia Meloni, paying particular attention to her presence on social media. Chapter 4 examines the party’s position in the Italian party system— starting from the concept of negative integration developed by Mattia Zulianello (2020). It then analyses its relationship with other political actors in Italy and at the European/international level (McDonnell and Werner 2019). The first part looks at the role played by FdI in the centre-right political camp in Italy, its relationship with Matteo Salvini’s League and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia. It also considers how the party approached other populist or left-wing competitors. Strategic interactions between the party and competitors are assessed based on the framework developed by Daniele Albertazzi et al. (2021). The second part, instead, provides a discussion of the international alliances established with other EU parties, paying particular attention to the European Conservatives and Reformists Party. Chapter 5 analyses the party’s electoral results. The first part focuses on the general elections from 2013 to 2022. Particular attention is paid to the geographical distribution of the vote not only across regions but also between cities and peripheral areas. The analysis highlights the similarities and differences existing between FdI and its main right-wing populist competitor, the League, while also evaluating vote shifts from one party to the other (and the profiles of their voters). The second part considers FdI’s results in the local, regional and European elections, thus providing a multi-level assessment of its electoral performance. Chapter 6 considers the role of FdI in public office. It examines the profiles of the party’s elected members in the Italian parliament and provides an overview of its position in the government formed after the 2022 general election. As in Chapter 5, the final part presents a multi-level account of FdI’s presence in local, regional and European institutions. Each chapter is followed by a postscript comparing FdI to the main right-wing populist parties in Western Europe, with a focus on France, Spain and Germany.

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The conclusion summarises the main results of the analysis presented in the various chapters, highlighting FdI’s peculiarities but also its similarities with other parties in Italy and Europe. The book’s final considerations are based on a discussion of the tensions between legacies (the post-fascist tradition), current developments (FdI’s electoral growth in a context of political instability exacerbated by new populist waves) and future implications (the possible effects of FdI’s success on Italian and European politics and democracy).

References Albertazzi, Daniele, Donatella Bonansinga, and Davide Vampa. 2021. The strategies of party competition. In Populism and New Patterns of Political Competition in Western Europe, ed. Daniele Albertazzi and Davide Vampa, 50–70. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Albertazzi, Daniele, and Duncan McDonnell. 2015. Populists in Power. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Bartolini, Stefano, Alessandro Chiaramonte, and Roberto D’Alimonte. 2004. The Italian party system between parties and coalitions. West European Politics 27 (1): 1–19. Basile, Linda, and Oscar Mazzoleni (eds.). 2021. Sovereignism and Populism: Citizens, Voters and Parties in Western European Democracies. London: Routledge. Boezi, Francesco. 2020. Fenomeno Meloni: Viaggio nella ‘Generazione Atreju’. Verona: Gondolin. Burst, Tobias, Werner Krause, Pola Lehmann, Jirka Lewandowski, Thers Matthieß, Nicholas Merz, Sven Regel, and Lisa Zehnter. 2021. Manifesto Corpus. Berlin: WZB Berlin Social Science Center. Gallego, Ferran. 1999. The Extreme Right in Italy: From the Italian Social Movement to Post-Fascism (Working Paper no. 169). Barcelona: Institut de Ciències Polítiques i Socials. Giubilei, Francesco. 2020. Giorgia Meloni: La rivoluzione dei conservatori. Roma and Cesena: Giubilei Regnani editore. Heinisch, Reinhard and Oscar Mazzoleni (eds.). 2016. Understanding Populist Party Organisation. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Hine, Davide, and Davide Vampa. 2011. Another divorce: The PDL in 2010. In Italian Politics: Much Ado about Nothing?, ed. Elisabetta Gualmini and Eleonora Pasotti, 69–91. Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books. Hopkin, Jonathan, and Caterina Paolucci. 1999. The business firm model of party organisation: Cases from Spain and Italy. European Journal of Political Research 35 (3): 307–339.

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Ignazi, Piero. 1989. La cultura politica del Movimento Sociale Italiano. Italian Political Science Review 19 (3): 431–461. Ignazi, Piero. 2005. Legitimation and evolution on the Italian right wing: Social and ideological repositioning of Alleanza Nazionale and the Lega Nord. South European Society & Politics 10 (2): 333–349. Jolly, Seth, Ryan Bakker, Liesbet Hooghe, Gary Marks, Jonathan Polk, Jan Rovny, Marco Steenbergen, and Milada Anna Vachudova. 2022. Chapel Hill expert survey trend file, 1999–2019. Electoral Studies. https://doi.org/10. 1016/j.electstud.2021.102420. Katz, Richard, and Peter Mair. 2018. Democracy and the Cartelization of Political Parties. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mair, Peter. 2009. Representative versus responsible government. MPIfG Working Paper, 09/8. Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne. Mazzoleni, Oscar, and Gilles Ivaldi. 2022. Economic populist sovereignism and electoral support for radical right-wing parties. Political Studies 70 (2): 304– 326. McDonnell, Duncan, and Annika Werner. 2019. International Populism: The Radical Right in the European Parliament. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Michels, Robert. 1968. Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendency of Modern Democracy. New York: The Free Press. Morlino, Leonardo. 1996. Crisis of parties and change of party system in Italy. Party Politics 2 (1): 5–30. Mudde, Cas. 2004. The Populist Zeitgeist. Government and Opposition 39 (4): 541–563. Mudde, Cas. 2007. Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mudde, Cas, and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser. 2017. Populism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Panebianco, Angelo. 1988. Political Parties: Organisation and Power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Parlato, Giuseppe. 2008. Il Movimento Sociale Italiano. In Storia delle destre nell’Italia repubblicana, ed. Giovanni Orsina. Soveria Mannelli: Rubettino Editore, 130–191. Pinelli, Cesare. 2010. ‘Fifty years later: Gronchi. Tambroni and the Form of Government’, Quaderni Costituzionali 4: 757–772. Poguntke, Thomas, and Paul Webb. 2005. The Presidentialization of Politics: A Comparative Study of Modern Democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Puleo, Leonardo, and Gianluca Piccolino. 2022. ‘Back to the post-fascist past or landing in the populist radical right? The Brothers of Italy between Continuity

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and Change, South European Society and Politics,. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 13608746.2022.2126247. Rhodes, Martin. 1997. Financing party politics in Italy: A case of systemic corruption. West European Politics 20 (1): 54–80. Rodden, Jonathan A. 2019. Why Cities Lose: The Deep Roots of the Urban-Rural Political Divide. New York: Basic Books. Ruzza, Carlo, and Stefano Fella. 2008. Re-inventing the Italian Right: Territorial politics, populism and ‘post-fascism.’ Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Tarallo, Carlo. 2018. Giorgia Meloni a “La Verità”: Il Sovranismo è difesa della famiglia, dei confini, dello Stato nazionale, dell’identità. La Verità, 25 September. Tarchi, Marco. 2003. The political culture of the Alleanza nazionale: An analysis of the party’s programmatic documents (1995–2002). Journal of Modern Italian Studies 8 (2): 135–181. Tronconi, Filippo. 2015. Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement: Organisation, Communication and Ideology. Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate. Ungari, Andrea. 2008. I Monarchici. In Storia delle destre nell’Italia repubblicana, ed. Giovanni Orsin, 236–283. Soveria Mannelli: Rubettino Editore Van Spanje, Joost. 2011. Keeping the rascals in: Anti-political-establishment parties and their cost of governing in established democracies. European Journal of Political Research 50 (5): 609–635. Wilson, Alex. 2009. The Italian Election of April 2008: A Political Earthquake? West European Politics 32 (1): 215–225. Zulianello, Mattia. 2020. Varieties of populist parties and party systems in Europe: From state-of-the-art to the application of a novel classification scheme to 66 parties in 33 countries. Government and Opposition 55 (2): 327–347.

CHAPTER 2

Ideology and Policy Positions

Abstract This chapter explores the ideology and key policy positions of Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia, FdI). It starts by introducing the four key ideological dimensions of nativism, authoritarianism, populism and sovereignism. It then includes a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the party’s manifestos, looking at how positions have evolved over time—in particular, programmatic shifts are assessed on issues such as immigration, law and order, the economy (trade and globalisation), welfare, individual rights, institutional reforms and European integration. The postscript compares FdI to the main populist radical right parties in France, Spain and Germany. Keywords Brothers of Italy · Party ideology · Party manifesto · Populism · Nativism · Authoritarianism · Sovereignism

FdI’s Ideological Diamond: Nativism, Authoritarianism, Populism and Sovereignism The success of Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia, FdI) can also be described as a ‘new populist wave’, as the sub-title of this book suggests. This is because the FdI phenomenon did not emerge in a vacuum. Rather,

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it is the latest in a series of ‘shocks’ caused by different political actors— from Silvio Berlusconi to Umberto Bossi, from Beppe Grillo to Matteo Salvini—who, over almost thirty years of Italian political history, have skilfully exploited the ‘people vs. elite’ dichotomy. However, Chapter 1 has already made it clear that it would be too simplistic to use only the populist category to define Giorgia Meloni’s party. Indeed, FdI also belongs to the political tradition of the Italian radical right, which has its roots in the twentieth century. The populist wave originating from this party is therefore ‘new’ not only because it is the latest chronologically, but also because it offers an original combination of populism and other ideological dimensions and traditions. Figure 2.1 identifies an ‘ideological diamond’ that we can use to interpret FdI’s political identity in its complexity and multi-dimensionality. It revolves around four strongly interconnected points and is the result of a long period of elaboration and reflection on the key principles that animate a party of the radical right in the twenty-first century. We can read the diamond clockwise, starting with nativism and authoritarianism, which are at the core of FdI’s ideology (Puleo and Piccolino 2022). Nativism aims at protecting the interests of the ‘native born’ and refers to the centrality of the national community and its cultural and moral cohesion. It is this aspect of FdI’s ideology that inspires the party’s positions on immigration—but also on ethnic/linguistic minorities (in Italian regions such as South Tyrol and Aosta Valley). Authoritarianism

Nativism

Populism

Sovereignism

Fig. 2.1 FdI’s ideological diamond

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Authoritarianism shapes the idea of national community by giving it an ordered and coherent form, appealing above all to traditional principles and demanding the strict application of norms and rules that enforce these principles—the removal of which would cause a deep identity crisis (Norris and Inglehart 2019). Socially conservative and law-andorder policies therefore respond to this second dimension of the party’s ideology. Populism was added to FdI’s ideological repertoire in more recent years after having been cultivated by other right-wing parties—Forza Italia (FI) and the Northern League (Lega Nord, LN) (Albertazzi and McDonnell 2015)—and having been re-elaborated in an eclectic way by Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle, M5S) (Pirro 2018). FdI’s populism manifests itself in the celebration of the will of the people, thus abandoning those hierarchical and ‘top-down’ tendencies typical of the neo- and post-fascist tradition. At the same time, it opposes technocratic government solutions and inter-party compromises that in a parliamentary democracy are thought to sacrifice representation in the name of responsibility (Mair 2009). Populism has been defined as a ‘thin-centred’ ideology (Mudde 2007) and can also act as an amplifier of instances originating from other ideological inclinations. In the (right-wing) populist view, nativism and authoritarianism take on a special legitimacy because they derive from the common sense of people belonging to the same national community. They are not political formulas devised by extremist sects. Instead, they are perfectly embedded in a ‘pathological normalcy’ (Mudde 2010). However, populism is not only used to enhance the impact of the ideologies it is coupled with. It can also make an original contribution to the elaboration of an idea of institutional order that responds more directly to the (presumed) will of the people. Populism can therefore be linked to FdI’s positions on the reforms to be introduced in the perennially crisis-ridden Italian representative system. The last ideological offshoot stems from the concept of sovereignism, which projects the three concepts discussed above outside national borders. In the European context, the concept of national community can be used to challenge supranational integration processes (Basile and Mazzoleni 2021; Basile and Borri 2022). Thus, populism, in addition to focusing on the domestic arena, tends to evolve into sovereignism when—combined with nativism and authoritarianism—it aims to assert the primacy of the national interest (emanation of the will of the people)

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against alleged global threats (Mazzoleni and Ivaldi 2022). Hence FdI’s positions on the European Union (EU) and globalisation. Within this framework, the economic policies proposed by right-wing populists seem to play a marginal role. In his seminal work, Cas Mudde (2007: 132) wrote that for these parties economics is ‘marginal and instrumental’. Writing at around the same time, Sarah de Lange (2007) pointed out that from a position of hard neoliberalism, the new radical right had shifted to a more centrist position on the socio-economic dimension. In general, the radicalism of right-wing populist parties is more socio-cultural and does not seem to be reflected much in policy positions related to the productive sectors, welfare and finance. However, over time, some scholars have come to the conclusion that economic positions may play a role in entrenching the appeal of right-wing populism to working class constituencies. As highlighted by Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin (2018: 222), ‘whereas some national populists often differ on economics, they have increasingly sought to set out an alternative to the status quo, including the adoption of policies that in the past were advocated by the left’. Gilles Ivaldi and Oscar Mazzoleni (2020) have likewise argued that economic issues are becoming increasingly salient for radical right populist parties and emphasised that the above-mentioned concept of sovereignism also has an economic dimension. Thus economic sovereignism ‘seeks to achieve economic prosperity through popular and national re-empowerment’ (Ivaldi and Mazzoleni 2020: 205), although it may translate into ‘different economic prescriptions in domestic politics and different orientations in the area of trade and foreign economic dimensions’ (ibid.: 212) that derive from the particular economic context and political opportunities in which they are deployed. Having outlined the ideological perimeter within which a populist radical right party may operate in the twenty-first century, we can now move on to an analysis of FdI’s political programme. The question is how the principles described in this section translate into concrete positions with respect to various issues and policy debates.

FdI’s Programmatic Positions There are a number sources that allow us to present a general (and comparative) overview of FdI’s positions on specific issues and policies. This section starts with a quantitative analysis built on data from the

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Chapel Hill expert survey (CHES) (Jolly et al. 2022) and the Manifesto Project (MARPOR) (Burst et al. 2021). Subsequently, a more qualitative discussion will be developed focusing on manifestos produced by FdI from 2013 to 2022. CHES provides scores based on responses to surveys compiled by experts. Instead, MARPOR quantitatively analyses the content of parties’ election manifestos in order to infer parties’ policy preferences. It has been argued that expert survey estimates are generally more accurate than estimates based on content analysis of party manifestos because the former contain smaller measurement error (Benoit and Laver 2007). At the same time, it is not always clear which element of the party an individual expert evaluates to determine its position, whereas within MARPOR parties can be compared longitudinally and cross-sectionally on the basis of the same type of evidence (their manifestos). In addition, MARPOR allows a more detailed exploration of policies and issues that are often overlooked in expert surveys. In general, all quantitative measures of party positions have advantages and disadvantages. MARPOR and CHES, while presenting clear similarities in their results (Bakker et al. 2015), can complement each other and thus, when analysed together, can allow for a more balanced evaluation of where a party stands in the political space. Starting with CHES data, Table 2.1 provides the scores of FdI in 2014 (shortly after its foundation) and in 2019. We can also compare the party with the other four largest Italian groups represented in the national (and European) parliament. The general score on left–right continuum shows that from 2014 to 2019 FdI moved further to the right of the political spectrum, overtaking the League (which was perceived as more generally right-wing in 2014). The radical-authoritarian credentials of Giorgia Meloni’s party are particularly evident on the socio-cultural GALTAN (Liberalism vs. Authoritarianism) dimension, while in socio-economic terms FdI appears more centrist than the League and even Forza Italia (FI). The latter result derives from the ‘social’ and ‘statist’ orientation of the Italian post-fascist right, which was rather hostile to neoliberal doctrines (see Chapter 1). At the same time, moving from 2014 to 2019, value-based GALTAN issues seem to have become more salient than economic issues. This shift in the party’s focus brings it closer to other radical right populists, who tend to emphasise the socio-cultural dimension more than the socio-economic one.

Source Chapel Hill Expert Survey (Jolly et al. 2022)

Left (0)–Right (10) [General] Left (0)–Right (10) [Economy] Salience Left–Right [Economy] (0–10) GALTAN: Libertarian (0) vs. Authoritarian (10) Salience GALTAN (0–10) Civil Liberties (0) vs. Law and order (10) Liberal policies (0 support–10 against) Religious principles (0 against–10 support) Immigration (0 support–10 against) Multiculturalism (0) vs. Assimilation (10) Ethnic minorities’ rights (0 support–10 against) Cosmopolitan (0) vs. Nationalist (10) Elite (0) vs. People (10) Anti-elite salience (0–10) EU Position (1 against–7 support) EU Salience (0–10) Trade Liberalisation (0) vs. Protectionism (10) Market deregulation (0 against–10 support) Redistribution (0 support–10 against) Improving services (0) vs. Reducing taxes (10) Support cities (0) vs. Support countryside (10) Pro-environment (0) vs. Pro-growth (10) Decentralisation (0 support–10 against)

7.9 5.6 7.5 9.3 7.2 9.2 9.8 7 8.8 6 8.8 9.4 n/a 6.3 2.2 6.8 n/a 3.4 5.4 4.8 10 7.2 8

9.1 6.4 6.5 9.4 7.8 9.6 8.5 7.9 9.8 9.9 8.6 9.8 6.6 8 1.9 7.5 8.9 4.3 5.5 7.1 5.6 7.6 7.7

8.9 7.3 8.2 9.1 7.2 9 9.2 5.6 9.5 5.8 9.8 9.6 n/a 8.8 1.1 8.9 n/a 5.2 5.6 7 7.3 5.8 1

League 2014

2019

FdI 2014 8.8 7.7 6.8 9.2 7.4 9.3 8.2 8.1 9.9 9.8 8 9.1 6.9 8.3 1.7 8.4 8.4 6.5 7.3 8.9 6.8 7.6 2.9

2019 6.7 7 8.3 7.3 5.7 8 7.6 6.8 7.8 5.2 8.3 7.2 n/a 4 3.4 5.9 n/a 7.6 8.8 7.8 5 8 6

2014

FI

6.9 7.8 7.3 6.8 5.1 6.8 6.2 6.5 7 7.4 6.5 6.4 4.1 4.2 4.9 5.8 3.8 8.1 6.9 8.5 3.1 7.6 4.7

2019 4.7 3.4 7.3 2.6 6.7 4.2 2.2 1.8 4.3 6 5.7 3.8 n/a 10 1.4 8.9 n/a 3.6 3.4 4 4 1.8 3.7

2014

M5S

4.8 3.2 6.9 3.7 5.2 4.6 2.9 2.8 6.6 5.6 3.8 4.3 9.3 8.9 3.5 6.1 6.4 3.1 1.9 3.3 4 2.4 5.3

2019

3.6 4.6 9 2.4 6.3 3.6 3.2 3.4 3.3 4.6 2.5 3.4 n/a 4.4 6.6 7.6 n/a 5.4 2.8 5.2 4.3 4 4.8

2014

PD

3.2 3.6 7.2 2.3 6.8 2.8 2.3 3.3 3.1 2.7 2 2 5.3 1.9 6.8 7.9 3.2 3.9 2.7 3.6 2.6 4.1 4.1

2019

Ideological dimensions and policy issues (salience and position) of FdI and other main Italian parties (2014–

Dimensions and issues

Table 2.1 2019)

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In general, FdI seems to have consolidated the aspects of its programme that are most directly related to the nativist and authoritarian principles of its ideology. The party is an advocate of law and order and religious principles while opposing policies inspired by liberal values, immigration, multiculturalism, ethnic minority rights and cosmopolitanism. As outlined by Table 2.1, on many of these issues FdI was or has become more radical than the League (only immigration and religious values are exceptions, although the two parties are very close). The distance from Forza Italia, on the other hand, has increased on almost everything, despite the fact that Meloni founded FdI as a split from Silvio Berlusconi’s party, the People of Freedom (Popolo della Libertà, PdL), from which FI would also be resurrected in 2013. Finally, the M5S, which to some extent is closer to left-wing populism, and the centre-left Democratic Party (Partito Democratico, PD) appear very distant from Brothers of Italy. As for its populist side, even if it is not possible to make a comparison with 2014 with respect to the ‘Elite vs. People’ dichotomy, FdI is clearly positioned closer to the ‘People’ end of the continuum, along with the League (with M5S even more clearly populist). Compared to 2014, the salience of anti-establishment and anti-elite rhetoric has also increased significantly, aligning FdI with the League and M5S. Thus, while not explicitly defining itself as populist, over the years Giorgia Meloni’s party seems to have absorbed the populist zeitgeist. Populism, as we have said, is accompanied by a more external, sovereignist dimension, whereby the emphasis on national sovereignty also translates into Eurosceptic positions. This becomes even more evident, both in terms of position and salience, as we move from 2014 to 2019: the EU has a more negative connotation and acquires a greater centrality in the party’s programmatic platform. FdI converges with the League, while appearing more distant from FI and the M5S, both of which have tended towards less Euroscepticism in more recent years. The centre-left PD remains the only party clearly in favour of the European Union, and increasingly so. As pointed out in the previous section, FdI’s sovereignism also has an economic component and in fact the party presents itself as the most fervent supporter of protectionist measures to shield the national economy from global competition. More generally, FdI also differs from other right-wing parties in its opposition to market deregulation—the

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League and FI (and, in 2014, even the PD) appear as more free-market— , its greater support for redistribution, and greater focus on functioning public services than on cutting taxes (although on this last point there seems to be a convergence with the League and FI in 2019). In short, as already highlighted, the social and statist legacy of the Italian Social Movement (Movimento Sociale Italiano, MSI) is still identifiable in the party’s economic policy positions. There are other interesting programmatic aspects, in addition to those closely related to the four poles of the ideological diamond. For example, FdI seems to be particularly attentive to the needs of the countryside as opposed to metropolitan areas, although its pro-countryside position has moderated since 2014 and, as we shall see in Chapter 5, its electoral base is in fact rather urban. In line with other right-wing parties, FdI also appears less sensitive to environmental issues (but, as we shall see below, its 2018 manifesto paid quite a lot of attention to this theme). Finally, a crucial difference with Matteo Salvini’s League is FdI’s position on decentralisation and federalism. Although Salvini’s party has morphed from a regionalist to a national (and nationalist) party (Albertazzi et al. 2018), it is still in favour of transferring competences and economic resources to regional governments, as shown in the bottom row of Table 2.1. In contrast, FdI remains sharply critical of institutional reforms that would threaten Italy’s territorial integrity. In sum, the two parties, despite their convergence towards sovereignism, continue to be influenced by their origins (Basile and Borri 2022): of the two, it is FdI that proves to be more faithful to its nationalist origins, while in the League the turn promoted by Salvini has less deep roots and has not led to a complete rejection of federalism. A quantitative content analysis of party manifestos confirms some (but not all) of the results from the Chapel Hill expert survey and it also allows us to go into more detail on the various issues and policies. Table 2.2 is based on MARPOR’s codebook and shows the top 20 categories in FdI’s 2018 manifesto (the last one fully analysed by MARPOR at the time of writing): their scores correspond to the percentage of ‘quasi-sentences’ devoted to a specific issue (out of the total number of quasi-sentences in the manifesto). FdI’s scores are again compared to those of the other four main Italian parties. Law and order (605 in MARPOR) is the category with the highest percentage of quasi-sentences, a result similar to (in fact, slightly higher than) that of the League. This issue is also quite important for FI but

605 504 502 501 706

402 403 406 601 506 608 104

201 303

110

1 2 3 4 5

6 7 8 9 10 11 12

13 14

15

Law and order Welfare state expansion State funding of cultural facilities Environmental protection Supporting women, university students, old, young, or middle-aged people Assistance to businesses Market regulation Protectionism Supporting national way of life Education expansion Opposing multiculturalism Importance of external security and defence Personal freedoma Governmental and administrative efficiency Negative view of European Union 2.198

3.297 2.747

5.495 4.945 4.945 4.945 3.846 3.846 3.297

11.538 8.791 7.143 6.593 6.044

FdI

6.031

0.153 5.344

3.511 4.198 0.916 4.046 3.13 2.748 0.992

11.145 4.809 5.267 10.611 1.527

League

5.208

1.042 8.333

7.292 1.042 0 2.083 4.167 0 2.083

9.375 9.375 1.042 3.125 3.125

FI

0.156

1.015 7.65

4.606 1.171 0.078 1.405 4.606 0 0.078

2.03 9.524 5.386 3.201 2.888

PD

(continued)

2.256

0.89 3.745

0.829 4.728 0.353 0.169 4.083 0 0.046

4.39 3.085 0.998 22.84 0.43

M5S

Share of quasi-sentences in manifesto (%)

MARPOR Category

Position

Meaning of the category

FdI’s key (top 20) programmatic categories and comparison with other parties (2018)

Table 2.2

2 IDEOLOGY AND POLICY POSITIONS

23

MARPOR Category

411 503 603 606 704

Position

16 17 18 19 20

Promoting technology and infrastructure Promoting social justice Supporting traditional morality Appeals for national solidarity and unity Support for middle class

Meaning of the category

2.198 1.648 1.648 1.648 1.648

FdI 5.115 1.527 0.916 1.069 0.916

League 11.458 5.208 1.042 0 1.042

FI 9.977 0.798 0 1.044 1.305

M5S

Share of quasi-sentences in manifesto (%)

10.07 5.621 0 1.093 3.591

PD

Source Author’s own elaboration based on MARPOR data (Burst et al. 2021). The categories in which FdI has the largest percentages among the main parties are indicated in bold a Personal freedom has a relatively high score but when checking the MARPOR hand coding of the manifesto only one sentence refers to this category and it is about the ‘reorganisation of the State machine according to the principle of equal dignity between the public administration and the citizen’. So this category is not discussed in the main text.

(continued)

Table 2.2

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much less relevant for the M5S and even less for the PD. It is also interesting to note that welfare state expansion (504) ranks as the second issue for the party, in line with the social dimension that also emerged in the previous analysis, although (surprisingly) FI takes the lead here. The third and fourth categories of the ranking, on the other hand, deviate from the profile already outlined on the basis of the CHES data (and generally associated with right-wing populist parties). FdI proposes public investment in cultural facilities (502) and also focuses on environmental protection (501), although the M5S and the League (another surprise) pay even more attention to this issue. Reading the 2018 programme, it becomes clear that category 502 on culture is inflated by point 10 (of the 15 pledges in the document) entitled ‘Culture and beauty at the heart of Italian identity’. Qualitative analysis thus helps us place FdI’s pro-culture stance in an identity/nationalist perspective, which other studies analysing the populist radical right in government have also stressed (Paxton and Peace 2021). The high percentage of the 501 category that refers to environmental protection is instead due to point 13 of the 2018 manifesto which, indeed, appears very ambitious (though not very detailed) in listing a series of actions in support of environmental sustainability, appropriate use of natural resources and the preservation of ‘rural culture’. This last point perhaps makes FdI’s emphasis on the environment less surprising, as it is not incompatible with a conservative view of the economy based on more traditional sectors (including agriculture). The 706 category that includes favourable mentions of ‘non-economic demographic groups’—a somewhat generic definition—is consistent with the type of welfare promoted by right-wing populist parties (Rathgeb and Busemeyer 2022). Indeed, it refers to parts of the FdI programme that support women as housewives (with tax recognition of domestic work) and offer economic assistance to ‘crime victims’ or pensioners who decide to move to poorer regions in southern Italy. There are also points on youth employment incentives. We can also note the mix of pro-business policies (402) and measures that regulate and protect the market (403 and 406), which make FdI a right-wing but less neoliberal party than the League and FI. FdI is more committed than all its competitors to promoting the ‘national way of life’ (601), a category of MARPOR that also includes hostility to immigration and can be linked to opposition to multiculturalism (608). The authoritarianism of Giorgia Meloni’s party’s ideology

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also translates into an emphasis on ‘external security and defence’ (104) and support for ‘traditional morality’ (603), all themes that seem more crucial to FdI than any other party, including the League. A significant difference with Salvini’s party can be seen in the position on Europe (110), which is much more negative for the League (and FI!) than for FdI. It should be remembered, however, that the figures presented in Table 2.2 refer only to the 2018 manifestos. More generally, MARPOR’s quantitative data, although useful, can only provide a partial picture and, being percentages based on predefined categories, tend to simplify and decontextualise specific cases. For this reason, the next section presents a qualitative overview of FdI’s policy development based on its manifestos from 2013 to 2022.

FdI’s Programmatic Development (2013–2022) The CHES data presented in Table 2.1 have already given us an idea not only of FdI’s peculiarities compared to other Italian parties, but also of the evolution of its positions on key issues. It is undeniable that the organisation founded by Giorgia Meloni, although clearly rooted on the right side of the political spectrum, has gone through a process of programmatic reworking (Donà 2022). The sections below provide an overview of some of the party’s main policy documents, from the first one, presented before the 2013 general election, to the most recent one published in 2022.1 2013: ‘The Challenges Ahead for Italy’ The 2013 manifesto (‘The challenges ahead for Italy’—‘Le sfide per l’Italia’) is based on a list of sixteen, rather general points. To be sure, the fact that FdI was founded only a couple of months before the general election did not leave much room for in-depth political elaboration. It is 1 The FdI manifestos considered here are: 2013 “Le sfide per l’Italia” (https:// www.fratelli-italia.it/le-sfide-per-l-italia-9-gennaio-pomeriggio/); 2014 “In Europa a testa alta” (https://www.fratelli-italia.it/programma-europa/); 2018 “Il voto che unisce l’Italia” (https://www.flipsnack.com/fratelliditalia/programma-in-sintesi.html); 2019 “Porogramma elezioni europee” (https://www.fratelli-italia.it/wp-content/uploads/ 2019/04/Programma-completo-1.pdf); 2022 “Pronti a risollevare l’Italia” (https:// www.fratelli-italia.it/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Brochure_programma_FdI_qr_def. pdf).

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also interesting that the topics included in the document were selected through a deliberative process open to activists and voters (Donà 2022). Here one can see the influence of the emerging M5S and its idea of direct and participatory democracy (Tronconi 2018), which FdI clumsily tried to echo in its programme. Surprisingly, immigration and integration issues linked to the party’s nativist ideological dimension do not dominate the manifesto. There is only one point (the penultimate one) with proposals that could come from a mainstream (rather than radical) conservative political organisation. It merely calls for the regulation of migration flows, the punishment of human trafficking, the promotion of incentives to learn Italian, and some restrictions on the granting of citizenship to second-generation immigrants (although in fact the party’s proposal appears almost liberal, as it seems to accept a conditional extension of citizenship rights). Throughout the document, there is little mention of ‘authoritarian’ policies based on traditional moral values. Instead, in the aftermath of the financial storm and the Eurozone debt crisis, the big topic of the 2013 election was Italy’s position as a member of the EU. In this period of turmoil in which economic and financial developments were strongly influenced by transnational decisions, the party began to elaborate a concept of sovereignism that would shape its idea of the European Union in the following years. Point 1 of the programme begins: ‘We belong to Italy and we are pro-European, because we believe in the Europe of the people, but not in that of finance and oligarchies’.2 It then goes on to state: ‘We believe in popular sovereignty as the foundation of national loyalty and of a just and shared relationship between state and person’. Therefore, sovereignty is for FdI the principle that must guide Italy’s action in Europe. Associated with this is the attack on oligarchies and elites, a clearly populist theme. Hostility to the political elite also emerges in other points of the programme calling for ‘a new public ethic’ (point 2) and ‘attacking waste and privilege’ (point 3). Returning to point 1, it is also interesting to note that the ‘will of the people’ can only find its full expression with the transformation of Italy into a presidential republic, a long-standing goal of the post-fascist right re-proposed in populist terms (with plebiscitary overtones).

2 All passages directly quoted from the manifestos are translated by the author.

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FdI’s economic proposals in 2013 are a mixture of conservative fiscal policies: cutting ‘wasteful’ spending and public debt, accompanied by tax cuts (points 4 and 5). At the same time, the party calls for greater vigilance on the funds disbursed to banks to restore liquidity to the system after the financial crisis in order to verify that they ‘actually reach families and businesses, without stopping in the coffers of credit institutions that, on the contrary, close the taps’ (point 7). The lowering of taxation on labour should be accompanied by active training policies and the introduction of a single contract for all workers with growing protections and greater flexibility in the first years. In short, no radical proposal can be found in the economic part of the programme. On social policy, FdI proposes an end to the largely inefficient and costly ‘assistenzialismo’—a welfarist approach ‘that places the citizen as a passive bystander’—, while it supports the creation of a less costly system ensuring equal or better services. In FdI’s proposed welfare model, private and voluntary organisations play an important role and, through a system of social vouchers, each citizen would be free to choose health and social assistance services (point 8). This is clearly inspired by the market-oriented right, but also linked to a more traditional system of subsidies to support the family and motherhood (point 11)—the woman-mother figure is a constant in the social policy model proposed by the Italian right. A final interesting aspect of this first party manifesto is the focus on justice reform (point 10, the longest in the list) but not necessarily in an authoritarian and repressive sense. Rather, the approach to this issue still seems to be influenced by Berlusconi’s battles against the judiciary, accused of using various investigations and trials to damage his political reputation. Thus, the call for speeding up and streamlining trials is accompanied by statements in support of the ‘presumption of innocence’, with the safeguarding of suspects and their reputations before a final verdict. 2014–2019: The years of Radicalisation Policy positions directly related to the ideological diamond in Fig. 2.1 were already present in the 2013 manifesto, albeit embedded in a traditionally conservative programmatic framework. The manifestos for the 2014 and 2019 European elections and for the 2018 general election are characterised by two important developments. The first is a reduction and simplification of the political message. From around forty pages of the 16 points in 2013—which, however, already lacked precision and

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policy detail—we observe a shift to less than twenty pages in 2014 and just fifteen pages in 2019. At the 2018 general election, FdI presented 15 short statements in just four pages. The second development is a clear radicalisation of the political message: the greater conciseness of the programmes brings out the backbone of FdI’s ideological system. Thus, for example, the programme for the 2014 European election (‘In Europe with our heads held high’—‘In Europa a testa alta’) begins by pledging to ask the European Commission ‘to proceed to an agreed and controlled dissolution of the Eurozone’ (point 1), a much more radical position than the one presented the year before. The manifesto goes on to attack European interference in national political choices (points 2 and 3) and accuses the European Union of having left Italy alone to manage the phenomenon of ‘wild immigration’ (point 4). The clear nativist/anti-immigration imprint is also accompanied by themes of economic sovereignism, with the explicit proposal to apply ‘intelligent protectionism’ to international trade. Identitarian and sovereignist themes are also applied to the discussion of specific economic sectors such as agriculture, against ‘the homologising drives that originate from a globalisation without rules’ (point 11). Principles such as the ‘defence of Christian roots’ and the ‘nonnegotiable values of life, the person, the family’ (point 7) are also explicitly mentioned in the 2014 manifesto, which thus has a more socially conservative and authoritarian outlook than that of 2013. These issues are also mentioned in the manifesto for the 2018 general election (‘The vote that unites Italy’—‘Il voto che unisce l’Italia’), which, being more focused on the domestic sphere, emphasises, in addition to the usual sovereignism (point 2), the themes of security and legality (point 3) and the opposition to the extension of integration and citizenship rights (point 4). The defence of traditional values is even more evident than in 2014 with an explicit attack on the ‘process of Islamisation’ (point 5). It is also interesting to note the increased focus on the issue of welfare, interpreted, however, from a strongly authoritarian/conservative value perspective. The first point of the programme in fact proposes ‘the most extensive plan to support families and increase the birth rate in the history of Italy’ and at the same time affirms the ‘defence of the natural family, the fight against gender ideology and support for life’ (this last point reveals a critical stance towards the right to abortion). At the same time, the opposition to welfarist measures such as the ‘citizenship income’ proposed by the M5S is reiterated. However, unlike in 2013, the need for more state

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intervention to combat poverty is emphasised. Also in the area of health a ‘pact between the state and citizens’ is advocated. Opposition to the pension reform that would postpone the retirement age is accompanied by support for a flat tax at 15 per cent for families and businesses—a measure that makes the income tax system less progressive. Finally, the populism that permeates several points of the programme is also reflected in a plebiscitary vision of democracy—advocating, once again, the transformation of Italy into a presidential system and a series of measures to reduce the number of parliamentarians, abolish bicameralism and impose a mandate constraint on elected representatives (point 15). The manifesto for the 2019 European election (‘Programme for the European election’—‘Programma elezioni europee’) reiterates many of the points of 2014 and 2018: reference to sovereignism in the European context, defence of the traditional family, combating illegal immigration and any meaningful extension of citizenship rights. Yet it also presents further developments. For instance, it no longer calls for Italy to leave or renegotiate its position in the Eurozone. Furthermore, in the eclectic mix of economic policies there is a more open hostility to austerity, emphasising the need for more public investment. This is accompanied by calls for the streamlining of bureaucracy and a reduction in taxes. Some ostensibly pro-market measures are, nevertheless, aimed at defending and strengthening the domestic production system as part of a protectionist economic approach. 2022: ‘Ready to Revive Italy’ The 2022 manifesto marks a departure from the period of radicalisation. First of all, the programmatic points are presented in more detail in a forty-page document. Moreover, already in the title—‘Ready to revive Italy’ (‘Pronti a risollevare l’Italia’)—a change in the party’s political role is emphasised. Whereas until 2020 FdI was an outsider and ran as an opposition party aiming to win enough votes to elect a group of representatives, in 2022 it is standing as one of the main contenders for the leadership of the Italian government. The tones are therefore calmer, although the ideological orientation remains clear. In particular, the populist and sovereignist set-up is reiterated in this statement included in the programme’s introduction:

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We will … have the opportunity to close a disgraceful historical phase: the one that in ten years has seen the birth of no less than seven governments , resulting from palace games played on the heads of the Italians. A historical phase in which the Italian left has always remained in the rooms of power, even in defiance of the will of the people. It was certainly an anomalous parenthesis of our democracy, which generated a failure of representation, mortifying and debasing the fundamental constitutional principle that ‘sovereignty belongs to the people’. (p. 3)

The first point of the programme, as in 2018, places the issue of support for the (traditional) family at the core of the party’s action, but this time without a value-based reference to the issue of ‘gender ideology’. In the election campaign, however, the issue of the right to abortion was repeatedly taken up by Giorgia Meloni. While the leader of FdI declared that she did not want to repeal the law that gives women the right to abortion, she pledged to guarantee ‘the right not to have an abortion’ (Ricciardi 2022). These words certainly hint at a socially conservative view of society in line with the authoritarian populism (Norris and Inglehart 2019) already described above. Many of the key points in FdI’s 2022 programme deal with economic and fiscal issues. The party sees Italy’s recovery and resilience plan (PNRR) financed through the EU support package as an opportunity that the outgoing government, chaired by technocrat Mario Draghi, did not fully exploit. Therefore, the plan needs to be reshaped and updated (point 2). In the area of taxation, reference is once again made to a flat tax but also to a system favouring large families (point 3). While there is no longer any open reference to economic protectionism, points 4 and 5 of the programme emphasise the need to support the Italian entrepreneurial system. This should be accompanied by a ‘valorisation of the Italian language abroad, the defence of the Italian character, culture and symbols throughout the world’ (point 5). Thus, consistent with many other cases of right-wing populist parties, socio-cultural and identity values permeate the party’s economic approach. The social dimension of Giorgia Meloni’s party emerges in point 9, which includes a commitment to build a ‘universal social security model for all workers’. This is a further step to the ‘left’ on the socio-economic dimension—a far cry from the residual, voucher-based welfare that was proposed in 2013. Here, too, FdI’s trajectory appears in line with that of

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many other radical right parties that combine a radicalisation of the values and identity dimension with centrist and even expansionary positions in the economic and welfare sphere. A more ‘neoliberal’ voucher system, however, is proposed in the education sector where citizens should be free to choose between public and private schools (point 8). Some new features of the 2022 manifesto are related to the crises that have gripped Europe (and the world) since 2020. In the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, FdI’s hostility to the restrictive system that was put in place by the government to deal with the emergency is clear. Thus, the party rails against any reintroduction of a vaccine pass restricting the movement of those who refuse vaccination (point 11). In an interesting ideological-programmatic twist, the issue of surveillance used during the COVID-19 emergency is also used to emphasise the ‘defence of everyone’s freedom and dignity’ (point 12). This statement seems surprising for a party defined as populist-authoritarian—and certainly would puzzle anyone attempting to develop a purely quantitative analysis of FdI’s programme. In fact, the individual freedoms advocated by the party are compatible with its ideological approach. Apart from a general reference to equal opportunities for men and women—a theme indeed far from the vision of the traditional right (but not incompatible with the new populist right [Akkerman and Hagelund 2007])—, we see that the freedom proposed by Brothers of Italy is aimed at protecting those who reject mass digital control and those who express themselves freely on social media. The latter point appears more like a criticism of so-called ‘political correctness’ and the ‘cancel culture’ advocated by progressive and liberal circles. Among the rights defended by FdI we find the right ‘to human life from its beginning’. Although not explicit, the critical tone towards abortion is clear. Surprisingly, reference is made to ‘combating all discrimination based on people’s sexual and sentimental choices, maintaining the law on civil unions’ (which allows same-sex civil unions). However, the programme goes on to reiterate ‘the ban on samesex adoptions and the fight against all forms of surrogate motherhood, in the supreme interest of the child’. In sum, the issue of personal freedoms is formulated in a sometimes original way within the value system typical of the radical right. The other major crisis influencing the 2022 election campaign is the Russian–Ukrainian war, which has forced all parties to take a stand on Italy’s international position. Here, among the Italian right-wing parties, FdI appears to be the one most clearly aligned with Ukraine, NATO and

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the Western alliance against Russia. Already in the introduction of the programme it is stated that: For us, Italy’s western positioning is a natural choice, not a political calculation. Italy must return to standing tall in international fora, as a full member of the G7 and as a founding state of the EU and NATO. (p. 4)

This is a departure from the more ambiguous and critical positions of previous years and a signal from the expected election winner to reassure Italy’s traditional allies on the international stage. On Ukraine, Giorgia Meloni cleverly used the issue of ‘national sovereignty’ violated by Russia’s invasion to justify her firm position of support for Ukraine (Zapperi 2022). In a context of growing global tensions, FdI has also (re)elaborated its idea of Europe and the European Union to ‘relaunch the system of European integration, for a Europe of Homelands, founded on the interest of peoples and capable of facing the challenges of our time’ (point 25). Here, too, however, the theme of identity returns with the ‘defence of the classical and Judeo-Christian roots of Europe and its fundamental values of freedom, democracy, solidarity, subsidiarity and justice’.

Conclusion This chapter presented an analysis of FdI’s ideological and programmatic profile. Starting with a discussion of the fundamental principles underpinning its system of ideas—nativism, authoritarianism, populism and sovereignism—, an assessment of quantitative and qualitative data provided important insights into how the party is positioned in the political space with respect to specific issues and policies. FdI certainly has a restrictive stance on immigration and security and consistently defends traditional values on the role of the family and individual rights. The theme of sovereignism—linked to the assertion of people-based national primacy in the international context (particularly that of the EU)—is present in all election documents submitted from 2013 to 2022. Yet FdI’s Euroscepticism radicalised in 2014–2018 and then returned to more conciliatory positions from 2019. Moreover, sovereignism has a clear economic dimension that is expressed in a protectionist and at times strongly anti-globalist vision. In general, however, FdI’s approach to the economic sphere is heavily conditioned by its value system: thus the family

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is at the centre of its proposed welfare model and the promotion of the national economy is part of a greater effort aimed at reaffirming Italian pride in the world. Finally, it is interesting to note how support for a presidential institutional system—a long-standing campaign theme of the Italian conservative right—is further legitimised by appealing to the ‘will of the people’, against the instability and lack of transparency and accountability of the parliamentary system (which, according to FdI, produced governments without democratic legitimacy from 2011 to 2022). In general, FdI is a clear example of how contemporary populism, with its simplified view of reality and its anti-elitism, can play an important role in enabling a renewal of ideas and positions rooted in the twentieth century, thus facilitating their full inclusion and mainstreaming in current political debates.

Postscript: FdI’s Ideological and Programmatic Profile in Comparative Perspective CHES data from the most recent wave (2019) give us an overview of how FdI is positioned in the European context of right-wing populist parties. Table 2.3 includes a comparison of FdI’s scores with those of Vox (Spain), National Rally (Rassemblement National, RN, France) and Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD). The analysis also considers the League (already included in Table 2.1) to assess how similarities and differences between the two key Italian right-wing populist players fit in a comparison with parties in other countries. Clearly, all five cases are on the right of the political spectrum. However, if one considers the economic component of the left–right dimension, important differences already emerge. FdI is closer to the RN with its pro-welfare and statist profile (Ivaldi 2012). The League lies a little further to the right, partly due to its origins as a strongly promarket party (which FdI lacks). Vox, often considered very close to FdI, actually embraces a more right-wing economic vision that advocates a reduced role for government (Turnbull-Dugarte et al. 2020). It should also be noted that the two Italian populist parties place more emphasis on economic issues than the other three, which instead seem clearly more focused on the socio-cultural divide between libertarian and authoritarian values. In general, however, all five parties are very close to the authoritarian end of the continuum—with the RN marginally more liberal after the process of modernisation (and ‘de-demonialisation’) promoted by

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Table 2.3 FdI’s CHES scores in 2019 compared to those of other key populist radical right parties in Western Europe

Left (0)–Right (10) [General] Left (0)–Right (10) [Economy] Salience Left–Right [Economy] (0–10) GALTAN: Libertarian (0) vs. Authoritarian (10) Salience GALTAN (0–10) Civil Liberties (0) vs. Law and order (10) Liberal policies (0 support–10 against) Religious principles (0 against–10 support) Immigration (0 support–10 against) Multiculturalism (0) vs. Assimilation (10) Ethnic minorities’ rights (0 support–10 against) Cosmopolitan (0) vs. Nationalist (10) Anti-elite salience (0–10) EU Position (1 against–7 support) EU Salience (0–10) Trade Liberalisation (0) vs. Protectionism (10) Market deregulation (0 against–10 support) Redistribution (0 support–10 against) Improving services (0) vs. Reducing taxes (10) Support cities (0) vs. Support countryside (10) Pro-environment (0) vs. Pro-growth (10) Decentralisation (0 support–10 against)

FdI

League

Vox

RN

AfD

9.1 6.4 6.5 9.4 7.8 9.6 8.5 7.9 9.8 9.9 8.6 9.8 8 1.9 7.5 8.9 4.3 5.5 7.1 5.6 7.6 7.7

8.8 7.7 6.8 9.2 7.4 9.3 8.2 8.1 9.9 9.8 8 9.1 8.3 1.7 8.4 8.4 6.5 7.3 8.9 6.8 7.6 2.9

9.7 9.3 4.3 9.7 8.3 9.8 9 9.5 9.8 8.7 9.7 9.7 6.4 3.3 5.1 6.4 9 8.3 9.2 6.1 8.8 9.9

9.8 6.9 5.1 8.1 7.6 9.3 7.8 5.5 9.9 10 9.9 9.6 9.4 2.4 8.6 9 4.5 4 5.4 7.3 7.3 4.6

9.2 7 3.2 9.5 9.4 9.5 9.1 4.3 9.9 10 9.8 9.7 9.7 1.9 6.7 6.7 6.3 6 7.3 8.5 8.5 5.9

Source Chapel Hill Expert Survey (Jolly et al. 2022)

Marine Le Pen (Scrinzi 2017). Authoritarianism is also reflected in the parties’ clear support for a law-and-order approach to society. On religious issues, the Italian and Spanish parties seem much more conservative than the other two, while on the protection of minorities, the League, influenced by its regionalist and pro-autonomy past, embraces a slightly more liberal position than the others. The League and FdI also stand halfway between Vox, on the one hand, and RN and AfD, on the other, in emphasising populist anti-elitism. A difference between FdI and Vox can also be found in the way they address the issue of European integration, with Vox being more cautious and not as clearly Eurosceptic as the other parties. In terms of economic positions, moreover, Vox has a more promarket approach that places it closer to the League than to FdI, which in turn has a more statist profile, similar to that of the RN. However,

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what FdI and Vox clearly have in common is their centralist conception of the state (Vampa 2020), which is clearly not supported by the League— again because of its regionalist origins—while RN and AfD occupy an intermediate position. On the contrary, in the dualism between cities and countryside, FdI and Vox seem to take a more balanced stance than the other parties, which are more explicit advocates of the rural world against the urban one. Of course, a more systematic and detailed comparison would be necessary, perhaps including parties in other countries, to get an even more precise idea of how FdI fits into the not entirely homogeneous family of the European populist radical right. However, already from this brief analysis it is clear that Giorgia Meloni’s party qualifies as a full member of this family. The main differences between right-wing populists tend to lie outside the ideological core described at the beginning of this chapter. All five cases presented in Table 2.3 are mainly united by their nativism (hostility to immigration), authoritarianism (right-wing position on the GALTAN scale) and populism (anti-elitism). Sovereignism is mainly reflected in their Eurosceptic positions and hostility to ceding national sovereignty to supranational institutions. Differences are greater with respect to their economic positions and preferred institutional setup of the state (centralism vs. decentralisation): FdI stands out for its inclination to favour state intervention, protectionism and centralism.

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Pirro, Andrea. 2018. The polyvalent populism of the 5 Star Movement. Journal of Contemporary European Studies 26 (4): 443–458. Puleo, Leonardo, and Gianluca Piccolino. 2022. ‘Back to the post-fascist past or landing in the populist radical right? The brothers of Italy between continuity and change. South European Society and Politics. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 13608746.2022.2126247. Rathgeb, Philip, and Marius R. Busemeyer. 2022. How to study the populist radical right and the welfare state? West European Politics 45 (1): 1–23. Ricciardi, Venessa. 2022. Meloni non vuole cambiare la legge 194 ma vuole fare ilpossibile contro l’aborto, Domani, 18 September. Scrinzi, Francesca. 2017. A “New” National Front? Gender, Religion, Secularism and the French Populist Radical Right. In Gender and Far Right Politics in Europe, ed. Michaela Köttig, Renate Bitzan, and Andrea Petö, 127–140. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Tronconi, Filippo. 2018. The Italian Five Star Movement during the crisis: towards normalisation? South European Society and Politics 23 (1): 163–180. Turnbull-Dugarte, Stuart J., José Rama and Andrés Santana. 2020. The Baskerville’s dog suddenly started barking: voting for VOX in the 2019 Spanish general elections, Political Research Exchange 2(1): Article 1781543. Vampa, Davide. 2020. Competing forms of populism and territorial politics: the cases of Vox and Podemos in Spain. Journal of Contemporary European Studies 28 (3): 304–321. Zapperi, Cesare. 2022. Giorgia Meloni sull’Ucraina: “Giusto mandare le armi. Attacchi a Salvini stucchevoli”, Corriere della Sera, 22 March.

CHAPTER 3

Organisation and Leadership

Abstract This chapter focuses on the organisation of Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia, FdI) from the national to the local level. In describing it as ‘presidential’, it pays particular attention to the centrality of its leader, Giorgia Meloni. The first part includes an analysis of the party statute (which outlines the territorial structure of the organisation and defines the role of party members). It also examines the party’s budgets from 2013 to 2021, showing that the party has financed its activities only to a small extent through membership subscriptions and more with state resources, taxpayer payments and private donations. This strictly organisational analysis is then linked to a discussion of the role played inside and outside the organisation by Giorgia Meloni, also considering her presence on social media, which places her in a position of strength and greater visibility than her own party. The postscript compares FdI with the main populist parties of the radical right in France, Spain and Germany. Keywords Brothers of Italy · Party organisation · Party members · Party leadership · Giorgia Meloni · Social media

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Vampa, Brothers of Italy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26132-9_3

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A ‘Presidential’ Party Since the 1990s, Italian political parties have seen a dramatic transformation of their organisational structures. To be sure, the trend towards ‘cartelisation’ and ‘professionalisation’ of party apparatuses is not a phenomenon confined to Italy (Panebianco 1988; Katz and Mair 1995, 2018). However, the rise of Silvio Berlusconi and his ‘business firm’ party (Hopkin and Paolucci 1999), the success of parties dominated by strong personalities—such as Umberto Bossi’s Northern League (Albertazzi and Vampa 2021a)—and the continuing instability on the left have all contributed to creating a political landscape in which the role of the leader has assumed unprecedented centrality. Thus, a process of ‘presidentialization’ of politics, ‘increasing leadership power resources and autonomy within the party’ (Poguntke and Webb 2005: 5), has been particularly pronounced in the Italian context. It is even more so in the case of Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia, FdI), not only because it was founded and has been led uninterruptedly by Giorgia Meloni, but also because ‘presidentialism’ fits coherently into its idea of institutional setup to be adopted for the whole country (Chapter 2). Presidentialism is thus a factor that links FdI’s internal dynamics to its external political action aimed at transforming Italy into a presidential republic, where a strong leadership is legitimised by popular support. The tradition of the Italian right is marked by strong leaders. Giorgio Almirante and Gianfranco Fini were at the helm of the Italian Social Movement (Movimento Sociale Italiano, MSI) and National Alliance (Alleanza Nazionale, AN) between 1969 and 2008.1 They exemplified very well the tendency in the neo-fascist and post-fascist right to delegate great powers to individuals, usually men, who had considerable authority within the party (despite the existence of internal factions) but also enjoyed a high degree of external recognition. However, while the MSI and AN could count on a deep-rooted structure and mass membership, FdI seems to have kept the leader-centred tradition alive without cultivating the organisational dimension to the same extent. The increasingly fluid and de-institutionalised Italian political context (Chiaramonte and Emanuele 2022) does not seem to encourage (or facilitate) the

1 Almirante led the MSI from 1969 to 1987. He had already been party leader for a short period between 1947 and 1950. Fini succeeded Almirante in 1987. He was briefly replaced by Pino Rauti in 1990–1991 but then regained the leadership.

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construction of ‘heavy’ party structures. To this we can add the very rapid electoral growth of FdI, which perhaps has not allowed the organisational dimension to catch up and expand sufficiently. At the same time, Nicole Bolleyer (2013) pointed out that new parties, even emerging populist ones, still need to work on the creation of a membership organisation if they are to endure after an electoral breakthrough. Reinhard Heinisch and Oscar Mazzoleni (2016) highlighted the existence of different levels of organisational complexity and centralisation among right-wing populist parties. A first dimension of analysis may relate to how these parties are structured at the national level and—particularly in multi-level systems—how they integrate vertically with peripheral units at the regional and local levels. The second dimension relates to the leadership and how much power is concentrated in its hands or within a small circle of senior party members. This chapter shows that the legacy of the MSI and AN still influences the organisational approach of the FdI, in particular its centralism and presidentialism. Moreover, its electoral success has been accompanied by some increase in membership, which however is not comparable to the levels of the 1990s or early 2000s. Finally, it is clear that Giorgia Meloni embodies an interesting development in the role of right-wing leaders. Not only does she enjoy greater power and autonomy vis-à-vis the party apparatus than her predecessors and can count on communication tools that did not exist 20 years ago, but she also stands out as a woman at the top of a political community historically dominated by men.

Organisational Structure FdI has been described as a ‘leader-centred’ party, ‘where the leadership of Meloni never faced any relevant competition over time and with a statute that assigns to the leader a wide range of powers’ (Puleo and Piccolino 2022: 18). At the same time, the party structure reflects the territorial set-up of Italy: the national organisation is divided into regional and provincial branches at lower levels. National leadership is entrusted to the president who heads the national executive. FdI is similar to Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (FI) in conceiving leadership as a ‘presidential’ position, while it differs from the League and other Italian parties where it is the ‘secretary’ who holds greater decision-making power, while the president, if there is one, is a more symbolic and honorary figure.

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As shown in Fig. 3.1, which is based on FdI’s Statute,2 the national congress elects the national president of the movement and the national assembly, as well as discussing and determining the political direction of the party. The Statute stipulates that the congress should take place every three years. The first party congress was held in 2014 and the second in 2017. However, there has been no congress since 2017. The COVID-19 pandemic can partly explain this delay, although looking at the history of the MSI and AN, it is not uncommon to see a progressive restriction of intra-party democracy that eventually leads to ignoring the congress deadlines (Puleo and Piccolino 2022). The assembly elects the direzione nazionale (national directorate), which includes the national president of the party and also the leaders of the parliamentary groups in the Chamber of Deputies, the Senate and the European Parliament. The national leadership also consists of members of the national executive, a smaller circle of senior members (up to 25, most of them chosen directly by the president), who assist the work of the leader and coordinate the work of the various party departments.3 The coordinamento politico nazionale (national coordination office) connects the members of the executive with main elected representatives in the regions and the mayors of key municipalities. Both the national directorate and the executive also involve the leaders of the party’s youth association (Gioventù Nazionale, National Youth). As of October 2022, the party’s national executive consisted of 24 senior members (including Giorgia Meloni), 19 of whom were men. The vast majority of the members of the executive were also elected representatives of the Chamber of Deputies or the Senate (17). Two more representatives were elected to Parliament in 2022. There was one member of the European Parliament and two regional councillors. Thus, the leadership seems to mainly rely on national elected politicians, without leaving much 2 The ‘Statuto del movimento «Fratelli d’Italia - Alleanza Nazionale»’ is available on the party website at https://www.fratelli-italia.it/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Statuto_regi strato_il_31.10.19.pdf (date of access 25/10/2022). 3 The organisation includes various thematic departments, of which the following are mandatory: Organisation; Communication and Propaganda; Local Autonomies; Thematic Workshops; Membership, Congresses and Primaries; Italians Worldwide. It is up to the national president, having consulted the national executive, to create more departments. For example, at the time of writing (October 2022), there are departments for specific policy issues such as Economics and Finance, Defence, Social Equity and Disability, Justice, etc.

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Fig. 3.1 The multi-level organisation of Brothers of Italy

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room for local or regional representatives and unelected members drawn from the so-called ‘civil society’. Lazio is the region most represented in the executive, which is not surprising given the centrality of Rome and surrounding areas as the party’s traditional stronghold. This presidential structure is replicated in the regions and provinces with strong powers attributed to the leaders and the executives (coordinamenti) that assist them. Another element that clearly emerges even at the lowest levels of the organisation is the right given to the main elected representatives in the institutions to be included in the executive and coordination offices. Considering what has already been said about the national executive, this indicates a substantial overlap between what Richard Katz and Peter Mair (1995) defined as ‘the party in the central office’ and ‘the party in public office’ (while the ‘party on the ground’ appears more isolated). The local branch, consisting of at least ten members, is the ‘fundamental organisational unit’ of the party (Article 6 of the Statute) and is usually established at the municipal level—although in large cities there may be more than one or there may also be thematic or workplace sections. In each branch, the assembly of members elects a municipal president and a coordination office. The organisation forged by Giorgia Meloni is therefore not a simple cadre party but retains some of the characteristics of the old mass parties with their territorial presence. It is in the local branches that what remains of grassroots political activism takes place. The next section examines in more detail the role of FdI members also in relation to the economic resources available to the party.

Party Membership and Resources Article 3 of the FdI Statute defines the rights of members. The list includes: . the right to vote in internal consultations within the Movement as long as members have paid their membership fee; . the right to vote in congresses; . participation in the life of the association and the definition of its political direction; . access to useful information to ensure full and responsible participation; and

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. the right to appeal to the guarantee bodies to denounce violations of regulations and to protect members’ associative rights. Members also have duties, including: . to represent and support the party by conforming their behaviour to requirements of honour and respectability; . to contribute financially to the life of the Movement by regularly paying membership fees; . to commit themselves to the growth of the Movement by disseminating its programmes and ideas in their social, cultural, territorial or working environment; . to join FdI groups in the elective assemblies at every level; and . to conform to the indications coming from the leading bodies of the Movement. FdI members are prohibited from joining other political parties or groups if they become party representatives in democratic public institutions. Moreover, if they are elected to regional councils or the national (or European) parliament, they are required to pay a monthly contribution to the party, in addition to the membership fee. Given the party’s hierarchical and centralised structure, the rights of members to participate in internal debates do not seem to constitute the greatest incentive to join the organisation. Yet local activism can still offer a privileged route to election to public office, which, as seen above, also provides easier access to the party’s executive bodies. However, it is not only incentives that determine membership in a political community. FdI can still rely on a pool of activists already involved in the MSI or AN. In 2007, before merging into the People of Freedom (Popolo della Libertà, PdL), AN had more than 600,000 members (van Biezen et al. 2012), second only (and by a narrow margin) to the Left Democrats (the then main centre-left party). Forza Italia, despite having twice as many votes, had only 400,000 members and the League less than 150,000. In short, the human capital from which Giorgia Meloni was able to draw was rather abundant by the standards of Italian politics. Still, in the years following its foundation, FdI had a modest membership relative to its long history of grassroots mobilisation. Unfortunately,

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Italian parties are not very transparent in providing membership figures. Yet journalistic sources estimated the number of annual FdI members until the pandemic at 40,000 (Adnkronos 2021). In 2020, however, there was substantial growth with over 130,000 members (50,000 online), a figure higher than that reported by FI and the League (around 100,000). FdI thus ranked as the third largest force in terms of membership after the centre-left Democratic Party (Partito Democratico, PD) (around 400,000) and the Five Star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle, M5S) (around 200,000). In general, it is clear that the membership of FdI, although growing and healthier than that of other parties, does not play the same role as it once did in traditional mass organisations—a development that is certainly not limited to Italy or the right side of the political spectrum. Figure 3.2 is based on the data provided by the annual budgets submitted by the party. Four revenue items are identified. The first two are fairly straightforward: membership fees and direct state funding. The third item was introduced in 2014, when a new law was passed which, by 2017, would replace all direct state funding with indirect financing through the so-called due per mille ai partiti (literally, ‘two in a thousand to the parties’). Under this system, taxpayers can decide to pay 0.2 per cent of their income tax to a registered political party of their choice (Fiorelli 2022). The fourth item includes other contributions from individual donors or from other organisations and activities. It is clear that the contribution of members to the party’s income remained rather limited throughout the period considered, although it increased towards the end in line with the growth in formal membership mentioned above. The abolition of state funding in 2017 was offset by taxpayer payments through the 0.2 per cent mechanism. These grew significantly, becoming the party’s first source of income between 2019 and 2021. Thus, despite not being able to count on a mass membership, FdI has been able to gather the support of a good number of ‘sympathisers’ (simpatizzanti), often not directly engaged in party activism. In fact, according to the Ministry of Finance, in 2021 with almost EUR 2,700,000 from over 200,000 taxpayers, FdI was the second most publicly supported party after the centre-left PD.4 Private contributions 4 Finance ministry data on the due per mille are available online her: https://www.fin anze.gov.it/finanze/2xmille/public/index.php?tree=2021AADUEXM0101 (date of access 25/10/2022).

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5000000 4500000 4000000

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Fig. 3.2 FdI income from 2013 to 2021 (Source Author’s own elaboration based on party budgets, available at https://www.fratelli-italia.it/)

and donations from other organisations are also an important resource: especially elected members in regional, national and European institutions provide additional financial support to the party. However, beyond the human capital and economic resources that the party can still deploy, FdI’s main asset remains its founder and leader: Giorgia Meloni. Without her and without her efforts inside and outside the organisation, it is not possible to fully explain the rebirth and astonishing success of a political project that only ten years before its electoral triumph was confined to the margins of the Italian party system.

Giorgia Meloni’s Leadership On a mild autumn afternoon in 2019, a demonstration in Piazza San Giovanni in Rome ended with speeches by various right-wing leaders. Matteo Salvini, who was the dominant populist figure at the time, called Giorgia Meloni on stage. Placing a tricolour flag on the lectern, the FdI leader began an impassioned speech with an attack on the PD but also

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on the M5S, both accused of having betrayed ‘the people’ by forming a governing alliance instead of allowing early elections. She then continued with a harsh criticism of the law presented by the left to give citizenship to immigrants. She declared war on the Islamisation of Europe and denounced Nigerian mafiosi, murderers and drug dealers. The climax of the speech was reached in an angry outburst directed at those who stood against national identity and family values. Meloni addressed them by asserting her identity: ‘I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am Christian. You won’t take that away from me!’ (author’s translation)

These few simple words soon became a leitmotif of Meloni’s astonishing rise from leader of a small party to a figure of great popularity on social media and, more widely, in the electorate. Even her critics and opponents, who tried to ridicule the content of that speech by extrapolating excerpts and making parodies and songs out of it, contributed to turning Meloni into a recognisable and popular political personality. ‘Giorgia-womanmother’ has thus become a trinity that has endeared her to many, so much so that even her autobiography, published in 2021 under the title ‘Io sono Giorgia’ (‘I am Giorgia’)—echoing that 2019 speech in Piazza San Giovanni—was a best seller. The crucial question is whether we can consider Giorgia Meloni a ‘strong leader’. As with many concepts in political science, there is much academic debate about what the key attributes of leadership are or should be (Helms 2012). However, it is generally accepted that it has to do with power and influence. Moreover, in the case of political parties, leadership can be exercised on two fronts: inside or outside the organisation. Indeed, a distinction that has often been made is between ‘external’ and ‘internal’ leadership: while the former is often related to electoral success and the ability of a party leader to attract significant personal support within the broader electorate, the latter has to do with the leader’s role within the party structure. ‘Charisma’ is generally presented as an ‘external’ attribute of leadership, which, mainly refers to the direct ties existing between the leader and the voters (Mudde 2007: 260). However, some scholars have highlighted that even if charismatic leaders may play a crucial role in attracting voters, they may be less able to lead parties in the long term. Electoral persistence cannot be easily secured by relying only on external appeals to the

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voters. Therefore, Sarah De Lange and David Art (2011) have stressed the importance of ‘internal’ leadership because it facilitates processes of party institutionalisation. The two authors argue that to develop the organisational structure of a party and contribute to its ‘systemness’, leaders need to complement external charisma with ‘coterie charisma’ (see also Eatwell 2004; McDonnell 2016). This means that leaders need to have an authoritarian leadership style and organisational talent, as well as practical leadership skills. These include the ability to operate an organisation that has not yet developed coherence, the ability to communicate with activists and administrative and political personnel, and the knowledge and people skills to select suitable candidates and staff (De Lange and Art 2011: 1233). Giorgia Meloni fits very well into the tradition of the right-wing leader exercising strong control over the internal life of the party. We have already highlighted the fact that FdI is characterised by a ‘presidential’ structure. The data from the Chapel Hill expert survey (CHES) (Jolly et al. 2022), already used in Chapter 2, also help us frame the role of leadership in the party organisation. Based on the responses of the experts involved in the survey, in 2019 each party was assigned a score ranging from 0 (members/activists have complete control over policy choices) to 10 (leadership has complete control over policy choices). FdI scores an average of 8.4 on this scale, just below Forza Italia and the League (9.1) but well above the PD (5.3) and M5S (4.3). Thus, the tendency to centralise power observed in Italian right-wing parties is much less pronounced in other sectors of the political spectrum, which seem to be more subject to internal changes and upheavals. In the 10 years before the 2022 election, Forza Italia and FdI remained under the control of the same person and the League elected a new leader (Matteo Salvini) in 2013. The PD, on the other hand, has had eight leadership changes (including some interim secretaries after resignations). The M5S went from being dominated by comedian Beppe Grillo as the movement’s ‘guarantor’ (along with co-founder Gianroberto Casaleggio), to electing Luigi Di Maio as the party’s frontrunner in 2018, to appointing former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte as party president (another instance of ‘populist presidentialism’) after a period of vacancy (although Grillo continued to exercise his role as guarantor). Giorgia Meloni’s role, however, goes beyond that of a dominant leader within the FdI community, whose perimeter was all in all rather narrow until 2020. Having started her political career within the MSI and then

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continued as the leader of the AN youth organisation, Meloni was able to use the network of contacts and relationships built up over years of activism to (re)create a group of senior figures supporting her attempt to revive the right after a period of crisis (Meloni 2021). Many of the prominent personalities promoted by Meloni to key positions within FdI come from AN’s youth organisation and are part of the so-called ‘Atreju generation’ (Boezi 2020). The name of Atreju, the protagonist of Michael Ende’s novel The Neverending Story, has been used to name a political gathering of the Italian right-wing youth that has been held every year since 1998, usually in September, in Rome. The creator of this annual event was Giorgia Meloni herself. She then used it to strengthen her connections with representatives from different political and cultural sectors. In the end she was able to unify much of the human and symbolic legacy of AN—including the flame in the logo (Chapter 1)—which had fragmented over the years. She even managed to involve some sectors of the so-called ‘social right’ that had rejected Gianfranco Fini’s various moderate turns and had left the party. By placing herself at the heart of a renewed alliance between key members of the Italian right, Giorgia Meloni has secured a truce between factions within her political area after years of divisions and infighting. This in turn has allowed her to focus on the external dimension of her leadership and consolidate her appeal to the electorate. Just around the time of the San Giovanni rally described above, Giorgia Meloni was overtaking Matteo Salvini in popularity. Figure 3.3 shows survey data provided by Demos and Pi. They refer to the percentage of Italian respondents with a positive opinion on various political leaders from the start of 2018 to the September 2022 election. Giorgia Meloni is represented by the continuous black line. Interestingly, from 2018 to early 2020, the FdI leader’s popularity gradually increased. While at the beginning of 2018 she occupied relatively low positions, together with old Berlusconi and the disgraced leader of the PD (Matteo Renzi), at the beginning of 2020 Meloni ranked second most popular leader after Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. She had overtaken Matteo Salvini who, after a strong surge in support between 2018 and early 2019, had seen his personal approval ratings drop considerably. While the pandemic caused a setback in Giorgia Meloni’s popularity growth, what emerges from the graph is the substantial stability of her ratings compared to those of the other leaders. In the 2018–2022 legislative term, Salvini and the M5S leaders saw significant rises in approval

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Fig. 3.3 The popularity of Giorgia Meloni and other Italian leaders from 2018 to September 2022 (Source Author’s own elaboration based on data provided by Demos and Pi, www.demos.it)

followed by sharp falls (Salvini went from over 60 per cent to less than 30 per cent). The high popularity of the prime minister should be considered separately, as it refers to two different political personalities: Giuseppe Conte occupied this position until the beginning of 2021 and then gave way to Mario Draghi in the last phase. Conte would in the meantime become leader of the M5S causing a rapid growth for this party, followed however by a decline. All in all, in the general volatility of the Italian political system where the fortunes of key players change rapidly, Giorgia Meloni appears to be the leader least subject to dramatic shocks and swings. Unlike Salvini, she has consolidated her popularity without crashing from the heights of rapid success. The ever-changing political scenario described above is made even more fluid by the role that social media play in today’s political communication (Fieschi 2019; Caiani and Guerra 2017). They are particularly important for populists, who can use social media to circumvent journalistic gatekeepers and ‘uncontestedly articulate their ideology and spread their messages’ (Engesser et al. 2017). Social media have reduced the

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strategic importance of party structures and increased the autonomy of leaders, as they no longer have to rely on members, mid-level officials and organisational resources to reach voters and supporters. We can therefore assume that the greater the number of followers a leader can address on Facebook and Twitter—the two main platforms used by politicians today—the greater the visibility and autonomy that leader will enjoy in articulating key political messages. The data shown in Fig. 3.4 refer to the social media followers of the five main Italian leaders on 25 September 2022, shortly before the announcement of the general election results. This makes it possible to analyse the figures without them being distorted by a bandwagon effect in the aftermath of FdI’s victory. Facebook and Twitter are considered separately and each graph maps the leaders according to the number of their personal followers (vertical axis) and the ratio between their personal followers and the party followers (horizontal axis). While the first measure gives us a rough idea of the social media ‘power’ of each leader in absolute terms, the second tells us how much more visible leaders are than their respective parties on Facebook and Twitter. The first finding that clearly emerges is that on both Facebook and Twitter Giorgia Meloni has the highest leader/follower ratio. She is 5.4 times more followed on Facebook and 6.8 times on Twitter than the FdI organisation. This suggests that the leader’s social media profile carries much more weight than her own party. Salvini has a similar ratio on Twitter but lower on Facebook. Giuseppe Conte, leader of the M5S from 2021, has a lower ratio on Facebook and even lower on Twitter. However, on Facebook the leaders of the M5S and League stand out in terms of their total followers—over 4 million for Conte and 5 million for Salvini. Giorgia Meloni, on the other hand, has 2.4 million Facebook followers, still many more than Berlusconi (1.1 million) and Enrico Letta, leader of the PD (270,000). Moreover, Meloni’s following was built from the opposition, ‘on the ground’, while the League and M5S leaders were already enjoying high institutional visibility. Matteo Salvini was interior minister in 2018–2019, after winning the 2018 general election (thus benefiting from a bandwagon effect). Giuseppe Conte became leader of the M5S after having served as prime minister for two and a half years—and having massively used social media (Facebook in particular) for communication during the Covid-19 pandemic (Ceccobelli and Vaccari 2021).

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Fig. 3.4 Mapping social media following of the main Italian party leaders and organisations (Source Author’s own elaboration based on Facebook and Twitter follower numbers on 25 September 2022)

In general, it is interesting to note that the personal following of Italian leaders tends to be higher on Facebook than on Twitter in absolute terms. The only exception is Enrico Letta (PD), who, however, does not appear to have much greater appeal than his own party (in fact, his ratio is even less than 1 on Facebook). Instead, the leaders of the three main populist parties, Conte, Salvini and Meloni, are clearly dominant in the social media communication of their respective parties—this is in line with what the literature tells us about the relationship between populism and new media.

Conclusion Brothers of Italy is a young party, founded only ten years before winning a general election. Yet in the Italian context, where political movements are created and dissolved in the space of a parliamentary term, ten years

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is not such a short time. Moreover, FdI can be defined as a ‘rooted newcomer’ (Baldini et al. 2023), since it was able to draw on the organisational resources of its predecessors, the MSI and AN, which could rely on mass organisations. Above all, however, Meloni’s party fits into the Italian right-wing tradition due to its tendency to concentrate authority in the hands of a strong national leader, who, although flanked by a small group of allies in the day-to-day running of the organisation, has almost total control over key programmatic and strategic choices. Hence the definition of FdI as a ‘presidential’ party both in its internal power relations and in its external vision of ‘plebiscitary’ institutional order. The organisational consolidation of FdI was therefore based on the centrality of the leader. The party grew in membership in the run-up to electoral victory. However, it is a long way from the numbers of the MSI and AN which, despite their hierarchical structures, could count on hundreds of thousands of members and activists. FdI is not an exception in a scenario characterised by a general decline in traditional forms of political participation. This weakening has been accompanied by the further strengthening of the leader, not only within the organisation, but also externally. Social media in particular have allowed prominent populist personalities—and Meloni can be included among them—to address voters directly without having to rely on intermediary structures and mainstream media.

Postscript: FdI’s Organisation and Leadership in Comparative Perspective Table 3.1 offers a comparison of the five right-wing populist parties in Italy, Spain, France and Germany based on some of the organisational dimensions discussed in this chapter. FdI belongs to the recent wave of populist parties founded in the aftermath of the financial crisis and the Great Recession (Albertazzi and Vampa 2021b). Giorgia Meloni’s party, the Spanish Vox and Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD) were created between 2012 and 2013 at the height of the Eurozone crisis. In contrast, the League and the French National Rally (Rassemblement National, RN—formerly National Front, FN) are among the oldest and still organisationally active parties in their respective countries.

Giorgia Meloni

Leader

5 million (2 million) 4.4 (3.3) 1.4 million (840,000) 6.6 (2.9)

2.4 million (2.7 million) 5.4 (3.1)

1.3 million (860,000) 6.8 (2.8)

1.8 (5.2)

Secretary 9 (10) 9.1 (6.8) 100,000 (210,000) 4.1 (4.6)

1989 (as an alliance) 1991 (as a party) Matteo Salvini

League

1.5 (0.7)

710,000 (620,000)

1.1 (0.6)

530,000 (170,000)

1.7 (6.2)

President 8 (2.7) 9.5 (7.6) 63,000 (326,000)

Santiago Abascal

2013

Vox

2.8 million (3.9 million) 9 (14)

1.7 million (1.9 million) 3.5 (8)

1 (6.6)

Marine Le Pen (until November 2022) President 11 (4.7) 9.5 (8.2) 83,000 (360,000)

1972

RN

Author’s own calculation based on CHES (Jolly et al. 2022), party websites, Facebook and Twitter In brackets: average value of each party’s main competitors. Social media data refer to 25 September 2022 a Leader-specific data for AfD refer to Alice Weidel who has been more influential than her co-leader

Members as proportion of voters in last general election (%) Leader’s followers (Facebook) Ratio Leader/Party followers (Facebook) Leader’s followers (Twitter) Ratio Leader/Party followers

Title of leader President Years in Office 10 (9.8) Power of Leader (0–10) 8.4 (7) Membership 130,000 (202,000)

2012

FdI

1 (0.9)

180,000 (445,000)

0.8 (0.7)

460,000 (100,000)

0.7 (3.2)

Party Chair 5 (1.3) 7 (6.2) 35,000 (307,000)

Alice Weidela Tino Chrupalla

2013

AfD

Leadership, organisation, social media communication: comparing five populist radical right parties

Year of foundation

Table 3.1

3 ORGANISATION AND LEADERSHIP

55

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D. VAMPA

Yet, despite leading a relatively young organisation, Meloni’s tenure is already quite long, having been at the helm of her party since its foundation in 2012. The average duration of leadership in the other major Italian parties is similar to that of FdI but this figure is inflated by Silvio Berlusconi’s almost three decades of full control of FI. Like Marine Le Pen5 and Santiago Abascal, Giorgia Meloni holds the position of ‘president’ of her party. The presidential nature of the leadership does not only depend on the institutional context—only Marine Le Pen leads a party competing in a presidential system—but it is clearly in line with a ‘plebiscitary’ interpretation of democracy, centred on a strong and authoritative personality acting on behalf of ‘the people’. However, formal titles do not tell us the full story. Although, unlike Meloni, the leader of the Italian League holds the title of (federal) ‘secretary’, with no reference to a ‘presidential’ role, he is still very powerful within his party. CHES data suggest that on a scale from 0 (members have full control of the party) to 10 (the leader has full control of the party), Matteo Salvini scores very similarly to the leaders of the FN and Vox: above 9. Giorgia Meloni is just below 9. Yet we should remember that the CHES data refer to 2019, and Meloni may have overtaken Salvini since then—indeed the latter’s leadership looked much more precarious after the 2022 general election (Giovannini and Vampa 2022). Only AfD has a considerably lower score, 7. This may be due to two factors. First of all, AfD’s leadership is shared by two people—a ‘dual’ system that is now common to almost all German main parties (only the Christian Democrats are an exception) (Campus et al. 2021). Moreover, internal party democracy is much more regulated in Germany than in other countries (Casal Bértoa and Bourne 2017) and this does not allow an excessive concentration of power in the hands of one leader. In general, however, all five populist parties are more leader-centred than their main competitors in their respective countries (figures in brackets in Table 3.1). Therefore, they follow what Rahat (2022) called the ‘Personalised-Centralised’ pattern and are closer to the ‘Leader Party’ organisational ideal type. If we consider the membership of the five parties, FdI is (in 2022) the largest one with about 130,000 members. However, it should be remembered that these figures are not totally accurate. Only in Germany, thanks 5 Marine Le Pen was officially replaced as president of the RN by 27-year-old Jordan Bardella in November 2022 (after he acted as caretaker leader for a year). Here she is still considered as leader and frontrunner of the RN.

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to the highly regulated system mentioned above, do we have more rigorously verified figures. In other countries we mainly have to rely on parties’ self-reported figures. The general picture we get is that even if they do not rely on mass memberships (also compared to their main competitors), populist radical right parties are not necessarily ‘light’ and may still find inspiration in the ‘mass party model’ (Albertazzi and van Kessel 2021). Yet their members remain a very small fraction of their (growing) electorates. Only the League has a more balanced membership/electoral ratio, partly due to its deeper organisational roots in some Italian regions, a legacy of its past as a regionalist party (Albertazzi and Vampa 2021a). In terms of social media use, FdI and the League seem to differ significantly from the other three parties. Giorgia Meloni and Matteo Salvini appear to be very active on Facebook and their following far exceeds that of their respective parties—Meloni has the highest leader-to-party ratio on Facebook (5.4) among the five cases examined in Table 3.1. Santiago Abascal and Alice Weidel are much weaker on social media than the two Italian leaders, although Vox frontrunner has more followers than other Spanish competitors on both platforms (particularly after the departure of Pablo Iglesias, former leader of left-wing Podemos). Weidel, on the other hand, is relatively more popular on Facebook. It should be noted, however, that the various parties seem to follow national trends. In Germany, in particular, the main political players—including those of the far right—seem to be much less inclined to use social media than politicians in Italy, where the extreme personalisation of political competition has encouraged the massive use of Facebook and Twitter (but also Instagram and, more recently, even TikTok). Marine Le Pen comes close to the Italian cases and in fact surpasses them on Twitter (which she seems to prefer as a communication tool over Facebook). However, the French institutional context, very focused on presidential figures and candidates, has generally favoured the media exposure of leaders over parties. Here Emmanuel Macron, and not Le Pen, is the extreme case: his leader-to-party ratio is 17 on Facebook and 28 on Twitter! Overall, Brothers of Italy seems to converge with the other major Western European cases on one key aspect: strong leadership, i.e. a personality who plays a dominant role both within and outside the organisation. At the same time, FdI and other populist radical right parties still rely on members to consolidate their support base (Bolleyer 2013), although their grassroots organisations are much smaller than those of traditional mass parties. Among the new forms of political participation

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and communication, we cannot overlook social media. Here, the strong personalisation and mediatisation of political competition seems to give Italy’s populist leaders a particular advantage compared to leaders in other countries. In Germany, for example, all key players show a greater reluctance to use Facebook and Twitter to communicate with voters. However, the general trend is clear: thanks to social media, personalities such as Giorgia Meloni, Matteo Salvini, Santiago Abascal, Marine Le Pen and even Alice Weidel can project their image of strong and resolute decisionmakers to the outside world by directly posting a comment or a video, without having to rely on the support of intermediary party structures. Finally, it cannot go unnoticed that in 2022 the main radical right parties of the three largest EU countries were led by women, with biographies that are not exactly conventional or in line with conservativetraditional principles.6 This opens up an interesting point for discussion and future research on whether or not a gender gap still exists on the right. This gap seems to have narrowed significantly, at least in positions of high responsibility. It remains to be seen whether this reflects deeper changes in society and the electorate, but also in the style and identity of political movements that until recently were called Männerparteien—men’s parties (Mudde 2007).

References Adnkronos. 2021. Pd “campione di tessere”, boom Fratelli d’Italia, 5 April. Albertazzi, Daniele, and Davide Vampa. 2021a. Populism in Europe: Lessons from Umberto Bossi’s Northern League. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Albertazzi, Daniele, and Davide Vampa, eds. 2021b. Populism and New Patterns of Political Competition in Western Europe. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Albertazzi, Daniele, and Stijn van Kessel. 2021. Right-wing populist party organisation across Europe: The survival of the mass-party? Introduction to the thematic issue. Politics and Governance 9 (4): 224–227. Baldini, Gianfranco, Filippo Tronconi, and Davide Angelucci. 2023. Yet Another Populist Party? Understanding the Rise of Brothers of Italy. South European Society and Politics. https://doi.org/10.1080/13608746.2022.2159625.

6 Giorgia Meloni is not married but has a daughter with her partner. Marine Le Pen has been divorced twice. Alice Weidel is in a relationship with a Sri Lankan-born woman; they live in Switzerland and have also adopted two children.

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Bolleyer, Nicole. 2013. New Parties in Old Party Systems: Persistence and Decline in Seventeen Democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Boezi, Francesco (2020) Fenomeno Meloni: Viaggio nella ‘Generazione Atreju’. Verona: Gondolin. Caiani, Manuela, and Simona Guerra, eds. 2017. Euroscepticism, Democracy and the Media: Communicating Europe, Contesting Europe. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Campus, Donatella, Niko Switek, and Marco Valbruzzi. 2021. Collective Leadership and Divided Power in West European Parties. Cham: Palgrave MacMillan. Casal Bértoa, Fernando, and Angela Bourne. 2017. Prescribing democracy? Party proscription and party system stability in Germany, Spain and Turkey. European Journal of Political Research 56 (2): 440–465. Ceccobelli, Diego, and Cristian Vaccari. 2021. A virus in the hybrid media system: How the Conte government communicated the coronavirus crisis. Contemporary Italian Politics 13 (2): 259–274. Chiaramonte, Alessandro, and Vincenzo Emanuele. 2022. The Deinstitutionalization of Western European Party Systems. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. De Lange, Sarah L., and David Art. 2011. Fortuyn versus wilders: An agencybased approach to radical right party building. West European Politics 34 (6): 1229–1249. Eatwell, Roger. 2004. The re–birth of Right-Wing Charisma? The cases of Jean– Marie Le Pen and Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 3 (3): 1–23. Engesser, Sven, Nicole Ernst, Frank Esser, and Florin Büchel. 2017. Populism and social media: how politicians spread a fragmented ideology. Information, Communication & Society 20 (8): 1109–1126. Fieschi, Catherine. 2019. Populocracy. Newcastle upon Tyne: Agenda Publishing. Fiorelli, Chiara. 2022. Are cartels going private? Italian parties’ organizational faces since the golden age of public financing. Contemporary Italian Politics 14 (3): 314–330. Giovannini, Arianna, and Davide Vampa. 2022. Boom to bust: where next for Matteo Salvini’s League? The Loop: ECPR’s Political Science Blog, 27 October. Heinisch, Reinhard and Oscar Mazzoleni (eds.). 2016. Understanding Populist Party Organisation. Palgrave Macmillan. Helms, Ludger, ed. 2012. Comparative Political Leadership. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Hopkin, Jonathan, and Caterina Paolucci. 1999. The business firm model of party organisation: Cases from Spain and Italy. European Journal of Political Research 35 (3): 307–339. Jolly, Seth, Ryan Bakker, Liesbet Hooghe, Gary Marks, Jonathan Polk, Jan Rovny, Marco Steenbergen, and Milada Anna Vachudova. 2022. Chapel Hill

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Expert Survey Trend File, 1999–2019. Electoral Studies. https://doi.org/10. 1016/j.electstud.2021.102420. Katz, Richard, and Peter Mair. 1995. Changing models of party organization and party democracy: The emergence of the cartel party. Party Politics 1 (1): 5–28. Katz, Richard, and Peter Mair. 2018. Democracy and the Cartelization of Political Parties. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McDonnell, Duncan. 2016. Populist Leaders and Coterie Charisma. Political Studies 64 (3): 719–733. Meloni, Giorgia. 2021. Io Sono Giorgia. Milan: Mondadori. Mudde, Cas. 2007. Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Panebianco, Angelo. 1988. Political Parties: Organisation and Power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Poguntke, Thomas, and Paul Webb. 2005. The Presidentialization of Politics: A Comparative Study of Modern Democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Puleo, Leonardo, and Gianluca Piccolino. 2022. Back to the post-fascist past or landing in the populist radical right? The brothers of Italy between continuity and change. South European Society and Politics, https://doi.org/10.1080/ 13608746.2022.2126247. Rahat, Gideon. 2022. Party types in the age of personalized politics. Perspectives on Politics. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592722000366. Van Biezen, Ingrid, Peter Mair, and Thomas Poguntke. 2012. Going, going,…gone? The decline of party membership in contemporary Europe. European Journal of Political Research 51 (1): 24–56.

CHAPTER 4

Political Friends and Foes

Abstract This chapter focuses on the positioning of Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia, FdI) in the Italian party system and also considers its alliances with other political actors in the European and international arenas. The first part frames FdI as a ‘negatively integrated’ party and examines its role in the centre-right political camp in Italy, in particular its relationship with Matteo Salvini’s League and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia. It also considers how it has interacted with other competitors, including the populist Five Star Movement and the centre-left Democratic Party, which switched from dismissive to more confrontational strategies. The second part discusses FdI’s growing activism in forging international alliances, focusing on the party’s role in the European Conservatives and Reformists Party and Giorgia Meloni’s ties to important sectors of the US Republican Party. The postscript compares FdI to the main populist radical right parties in France, Spain and Germany. Keywords Brothers of Italy · Party system · Political integration · Political competition · Political alliances · International alliances

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Vampa, Brothers of Italy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26132-9_4

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Exiting the Political Mainstream to Become the New Mainstream In trying to carve out a place for itself within the Italian political system, Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia, FdI) has not moved along the trajectory often followed by other right-wing populist parties. These generally start from very radical and/or marginal positions on the political space and then gradually work their way into the system and shift towards the so-called ‘mainstream’ (Akkerman et al. 2016). FdI, however, emerged in 2012 from the very core of the Italian system as a split from the People of Freedom (Popolo della Libertà, PdL), which, despite facing a turbulent period, was still the largest group in parliament. Giorgia Meloni was not an outsider or a challenger. She had been a minister in the last Berlusconi government. Previously, she had been vice-president of the Chamber of Deputies and a prominent representative of National Alliance (Alleanza Nazionale, AN), a post-fascist party that held important government posts in the 1990s and 2000s to pursue a relatively moderate conservative agenda. The political-economic storm of 2011–2012 abruptly interrupted this process of ‘inclusion-moderation’ and led Meloni and her followers to reverse course: out of the PdL, out of the governmental area, further away from the mainstream. Chapter 2 has already shown how FdI’s more moderate positions of 2012–2013 radicalised in the following years and then stabilised on a more pragmatic and government-oriented form of radicalism. In short, Giorgia Meloni seems to have left the mainstream temporarily, only to re-enter it as a protagonist and reshape it. Experts have much debated how (old and new) populist parties position themselves within the political systems of mature democracies. Terms such as ‘mainstream’, ‘establishment’, ‘insider’, ‘dominant’, ‘challenger’, ‘anti-system’, ‘outsider’ have been used with varying degrees of precision to define not only the ideological-programmatic but also the ‘systemicfunctional’ boundaries between populist parties and their competitors. The question often asked after studying the characteristics of a specific party is indeed how it interacts with other players in the democratic process. The term ‘mainstream’, already mentioned, is perhaps the most widely used to define both the ideological profile of parties (Akkerman et al. 2016) and their more or less advantageous and central position in the political system (De Vries and Hobolt 2012). Mattia Zulianello (2020) has proposed a new framework that distinguishes more clearly between the ideological-programmatic orientation

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of a party—i.e. its positive or negative approach to the status quo—and its ‘functional’ role in the party system—i.e. whether it is integrated in cooperative/competitive interactions with other key actors in the political arena. This allows us to refine the description of the path taken by FdI proposed at the beginning of this chapter. Before leaving the PdL, the group led by Giorgia Meloni was positively integrated into the Italian system, in that, after years of governing and managing the status quo, it no longer questioned the system of ‘metapolicies’ that formed the basis of Italy’s political, economic and social order at national and international level (McDonnell and Newell 2011). The exit from the ‘mainstream’ in 2012–2013 can be more correctly defined as a growing opposition to the status quo, through increasingly harsh criticism of the political, economic and socio-cultural preferences of the Italian elites, including their support for EU integration. However, this did not mean a total isolation of FdI. Giorgia Meloni continued to advocate an alliance with the other two main right-wing parties, Forza Italia (FI) and the League (Lega), even when they decided to join some of the governments between 2013 and 2022. So, despite being in opposition for ten years and taking increasingly critical positions towards the system, FdI managed to maintain some level of systemic integration. Using the scheme proposed by Zulianello, we could say that FdI moved from ‘positive integration’ to ‘negative integration’. Its return to government in 2022 could mark the beginning of a new phase if Giorgia Meloni were to undertake a significant revision of the political positions she adopted during ten years of opposition. Or she might succeed in bringing about fundamental changes in the Italian metapolicies, so as to align them with her party’s ideological framework. After all, Hungary offers a case in point where, instead of adapting to a liberal-democratic system, populists have illiberally altered the institutions to assume the role of the new ‘positively integrated’ mainstream. The following sections of this chapter will present an analysis of how FdI interacted with other political actors in its period of ‘negative integration’ between 2012 and 2022, but will also examine how ideologically distant competitors responded to its electoral growth. We will start with FdI’s two traditional right-wing allies, FI and the League. We will then look at the two main opponents, the Democratic Party (Partito Democratico, PD) and the Five Star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle, M5S). The assessment of party interactions will be based on the typology proposed by Daniele Albertazzi et al. (2021). Finally, the analysis will shift from the domestic to the international sphere. Within the European

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Union FdI also experienced a period of (negative) integration, forging alliances with other conservative and right-wing populist parties within the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group. Here, Duncan McDonnell and Annika Werner’s (2019) framework can help us study the phenomenon of ‘international populism’. Also, outside Europe, one can consider the increasingly close ties between Giorgia Meloni (and her supporters) and some sectors of the US Republican right. Generally, an important (and perhaps surprising) development in the global political scenario is the ability of nationalist parties and movements to establish international and transnational networks and alliances.

Domestic Allies: League and Forza Italia In the typology developed by Albertazzi et al. (2021) to assess party competition strategies, ‘cooperation’ is a specific category indicating joint action by two or more parties at the electoral, legislative or governmental level. In the case of the Italian right (or centre-right), apart from a brief interlude between 1995 and 1999, the collaboration between its various components has never completely ceased over the last thirty years. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Silvio Berlusconi’s rise led to the creation of a coalition that rested on three pillars: Forza Italia, the League (then Northern League) and National Alliance. In 2022, Giorgia Meloni came to power supported by a pact signed by three allies: Forza Italia, the League and Brothers of Italy. Thus, little seems to have changed since the 1990s, as FdI can be regarded as a successor of AN. However, while on the surface the coalition has shown a high degree of stability (especially by Italian political standards), its internal equilibria have shifted dramatically. For over twenty years, Berlusconi played the role of unifying and dominant figure in the alliance. The electoral weight of his party was clearly greater than that of the other two (Fig. 4.1), but also his ideological position ensured that he acted as a mediator between the federalist impulses of the League and the statist-centralising tendencies of AN (Albertazzi and Vampa 2021). His efforts to unify the right (or centre-right) reached the peak of success in 2008 with an even more advanced form of cooperation: the merger of FI and AN into the PdL (Chapter 1). The 2013 general election was the last one in which Berlusconi and his party led the conservative camp. Since then, the balance of power between traditional allies has changed markedly. First, the League

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Share of right-wing vote

experienced a surge in the polls after its transformation from a regionalist to a nativist-nationalist party (Albertazzi et al. 2018; Vampa 2017). In 2018 it won the largest share of the right-wing vote and Matteo Salvini, its leader, became the dominant personality on the right, relegating Berlusconi to a secondary (although still influential) role (Vampa 2018). Then the Salvini era was abruptly and prematurely interrupted by Giorgia Meloni’s success in 2021–2022. So over the last ten years, the cooperation between the three parties, which has never formally ceased, has taken on more complex forms. The differentiation proposed by Albertazzi et al. (2021) between cooperation ‘concerning policies’ and cooperation ‘concerning actors’ is useful to capture the nuances of the evolving relationship between the three parties. Until 2011 they clearly cooperated both in the electoral arena and in policy-making processes. Yet, since the fall of the last Berlusconi government (2011), we can observe an increasing bifurcation between their electoral and governmental strategies. In the decade 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%

FdI/AN

League

FI/PdL

Other

Fig. 4.1 Changing equilibria within the right: share of right-wing vote controlled by FdI/AN, League and FI/PdL from 1994 to 2022 (Source Author’s own elaboration based on data from the Italian Interior Ministry)

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preceding Giorgia Meloni’s victory, FI and the League were in government several times (not always together) in coalitions of different types that left out important sectors of the right (Table 4.1). This split within the alliance, which also implied a significant internal divergence with respect to economic and international policy choices, did not, however, hinder collaboration at general elections. So, despite finding themselves on different sides of the government-opposition divide, the three parties always ended up joining forces in the electoral arena to maximise their chances to win parliamentary seats. This move was also encouraged by a new electoral law approved in 2017. The Rosatellum, as it was colloquially known (after Ettore Rosato, the MP who promoted the law), is a mixed voting system, with one third of seats allocated in first-past-thepost constituencies and two-thirds using a proportional method, with one round of voting (Chiaramonte and D’Alimonte 2018). The mechanisms of this law are very complicated but a key factor is that the election of firstpast-the-post candidates in each constituency is linked to the proportional part of the system, which allows for the formation of pre-election multiparty coalitions. Thus broader coalitions are more likely to win a larger number of constituency candidates than parties running on their own. As a result, cooperation on a purely electoral level (‘concerning actors’) has increasingly prevailed over (more substantive) cooperation ‘concerning policies’. As also pointed out in Chapter 2, while the League and FdI have converged ideologically and programmatically, FI has diverged on many fundamental issues, although not openly clashing with them. Moreover, the ideological convergence between the League and FdI appears more inspired by co-optation than cooperation as the two parties never governed together in 2012–2022 but competed for a similar electorate (see Chapter 5). Another clear sign that dynamics within the alliance may have become more competitive is the formation of electoral pacts at the local and regional level, where the incentives to form pre-election coalitions are less strong than in general elections (especially in large municipalities, where mayors and councillors are elected in a two-round contest). Figure 4.2 shows that in the period from 2003 to 2007, AN, before merging into the PdL (2008–2012), was almost everywhere part of broad coalitions that included the entire right. After splitting from the PdL, FdI seems to have distanced itself locally and regionally from its traditional allies (2013–2017 period). In those years of transition and radicalisation, the number of right-wing unitary coalitions dropped significantly, giving

Yes

Yes

Yes

League

FI

Source Authors’ own elaboration

Yes

Yes

AN/FdI Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

2006–2008 Electoral alliance?

In government?

2001–2006

No

No

No

In government?

Yes (PdL)

Yes

Yes (PdL)

Electoral alliance?

2008–2013

2013–2018 Electoral alliance?

Yes (external 2011–2012)

Yes

Yes Yes (external 2011–2012) Yes Yes (2008–2011) No (2011–2013)

In government?

2018–2022

Yes

Yes

Electoral alliance?

Yes Yes (2013, April–November) No (2013–2018)

No

No

In government?

Yes (2018–2019 and 2021–2022) No (2019–2021) Yes (2021–2022) No (2018–2021)

No

In government?

AN/FdI, League and FI: consistent electoral allies, (increasingly) inconsistent governmental partners

Electoral alliance?

Table 4.1

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way to experimentation in cooperation and competition strategies (Vampa 2015, 2016). For example, in 2016 Giorgia Meloni ran for mayor of Rome forming a radical right-wing coalition with the League, while Forza Italia decided to support a more moderate candidate. Similar rifts between moderates and the radical right occurred in some regional elections—in Tuscany and Marche, for example—and in other important cities such as Turin and Palermo. In some cases, FdI even chose to run alone, as, for example, in Venice, Naples and Florence, or in coalitions opposing the official candidate supported by FI and the League, as in the 2015 regional election in Apulia. In the period 2018–2022, despite the different roles played by the three parties in successive national governments, we observe a regrouping of the right but, as shown above, with significantly altered power relations between partners.

40 35

Number of elections

30 25 20 15 10 5 0

Unitary coalition

With League

2003-2007

With FI

2013-2017

Alone

Not running

2018-2022

Fig. 4.2 FdI’s (AN in 2003–2007) electoral alliances in regions and regional capitals (capoluoghi) (Source Author’s own elaboration based on data from the Italian Interior Ministry)

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Domestic Opponents: Democratic Party and Five Star Movement For much of the decade from 2012 to 2022, both the Democratic Party (PD) and the Five Star Movement (M5S) adopted a strategy towards FdI that, using the typology by Albertazzi et al. (2021), could be described as ‘dismissive’. Until the early 2020s, Giorgia Meloni was not regarded as a key right-wing opponent by these two parties and was eclipsed by the dramas surrounding Silvio Berlusconi’s decline and the rise of Matteo Salvini. Moreover, especially between 2014 and 2016, it was the clash between the PD and M5S that dominated Italian politics, while the right, in search of a new internal settlement, was temporarily out of the picture. The centre-left camp led by Matteo Renzi’s PD saw the new movement founded by comedian Beppe Grillo as its main rival. This hostility was reciprocated by the M5S. Only in 2017–2018, after a period of stasis (Vampa 2017), did the League led by Matteo Salvini emerge as a driving force capable of regrouping the right and competing effectively with the other two blocs. Thus salvinismo—a neologism included in the prestigious Treccani encyclopaedia in 2018 precisely to underline the growing political relevance of the League leader1 —became for some time a political category which both the PD and the M5S could not ignore. While the PD positioned itself on an open and unconditional opposition to salvinismo, the M5S on the other hand was more ambiguous and open to dialogue—which would then facilitate the formation of a government between the M5S and League in 2018 (Pedrazzani 2018; Froio 2021). Meanwhile, Meloni continued to be considered a minor (and ideologically akin) ally of the League. Even in the 2016 Rome municipal election in which Meloni ran as the mayoral candidate of a ‘sovereignist’ front including the League and FdI (without FI), the main clash was between M5S and PD—Meloni would not even make it to the second round. Perceptions began to change after Salvini’s exit from the governing coalition with the M5S and his failure to force a new general election in 2019 (Chapter 3). The aura of invincibility that had surrounded the League leader gradually vanished and his contradictions and vulnerabilities were exposed (Giovannini and Vampa 2022). Meloni’s rise in popularity, accompanied by the growth in support for her party, could no 1 https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/ricerca/salvinismo/ 2/10/2022).

(date

of

access

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longer be ignored by the representatives of the PD and M5S, who had meanwhile abandoned all hostility between them and, in a twist typical of Italian politics, had agreed to form a new government. The decisive turning point came at the beginning of 2021. with the formation of the Draghi government supported by a grand coalition that included all the main Italian parties except Giorgia Meloni’s. Thus, FdI became the only relevant opposition party. In this context of consensus-based technocracy, Meloni’s political trajectory could take two very different directions. FdI could end up in the same isolated position as the post-war neo-fascist right: relegated to a marginal, protest role and systematically excluded from power. Alternatively, it could use its status as the only opposition party to consolidate and increase its electoral appeal, while keeping alive a right-wing alternative to a government coalition that—as recent Italian history had shown on several occasions—was too broad to last. By deciding to maintain strong ties with the League and FI, despite not following them in government, Meloni managed to avoid total isolation and at the same time present herself as the only candidate openly aspiring to replace Draghi—no other party dared to challenge the former President of the European Central Bank so openly. Meanwhile, the PD and other centrist parties positioned themselves on the opposite front to strenuously defend ‘the Draghi agenda’ and ensure Draghi’s stay in power. Thus, in the election campaign that followed the fall of his government, they saw in Giorgia Meloni their main opponent: the real anti-Draghi. PD leader Enrico Letta adopted a strategy of open confrontation with FdI, even evoking the danger of a fascist drift. From being a minor player in the political arena, Meloni was now portrayed as a threatening opponent in an attempt to mobilise demotivated and disillusioned left-wing (and moderate) voters. Seeking to polarise the political debate, the PD was aiming to stand as the last democratic bulwark and divert attention away from potential competitors (including the M5S) considered too ambiguous or electorally too weak to withstand the challenge. Letta openly set himself the goal of winning more votes than FdI (Cappellini 2022; Vitale 2022), thus attaching even greater importance to this rightwing party and making it a yardstick for assessing the electoral success of the centre-left camp. In the end, only Giorgia Meloni benefitted from this polarisation, while the PD proved incapable of convincing voters that it could block or at least effectively contain her rise.

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International Connections: From the European Conservatives and Reformists to Trump’s Republicans While FdI’s (albeit negative) integration into the Italian system has never been questioned, Giorgia Meloni’s party remained virtually absent from the European political scene until 2019, when it managed to elect members of the European Parliament (MEPs) for the first time.2 However, this did not prevent FdI from quickly finding allies in the EU’s main representative institution. Shortly before the European election, it had already joined the European Conservatives and Reformists Party (ECR), of which Meloni would become president the following year. The swift inclusion of FdI in the ECR was not a foregone conclusion. This group had long been considered a ‘soft Eurosceptic’ group, consisting of more moderate and respectable parties than the radical and populist fringes represented in the European Parliament (McDonnell and Werner 2019). Indeed, the ECR was founded by the very respectable UK Conservative Party (which had left the European People’s Party, EPP) and Polish and Czech conservatives. Joining the ECR was thus seen by many radical right parties as a path to the mainstream and greater political influence, not only in Europe but also (and especially) in their respective countries (ibid.). Despite the post-fascist origins of her party, Meloni tried to carve out a role for herself and her political community in the conservative European family. Therefore, she took a different approach from Matteo Salvini’s League, which was instead among the creators of a more clearly radical and anti-system right-wing group, Identity and Democracy (ID), together with Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (Rassemblement National, RN) and the Austrian Freedom Party (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, FPÖ). Authors and intellectuals close to the FdI leader and trying to promote her international profile also emphasised her party’s conservative credentials and its distance from populism, seen as a confused protest movement with no precise ideology and no clear (national) identity (Giubilei 2020).

2 Immediately after the split from the PdL FdI also had two MEPs coming from Berlusconi’s party delegation in Brussels. However they were not re-elected in the 2014 European election.

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Meloni herself repeatedly stressed her greater adherence to sovereignist principles than to populism (ibid.). At the same time, it should be pointed out that today’s ECR is different from the one created in 2009 by the British Conservatives. Especially after Brexit, the ECR has undergone a transformation process that has made it somewhat more similar to the populist radical right group. Representatives of the Polish Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwo´sc´ , PiS), with whom Meloni has forged strong ties, have become promoters of openly illiberal policies in their own country (where they govern) and have therefore been described as a ‘radicalised mainstream party’ (Zulianello 2020). Furthermore, together with FdI, the group admitted other radical right and/or populist parties such as the Sweden Democrats, the Dutch Forum for Democracy and the Spanish Vox in 2019. Indicative of the growing similarity between ECR and ID is also the fact that parties, such as the Danish People’s Party and the Finns Party, which had previously joined the conservative group to signal their ‘mainstreaming’ and growing respectability (McDonnell and Werner 2019), have switched to an alliance with Matteo Salvini and Marine le Pen. The boundaries between the two right-wing clusters in the European Parliament thus seem to have become increasingly porous. This could indicate a paradigm shift: today, to gain influence and respectability, right-wing populists do not necessarily have to prove their credentials, undergo a one-way purification process and be admitted into the club of their more established ideological neighbours. Giorgia Meloni’s ability to establish international connections goes beyond the ECR group of which she has become one of the main representatives. In fact, the FdI leader has also sought cooperation with Viktor Orbán. The Hungarian Prime Minister was once a member of the mainstream EPP, which he later left after being suspended due to his illiberal positions and policies. Meloni has repeatedly opposed any condemnation or sanction of the Orbán regime coming from European institutions (Pascale 2022a) and has in fact regarded the Fidesz leader as a model for the Italian right (Sondel-Cedarmas 2022). For his part, Orbán has tried to break his growing isolation within the EU by openly endorsing rising stars in the populist radical right, including Matteo Salvini and Giorgia Meloni. With the latter, the Hungarian prime minister has met several times, always reiterating a shared vision of Europe and similar ideas on social values, democracy and sovereignty. However, Meloni’s international ambitions did not stop in Europe. In early 2020, she was invited by members of the US Congress to attend the

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traditional two-day National Prayer Breakfast, an event held behind closed doors, ending with Donald Trump’s speech. This was an opportunity for the FdI leader to expand her network of transnational relations with far right and nationalist leaders, including some sectors of the Republican Party (Bruno and Downes 2020). During her US visit, Meloni declared her full support for Trump by emphasising a similar approach to his on the ‘defence of identity, borders and companies’. For Meloni, Trump’s policies should also be followed in Italy, ‘where we also want to defend our products, our companies, our borders and our families’ (quoted in Valenti [2020], translation by the author). Back in 2018, Meloni had already invited right-wing strategist Steve Bannon, one of the main architects of Trump’s victory in 2016, to Atreju, the annual event organised by the FdI leader to discuss political ideas in a changing Italian and international political scenario. As mentioned in Chapter 3, Atreju was an important venue to consolidate her role at the core of a network of right-wing movements and organisations active not only in Italy but also abroad. In 2020, by hosting the National Conservative Conference in Rome, Meloni extended her reach by gathering the political and intellectual community that gravitated around sovereignist, nationalist and nativist ideas (Ventura 2022). Among the guests were the aforementioned Viktor Orbán and also Marion Maréchal, niece of Marine Le Pen, who would later join the ultraconservative party led by Eric Zemmour. In sum, in a political context increasingly embedded in the European system and strongly influenced by populism as a ‘global’ phenomenon (Moffitt 2016), FdI’s path to political integration could not ignore the international and transnational sphere as an arena for building alliances to reinforce and echo nationalist and sovereignist messages, rather than cosmopolitan ideals.

Conclusion This chapter has shown that Brothers of Italy did not have to embark on a long journey of integration into the Italian political system. The mainstreaming and moderation process already undertaken by FdI’s predecessors—the Italian Social Movement and National Alliance—had culminated in the creation of a large centre-right party in the late 2000s: the People of Freedom (PdL). By leaving the PdL Meloni temporarily distanced herself from the centre of political power without, however, breaking alliances with other right-wing parties and leaders. Thus, unlike

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many other radical right parties, FdI has never experienced a period of complete isolation. At worst, Giorgia Meloni was ignored for years by her main opponents, especially the PD and M5S. It was only when the polls started to be favourable to FdI and it was clear that it would become the main right-wing party, that the PD abandoned its dismissive strategy and shifted to more openly hostile positions, even fuelling the spectre of a resurgent fascist ideology. This last-minute scaremongering has by no means stopped Giorgia Meloni’s electoral rise, as we shall see in the next chapter. Internationally, FdI started from a more unfavourable position, as it was almost completely absent from the European scene at its birth— failing even to elect representatives to the European Parliament in 2014. However, in just a few years, Meloni has managed to exploit her role as an emerging leader in Italy to strengthen her ties with the ECR and with important leaders and heads of government, including Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. Her success has also resonated with the Republican right close to former US President Donald Trump. In short, far from being only focused on domestic politics, Meloni has realised that building an international support network does not contradict but can give even more strength and legitimacy to radical nationalist and identity-based demands for change.

Postscript: Right-Wing Populist Integration in Other European Countries The populist radical right in Italy has certainly enjoyed high levels of political integration and for much longer than ideologically similar parties in most major Western European democracies. In his review, Zulianello (2020) places both FdI and the League among the negatively integrated parties in their polity, meaning that, despite their critical stance towards some of the founding principles of the political regime in which they operate, they have been involved in cooperative interactions with other key players. They are therefore ‘coalitionable’. Among the parties in the four largest EU countries (Table 4.2), only Vox has been integrated into its country’s political system within a relatively short period of time since its foundation (Zulianello 2020). The other Spanish centre-right and right-wing parties have not ruled out collaboration with Vox, although, at the time of writing, it has not yet entered into a national coalition and

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has only signed formal cooperation agreements at the regional level (Gray 2020; Kennedy and Cutts 2022). In contrast, in France, fifty years after its foundation, the National Front (Front National, FN), later to become the National Rally (Rassemblement National, RN), has been systematically excluded from coalitions with other parties and is indeed classified as ‘non-integrated’ by Zulianello (2020). The same applies to Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD), which has been kept out of the political alliance system at all territorial levels (Zulianello 2020; Pautz 2021). However, the relationship with populist parties goes beyond the mere willingness to cooperate (or not) with them. As Albertazzi et al. (2021) have pointed out, there are a range of possible strategies that other parties can adopt when faced with the rise of populist parties. In Italy, the more ‘moderate’ right has always been fully cooperative with FdI and the League, while the left has alternated between open hostility and attempts to co-opt certain issues (from federalism to migration policies). In 2018–2019, there has also been a direct collaboration between the League and the M5S, two populist parties, albeit of different ideological orientation (Pirro 2018; Zulianello 2020; Froio 2021). Unlike the League, however, FdI has been dismissed as an uninfluential party for some years. In Spain, early attempts by the mainstream right to ignore and downplay Vox’s challenge were soon followed by co-optation strategies (especially with regard to Spanish territorial politics) and, as mentioned earlier, open collaboration (Gray 2020; Vampa and Gray 2021). On the left, however, Vox is clearly identified as a right-wing opponent. In Germany and France, the populist radical right has been subjected to a real cordon sanitaire by all the main parties, although in France, after years of electoral growth of the FN/RN, this strategy no longer seems sustainable. Moreover, the French mainstream right has for years tried to co-opt the FN/RN on immigration and law and order issues. Even the populist radical left has moved from left-wing universalism to a strong defence of French national interests (Shields 2021). In Germany, although formally ostracised by the entire political system, AfD has become a fearsome competitor for some sectors of the Christian-Democratic right, which has tried to take more restrictive positions on immigration and integration (Pautz 2021). Additionally, as in France, AfD’s success in some ‘leftbehind’ areas—especially in the eastern regions—has opened a debate

Clashing Co-optation EFD (2009–2014) ENF (2015–2019) ID (2019–)

Dismissive Clashing

ECR (2019–)

Sources Zulianello (2020), Albertazzi and Vampa (2021), European Parliament

Negative integration Cooperation

League

Negative integration Cooperation

FdI

ECR (2019–)

Negative integration Dismissive Co-optation Cooperation Clashing

Vox

Non-integration Marginalisation Dismissive Co-optation Marginalisation Clashing (Co-optation) NI (2009–2014) ENF (2015–2019) ID (2019–)

FN/RN

National and international integration of five populist radical right parties

Systemic integration Interaction with other key parties on the right Interaction with other key parties on the left International affiliation

Table 4.2

ECR (2014–2016) EFDD (2016–2019) ID (2019–)

Non-integration Dismissive Marginalisation Co-optation Marginalisation

AfD

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even on the radical left on the issue of immigation and national identity. So, although the five parties analysed here enjoy varying degrees of integration and have had different types of relations with the political mainstream, it is undeniable that all of them have produced important effects on political dynamics and have forced competitors to take a stand on issues that were previously considered of minor importance or deliberately non-politicised. Finally, all five parties have joined European alliances. FdI and Vox followed a very similar path. Both emerged from a split in the mainstream right and immediately moved closer to the ECR group, with its emphasis on traditional values and a relatively soft version of Euroscepticism. Santiago Abascal and Giorgia Meloni have also established close personal ties and Meloni has travelled to Spain on various occasions to support Vox campaigns and candidates. The League and the FN/RN, on the other hand, have taken more (negatively) radical positions on Europe and, with the creation of the Identity and Democracy (ID) group in 2019, they have sought to give voice to a network of parties that more openly embrace ‘anti-system’ views. AfD can be seen as a kind of link between the two groups, whose boundaries have become increasingly blurred. The German right-wing party started from conservative Eurosceptic positions close to those of the ERC, to which it belonged until 2016, and then gradually turned into a clearly nativist and anti-system movement, joining the ID group in 2019. Yet this process of radicalisation has also affected most of the other parties remaining in the ECR—the Polish PiS is a clear example (Zulianello 2020)—so much so that some even speculated that this group might merge with ID. When asked about this possibility after Giorgia Meloni’s victory in 2022, FdI MEP Nicola Procaccini replied that ‘there is no way for the European Conservatives and Reformists … to form a big right group with the far-right Identity and Democracy’ (quoted in Pascale 2022b). Thus, despite the growing connections and overlaps between the different sectors of the European right (outside the moderate EPP), there still seem to be obstacles to the formation of a united group that, if it were to materialise, could play a decisive role in the most crucial EU decision-making processes.

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References Akkerman, Tjiske, Sarah L. de Lange, and Matthijs Roodujin, eds. 2016. Radical Right-Wing Populist Parties in Western Europe: Into the Mainstream? Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Albertazzi, Daniele, Arianna Giovannini, and Antonella Seddone. 2018. No regionalism please, we are Leghisti! The transformation of the Italian Lega Nord under the leadership of Matteo Salvini. Regional & Federal Studies 28 (5): 645–671. Albertazzi, Daniele and Davide Vampa. 2021. Populism in Europe: Lessons from Umberto Bossi’s Northern League. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Albertazzi, Daniele, Donatella Bonansinga, and Davide Vampa. 2021. The Strategies of Party Competition. In Populism and New Patterns of Political Competition in Western Europe, edited by Daniele Albertazzi and Davide Vampa, 50–70. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Bruno, Valerio Alfonso, and James F. Downes. 2020. The Case of Fratelli d’Italia: How Radical-Right Populists in Italy and Beyond Are Building Global Networks. Democratic Audit Blog 27 (February). Cappellini, Stefano. 2022. Enrico Letta a Repubblica: Le elezioni un bivio, l’Italia scelga noi o Meloni. Si vince con le idee. la Repubblica 24 (July). Chiaramonte, Alessandro, and Roberto D’Alimonte. 2018. The New Italian Electoral System and Its Effects on Strategic Coordination and Disproportionality. Italian Political Science 13 (1): 8–18. De Vries, Catherine E., and Sara B. Hobolt. 2012. When Dimensions Collide: The Electoral Success of Issue Entrepreneurs. European Union Politics 13 (2): 246–268. Froio, Caterina. 2021. Italy. In Populism and New Patterns of Political Competition in Western Europe, edited by Daniele Albertazzi and Davide Vampa, 250–268. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Giovannini, Arianna, and Davide Vampa. 2022. Boom to Bust: Where Next for Matteo Salvini’s League?. The Loop: ECPR’s Political Science Blog 27 (October). Giubilei, Francesco. 2020. Giorgia Meloni: La rivoluzione dei conservatori. Roma and Cesena: Giubilei Regnani editore. Gray, Caroline. 2020. Territorial Politics and the Party System in Spain. London: Routledge. Kennedy, Paul, and David Cutts. 2022. What the Castilla-León Elections Told Us About the Trajectory of Spanish Politics. LSE European Politics and Policy (EUROPP) blog 22 (February). McDonnell, Duncan, and Annika Werner. 2019. International Populism: The Radical Right in the European Parliament. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

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McDonnell, Duncan, and Jim Newell. 2011. Outsider Parties in Government in Western Europe. Party Politics 17 (4): 443–452. Moffitt, Benjamin. 2016. The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style, and Representation. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Pascale, Federica. 2022a. Italy’s Meloni Backs Orbán, Says Hungary is ‘Democratic. Euractiv 16 (September). Pascale, Federica. 2022b. Brothers of Italy MEP: No Way for ECR and ID to Merge. Euractiv 4 (October). Pautz, Hartwig. 2021. Germany. In Populism and New Patterns of Political Competition in Western Europe, edited by Daniele Albertazzi and Davide Vampa, 112–130. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Pedrazzani, Andrea. 2018. Introduction to the Special Issue: “Governo del cambiamento”? Italian Politics Under the Yellow-Green Government. Italian Political Science 13 (2): 1–10. Pirro, Andrea. 2018. The Polyvalent Populism of the 5 Star Movement. Journal of Contemporary European Studies 26 (4): 443–458. Shields, James. 2021. France. In Populism and New Patterns of Political Competition in Western Europe, edited by Daniele Albertazzi and Davide Vampa, 92–111. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Sondel-Cedarmas, Joanna. 2022. Giorgia Meloni’s New Europe: Europe of Sovereign Nations in the Brothers of Italy Party Manifestos. In The rightWing Critique of Europe, edited by Joanna Sondel-Cedarmas and Francesco Berti, 60–75. London: Routledge. Valenti, Federica. 2020. “Trump è un modello”. La giornata americana di Giorgia Meloni. Agenzia Giornalistica Italia 7 (February). Vampa, Davide. 2015. The 2015 Regional Election in Italy: Fragmentation and Crisis of Sub-national Democracy. Regional & Federal Studies 25 (4): 365– 378. Vampa, Davide. 2016. Il centrodestra: c’è ma non si vede. In Cambiamento o assestamento? Le elezioni amministrative del 2016, edited by Marco Valbruzzi and Rinaldo Vignati, 297–308. Bologna: Istituto Carlo Cattaneo. Vampa, Davide. 2017. Matteo Salvini’s Northern League in 2016: Between Stasis and New Opportunities. Italian Politics 32: 32–50. Vampa, Davide. 2018. Il centrodestra a guida leghista. In Il vicolo cieco, edited by Marco Valbruzzi and Rinaldo Vignati, 57–78. Bologna: Il Mulino. Vampa, Davide, and Caroline Gray. 2021. Assessing and Explaining the Diverging Trajectories of Territorial Parties and Politics in Italy and Spain (2008–2018). Swiss Political Science Review 27 (1): 84–106. Ventura, Sofia. 2022. Giorgia Meloni e Fratelli d’Italia Un partito personalizzato tra destra estrema e destra radicale. Rome: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. Vitale, Giovanna. 2022. Letta rivede la rotta: Ora io contro FdI, il Pd punta al 30%. la Repubblica 9 (August).

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Zulianello, Mattia. 2020. Varieties of Populist Parties and Party Systems in Europe: From State-of-the-Art to the Application of a Novel Classification Scheme to 66 Parties in 33 Countries. Government and Opposition 55 (2): 327–347.

CHAPTER 5

Winning Votes

Abstract This chapter analyses the vote for Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia, FdI) by answering three questions: Where? How? Who? The ‘where’ question refers to the geography of FdI’s electoral success, not only looking at its varying performance across regions but also considering the existence (or absence) of an electoral gap between urban and provincial/rural areas. The ‘how’ question is instead aimed at understanding how electoral support for FdI correlates with vote shifts to and from other parties and whether the growth of this party has been accompanied by the decline of others. The ‘who’ question seeks to outline the profile of the typical FdI voter by examining individual characteristics such as gender, age, education and socio-economic status. The last part discusses FdI’s performance in local, regional and European elections. The postscript compares FdI to the main populist radical right parties in Western Europe, with a particular focus on France, Spain and Germany. Keywords Brothers of Italy · Electoral results · Electoral geography · Voters · Vote shifts

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Vampa, Brothers of Italy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26132-9_5

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A Meteoric Rise From 2013 to 2022 Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia, FdI) experienced significant electoral growth. In less than ten years it gained over six and a half million votes and its share rose from around 2% to 26% (Fig. 5.1). At the end of the same period, the League (Lega) had about one million more votes than at the beginning. While not returning to the crisis levels of 2013, in 2022 Matteo Salvini’s party seemed to have squandered much of the electoral capital won in 2018–2019. The other three main Italian parties suffered heavy losses. Forza Italia (FI), which was still the People of Freedom (Popolo della Libertà, PdL) in 2013, collapsed from 21.6% to 8.1% of the vote (losing more than five million votes). The Democratic Party (Partito Democratico, PD) lost over three million votes, declining from 25.4% to 19.1%. Finally, the Five Star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle, M5S), after triumphing in 2013 and 2018 fell below 20% in 2022, halving its votes (from eight to four million) in ten years. However, it cannot be said that FdI’s success is unprecedented in recent Italian history. In 2013 the M5S won a quarter of the vote without ever having participated in previous general elections. In 2018 the League more than quadrupled its votes compared to 2013—and then doubled its share of the vote in the 2019 European election. So FdI’s triumph came in an electoral context that has become increasingly volatile

Share of the vote (%)

32.7

26

25.6 25.4 21.6

19.1

18.8 17.4

15.4

14

8.8 8.1 4.3

4.1 2

2013 FdI

2018 League

PdL/FI

2022 M5S

PD

Fig. 5.1 The electoral performance (in %) of FdI and the other main Italian parties between 2013 and 2022 (general elections) (Source Author’s own elaboration based on data from the Italian Interior Ministry)

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and unstable (Chiaramonte and Emanuele 2022). Today’s winner could become tomorrow’s big loser. The fact remains that FdI achieved a level of electoral dominance in the Italian right-wing camp that even Silvio Berlusconi, despite his successes, had only managed to gain in 2008 with the creation of the PdL. FdI also far exceeded the performance of its neo-fascist or post-fascist predecessors. Indeed, the Italian Social Movement (Movimento Sociale Italiano, MSI) scored its best result in 1972, capturing 8.6% of the vote, while National Alliance (Alleanza Nazionale, AN) reached its peak of 15.7% in 1996. Moreover, at the time of writing this book, very few populist radical right parties in Western Europe have been more successful in a general election than FdI in 2022 (see Postscript). Since winning votes is the first step to gaining political influence through access to representative and governmental offices (the subject of the next chapter), it is important to understand what lies behind FdI’s remarkable victory at the ballot box. This chapter will analyse the vote for Giorgia Meloni’s party by answering three questions: Where? How? Who? The ‘where’ question refers to the geography of FdI’s electoral success, not only looking at its varying performance across regions but also considering the existence (or absence) of an electoral gap between urban and provincial/rural areas. The ‘how’ question is instead aimed at understanding how electoral support for FdI correlates with vote shifts to and from other parties and whether the growth of this party has been accompanied by the decline of others. The ‘who’ question seeks to outline the profile of the typical FdI voter by examining individual characteristics such as gender, age, education and socio-economic status. Finally, the analysis will examine results in local, regional and European elections. Thus, by also considering the sub-national and supranational arenas, it will be possible to develop a multi-level assessment of FdI’s electoral performance.

Analysing FdI’s Electoral Success: Where? How? Who? Where? We begin our analysis of FdI’s electoral performance by considering the geography of its vote. The territorial dimension is indeed central in the Italian context, characterised by strong regional and macro-regional

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differences (Vampa 2016). In Tables 5.1a and 5.1b, the results of the five parties already considered in Fig. 5.1 are disaggregated by region and compared longitudinally from 2013 to 2022. The regions are also grouped into macro-regions defined geographically but also politically and socio-economically: the rich North, the relatively prosperous Centre (with some traditionally left-leaning regions forming the so-called ‘Red Belt’) and the poorer South (together with the two islands of Sardinia and Sicily). In 2013, FdI obtained its best results in southern and central regions: Molise, Abruzzo, Campania, Umbria and Lazio. These results were in line with those of FdI’s predecessors, MSI and AN, whose strongholds had been around and south of Rome. Among the northern regions, only Piedmont, the region of Guido Crosetto, one of the co-founders of FdI (see Chapter 1), stood out in 2013. Table 5.1a Electoral results (%) of FdI and the other right-wing Italian parties by region (general elections from 2013 to 2022) FdI

League

FI

Macro-region Region

2013 2018 2022 2013 2018 2022 2013 2018

North

2.6 1.6 1.4 1.5 1.8 0 1.3

4 4 3.8 4.2 5.3 2.6 3.3

27 4.8 28.5 12.9 24.3 2.3 32.7 10.5 31.3 6.7 18.8 4.2 25 2.6

22.6 28 19.9 32.2 25.8 19.2 19.2

1.8 2.8 2.2 2.6 3.6 5.9 3 2.4 1.6 1.4 1.6 1.8 0.55

4.2 4.9 4.9 8.2 5 3.1 3.5 3.7 3.8 4.6 3.7 4 0.28

26 30.8 29.1 31.2 27.9 21.4 17.4 18.2 23.6 19 19.1 23.4 0.2

17.4 20.2 17.3 13.4 13.8 8.7 4.3 6.3 6.2 5.6 5.2 10.8 0.53

Piedmont Lombardy Liguria Veneto Friuli-V.G Trentino-A.A Centre and Emiliared belt Romagna Tuscany Umbria Marche Lazio South and Abruzzo islands Molise Campania Basilicata Apulia Calabria Sicily Sardinia Coefficient of variation

0.7 0.6 0.7 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.3 0.1 0.1 0.3 0.2 0.1 1.52

10.7 13.3 9.3 14.5 11 8.5 7.5 6.6 7.8 7.9 6.2 8.1 8.5 4.4 9 5.3 5.8 5.1 6.3 0.33

2022

19.7 20.8 18.7 18.7 18.6 10.9 16.3

13.4 13.9 12.7 10.6 10.7 6.9 9.9

7.9 7.9 6.4 7 6.7 3.4 5.8

17.5 19.5 17.5 22.8 23.8 21 29 19.08 28.9 23.8 26.5 20.4 0.21

9.9 11.2 9.9 13.3 14.4 16.1 18.2 12.4 18.7 20.1 20.6 14.8 0.28

5.6 6.8 6.8 6.9 11.1 11.4 9.7 9.4 11.5 15.6 11.2 8.6 0.33

Source Author’s own elaboration based on data from the Italian Interior Ministry

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Table 5.1b Electoral results (%) of PD and M5S by region (general elections from 2013 to 2022) M5S

PD

Macro-region

Region

2013

2018

2022

2013

2018

2022

North

Piedmont Lombardy Liguria Veneto Friuli-V.G Trentino-A.A Emilia-Romagna Tuscany Umbria Marche Lazio Abruzzo Molise Campania Basilicata Apulia Calabria Sicily Sardinia

27.5 19.6 32.1 26.4 27.2 14.6 24.7 24 27.2 32.1 28 29.9 27.7 22.1 24.3 25.5 24.9 33.5 29.7 0.17

26.1 21.1 30.1 23.8 24.6 19.5 27.5 24.7 27.5 35.6 32.8 39.9 44.8 49.5 44.4 44.9 43.3 48.7 42.5 0.29

10.4 7.5 12.7 5.8 7.2 5 9.9 11.1 12.7 13.6 15 18.5 24.3 34.6 25 28 29.3 28.2 21.8 0.54

25.1 25.6 27.7 21.4 24.7 16.7 37.1 37.5 32 27.7 25.7 22.6 22.6 22.6 25.7 18.5 22.4 25.1 25.2 0.21

20.5 21.1 19.7 16.7 18.8 14.7 26.4 29.6 24.8 21.3 18.6 14.3 15.2 12.8 16.2 13.7 14.3 11.2 14.8 0.27

20 19 22.7 16.3 18.4 17.1 28.1 26.4 20.9 20.4 19.3 16.6 18.1 15.6 15.2 16.8 14.4 11.8 18.7 0.21

Red belt and Centre

South and islands

Coefficient of variation

Source Author’s own elaboration based on data from the Italian Interior Ministry

A first small shift could be observed in 2018. The FdI vote grew less in the regions of the South than in those of the North, while it strengthened considerably in Lazio, the region of the capital Rome, where the Italian right has traditionally been quite strong (as well as being Giorgia Meloni’s birthplace). However, on the right, it was the League that showed the greatest increases not only in the North, but especially in the Centre and in the ‘red’ regions—Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany, Umbria and Marche—where the PD collapsed. For the first time the League also won a considerable amount of votes in the South, overtaking FdI everywhere and signalling the transformation of Salvini’s party from a regionalist organisation rooted exclusively in the North to a national party capable of competing everywhere in the country (Vampa 2018). Yet in the South it was above all the M5S that dominated the political scene. Indeed the

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2018 general election marked the ‘southernisation’ of the vote for Beppe Grillo’s party-movement. 2022 saw a further shift in the electoral geography of FdI, which grew mostly in the North and less in the South, where only Abruzzo maintained a percentage above the national result. The party’s expansion south of Rome was constrained by the consolidation of the M5S’s support base and FI’s resilience in that macro-region. FdI’s success in the Centre and North was instead strongly correlated with the League’s collapse in those same regions. The territorial distribution of electoral support can also be measured by relying on the coefficient of variation (CV), defined as the ratio between the standard deviation and the average electoral result of each party across regions (Caramani 2004). Thus, a higher CV indicates greater territorial unevenness in electoral support for a party. A CV above 1 means that the standard deviation is even higher than the average, pointing to a particular concentration of the vote in a few regions. The coefficients of variation of the parties are shown in the last rows of Tables 5.1a and 5.1b. It can be noted that in 2013 the League was by far the party with the most territorially concentrated vote (CV = 1.52). This is not surprising given that back then the League was still the Northern League, a regionalist party rooted almost exclusively in the northern macro-region. Among the other major parties, it was FdI, however, that had the highest CV (0.55), due to its concentration of votes in some regions, especially in the Centre and South. The M5S was the most ‘national’ party with a CV at 0.17, less than the PD (0.21). In 2022, the situation changed radically. FdI became the party with the most evenly distributed vote, thanks to substantial growth in the Centre and North that balanced (and surpassed) the vote in the South. Salvini’s League has also become a national party and its CV has plummeted to 0.33, while the M5S is now the party whose vote is less even, being concentrated mainly in the South (CV = 0.54). Forza Italia followed a similar pattern, shifting its electoral base to the South and going from being the most ‘nationalised’ to the most ‘regionalised’ right-wing party. In short, Meloni’s FdI achieved national success by becoming the leading party in those northern regions where the neo- and post-fascist right, especially the MSI, had been historically weak. As we shall see, this mainly happened by taking votes away from the League. However, there is another important aspect of electoral geography that is more rarely taken into account in the Italian context, but which may

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nevertheless be particularly relevant in contemporary politics: the existence (or absence) of a vote gap between cities and provincial areas. In their classic sociological investigation into the origins and consolidation of party systems, Seymour Lipset and Stein Rokkan (1967) pointed not only to the existence of a centre-periphery cleavage but also to another potential political divide of a socio-economic and territorial nature: that between urban and rural communities. In an updated version of the urban–rural cleavage, cities can still be contrasted with sub-urban and/or sparsely populated areas, which are not necessarily ‘rural’, but are generally less exposed (and less receptive) to processes of economic and/or cultural transformation. Today, one could speak of a political tension between ‘city’ and ‘province’ exacerbated by social change. The literature on American electoral politics has long paid attention to the existence in the United States of a growing polarisation between cities and low population density areas. In his book Why Cities Lose, Jonathan A. Rodden (2019) has demonstrated with a wide variety of data how American politics has become increasingly trapped in an electoral geography where blue urban islands siding overwhelmingly with the Democrats are surrounded by a vast red sea, the colour of the Republicans. Rodden pointed out that this territorial polarisation is more pronounced in Anglo-Saxon majoritarian democracies (a similar trend has been noted in the UK, for instance). However, even in the continental European context, it is not uncommon to speak of a growing political disconnect between urban areas more open to diversity and cosmopolitanism and the vast rural, post-industrial or small-business provinces that are more tied to a conservative view of society. Thus one can expect leftwing or liberal parties to prevail in the former, while the right would prove stronger in the latter. To get a rough estimate of whether the success of FdI (and the other major Italian parties) is more concentrated in cities or in provincial areas, we can use a new measure of ‘provincial versus urban vote’ (PvUV), calculated in this way: PvUV =

U−P ∗ 100 U+P

U is the election result (in %) achieved by a party in the main Italian cities (for each region, the most populous city is selected, which in most cases

88

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is also the regional capital1 ). From this we subtract the result (again in %) obtained by the same party in the rest of the country (P ), excluding the main cities. To obtain a standardised index ranging from −100 (a party is voted exclusively in the provincial areas) to +100 (a party is voted exclusively in the main cities), the difference between U and P is then divided by their sum and multiplied by 100. Thus, the higher the score on the −100 to + 100 continuum, the more urban a party’s electoral base is. A score of 0 indicates a balance between city and province in a party’s electoral base. Figure 5.2 starts well before the foundation of FdI and traces the 30-year period from 1992 to 2022 focusing on the usual five Italian parties. For much of recent political history, the parties of the post-fascist and radical right, from the MSI to FdI, have been those with the most urban electoral base. On the negative side of the continuum, that of the provinces, we find instead the other party of the populist radical right, the League—formerly the Northern League (Lega Nord, LN)—which over time has become increasingly ‘provincial’ before temporarily reversing this trend in 2018 (but still remaining more deeply rooted outside large urban centres). How can we explain this significant difference between two ideologically not so distant parties? In the 1990s and 2000s, AN and LN were actually positioned on opposite sides of the territorial cleavage, with AN being deeply centralist and statist and LN representing instead the areas geographically more distant from central power (but economically prosperous). AN, and the MSI before it, therefore enjoyed strong electoral support in the capital Rome but also attracted a large voto di opinione— a vote shaped more by public opinion than grassroots campaign or local patronage—in the large cities of the South (Naples and Bari, for example). The LN, on the other hand, had its strongholds in the wealthy small and medium-sized towns of the North, while failing to expand its electoral base in large cities of the same macro-region, such as Milan, Turin and Genoa (Albertazzi and Vampa 2021). Thus, the conventional story that describes the right as more ‘provincial’ and the left as more ‘urban’ appears less straightforward in the Italian context. It is true that the PD and its predecessors have tended to be more successful in the cities, but the scores in Fig. 5.2 place this centre-left party not far from the 0 balance 1 The selection of cities is very similar to that used in the analysis by Tentoni (2018), although in two cases—Abruzzo and Calabria—the largest city is not the regional capital. However, this has a minimal impact on the final results.

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point (and most of the time below FdI, MSI and AN) until 2018. On the centre-right side, the same can be said of Berlusconi’s FI, which for much of its history has been only slightly more ‘provincial’. However, the last election in 2022 seems to have resulted in a sharper contrast between cities and provinces. For the first time in its history, FdI has moved to the negative side of the continuum, which indicates a significant ‘provincialisation’ of its electorate compared to 2018 (when Giorgia Meloni’s party was still the most ‘urban’). Arguably, having absorbed a substantial part of the electorate of its right-wing allies, particularly the League, the party has seen its territorial profile shift not only northwards but also out of the cities. In general, in 2022 we observe for the first time a convergence of the three main right-wing parties on the provincial side of the continuum, with the League reversing the partial narrowing of its city-province gap of 2018, FI moving sharply away from its equilibrium between city and province in favour of the latter, and FdI joining the two allies. The PD, on the other hand, has reached its highest level of urbanisation and even the M5S (which has moved to the left in recent years) has performed particularly well in large southern cities such as Naples

16 3.8

4.4 1.7

17.4 5.8 -2.1

13 9.5 -4

9.91 4.3

8.4 0.7

-5.6

6.8 2 -0.4 -6.6

15.2 9.7

Provincial (-)

-20.3

-8.7 -20.4

-44.9

-44.9

1994 MSI/AN/FdI

-19.9 -29.1

-31.1

1992

11.1 4.7

-3 -4.8

VS

Urban (+)

20.2

1996

-49.3

-50.2

2001

2006

League

FI/PdL

2008

-47.5

2013 M5S

2018

2022

PDS/DS/PD

Fig. 5.2 Provincial vote (−) versus urban vote (+) for FdI (and predecessors) and the other four main Italian parties (Source Author’s own elaboration based on data from the Italian Interior Ministry)

90

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and Palermo. Of course, one cannot extrapolate a trend from a single election, and only with time will it be possible to see whether Italy too is experiencing the same electoral sorting between cities and more sparsely populated areas that is observed in other advanced democracies such as the United States and the United Kingdom. How? The territorial data discussed above showed that FdI’s electoral growth in 2022 occurred mainly in the northern regions and, reversing historical patterns, the party won more votes in the less urbanised areas of the country. In short, FdI won in areas where the League had triumphed in previous years. This section takes a closer look at how, in the zero-sum electoral game, FdI became the leading Italian party within a few years. Was Giorgia Meloni’s victory determined by a shift of votes from the left to the right? Or, as the territorial data already seem to suggest, did it come at the expense of the League as a result of a transfer of votes from one right-wing populist party to another? To answer these questions, we can start with a longitudinal analysis of electoral trends over the last ten years to see how FdI’s growth has unfolded. Figure 5.3 shows Italian voting intentions surveyed by Demos & Pi from 2013 to the general election of 2022.2 The thick black line representing FdI shows that Meloni’s party grew very modestly in the first period. Instead, the League (thick light grey line) started not so far from FdI in 2013 but then experienced a first period of significant expansion between 2014 and 2015, followed by two years of electoral ‘stasis’ and consolidation (Vampa 2017). It then enjoyed a new period of sustained growth between 2018 and 2019, especially after forming a populist government with the M5S. The League’s growth between 2018 and 2019, however, seems to have come mainly at the expense of its government ally, the M5S (thinner dark grey line), while in that two-year period FdI, which did not join the government, experienced only a slight decline. Thus, Matteo Salvini’s party had the merit of bringing back to the right voters who in previous years had been attracted to the M5S with its eclectic and ‘polyvalent’ form of populism (Pirro 2018; Zulianello 2020).

2 www.demos.it/ (accessed on 29/11/2022).

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50 45 40

share of vote (%)

35 30 25 20 15 10 5 Sep-13 Jan-14 May-14 Sep-14 Jan-15 May-15 Sep-15 Jan-16 May-16 Sep-16 Jan-17 May-17 Sep-17 Jan-18 May-18 Sep-18 Jan-19 May-19 Sep-19 Jan-20 May-20 Sep-20 Jan-21 May-21 Sep-21 Jan-22 May-22 Sep-22

0

FdI

League

FI

M5S

PD

Fig. 5.3 Voting intentions (%) from 2013 to 2022 (Source Author’s own elaboration based on data from Demos and Pi [www.demos.it])

The balance between the League and FdI started to change after Salvini’s exit from the government with the M5S. His failed attempt to force an early general election in order to become prime minister had a negative impact on voters’ perceptions of his party and Giorgia Meloni immediately seemed to benefit from this (see also Chapter 3). The righthand side of Fig. 5.3 shows the opposite trends followed by the two parties: as FdI rises, the League falls. The gap between the two parties closed in early 2021, when the League joined the grand coalition government supporting technocrat Mario Draghi. Then, in the year leading up to the 2022 general election, FdI overtook the League, which was in free fall. Survey data provided by the polling firm IPSOS—and analysed by Andrea Scavo and Benjamin Fishman (2022)—immediately after the 2022 general election confirm what was already apparent in Fig. 5.3. If we take as a reference point the 2019 European election, when the League reached its peak (obtaining 34.2% of the vote), we can see that almost 40% of its voters at that time then chose FdI in the 2022 general election (Table 5.2). Less than a fifth confirmed their vote for the League

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Table 5.2 Vote shifts from the 2019 European election to the 2022 general election (%)

FdI 2022 League 2022 FI 2022 M5S 2022 PD 2022 Other, didn’t vote Total

Voted FdI in 2019

Voted League in 2019

Voted FI in 2019

Voted M5S in 2019

Voted PD in 2019

77.3 2 2 0.7 1 17

38.4 21.9 3.2 1.2 0.5 34.8

21.3 2 55.3 3.3 2.1 16

8.9 1.1 2.8 55.2 6.7 25.3

2.4 0.2 0.5 3.8 67.8 25.3

100

100

100

100

100

Source Author’s own elaboration based on data from IPSOS (Scavo and Fishman 2022)

(even fewer than those who abstained or chose other parties in 2022). On the other hand, FdI confirmed more than two-thirds of its 2019 voters and, in addition to attracting votes from the League, took more than a fifth from FI. In contrast, it does not seem to have made any significant inroads into the M5S and PD electorates. So Giorgia Meloni won without shifting a substantial portion of votes from the left to the right but simply by stealing votes from her right-wing allies, especially the League. In general, the period from 2018 to 2022 shows us that the competition for votes is increasingly taking place between populist parties with less involvement of the so-called ‘mainstream’ or, to use Zulianello’s (2020) definition, ‘positively integrated’ parties, which in Italy are reduced to an all-time low. The rise of the League in 2018–2019 was mainly the result of competition/collaboration in government with the M5S, which instead saw a decline in its electoral support. The role of a leading party then passed from the League to FdI, again thanks to a transfer of votes from one populist party to the other. Who? After its electoral triumph, FdI became a less urban and more northern party, not least as a result of a shift of votes away from the League. However, so far we have very little information on the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of its typical voter. For example, is there

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a gender gap in the vote for Giorgia Meloni’s party? Are there differences between age groups or levels of education? Are there professional categories where the party’s message resonates more? The literature suggests that voters of the populist radical right tend to be male, older and less educated than the general electorate (Norris and Inglehart 2019). In terms of employment status, there is a bifurcation in the social base of the radical right, as it is particularly successful among blue collar voters and owners of small businesses, who have different economic preferences (Iversflaten 2005). In the aftermath of the 2018 and 2022 general elections, IPSOS provided interesting polling data on the main Italian parties (Formigoni and Forni 2018; Scavo and Fishman 2022). Table 5.3 summarises the distribution (in %) of voters for each relevant category starting with gender and ending with various occupational groups. The figures in bold indicate the categories in which a party is over-represented. In 2018, Giorgia Meloni’s party won just over 4% of the vote but appeared stronger among middle-aged and older men with a medium or high level of education. FdI was particularly popular among entrepreneurs and managers, shopkeepers and artisans, manual workers and pensioners. Apart from the relatively high level of education, all other categories are in line with what one would expect from a populist radical right party. Among the other parties, the League had a similar electorate to FdI albeit with lower levels of education and, surprisingly, greater support among women. The M5S had a younger electorate than FdI (and all the other main parties) and was particularly entrenched among manual workers and the unemployed. Finally, the PD stood out for being a party voted by the elderly, university graduates, white-collar workers and pensioners. In 2022, most of the patterns already observed in 2018 were confirmed. Obviously FdI strengthened significantly in all categories but continued to be more popular among middle-aged/older men. Interestingly, of the three right-wing parties, the only one led by a (relatively) young woman seems to have a more male and older electorate, suggesting that there is no necessary correspondence between characteristics of the political elite and the electoral base of a party. Furthermore, the 2018 ‘anomaly’ of having a more educated electorate seems to have disappeared. FdI gained much more support among voters with lower levels of education and, as in 2018, was very successful not only among the ‘petty bourgeoisie’ of shopkeepers and artisans but also among manual workers. Today, the right as a whole, which includes FdI, the League and FI,

11.3 14.3 22.4/17.6 12.9

19.7 25.7 29 25.3 30.2 24.7 34.6

4.6 4.9 3.5/4.5a 4.9 5.2 4.7 5.4

23.6 14.5 23.8

17.8 17.6 19.7 14.6

15.8 29.1 28.3 28.2

3.3 4.6 4.5 4.4

17.1 17.6

2018

League

27.8 24.2

2022

4.6 4.1

2018

FdI

12.4 13.9 13 16.1

13.8 14.1

2018

13.4 17.6 8.6 12.5

4.7 7.6 13.4

12.1 14.3 15.2/12.9

FI

6.7

5.6 7.9 10.8

5.2 11.3 8.8 9.2

8.1 9.5

2022

7.9 5.3 7.6

9.3

6.3 7.6 9.3

8.1 8.5 7.3 8.6

8.1 8.1

2022

31.8 36.1 37

31.2

29.3 36.1 33.3/30

35.3 35.4 34 27.1

32.8 32.9

2018

M5S

15.8 13.8 16.4

11.6

11.3 16.1 16.7

20.9 17.4 16.6 8.8

15.2 15.8

2022

15.3 15.9 16.5 27.3

18.9 18.7

2018

11.7 18.9 11.3

22.5

21.8 16.1 15.9/25.2

PD

10.9 21 11.4

17.2

24.8 17.9 17.5

18.7 13.9 17.4 25.2

18.4 19.8

2022

Partisan distribution of voters (%) by socio-economic and demographic characteristics (comparing 2018 and

Gender Male Female Age 18–34 35–49 50–64 65 + Education University High school Primary Professional status Entrepreneur/ manager Shopkeeper/craftsperson White collar/teacher Manual worker

Categories

Table 5.3 2022)

94 D. VAMPA

2.6 2.1 3.5 4.5 4.3

Unemployed Student Housewife Pensioner Overall result (total electorate)

20.9 10.2 25.3 27.6 26

2022 18.2 15 19.8 14.6 17.4

2018

League

8.6 3.1 12.3 8.7 8.8

2022

FI

20.4 11.7 15.7 16.1 14

2018 13.6 5.5 11.3 7.5 8.1

2022 37.2 32.3 36.1 26.4 32.9

2018

M5S

23.5 24.8 19 9.9 15.4

2022

PD

10.3 17.1 15.4 27.6 18.8

2018

Source Author’s own elaboration based on data from IPSOS (Formigoni and Forni 2018; Scavo and Fishman 2022) Note Figures in bold are for categories in which party is over-represented a In 2018, the lower education level was divided into two categories (intermediate and primary), which is why two percentages are provided

2018

Categories

FdI

14.8 24.3 15.2 27.1 19.1

2022

5 WINNING VOTES

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96

D. VAMPA

controls more than 50% of the working class vote while the PD, despite its links to the social democratic tradition, barely exceeds 10% in this category, thus remaining a party of white-collar workers and pensioners (but also of students, unlike in 2018). The M5S differs once again from FdI in its young electorate, made up of many students and unemployed. In short, the boundaries between left and right no longer seem to be neatly defined by traditional class politics, and in any case the roles of the two opposing camps seem to have reversed compared to twentieth-century politics: it is the right that dominates among Italian workers today, not the left. Additionally, generational differences and gaps in education levels, also linked to the challenges posed by unemployment and job insecurity, seem equally useful in explaining the choices of an increasingly fluid and fragmented (but also disillusioned) electorate.

Multi-Level Electoral Success: The Local, Regional and European Arenas FdI’s victory in 2022, however resounding, was not entirely unexpected. In a context where parties compete at various territorial levels—local, regional and, for a European democracy like Italy, also supranational— political changes can be glimpsed well before a general election. The national arena, while central, is not the only one and is not isolated. Therefore, if we want to fully understand the electoral trajectory of FdI since its creation, we must equally consider its presence and growth in the municipalities and regions of Italy and also in the European elections, where national issues are linked to Europe-wide themes. Table 5.4 shows the results of FdI and the other four main Italian parties at local and regional level and in the European elections. The period 2013–2022 is divided into two election cycles 2013–2017 and 2018–2022 because local and regional elections take place in different years. The first cycle corresponds to the period of formation and consolidation of FdI and the second to the period of sustained growth preceding the 2022 victory. The analysis also considers the European elections of 2014 (part of the first cycle) and 2019 (second cycle). It is immediately clear that, compared to the first cycle, FdI experienced electoral growth at all three levels between 2018 and 2022. This, however, did not necessarily indicate that it would become Italy’s leading party. The data in part 1 of the table refer to the capitals of the 19 Italian regions and two autonomous provinces (Trento and Bolzano) and give us

5

Table 5.4 Performance of FdI and the other main Italian parties in local, regional and European elections

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1. Local Elections (Regional Capitals) 2013–2017

2018–2022

Change

5.3 4.8 8.4 22.6 21.5

11.1 7.9 5.1 7.3 21.1

+5.8 +3.1 −1.3 −15.3 −0.4

2013–2017

2018–2022

Change

8.3 20.3 9.1 11.9 19.8

+5.3 +12.9 −5.8 −3.7 −6.3

FdI League FI M5S PD 2. Regional elections

FdI League FI M5S PD

3 7.4 14.9 15.6 26.1

3. European Elections

FdI League FI M5S PD

2014

2019

Change

3.7 6.2 16.8 21.2 40.8

6.4 34.3 8.8 17.1 22.7

+2.7 +28.1 −8 −4.1 −18.1

Source Author’s own elaboration based on data from the Italian Interior Ministry

an (admittedly partial) idea of how the various parties fared in municipal elections, which are influenced not only by the national political debate but also by the personality of local candidates. In fact, since the early 1990s, the election of municipal administrations has been based on a strongly candidate-centred system in which the mayor is elected directly by the voters (Baldini 2002). Moreover, the election of the mayor also determines the composition of the municipal council. Party lists linked to the winning mayor get a majority bonus and councillors are selected on the basis of individual preferences within party lists. Thus, the candidates for mayor and councillors can make a big difference to the final result. Already in the period 2013–2017, FdI showed that it was quite well established in the main Italian municipalities. It even surpassed the

98

D. VAMPA

League, although we must remember that the data in the table refer only to the largest cities and, as already shown in the territorial analysis of the vote, FdI has a more urban electoral base than the League. In 2018– 2022 Giorgia Meloni’s party further improved its position, becoming the second largest party after the PD in the big cities, surpassing not only the League and FI on the right but also the M5S, which collapsed compared to 2013–2017. In the regions, the period 2018–2022 saw a meteoric rise of the League, which emerged as the largest party, overtaking the PD. FdI also increased its share of the vote, while all other parties experienced a decline. Yet compared to what was observed in the big Italian cities, FdI failed to overtake any of its competitors. Finally, the 2019 European election marked the triumph of the League, which reached the peak of its success. FdI also managed to grow on this occasion, but much less than Salvini’s party. However, while in 2014 it had remained below the 4% threshold needed to elect MEPs in Italy, in 2019 it managed to surpass it by a wide margin. Moreover, once again, the two populist parties of the radical right were the only ones to grow, while the other three parties lost votes. Overall, even though the local, regional and European elections, often referred to as ‘second-order’ elections (Reif and Schmitt 1980), only partially anticipated the electoral success of FdI, they nevertheless clearly indicated a political trend in favour of right-wing populism. Until 2019 the League seemed to be the major beneficiary of this shift—although less so in large cities. In 2021–2022 Meloni was thus able to build her success on an already favourable ground prepared by the League. Indeed, as we have already seen, what occurred in the months leading up to the 2022 general election was mainly a transfer of votes from one populist radical right party to another.

Conclusion In 2022, for the first time, a populist radical right party came first in a general election in a major Western European democracy. However, this electoral breakthrough did not come as a complete surprise. Since 2013, the Italian political system had experienced a period of high volatility characterised by the rise of populist parties: the M5S had triumphed in 2013 and 2018 and the League had become the largest Italian party in the 2019 European election. Therefore, FdI benefited from an unstable

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electoral context in which there was much room to challenge a weakened and increasingly ill-defined ‘mainstream’. The 2022 election did not mark a clean break with the trends of previous years, which had already seen right-wing populists gain support in local, regional and European elections. The main electoral shift was observed within the right-wing populist camp, with Giorgia Meloni’s party winning votes at the expense of Matteo Salvini’s party. In contrast to its previous success in the South and in urban areas, in 2022 FdI grew more in the North and outside the country’s major cities, in places which had tended to be more favourable to the League. FdI also replaced the League as the most voted party in key socio-economic groups such as small-business owners and a working class that is no longer aligned with the left.

Postscript: The Electoral Success of FdI in the Western European Context FdI’s success appears even more remarkable when placed in the context of Western Europe. The rise of populist radical right parties has occurred in almost all democracies in this region of the world, albeit with varying intensities. Figure 5.4 includes the best results achieved by parties that are still active in 14 Western European Countries. It shows that the performance of Giorgia Meloni’s party in 2022 is only surpassed by the Swiss People’s Party (Schweizerische Volkspartei, SVP) in 2015 and the Freedom Party of Austria (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, FPÖ) in 1999. It is clear that almost everywhere except Austria, the growth of the populist radical right has intensified in recent years, especially after the financial crisis of 2008–2009 (Hutter and Kriesi 2019; Hopkin 2020). The year 2022 saw, for instance, not only the triumph of FdI, but also the success of the National Rally (Rassemblement National, RN) in the presidential election (and in the following legislative election) in France, the enormous growth of the Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna, SD) and the leap from just over 1% to over 7% of the vote of Chega in Portugal. The Portuguese case, along with the Spanish and Greek cases, also suggests that Italy may find itself less isolated in the context of southern Europe, where until a few years ago right-wing populists seemed unable to become electorally relevant. If we compare FdI to similar parties in the other three main EU countries, France, Germany and Spain, we can see commonalities in their electoral trajectories but also significant differences that underline the

100

D. VAMPA

35

% of the vote

30 25 20 15 10 5

29.4 26.9 26 23.2 22.9

21.1 20.5

19.1 15.5 15.1 12.6 12 7.2 3.7

0

Fig. 5.4 Best electoral performance of existing populist radical right parties in Western Europe (Source Author’s own elaboration based on data from the Political Data Yearbook [https://politicaldatayearbook.com/]. Data refer to general elections or, in the case of France, presidential election; country and year of best performance in brackets)

complexity of the populist radical right phenomenon. FdI is clearly the most successful party today, although not the oldest one as highlighted in previous chapters. Table 5.5 shows data related to the territorial dimension of the vote for these parties. FdI is the one with the most territorially homogeneous vote, with a Coefficient of Variation (CV) of 0.2 compared to 0.44 of Spanish Vox and 0.54 of Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD). Electoral support for these two parties is more regionally concentrated than for any other major parties in their respective countries. They are even more ‘regionalised’ than the League (CV = 0.33), which used to be a regionalist party. This reflects specific territorial characteristics of their electorates. Vox is particularly strong in the Spanish heartland, where opposition to the pro-independence and pro-autonomy demands of some regions (Catalonia in particular) has fuelled a right-wing populist backlash (Vampa 2020). The growing appeal of AfD in not only associated to its anti-immigrant discourse in the wake of the refugee crisis

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but also to the territorial conflict between East and West that emerged after German unification (León and Scantamburlo 2022). RN instead has a much more territorially homogeneous electoral base, with a CV that is very close to that of FdI. Yet a fundamental difference between Le Pen’s party and Meloni’s is that the latter still has a more urban electorate than the former—as the data on the electoral results of the two parties in the capital regions of their respective countries suggest (admittedly, in a very sketchy way). While FdI remains very strong in Rome and surroundings, the RN performs much worse in Paris and the Île-de-France than at the national level. In this respect, FdI is more similar to Vox, while RN is more like the League. Although starting from very different positions on the centre-periphery cleavage, RN and the League are parties of the (rural or sub-urban) provinces mobilising against the central elites, while FdI and Vox belong to a tradition in which the urban context of the capital city has come to symbolise the unity of the nation. Compared to the parties in the other three countries, we can also see that FdI and the League show a larger gap between their general election results and those they obtained at other territorial levels. As shown in the chapter, the results of the ‘second-order’ elections between 2018 and 2020 indicated a radicalisation of the Italian electorate, which, however, quickly shifted from one populist radical right party (League) to another (FdI) by the time of the general election. Overall, Italian politics—and to a lesser extent Spanish politics—appears more volatile and territorially disconnected (Vampa 2022) than that of Germany and France, where RN and AfD obtained similar results at different territorial levels. Finally, comparisons on voters’ characteristics between different parties are made difficult by the scarcity of comparable micro-level data across national contexts. The figures in the table were calculated from data provided by the European Social Survey (ESS) in 2018, when FdI was still in an electoral consolidation phase. However, results included in the League column may still give us an idea of how FdI’s electorate would evolve in subsequent years, since we know that there was a shift of votes from one party to the other in 2021–2022 (data in Table 5.2 confirm that). Contrary to what is suggested in the literature, there does not seem to be a clear pattern that helps us identify a common voter profile for all five parties. Negative numbers in Table 5.5 suggest that a party deviates from the general expectation of the relatively old man with low levels of education and low income voting for right-wing populists. Although men generally tend to support these parties, the gap between men and women

26 (2022) 0.2 29.9

Best electoral result in G.E. (%) (year)

Regional Variation of Results (CV) Vote capital region (% in most recent G.E.) Vote in regional elections (%) Vote in European election (%) Diff. Male (+) Female (−) Diff. Old (+) Young (−) Diff. Low (+) High (−) Education Diff Low (+) High (−) Income 20.3 34.3 0.9 4 6.6 −0.9

0.33 5

17.4 (2018)

8.8 (2022)

League

8.8 7.9 3.8 −6.8 3.7 −1

0.44 18.5

15.1 (2019)

15.1 (2019)

Vox

23.1 (2022 presidential 1st round) 23.1 (2022 presidential 1st round) 0.21 13 (Île-de-France) 5.5 (Paris) 18.7 23.3 −2.3 −5 7.7 5.2

FN/RN

Author’s own elaboration from various sources (Electoral archives of the four countries and European Social Survey 2018)

8.3 6.2 0.3 −1.4 −1.5 −0.8

26 (2022)

Fdi

FdI and other key Western European populist radical right parties in the electoral arena

Most recent result in G.E. (%) (year)

Table 5.5

10.8 11 3.2 −0.2 4.3 1.6

0.54 8.4

12.6 (2017)

10.3 (2021)

AfD

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is more substantial for Vox and AfD than for the other parties—in fact, the RN seems to have a more female electorate, which indicates a closing of the gender gap in the French case (Mayer 2015). Also the idea that these parties are voted mainly by older people seems to apply only to the League (and FdI in 2022 as shown in Table 5.3). Moreover, only the RN seems to represent more economically disadvantaged sectors of the electorate, while the others have a more even distribution of voters, thanks to their cross-class appeal. Only one variable clearly goes in the same direction for all the parties considered (including FdI if we refer to the 2022 data presented in Table 5.3): the education gap. Populist radical right parties seem to be consistently more popular among voters with lower levels of education and this reflects a shift in Western democracies, where, as suggested by Gethin et al. (2022), politics is less class-based and more ‘multidimensional’ or ‘multiconflictual’. Education, increasingly disconnected from income in its electoral effects, has been particularly important in structuring socio-cultural political divides, based on conflicts over identity or morality, which are particularly salient for ‘new’ parties, including those of the radical right.

References Albertazzi, Daniele, and Davide Vampa. 2021. Populism in Europe: Lessons from Umberto Bossi’s Northern League. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Baldini, Gianfranco. 2002. The direct election of mayors: An assessment of the institutional reform following the Italian municipal elections of 2001. Journal of Modern Italian Studies 7 (3): 364–379. Caramani, Daniele. 2004. The Nationalization of Politics. The Formation of National Electorates and Party Systems in Western Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chiaramonte, Alessandro, and Vincenzo Emanuele. 2022. The deinstitutionalization of Western European party systems. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Formigoni, Lucio and Mattia Forni. 2018. Elezioni politiche 2018: L’analisi del voto. IPSOS. Gethin, Amory, Clara Martínez-Toledano, and Thomas Piketty. 2022. Brahmin left versus merchant right: Changing political cleavages in 21 western democracies, 1948–2020. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 137 (1): 1–48. Hopkin, Jonathan. 2020. Anti-System Politics: The Crisis of Market Liberalism in Rich Democracies. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Hutter, Swen, and Hanspeter Kriesi, eds. 2019. European Party Politics in Times of Crisis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Ivarsflaten, Elizabeth. 2005. The vulnerable populist right parties: No economic realignment fuelling their electoral success. European Journal of Political Research 44 (3): 465–492. León, Sandra, and Matthias Scantamburlo. 2022. Right-wing populism and territorial party competition: The case of the Alternative for Germany. Party Politics, OnlineFirst: https://doi.org/10.1177/13540688221122336. Lipset, Seymour Martin, and Stein Rokkan. 1967. Cleavage structures, party systems and voters’ alignments: An introduction. In Party Systems and Voter Alignments: A Cross-National Perspective, ed. Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan, 1–64. New York: Free Press. Mayer, Nonna. 2015. The closing of the radical right gender gap in France? French Politics 13 (4): 391–414. Norris, Pippa, and Ronald Inglehart. 2019. Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian Populism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pirro, Andrea. 2018. The polyvalent populism of the 5 Star Movement. Journal of Contemporary European Studies 26 (4): 443–458. Reif, Karlheinz, and Hermann Schmitt. 1980. Nine second-order national elections: A conceptual framework for the analysis of European election results. European Journal of Political Research 8 (1): 3–44. Rodden, Jonathan A. 2019. Why Cities Lose: The Deep Roots of the Urban-Rural Political Divide. New York: Basic Books. Scavo, Andrea, and Benjamin Fishman. 2022. Elezioni politiche 2022: Analisi del Voto. IPSOS. Tentoni, Luca. 2018. Capitali regionali: Le elezioni politiche nei capoluoghi di regione (1946–2018). Bologna: il Mulino. Vampa, Davide. 2016. The Regional Politics of Welfare in Italy, Spain and Great Britain. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Vampa, Davide. 2017. Matteo Salvini’s Northern League in 2016: Between stasis and new opportunities. Italian Politics 32: 32–50. Vampa, Davide. 2018. Il centrodestra a guida leghista. In Il vicolo cieco, ed. Marco Valbruzzi and Rinaldo Vignati, 57–78. Bologna: Il Mulino. Vampa, Davide. 2020. Competing forms of populism and territorial politics: The cases of Vox and Podemos in Spain. Journal of Contemporary European Studies 28 (3): 304–321. Vampa, Davide. 2022. Multi-level crisis? Assessing political change and stability in 58 European regions (1993–2022). Paper presented at the 2022 Italian Political Science Association Conference, Rome. Zulianello, Mattia. 2020. Varieties of populist parties and party systems in europe: From state-of-the-art to the application of a novel classification scheme to 66 parties in 33 countries. Government and Opposition 55 (2): 327–347.

CHAPTER 6

Winning Seats (and Government)

Abstract This chapter examines the role of Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia, FdI) in representative and government institutions. The first part focuses on the party’s parliamentary group. It stresses that it is not only the number of elected parliamentarians that matters, but also the type of political personnel FdI has selected to represent its constituencies. Like its voters, FdI representatives tend to be male, older and less educated than those of its main competitors. The discussion then moves on to a brief analysis of the party in government by considering its role in the executive formed in the aftermath of the 2022 general election. Finally, the chapter provides a multi-level overview of FdI’s presence in local, regional and European institutions. The postscript compares FdI to the main populist radical right parties in Western Europe, with a particular focus on France, Spain and Germany. Keywords Brothers of Italy · Members of Parliament · Government · Political institutions · Representation

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Vampa, Brothers of Italy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26132-9_6

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Translating Votes into Political Power Before the 2022 general election, Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia, FdI) controlled very few positions and offices at the heart of the Italian political system. In 2013, the group led by Giorgia Meloni consisted of only 9 members of parliament (MPs) in the Chamber of Deputies (the lower chamber) and none in the Senate (the upper chamber)—this was just 1% of the total number of parliamentary representatives. Figure 6.1 shows that the situation improved slightly in 2018. FdI managed to elect representatives in both houses of parliament and, while remaining a small group, gained more visibility by opposing the various successive governments from 2018 to 2022. This opposition role was indeed a constant for the party in the decade since its creation. During the same period, the Democratic Party (Partito Democratico, PD) was in power for almost 9 years, the 5 Star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle, M5S) for about 4 years, the League (Lega) and Forza Italia (FI) for about 3 years. In short, whether populist or mainstream, FdI’s main competitors have been in government at least once, taking part in a continuous rotation of roles that has little to do with the democratic principle of alternation, but is rather the result of great instability and the underlying weaknesses of the Italian ruling class. In 2022 FdI would benefit precisely from this fluid situation, characterised by elite-driven repositioning and lack of accountability. The party eventually managed to achieve a level of electoral success that translated into a large share of political power, electing almost a third of the representatives in a fragmented parliament. Thus, whereas in 2013–2018 Meloni and her followers had been de facto irrelevant in the legislative process and for much of 2018–2022 had been able to cause little disturbance to the other parties by remaining on the political fringes, in 2022 they became a central player in the Italian party system, with a clear mandate to form and lead a new government. As they gain strength in representative institutions, it is not uncommon for populist parties to be included as junior partners in government coalitions (Akkerman et al. 2016). In this position of responsibility, where their power is constrained by compromises with more established actors, they often face a heavy ‘cost of governing’ and have to manage increasingly pressing trade-offs between votes, office and policy (Strøm and Muller 1999; van Spanje 2011). Therefore, populists are usually victims of disappointing periods in government and their subsequent attempts to return to power in a more prominent role can be seriously hampered by their

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Share of the seats (%)

43.2 35.9 30.7 20.7 17.2

19.4 17.5 17

5.3

3.8 1

2013 FdI

18.2 16 13.3 10.5

2018 League

PdL/FI

2022 M5S

PD

Fig. 6.1 Share of seats won by FdI and other main parties in both Chamber of Deputies and Senate (2013–2022) (Source Author’s own elaboration based on data from the Italian Interior Ministry)

own failures. This did not happen in the case of FdI, which entered the government directly from a position of strength, to lead it, untainted by previous experience as a subordinate ally of more influential parties. In 2022 few remembered Giorgia Meloni’s presence in the last Berlusconi cabinet of 2008–2011, a different political era when FdI had not yet been founded. Yet this does not mean that the tension between responsive and responsible government (Mair 2009) did not materialise when Meloni was elected prime minister and had to strike a balance between radical election promises, rewarded by the voters, and new institutional duties. In this chapter, which concludes our assessment of FdI as a (potentially) disruptive new force in the Italian and European political landscapes, we will analyse aspects related to the party’s institutional role— what we can also call the ‘party in public office’ (Katz and Mair 2018). The next part will focus on the party’s parliamentary group. It is not only the number of elected parliamentarians that matters, but also the type of political personnel FdI has selected to represent its constituencies. To what extent does it reflect the characteristics of its electorate? How do FdI representatives differ from those of other Italian parties? We will then move on to a brief analysis of FdI in government by considering its role in the executive formed in the aftermath of the 2022 general election. Finally, the chapter will provide a multi-level overview of FdI’s presence in local, regional and European institutions.

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Who Was Elected? It has already been pointed out that the size of the FdI parliamentary group increased dramatically from 2018 to 2022 (after a small growth from 2013 to 2018), so much so that it profoundly altered the balance in both the legislative process and in government formation. One of the early signs that things had changed after the 2022 general election was that FdI managed to gather sufficient parliamentary support to appoint one of its senior members, Ignazio Benito Maria La Russa (the middle name is indicative of his ideological background), to the presidency of the Senate, the second most important office of the state. This means that should the President of the Republic, the head of state, be unable to perform his duties, La Russa would assume all the functions of acting president (Article 86 of the Italian Constitution). An overall assessment of the changes in the party’s role within institutions must not stop at quantitative aspects but should also consider possible qualitative transformations. The key questions here are: who sits in the FdI benches today? Can we observe a shift from previous parliamentary terms? Table 6.1 provides data on the main characteristics of FdI representatives in the lower house of parliament, the Chamber of Deputies, in 2018–2022 and in the post-2022 legislative term. The data are also compared with those of the other main parliamentary groups and the Chamber as a whole. After years of growth in women’s representation, the 2022 election marked a setback—although accompanied by the election of the first female prime minister. We can see that the percentage of women in the FdI group fell slightly from 32.5% to 31.4% and remains, albeit not significantly, lower than the total share of female MPs. The League and FI also have fewer female MPs than the M5S and PD. Thus, if at the electoral level only FdI was clearly more ‘maledominated’, despite its leader (Chapter 5), at the parliamentary level the entire right is characterised by a lower presence of women, who are instead almost half of the M5S group. With regard to educational background, we find a clear alignment between electorate and representatives, with a lower share of graduates in the three right-wing groups, especially the League, than in the other parties (although a general growth is observed in this category compared to 2018–2022). In Chapter 5 we also saw that FdI voters tend to be older and this is confirmed in the parliamentary group, where the share of under-40s was already very small in 2018–2022 and today remains lower than in almost all other groups.

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Only the PD fares worse in this category. On the other hand, while FdI did not have many MPs aged 60 and above in 2018–2022, after the 2022 election it became the second ‘oldest’ group after FI, overtaking the PD. Among the right-wing parties, the League stands out, having a relatively young parliamentary group already in 2018–2022, which became even younger after September 2022, despite losing MPs. In contrast, the new intake of FdI MPs does not seem to have contributed much to the rejuvenation of parliamentary representation (as happened after the success of the M5S in 2013 and 2018). The geographic shift of FdI’s electorate (Chapter 5) has also affected the share of its MPs elected in northern Italian regions. While in 2018– 2022 FdI was clearly the most ‘southern’ group among the right-wing parties, with only 30% of MPs elected in the North (compared to a total of 38% in the whole Chamber), after the 2022 election it has an aboveaverage share of northern MPs—only the League has a higher (albeit declining) share in this category. Instead, we can see a marked process of southernisation in the representation of FI and, to an even greater extent, of M5S. Overall, the data suggest a general convergence between voters and representatives of the main parties, with FdI having a more male-dominated, less educated, older and more northern parliamentary group compared to the total of MPs sitting in the Chamber of Deputies. Despite being relatively old, FdI MPs do not seem to be more experienced than the others. On the contrary, data provided by Openpolis (2022)—an independent, not-for-profit Italian foundation that collects public data to promote institutional transparency and democratic participation—tell us that only 34.5% of FdI representatives elected in 2022 have previous parliamentary experience. The League, on the other hand, is the group with the most experienced parliamentarians, 77% of its MPs were previously elected in the Chamber or in the Senate, despite being younger than their FdI colleagues. In fact, more than half of the MPs of all major groups, including the M5S, have already been in parliament for at least one term. FdI is therefore an important exception. However, if one considers the number of MPs who held political office at the local and regional level, FdI enjoys—still together with the League—the highest level of experience among the main groups. 68% of FdI representatives were previously elected in municipalities and regions, compared to only 22.5% in the M5S group. Thus, the party’s sudden success did not result in the election of totally inexperienced candidates (as happened in 2013 with the M5S). Rather, FdI relied on political personnel with

32.5 29 35.3 45.8 36.1 36.8

31.4 27.3 27.3 44.2 31.9 32.3

67.5 57.3 67.6 79.2 71.1 70.6

2018–2022

2018–2022

2022–

Graduates (%)

Women (%)

83.1 74.2 81.8 90.4 94.2 86.3

2022– 10 19.8 7.4 43.8 7.2 21.7

2018–2022

Aged 25–39 (%)

13.5 21.2 13.6 34.6 11.6 15.8

2022– 15 14.5 44.1 7.3 33 19.7

2018–2022

18.6 9.1 31.8 11.5 13 16.8

2022–

30.2 65.7 43.8 18.4 28.6 38

2018–2022

39.8 57.6 31.8 13.5 31.9 38

2022–

Aged 60 and above (%) Northerners (%)

Characteristics of elected MPs by group (% of the group in the Chamber of Deputies)

Source Author’s own elaboration based on data of the Italian Chamber of Deputies (www.camera.it)

FdI League FI M5S PD Total

Table 6.1

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an established track record in the sub-national arena. In this respect, both right-wing populist parties—the League and FdI—appear territorially rooted and differ significantly from the M5S, whose national political class is much more loosely connected to lower levels of government.

In Government The election of Giorgia Meloni as prime minister in 2022 marked an important moment in Italy’s democratic history. She became not only the leader of the most ideologically right-wing executive since the creation of the republican system, but also the first democratically elected populist radical right (and post-fascist) head of government in Western Europe after World War II. Moreover, for the first time Italy had a female prime minister—a long-awaited milestone, which, ironically, was achieved by a socially conservative party. Another clear departure from the two previous general elections was that the subsequent government formation process was quite quick. Indeed, since the fall of the Berlusconi government in 2011, Italy had been ruled by executives resulting from precarious agreements between electorally and programmatically distant parties. Neither the 2013 nor the 2018 election produced a clear winner and both were followed by lengthy negotiations culminating in the appointment of prime ministers who had never participated as frontrunners in previous electoral contests. Although constitutionally legitimate because they were supported by a parliamentary majority, successive governments from 2011 to 2022 were often accused of lacking popular legitimacy because they had not resulted from a clear election outcome. However, this criticism could not be aimed at Giorgia Meloni, who was the head of the largest party in a coalition that decisively won the September 2022 election competition. For many observers from different political backgrounds, Giorgia Meloni’s rise to power could be seen as a return to ‘Politics’ proper, after years in which the increasingly fluid and blurred boundaries between parliamentary groups favoured the formation of heterogeneous government coalitions often dominated by technocratic figures or second-rate politicians. The 2022 election certainly did not lead to a return to the ‘bipolar’ party system of the 1990s and early 2000s, given the fragmentation of the opposition. However, the winning camp was more ideologically coherent than the post-election majorities of the 2010s. Meloni’s mandate was so clear that her government was formed in the

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second shortest post-election negotiation period (27 days) in Italy’s entire republican history (average of 46 days)—preceded only by Berlusconi’s fourth government formed (in 24 days) in the aftermath of the People of Freedom’s (Popolo della Libertà, PdL) triumph at the polls in 2008 (Liguori 2022). Openpolis1 also provides various interesting quantitative data on the key characteristics of the new Meloni government. For example, the number of ministers and undersecretaries (65) is in line with that of successive governments since 2008 (before 2008, governments used to be much bigger: for instance, the 2006–2008 one led by Romano Prodi consisted of 99 members!). However, despite the relatively young age of the prime minister (45, the third youngest since 1945), her government is the seventh oldest in republican history (average age 55.1), which confirms the general tendency already observed in the FdI and FI parliamentary groups to promote more ‘senior’ representatives within key institutions. By way of comparison, ministers in the first Conte government resulting from the alliance between M5S and League—two relatively ‘young’ parties as shown in Table 6.1—were on average almost 10 years younger than those in the cabinet led by Giorgia Meloni. Not surprisingly, FdI obtained the largest share of positions in the government (44.6%), with 10 cabinet ministers out of 25 (5 each went to the League and FI and 5 are independents), 4 deputy ministers out of 8 (2 each for the League and FI) and 15 undersecretaries out of 32 (9 for the League, 6 for FI and the rest went to others). These are certainly substantial numbers for FdI, but they do not match or exceed the electoral strength of the party, which, having won almost 60% of the votes of the right-wing coalition, has in fact ceded some space in the executive to its junior partners (which is not so unusual in the tradition of Italian coalition politics). Additionally, FdI’s ministers and undersecretaries are by far the least experienced. Only 27.9% of them previously held a government position, compared to 30.8% of FI and the impressive 81.2% of the League, which once again stands out as a more politically professional party than its allies. Besides the numbers, it is useful to look at how the various government roles were distributed and which key ministries went to FdI. First 1 All data are included in a series of articles available on the Openpolis website, in the section on numbers related to ‘political power’ (potere politico): https://www.openpolis. it/categoria_numeri/potere-politico/ (date of access 13/12/2022).

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of all, one can already discern the ideological-programmatic orientation of the new leading party in the names of some ministries held by its members. For example, the Ministry of Agriculture was renamed ‘Ministry of Agriculture, Food Sovereignty and Forestry’. The concept of food sovereignty, strongly criticised by some sectors of the opposition, clearly links the ideological dimension of ‘sovereignty’ (Chapter 2) to the economic dimension of agricultural production. Equally influenced by the emphasis on national economy is the new name of the Ministry of Development, which has been changed to the ‘Ministry of Enterprise and Made in Italy’. Once again, the new designation underlines the importance of promoting Italian goods as identity-defining items in global markets, which also need to be protected from the risk of homologation and unfair competition. The Ministry for Equal Opportunities has become the ‘Ministry for Family, Birth and Equal Opportunities’, strongly influenced by FdI’s social conservatism (Chapter 2) that associates the role of women with motherhood and the (traditional) family. In addition to these three positions, FdI gained control of the following ministries: Defence (quite crucial for a right-wing party), Justice, Relations with Parliament, Policies of the Sea (another innovation introduced by Giorgia Meloni), European Affairs/South/Cohesion Policies/National Recovery & Resilience Plan, and Tourism. Finally, two other examples can be cited in which the change of name of a ministry symbolises a different ideologicalprogrammatic approach. The Ministry of Education, which went to the League, was renamed the ‘Ministry of Education and Merit’, thus emphasising a conservative idea of education that rewards individual achievement (Robin 2017). The Ministry of Ecological Transition was also transformed into the ‘Ministry of Environment and Energy Security’ (headed by a member of FI), thus linking the issues of environmental sustainability to the strategic role of energy and natural resources in the geopolitical arena (considered a priority after the Russian invasion of Ukraine). At the time of writing this chapter, the Meloni government has been in office for just over two months and it is therefore too early to assess its impact on policies and its performance. Immediately after her appointment as prime minister, Giorgia Meloni went to the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate to secure a confidence vote that would ratify her executive. On that occasion, she presented the priorities of her new government in

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a policy speech.2 After emphasising the fact that she was the first woman to head the government, Meloni thanked the ‘Italian people… holder of sovereignty’ but for many years inadequately represented by ‘a succession of government majorities fully legitimate on a constitutional level, but dramatically distant from the indications of the voters’.3 So the leader’s programmatic speech started with a populist-sovereignist statement marking the return of a ‘political’ government, legitimised by the will of the people. Also linked to this was the new government’s intention to initiate a constitutional reform based on the presidential model, ‘guaranteeing stability and restoring centrality to popular sovereignty’. The reform proposed by Meloni would thus allow Italy to transition from an ‘interlocutory democracy’ to a ‘deciding democracy’. Many of the policies announced by Meloni were those of her party’s 2022 manifesto discussed in Chapter 2. Internationally, she confirmed Italy’s role in the West, the European Union and the G7, linking this to the values of Western civilisation. However, the European Union could no longer be ‘an elitist club, with first-class and second-class members or, worse, like a joint-stock company run by a board of directors, with the sole task of keeping the accounts in order’ but rather had to become ‘the common home of the European peoples’. In the difficult economic situation in which Italy found itself, Meloni stressed that the way to reduce public debt was not austerity but economic growth also by relying on the European funds attached to the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (Piano nazionale di ripresa e resilienza, PNRR). The PNRR was presented as an opportunity that had only been partially exploited by previous governments and therefore the need for a renegotiation of the plan was hinted at. In December 2022, the Italian government also questioned the reform of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) aimed at providing financial assistance to Eurozone member states that have difficulties financing themselves on the market. According to the economy and finance minister of the Meloni government, League’s Giancarlo Giorgetti, the ESM should be transformed ‘from an instrument for protection against sovereign debt and banking crises, into a driver for investment

2 Giorgia Meloni’s full speech is available on the Italian Government website: https:// www.governo.it/it/articolo/le-dichiarazioni-programmatiche-del-governo-meloni/20770. 3 All passages directly quoted from the speech are translated by the author.

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financing and support’ against international crises (quoted in Pesole 2022, author’s translation). On the economic side, another point that provoked much debate was the issue of taxation. On the one hand, Meloni promised a ‘tough fight against tax evasion’, but on the other she called for a ‘fiscal truce to allow citizens and businesses, especially SMEs, in difficulty to regularise their position with the tax authorities’. In the weeks following her speech, controversy would also erupt over the proposal included in the budget law to raise the allowed ceiling for the use of cash, another proposal of the right-wing government that clearly favoured its main constituencies of small business owners (Chapter 5). The topic of immigration could not be missing from the speech, although it was less central than one might expect from a radical right leader. Meloni focused mainly on the issue of ‘human trafficking in the Mediterranean’, calling for a halt to the departure of migrant boats from North Africa and the creation of hotspots run by international organisations in African territories. One of the first diplomatic crises of the Meloni government occurred precisely on the issue of the migrant boats: the Italian government refused the landing of the NGO ship Ocean Viking, which instead landed in France, causing not only a clash between representatives in Rome and Paris but also a strong protest from the French radical right (Ginori and Ziniti 2022). The government’s first initiatives and statements did not focus much on civil rights and individual freedoms. In her inaugural speech, Meloni sought to reassure the opposition by declaring that ‘a centre-right government will never restrict the existing freedoms of citizens and businesses’. Also referring to the issue of abortion rights, she attacked ‘those who have lied… about our real intentions’, denying any intention to revise or repeal the abortion law. At the same time, surprisingly for the first female prime minister in Italian history, little space was given to women’s rights and gender equality, apart from the government’s commitment to ‘incentivise women’s employment in every way, rewarding companies that adopt policies that offer effective solutions for reconciling home-work times and supporting municipalities to guarantee free crèches that are open until shop and office closing time’. On the whole, the start of the new government does not seem to have marked a clean break from past policy choices, apart from a few statements and some diplomatic tensions. Moderation seems to have prevailed. Meloni even managed to engage in constructive dialogue with

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the centrist opposition parties on the government’s first measures (De Cicco 2022). In short, entering the cabinet in a leading position seems to have accelerated an ‘inclusion-moderation’ process, whereby government responsibility forces a populist party to revise its more radical positions (Akkerman et al. 2016). However, it is still too early to draw conclusions. Indeed, the recent literature on ‘democratic backsliding’ warns us that the impact of radical forces on the democratic system is not necessarily disruptive and immediate but can occur gradually and imperceptibly (Przeworski 2019; Haggard and Kaufman 2021).

Local, Regional and European Levels There are also clear signs of a strengthening of FdI in sub-national and supranational institutions, although this is not comparable to the success observed at the national level. This discrepancy is partly due to the fact that local, regional and European elections were held in different years, when, as we saw in Chapter 5, political dynamics were more favourable to other parties. Moreover, Italian sub-national politics appears increasingly disconnected from national politics and the growing success of local and independent lists has signalled a general crisis in the territorial role of national parties ‘on the ground’ (Vampa 2016, 2021a). However, FdI, along with the League, is the only major party to have experienced consistent growth in its multi-level representation from the 2013–2017 to the 2018–2022 election cycle. Table 6.2 shows that in the municipal councils of the regional capitals, FdI started from a very weak position and is now the third political group after the PD and League. Even weaker was the initial presence of Giorgia Meloni’s party in regional councils, which quadrupled in the last election cycle. Finally, while in the 2014 European election FdI had failed to elect any representatives, in the 2019 election the party entered the European Parliament with important consequences in its international positioning within the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group (Chapter 4). The characteristics of the political personnel elected in the ranks of FdI at regional level are not very different from those found at national level. Table 6.3 based on data referring to the 2018–2022 cycle provided by Vampa (2021b) suggests that FdI regional councillors are on average older than those of the League and M5S. Furthermore, FdI has elected a rather low number of women and the party’s regional councillors have little experience in regional institutions. On this last point, FdI appears

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Table 6.2 Elected representatives (share of the total) by territorial level and by party Share of seats (%) 2013–2017 1. Local level (Regional Capitals) FdI 3.2 League 6 FI 10.4 M5S 14.1 PD 24.5 Share of seats (%) 2013–2017 2. Regional Level FdI League FI M5S PD

3. European Level FdI League FI M5S PD

2 6.9 12.7 11.8 32.3

Share of seats (%) 2018–2022

Change

10 10.3 4.8 6.4 25.2

+6.8 +4.3 −5.6 −7 .7 +0.7

Share of seats (%) 2018–2022

Change

8 22.5 8.7 9.9 22.1

+6 +15.6 –4 –1.9 –10.2

Share of seats (%) 2014

Share of seats (%) 2019

Change

0 6.8 17.8 23.3 42.5

7.9 38.1 9.2 18.4 25

+7 .9 +31.3 –8.6 –4.9 –17 .5

Source Author’s own elaboration based on data from the Italian Interior Ministry

similar to the League, although this low percentage can be explained by the fact that both parties have only recently grown significantly in regional administrations (the League was virtually non-existent in the South in the previous period). Therefore, many of their representatives were elected for the first time, but, as shown in the last column of the table, they are largely politicians with experience at the municipal level and therefore not completely new to institutional politics. It should also be added that although FdI managed to win seats in the European Parliament for the first time in 2019, already in the previous term Raffele Fitto, elected in 2014 with Forza Italia, had defected to FdI playing an important role in securing the party’s membership of the ECR group.

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Table 6.3 Characteristics of regional councillors by party (2018–2022) Party

Average age

PD M5S LEGA FI FdI Total

49 43 47 50 48 48

% female

28.2 35.4 23.2 11.9 13.3 22.2

% previous regional experience

Average years of reg. experience

58 44.3 18 38.8 28.3 37.6

3.8 2.3 1 2.9 2.5 2.6

% with experience at local level 87.3 15.2 82.5 89.6 86.7 76.3

Source Vampa (2021a, b). No data available for Sicily

FdI not only has representatives in the assemblies of regions and municipalities, but has also managed to elect mayors and regional presidents in recent years. At the time of writing this chapter, there are FdI mayors in two regional capitals: L’Aquila in Abruzzo and Cagliari in Sardinia. In addition to these, the party also won mayoralties in three provincial capitals: Pistoia, Rieti and Ascoli Piceno, all located in central Italy. In many other cities, winning right-wing coalitions were led by independent candidates, but the number of FdI mayors in provincial capitals (5) is lower than that of PD (32), League (12) and FI (8). FdI regional presidents were elected in Abruzzo (2019) and Marche (2020). In Sicily, the former president of the region, Nello Musumeci, a long-standing representative of the Sicilian right, joined FdI in 2022, later becoming senator and minister.

Conclusion The year 2022 clearly marked a breakthrough in FdI’s institutional role at the national level. For the first time in republican history, a party of the radical right (and stemming from the post-fascist tradition) won the largest share of representatives in both houses of parliament and entered Italy’s government in a leading position. This success was so rapid that it could not be matched by a similar growth at other territorial levels of government, where longer, multi-year electoral cycles failed to keep up with the sudden changes observed in national politics. In this context of increasingly disconnected multi-level politics, Giorgia Meloni’s party had to quickly build a ruling class that could meet Italy’s challenges in

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the post-pandemic era and in an increasingly tense and unstable geopolitical context. While it is true that many of FdI’s elected members have held local and regional public offices in the past, it is also equally clear that compared to other parties represented in parliament, they have not had time to gain experience in the national political arena. Although they are relatively unfamiliar with the mechanisms of political power in central government, FdI representatives share many socio-demographic characteristics—such as gender balance, age and level of education—with their voters. Moreover, like its recently expanded electoral base, the party’s parliamentary group is more deeply rooted in the North of the country (in contrast to the more southern electoral geography of its post-fascist predecessors). The first months of the Meloni government have been marked by a few policy surprises. At the time of writing, the party’s programmatic radicalism, already tempered in the 2022 election campaign, has not translated into disruptive measures and most of the announced innovations have been symbolic rather than substantive. While the process of government formation has changed significantly compared to the ten turbulent years following Berlusconi’s downfall (when elections failed to produce clear majorities), FdI’s rise to power seems more akin to a classic case of inclusion-moderation, magnified by the fact that the party has not only entered government but is actually leading it, with all the responsibilities this entails. However, even if FdI’s policy intentions were more radical, it would be surprising to witness sudden and systemic changes in a mature democracy like the Italian one, which is moreover embedded in (and constrained by) the European Union’s system of governance. This is precisely why it is necessary to closely observe future developments within and outside the institutions and monitor the evolving dynamics between government and opposition. After all, other European and non-European examples show us that it takes time to change dominant political paradigms and, in the most extreme cases, to dismantle liberal democracy.

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Postscript: FdI and the Institutional Role of Populist Radical Right Parties in Other Western European Countries Giorgia Meloni is the first leader of a populist radical right party in Western Europe to serve as head of her country’s government. This record, however, did not come entirely unexpected. It materialised after decades in which parties ideologically akin to FdI had strengthened their presence in national parliaments and had been increasingly involved in government majorities, even occupying key positions in various cabinets (Akkerman et al. 2016). In Italy, the rise of the populist right to government began in the 1990s (Albertazzi and McDonnell 2015). But also in other core European countries such as Switzerland and Austria similar movements have enjoyed considerable political and institutional centrality for almost three decades (Fig. 6.2). Indeed, already in the late 1990s, the Freedom Party of Austria (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, FPÖ) had won a similar share of parliamentary seats as the FdI would win in 2022 (Müller 2000). In the Nordic countries, too, radical right parties like the Norwegian Progress Party (Fremskrittspartiet, FrP) and Danish People’s Party (Dansk Folkeparti, DF) have been decisive in the formation of various governments (Meret 2021). In this same part of Europe, they were recently joined by the Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna, SD) who managed to break their isolation after the 2022 election and for the first time signed an agreement to support a government led by the moderate right. However, among the four largest EU countries, Italy remains the only one to have had populist right-wing parties in national government. Vox in Spain, National Rally (Rassemblement National, RN) in France and Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD) have never come so close to power. Only Vox, among them, has played a significant role in the formation of some regional governments, formally entering the Junta of Castile and Leon for the first time in 2022 (holding the position of regional vice-president). However, even outside national government these parties have been able to become more influential (Table 6.4). France demonstrates that a populist radical right party can considerably increase its institutional weight even in a majoritarian electoral system that imposes significant barriers to entry to ‘outsiders’ (Blais and Loewen 2009). In 2022, for the first time, Marine Le Pen’s RN won 89 seats in first-past-the-post constituencies, 15.4% of the total,

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32.5 29.8

28.4 24.3 21.1 20.9

19.5 16 15.4 14.9

13.3

12 5.2

3.3

0

Fig. 6.2 Largest share of seats won by existing populist radical right parties in Western Europe (Source Author’s own elaboration based on data from the Political Data Yearbook, https://politicaldatayearbook.com/. Data refer to the lower chamber of parliament; country and year of best performance in brackets)

preventing Emmanuel Macron from winning an absolute majority of seats in the National Assembly. AfD and Vox have also won large shares of seats in their national parliaments, where the far right had been absent since Germany and Spain transitioned to democracy. In the period 2017– 2021, AfD even acted as the main opposition party to the grand coalition formed by Christian Democrats and Social Democrats in Germany (Lees 2018). An interesting difference between the parties in Table 6.4 is their share of elected representatives in the capital regions of their respective countries. Here, the RN stands out once again as the most ‘provincial’ party (Chapter 5): all its MPs were elected outside Paris and almost all outside the highly urbanised Île-de-France. On the contrary, thanks to their more urban electorate, FdI and Vox managed to win a large number of parliamentary seats in the major metropolitan areas of Italy and Spain. Moreover, the two parties appear significantly less strong at the regional than at the national level, indicating a further disconnect between national

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Table 6.4 FdI and other key Western European populist radical right parties in the parliamentary arena

Share of seats won (% of total lower chamber) Share of seats won in capital region (% of total capital seats) Female (% of group) Under 40 (% of group) Regional representation (% of total regional seats)

FdI

League

Vox

FN/RN

AfD

29.8

16.5

14.9

15.4

11.3

29.2

12.5

18.9

10.3

31.4 13.5 8

27.3 21.2 22.5

26.9 11.5 6.6

2.1 (Île-de-France) 0 (Paris) 38.2 37.1 14.3

12 12 11.7

Source Author’s own elaboration based on data provided by Camera dei Deputati (Italy), Congreso (Spain), Assemblée Nationale (France), Bundestag (Germany)

and sub-national politics in Italy and Spain (Chapter 5). RN is the party with the youngest parliamentary group—over a third of its MPs are under 40—and the one with the largest share of women. In this respect, it is very different from AfD, which is much older and male-dominated. FdI lies between these two extremes, closer to RN in terms of gender balance (although its group has a lower share of women than most Italian parties) and to AfD in terms of age. The League, by contrast, is less genderbalanced but younger, while Vox is more similar to AfD mainly due to the low number of young representatives in its parliamentary group. Overall, there seem to be considerable differences between these parties despite their ideological affinities. Therefore, simplifications and hasty conclusions should be avoided when assessing how their success may affect the type of political personnel elected in key representative institutions. Giorgia Meloni, a relatively young woman, can rely on the support of a parliamentary group largely made up of older men. Vox and AfD have brought mainly baby boomers and Generation X men into the parliaments of their respective countries. The League, on the other hand, has contributed to a rejuvenation of the Italian political class, although not in a genderbalanced way. Finally, the RN’s recent success in France has led to the election of a large number of young and female MPs, making the party of Marine Le Pen—the oldest of the five party leaders—an important factor (for better or worse) in the renewal and diversification of French representative politics.

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References Akkerman, Tjiske, Sarah L. de Lange, and Matthijs Roodujin, eds. (2016). Radical Right-Wing Populist Parties in Western Europe: Into the Mainstream? Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Albertazzi, Daniele, and Duncan McDonnell. (2015). Populists in Power. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Blais, André, and Peter John Loewen. 2009. The French electoral system and its effects. West European Politics 32 (2): 345–359. De Cicco, Lorenzo. 2022. Quei messaggi tra Calenda e Meloni che aprono il dialogo e preoccupano FI. la Repubblica, 26 November. Ginori, Anais, and Alessandra Ziniti. 2022. Migranti, il primo sbarco agita la destra francese. Meloni-Macron, è scontro sui numeri. la Repubblica, 12 November. Haggard, Stephan, and Robert Kaufman. 2021. Backsliding: Democratic Regress in the Contemporary World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Katz, Richard, and Peter Mair. 2018. Democracy and the Cartelization of Political Parties. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lees, Charles. 2018. The “Alternative for Germany”: the rise of right-wing populism at the heart of Europe. Politics 38 (3): 295–310. Liguori, Arnaldo. 2022. La formazione del governo Meloni è la seconda più veloce della storia italiana. Quotidiano Nazionale, 22 October. Mair, Peter. 2009. Representative versus responsible government. MPIfG Working Paper, 09/8, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne. Meret, Susi. 2021. Denmark. In Populism and New Patterns of Political Competition in Western Europe, ed. Daniele Albertazzi and Davide Vampa, 168–186. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Openpolis. 2022. La XIX legislatura e gli equilibri del nuovo parlamento: 5. L’esperienza politica dei nuovi deputati e senatori. Available online at: https://www.openpolis.it/esercizi/lesperienza-politica-dei-nuovi-deputati-esenatori/#solo-il-354-degli-eletti-di-fratelli-ditalia-ha-almeno-unesperienzaparlamentare-alle-spalle. Pesole, Dino. 2022. Mes, che cos’è e cosa potrebbe decidere l’Italia. Il Sole 24 Ore, 16 December. Przeworski, Adam. 2019. Crises of Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Robin, Corey. 2017. The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Strøm, Kaare, and Wolfgang C. Muller, eds. 1999. Policy, office or votes? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Vampa, Davide. 2016. Declining partisan representation at the local level: assessing and explaining the strengthening of local lists in Italian municipalities (1995–2014). Local Government Studies 44 (2): 579–597. Vampa, Davide. 2021a. The 2020 regional elections in Italy: sub-national politics in the year of the pandemic. Contemporary Italian Politics 13 (2): 166–180. Vampa, Davide. 2021b. Translating votes into seats and offices: Changing representation and government in the Italian Regions (2018–2020). Contemporary Italian Politics 13 (4): 485–505. Van Spanje, Joost. 2011. Keeping the rascals in: Anti-political-establishment parties and their cost of governing in established democracies. European Journal of Political Research 50 (5): 609–635.

CHAPTER 7

Conclusion: Ten Lessons from Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy

Abstract This chapter lists ten key lessons that can be drawn from the analysis of Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia, FdI). It is shown that FdI’s success stems from a mix of past legacies and current developments seen in much of Europe (and beyond). These include: the rise of sovereignism as a distinctive ideological dimension; the growing role of right-wing female leaders and their reliance on new media; the mainstreaming of populist repertoires; the de-alignment and (partial) re-alignment of voters; the reconfiguration of electoral geographies; and ultimately the possible emergence of an illiberal model of democracy. In short, rather than being an exception, FdI can be seen as one of the most recent and advanced manifestations of a broader process of political change sweeping the West. Keywords Brothers of Italy · Populist radical right · Democracy · Legacies · Political change

This last chapter provides a summary of the main lessons that can be drawn from the analysis of Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia, FdI) developed in the previous chapters. Far from being an isolated case, FdI is today one of the most advanced manifestations of a wave of right-wing populism sweeping Europe. For Italy, this is not a complete novelty, given the political instability that has characterised this country since the 1990s. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Vampa, Brothers of Italy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26132-9_7

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Indeed, one of the first points to note about the rise of Giorgia Meloni is that it came after a sequence of successes (and failures) of other disruptive forces and leaders, from Silvio Berlusconi to Umberto Bossi, from Beppe Grillo to Matteo Salvini. The legacies of a fractured and fluid political system are mixed with innovations stemming from more recent and global trends. Therefore, the final considerations presented below may be valid for many other cases besides Italy. They aim to provide a broader interpretative key to a political phenomenon—the rise of the radical right linked to the success of populist repertoires—whose relevance now extends to almost all so-called ‘mature’ democracies.

Radical Legacies and Populist Innovations It would be inaccurate to describe FdI as an entirely new and unexpected occurrence in the Italian context. We have seen that this party is rooted in a right-wing tradition that has long been defined as neoand post-fascist. Additionally, FdI cannot be explained without looking at the series of populist waves that have swept through Italy over the last thirty years and made its party system even more vulnerable to the challenges of new and increasingly radical ‘political entrepreneurs’ (De Vries and Hobolt 2020). At the same time, the success of Giorgia Meloni and the organisation she founded is also the result of a process of innovation and reworking of the political and programmatic schemes typical of the conservative right, linking them to instances of renewal and antielitist sentiments that are spreading in society. In sum, populism, thanks to its chameleon-like nature (Taggart 2000), has lent more people-centric ideological tools and vocabulary to political traditions, including the postfascist one, whose exaltation of hierarchies is ill-suited to today’s ‘liquid’ society (Bauman 2007).

The Growing Importance of Sovereignism in a Multi-Dimensional Ideological Framework Radical right populism has been defined as an amalgamation of various ideological features (Mudde 2007). Populism’s dichotomous vision of a society divided between good people and bad elites is combined with nativism aimed at defending a closed and homogenous community hostile to outsiders, and authoritarianism, which is not necessarily antidemocratic but espouses an idea of public life based on stable (traditional)

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principles serving as points of orientation (and authority) in a world increasingly exposed to rapid change. FdI includes all these elements in its ideological framework. Furthermore, the party has emphasised the importance of a fourth concept that, while certainly related to the first three, is worth keeping analytically separate given its increasing centrality in political debates. This is the concept of ‘sovereignism’, which goes beyond the domestic sphere and proposes to assert the primacy of the national interest (emanation of the ‘will of the people’) against globalisation and—particularly in the European context—ongoing supranational integration processes, thus stressing the need to ‘take back control’ (Basile and Mazzoleni 2021).

Leaders and Followers: Old Organisational Imperatives and New Media Strategies Despite the decline of parties as organisations and the steady decline in membership and activism (Katz and Mair 2018), structures on the ground still serve to secure ‘persistence’ and ‘electoral sustainability’ and select qualified political personnel (Art 2008; Bolleyer 2013). This does not only apply to so-called mainstream parties but also to parties that challenge established political equilibria (Heinisch and Mazzoleni 2016; Albertazzi and van Kessel 2021). FdI, like many other parties of the populist radical right, has been committed to building an organisation that, to some extent, echoes the hierarchical and ‘presidential’ model so popular on the post-fascist and conservative right. The number of FdI members increased in conjunction with its success at the ballot box and it is therefore difficult to establish a causal link between organisational strength and electoral strength. The fact remains that FdI is one of the most solidly structured radical right parties in contemporary Europe, also thanks to the organisational legacy of its political predecessors: the Italian Social Movement (Movimento Sociale Italiano, MSI) and National Alliance (Alleanza Nazionale, AN). However, it is evident that today the leader’s charisma—which is central to the electoral appeal of the party— is projected externally mainly through social media. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even TikTok provide populist leaders with the opportunity to interact directly with voters, and thus it is not surprising that political communication on these platforms is, especially in the case of populist parties, mainly ‘leader-centric’ (McSwiney 2021).

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Female Leaders in Ma¨ nnerparteien Today, populist radical right parties in the three main EU countries are led by women with backgrounds that are unconventional by conservative standards. Giorgia Meloni, an unmarried mother, is the first female Prime Minister in Italian history. Marine le Pen, a multiple divorcee who broke ties with her father (and political mentor), is a frontrunner of the National Rally (Rassemblement National, RN) and has twice come close to winning the presidency of the French Republic. Alice Weidel has declared that the party she co-leads, the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD), is the ‘only Christian party that still exists’ (Knight 2017) and has repeatedly expressed her critical stance towards same-sex marriage, despite being in a relationship with a woman of Sri Lankan origin living in Switzerland, with whom she has also adopted two children. All this points to interesting developments within parties that were once led and dominated by men (Mudde 2007). The growing role of women and other groups once considered alien to the culture of the radical right raises new questions about how these parties position themselves with respect to issues of gender equality and LGBTQ+ rights. In the French case, it seems that Le Pen’s leadership has led to a general ‘liberalisation’ of the party culture that has also been accompanied by a reduction of the ‘gender gap’ in the RN electorate (Mayer 2015). However, the relationship between leaders, parties and voters remains complex and both FdI and AfD demonstrate that female leaders do not necessarily promote more pro-gender equality ideas, which may in turn result in growing electoral support among female voters.

Systemic Integration and the Importance of Establishing Alliances (And Finding the Right Opponents) FdI demonstrates that in order to increase their influence and gain access to power, populist radical right parties must achieve some level of integration into the political system, not necessarily by accepting its core principles, but by agreeing to establish alliances with other parties (McDonnell and Newell 2011; Zulianello 2020). For Giorgia Meloni, this integration process posed no particular challenges, since she was not a complete outsider. The movement she founded was in fact the result of a split within a coalition (and then party) that had dominated Italian

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politics for much of the 2000s. Thus FdI temporarily left the mainstream and then re-entered it as a protagonist, in a context that was much more receptive to its ideas and slogans. It did so by maintaining a network of alliances with other right-wing parties—even from the opposition, when these parties agreed to govern in heterogeneous coalitions. The case of FdI also shows that it is not only alliances that make the difference for a party of the radical right but also the responses of its main opponents to its growing electoral appeal (Albertazzi and Vampa 2021). Giorgia Meloni benefited greatly from the polarising strategy employed by the leader of the centre-left Democratic Party (Partito Democratico, PD) during the 2022 election campaign. By framing the competition with FdI as a struggle between system stability and anti-system chaos (and the risk of authoritarian drift), the PD gave Giorgia Meloni greater visibility and put her at the centre of the political debate, after having effectively ignored her until 2020. This rapid (and belated) change of strategy towards FdI was hardly credible to the electorate. In France, a similar dynamic emerged between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen (Shields 2021). So far, contrary to what has happened in Italy, the competition between Macron and Le Pen has rewarded the former even though it has still helped strengthen the latter and legitimised her party as the main opposition to the French presidency (Fieschi 2019).

An International Network of Nationalists The growing importance of the international dimension, captured by the concept of sovereignism, is also associated with the phenomenon of radical right populism as a global movement, capable of building alliances between political players in different countries. One could call it an oxymoronic ‘international of nationalists’: populist radical right parties have entered a new international and transnational phase (McDonnel and Werner 2019). The growing role of FdI within the European Conservatives and Progressives (ECR) group is emblematic of a more general process of aggregation of sovereignist forces that use international and transnational institutions to pursue campaigns that speak to national electorates and stand in defence of national interests. The case of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) is emblematic in this respect: the EU offered a political stage to one of its biggest opponents. FdI does not have the same Eurosceptic vehemence as UKIP and has never explicitly called for Italy’s exit from the European Union. Yet it has certainly used the

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European arena to strengthen its role and gain political legitimacy in Italy, while reiterating its opposition to European integration processes whenever these are perceived as a challenge to national sovereignty. The growing international connections of FdI and Giorgia Meloni, however, do not stop at the European level but, especially after 2016, have extended to the United States, where Donald Trump’s presidency and the radicalisation of important sectors of the Republican Party have given new impetus to the formulation of a global model of right-wing populism.

The Complexities of Electoral Geography There is often a tendency to judge the success of parties, including those of the radical right, by their results at national level. To be sure, these are important for identifying general political trends. However, aggregate figures can hide important territorial dynamics in the electoral and political evolution of parties, whose votes shift not only between sectors of society but also between places. In Italy, regional politics has traditionally been quite important, given the existence of well-known territorial divisions: not only the gap between North and South, which is partly socio-economic, but also the presence of different subcultures stemming from long political traditions in large areas of the country (Trigilia 1986). This regional dimension, however, is not exclusive to Italian democracy but affects all multi-level political systems where the national electoral arena is linked to (and may be affected by) the sub-national one. The German and Spanish cases equally demonstrate how territorial dynamics and tensions can influence the ideological-programmatic profile and success of the radical right (León and Scantamburlo 2022; Vampa 2020). Additionally, FdI shows that the growth of a party can be accompanied by major changes in its electoral geography. Indeed, the heirs of Italy’s post-fascist right, which used to be particularly strong in the central and southern regions of the country, have triumphed electorally in 2022 thanks to a huge growth in support in the North. Yet a territorial analysis should not stop at the geographical distribution of the vote across regions. The case of FdI allowed us to examine the existence of an electoral gap between large urban centres and more peripheral areas (Rodden 2019). Contrary to conventional expectations, the radical right is not necessarily rooted in sparsely populated rural areas outside big cities. In Italy, the League and FdI, while being ideologically very close, have for years been positioned on opposite sides of the city-province

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divide, with the former being firmly established in the wealthy peripheral areas of the North and the latter being supported by many voters in the large urban centres of the Centre and South. Also outside Italy, significant differences can be observed between parties with similar political orientations. Thus, for example, the Spanish Vox is more similar to FdI in being an urban party (particularly successful in the capital Madrid), while the RN is a representative of ‘deep’ France (la France profonde) as opposed to cosmopolitan Paris, where Le Pen’s party remains as weak as the League is in Italian cities strongly integrated with European culture and economy, such as Milan or Turin. However, like the regional differences discussed above, the division between city and province is by no means static, as demonstrated by the fact that in 2022 FdI not only grew electorally but also became more ‘provincial’ along with the entire right-wing coalition, thus bringing Italian politics closer to the trends observed most clearly in the US and UK. In short, populist radical right parties are characterised not only by an ideological and sociological multidimensionality but also by a territorial complexity that should be systematically investigated and interpreted in the analysis of their political evolution.

Education: The New Political Divide? Today, more than half of Italian manual workers vote for right-wing parties, FdI being by far the largest one, while the centre-left camp represents mainly public sector employees and pensioners. If a ‘working class’ still exists, it is clearly no longer represented by the left. To be sure, this is not a phenomenon of recent years but part of a long process of which the 2022 election is only the dramatic culmination (Vampa 2009). The success of populist radical right parties in traditional social democratic constituencies is a fairly common feature of many western democracies. However, this does not imply that the radical right only garners the support of the most ‘disadvantaged’ sectors of the electorate. For example, in Italy, the unemployed and precarious workers are more inclined to vote for the Five Star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle, M5S), whose populism is decidedly more inclusive and often combined with ideas that could be defined as left-wing. Moreover, in the main European countries, the populist right has managed to form cross-class coalitions that also include small entrepreneurs and artisans (Ivarsflaten 2005). So it would be incorrect to speak of a simple reversal of roles in class-based politics, where today it is the radical right that

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represents the masses of workers against the left that has betrayed them by embracing globalisation. The picture is more complex and seems to suggest a general re-alignment of the electorate based on transformed dimensions of political conflict. An interesting common feature of many radical right parties today—including FdI and the League in Italy—is their success among voters with lower levels of education, regardless of their social and employment status. So the impact of education on electoral results is no longer connected, as it was in the past, to socio-economic class politics. Today it is perhaps more correct to speak of ‘multidimensional’ or ‘multiconflictual’ politics with education particularly important in structuring socio-cultural political divides, with their focus on issues of identity or morality (Gethin et al. 2022).

Populists Competing for Votes We are used to thinking of the electoral competition of recent years as a struggle between ‘mainstream’ and populists. This is how the leaders of the Italian centre-left still tried to frame their campaign for the 2022 general election. The idea was that most votes would be contested between a line-up of reassuring and responsible politicians, advocates of gradualism and continuity, on the one hand, and irresponsible forces of populist chaos flirting with authoritarian tendencies, on the other. However, the election results clearly showed that the largest shift of votes occurred within the populist camp, between the right-wing League and FdI. Previously, in the 2019 European election, the League’s triumph had in turn come mainly at the expense of the M5S: another case of electoral shift from populist to populist. So, in increasingly fragmented party systems, not only have established parties ceased to be the main actors in the electoral process, having to respond to the challenge posed by populists, but it is the populists themselves, often divided into several parties, who compete with each other for the votes of often overlapping sectors of the electorate (Albertazzi and Vampa 2021). The French case is in some respects even more striking than the Italian one, since the two parties that had dominated the political scene of the Fifth Republic have been replaced by a new centrist party facing two populist forces on two sides: the RN on the radical right and France Unbowed (La France Insoumise, LFI) on the radical left. Moreover, in 2022 a split in the radical right led to a fight for the same electorate between Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour in the presidential election. Generally, it appears

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increasingly difficult to define precisely where the political mainstream lies—have the populists become the ‘new mainstream’? Has competition between populists become a defining feature of contemporary European democracies?

Between Inclusion-Moderation and Democratic Backsliding FdI’s rise to power certainly marks an important moment in the history of Italy and Western Europe. For the first time since World War II, a leader of a radical right party with roots in post-fascist history has won a democratic election and become prime minister. However, Italy has long accustomed us to firsts. Already in 2018 two populist parties had gone into government, the M5S and the League, both highly critical of the EU and radical in their demands for change in the economic and socio-cultural spheres. Even before then, the various governments led by Silvio Berlusconi had brought a wave of populism, accompanied by politics centred on the cult of the leader and also concerns about the obscure links between business and political interests. The transformation projects proposed at the beginning of all these previous populist experiments resulted in failures or had to be substantially moderated in light of numerous domestic and international constraints. Giorgia Meloni’s government seems to be no exception and appears even more cautious than its populist predecessors. A few symbolic initiatives were accompanied by policies that did not substantially break with decisions taken by previous consensus-based or technocratic-led governments. Attempts to introduce new economic and taxation policies were on the whole blocked. At the time of writing, far-reaching institutional reforms or changes in the sphere of individual rights have yet to materialise. Therefore, one could say that FdI confirms the ‘inclusion-moderation’ thesis, whereby once fully integrated into the system and placed in government, especially if in a leading position, a populist radical right party tends to moderate its stances and make compromises. However, while it is true that all the populists who have governed Italy several times over the last three decades have failed to implement their transformative agendas, their disruptive incursions into the political system have deeply affected the democratic fabric of the country, which today appears more fragile than ever. The Italian electorate seems increasingly disappointed and distant from politics after years of unrealistic and

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unfulfilled promises. In the 2022 election, only 63 per cent of voters went to the polls, almost 10 per cent less than in 2018 and 20 per cent less than in 2006, signalling a steeper decline in participation than that experienced by most Western European countries. Although it may be hasty or inaccurate to accuse Meloni, FdI and the right as a whole of taking advantage of this general apathy and demobilisation, Italy is undoubtedly going through a critical period for the resilience of its institutions. This could ultimately lay the social, political and cultural foundations for a process of ‘democratic backsliding’ with the full triumph of illiberal ideas and practices (Haggard and Kaufman 2021). This book focusing on Brothers of Italy has outlined the beginning of a new phase in the far from linear history of Italian and European democracy; it will be up to others to analyse and interpret its future developments.

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Ivarsflaten, Elizabeth. 2005. The Vulnerable Populist Right Parties: No Economic Realignment Fuelling Their Electoral Success. European Journal of Political Research 44 (3): 465–492. Katz, Richard, and Peter Mair. 2018. Democracy and the Cartelization of Political Parties. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Knight, Ben. 2017. AfD Leader: German Churches are too Political. Deutsche Welle 21 (December). León, Sandra, and Matthias Scantamburlo. 2022. Right-Wing Populism and Territorial Party Competition: The Case of the Alternative for Germany. Party Politics. OnlineFirst, https://doi.org/10.1177/13540688221122336. Mayer, Nonna. 2015. The Closing of the Radical Right Gender Gap in France? French Politics 13 (4): 391–414. McDonnell, Duncan, and Annika Werner. 2019. International Populism: The Radical Right in the European Parliament. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. McDonnell, Duncan, and Jim Newell. 2011. Outsider Parties in Government in Western Europe. Party Politics 17 (4): 443–452. McSwiney, Jordan. 2021. Social Networks and Digital Organisation: Far Right Parties at the 2019 Australian Federal Election. Information, Communication & Society 24 (10): 1401–1418. Mudde, Cas. 2007. Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rodden, Jonathan A. 2019. Why Cities Lose: The Deep Roots of the Urban-Rural Political Divide. New York: Basic Books. Shields, James. 2021. France. In Populism and New Patterns of Political Competition in Western Europe, edited by Daniele Albertazzi and Davide Vampa, 92–111. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Taggart, Paul. 2000. Populism. Buckingham: Open University Press. Trigilia, Carlo. 1986. Small-Firm Development and Political Subcultures in Italy. European Sociological Review 2 (3): 161–175. Vampa, Davide. 2009. The Death of Social Democracy: The Case of the Italian Democratic Party. Bulletin of Italian Politics 1 (2): 347–370. Vampa, Davide. 2020. Competing Forms of Populism and Territorial Politics: The Cases of Vox and Podemos in Spain. Journal of Contemporary European Studies 28 (3): 304–321. Zulianello, Mattia. 2020. Varieties of Populist Parties and Party Systems in Europe: From State-of-the-Art to the Application of a Novel Classification Scheme to 66 Parties in 33 Countries. Government and Opposition 55 (2): 327–347.

Index

A Abascal, Santiago, 55–58, 77 Abortion, 29, 31, 32, 115 Albertazzi, Daniele, 7, 9, 11, 17, 22, 40, 54, 57, 63–65, 69, 75, 76, 88, 120, 127, 129, 132 Almirante, Giorgio, 40 Alternative for Germany (AfD), 34–36, 54–56, 75–77, 100–103, 120–122, 128 Art, David, 49 Atreju, 50, 73 Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), 71, 99, 120 Authoritarianism, 10, 16, 17, 19, 25, 33, 35, 36, 126 Azione Giovani, 6

B Backsliding, 116, 134 Bannon, Steve, 73 Berlusconi, Silvio, 2, 5–7, 11, 16, 21, 28, 40, 41, 50, 52, 56, 62, 64,

65, 69, 71, 83, 89, 107, 111, 112, 119, 126, 133 Bolleyer, Nicole, 41, 57, 127 Bossi, Umberto, 16, 40, 126

C Cabinet, 7, 107, 112, 116, 120 Centralism, 36, 41 Chamber of Deputies, 2, 42, 62, 106, 108–110, 113 Chapel Hill expert survey (CHES), 10, 19, 20, 22, 25, 26, 34, 35, 49, 55, 56 Charisma, 48, 49, 127 Chega, 99 Coefficient of Variation (CV), 84–86, 100–102 Congress, 42, 44, 72 Conservatism, 113 Conte, Giuseppe, 49–53, 112 COVID-19, 32, 42, 52 Crosetto, Guido, 7, 84

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INDEX

D Danish People’s Party (DF), 72, 120 Decentralisation, 20, 22, 35, 36 De Lange, Sarah, 18, 49 Democracy, 3, 4, 10, 12, 17, 27, 30, 31, 33, 42, 56, 62, 72, 74, 87, 90, 96, 98, 99, 103, 114, 119, 121, 126, 130, 131, 133, 134 Democratic Party (PD), 20–25, 46, 47, 49–53, 63, 69, 70, 74, 82, 85, 86, 88, 89, 91–98, 106–108, 110, 116–118, 129 Demos & Pi, 50, 90 Draghi, Mario, 31, 51, 70, 91 E Eatwell, Roger, 18, 49 Education, 32, 83, 93, 94, 96, 101–103, 113, 119, 132 Elite, 3, 7, 9, 16, 21, 27, 63, 93, 101, 126 European Conservatives and Reformists Party (ECR), 9, 11, 64, 71, 72, 74, 76, 77, 116, 117, 129 European election, 11, 28–30, 71, 82, 83, 91, 92, 96–99, 102, 116, 132 European Union (EU), 10, 11, 18, 21, 23, 27, 29, 31, 33, 58, 63, 64, 72, 74, 77, 99, 120, 128, 114, 119, 129, 133 F Facebook, 52, 53, 55, 57, 58, 127 Fascism, 4 Federalism, 22, 75 Fidesz, 72 Fini, Gianfranco, 5–7, 40, 50 Five Star Movement (M5S), 7, 17, 20, 21, 23–25, 27, 29, 46,

48–53, 63, 69, 70, 74, 75, 82, 85, 86, 89–98, 106–112, 116–118, 131–133 Forza Italia (FI), 5, 7, 11, 17, 19–26, 41, 45, 46, 49, 53, 56, 63–70, 72, 82, 84, 86, 89, 91–98, 106–110, 112, 117, 118 France, 11, 34, 54, 75, 99, 101, 102, 115, 120, 122, 129, 131, 132 France Unbowed (LFI), 132 G Gender, 29, 31, 58, 83, 93, 94, 103, 115, 119, 122, 128 General election, 2, 5, 11, 26, 28, 29, 52, 53, 55, 56, 64, 66, 69, 82–86, 90–93, 96, 98, 101, 106–108, 111, 132 Geography, 3, 83, 86, 87, 119, 130 Germany, 11, 54, 56–58, 75, 99, 101, 121, 122 Globalisation, 10, 18, 29, 127, 132 Goodwin, Matthew, 18 Government, 2, 4–7, 10, 11, 17, 22, 25, 30–32, 34, 62, 63, 65, 66, 68–70, 74, 90–92, 106–108, 111–116, 118–120, 133 Grillo, Beppe, 7, 16, 17, 49, 69, 86, 126 H Heinisch, Reinhard, 10, 41, 127 I Identity and Democracy (ID), 71, 72, 76, 77 Ideological diamond, 10, 16, 22, 28 Ideology, 3, 10, 16, 17, 21, 25, 29, 31, 51, 71, 74 Immigration, 10, 16, 20, 21, 25, 27, 29, 30, 33, 35, 36, 75, 115

INDEX

Inclusion-moderation, 62, 116, 119, 133 IPSOS, 91–93, 95 Italian Social Movement (MSI), 4, 5, 7, 8, 22, 40–42, 45, 49, 54, 73, 83, 84, 86, 88, 89, 127 Ivaldi, Gilles, 8, 18, 34

K Katz, Richard, 8, 40, 44, 107, 127

L La Russa, Ignazio Benito Maria, 108 Law and Justice (PiS), 72, 77 Law and order, 10, 20–23, 35, 75 Lazio, 44, 84, 85 Leadership, 3, 5, 7–10, 30, 40–42, 48–50, 55–57, 128 League, 11, 19–26, 34–36, 40, 41, 45, 46, 49, 52, 54–57, 63, 64, 66–71, 74–77, 82, 84–86, 88–95, 97–103, 106, 108–113, 116–118, 122, 130–133 Le Pen, Marine, 35, 55–58, 71–73, 101, 120, 122, 128, 129, 131, 132 Letta, Enrico, 52, 53, 70 Liberalism, 19 Lipset, Seymour, 87 Logo, 2, 5, 50

M Madrid, 131 Mair, Peter, 8, 10, 17, 40, 44, 107, 127 Manifesto, 10, 19, 22, 24–30, 32, 114 Manifesto Corpus (MARPOR), 10, 19, 22–25 Mayor, 42, 66, 68, 97, 118

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Mazzoleni, Oscar, 4, 8, 10, 17, 18, 41, 127 McDonnell, Duncan, 7, 9, 11, 17, 49, 63, 64, 71, 72, 120, 128 Meloni, Giorgia, 2, 3, 6–11, 16, 19, 21, 25, 26, 31, 33, 36, 40–42, 44, 45, 47–58, 62–66, 68–74, 77, 83, 85, 86, 89–93, 98, 99, 101, 106, 107, 111–116, 118–120, 122, 126, 128–130, 134 Membership, 11, 40, 41, 44–46, 54–57, 117, 127 Ministry, 46, 84, 85, 97, 113 Monti, Mario, 7 Mudde, Cas, 4, 5, 8, 9, 17, 18, 48, 58, 126, 128 N National Alliance (AN), 5–8, 40–45, 45, 50, 54, 62, 64–68, 73, 83, 84, 88, 89, 127 National directorate, 42 National executive, 41, 42, 44 National Rally (RN), 34–36, 54–56, 71, 75–77, 99, 101–103, 120–122, 128 Nativism, 10, 16, 17, 33, 36, 126 NATO, 32 Negative integration, 11, 63, 76 North, 84–86, 88, 99, 109, 119, 130, 131 Northern League (LN), 7, 17, 40, 64, 86, 88 O Openpolis, 109, 112 Orbán, Viktor, 72–74 Organisation, 3, 6, 8, 10, 11, 26–28, 41, 42, 44–50, 52, 54–57, 73, 85, 115, 126, 127

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P Paris, 101, 102, 115, 121, 122, 131 Parliament, 11, 19, 42, 45, 62, 72, 76, 106, 108, 109, 113, 118, 119 Party system, 4, 8, 11, 47, 63, 87, 106, 111, 126, 132 People of Freedom, 2, 5, 21, 45, 62, 73, 82, 112 Policy position, 18, 22, 28 Popolo della Libertà (PdL), 2, 6, 7, 21, 45, 62–67, 71, 73, 82, 83, 89, 107, 112 Populism, 8–10, 16–18, 21, 30, 31, 33, 34, 36, 53, 64, 71–73, 90, 98, 125, 126, 129–131, 133 Post-Fascist, 2–5, 9, 12, 17, 19, 27, 40, 62, 71, 83, 88, 111, 118, 119, 126, 127, 130, 133 Presidentialism, 40, 41, 49 Prime minister, 2, 49–52, 72, 91, 107, 108, 111–113, 115, 128, 133 Procaccini, Nicola, 77 Programme, 18, 21, 25, 27–33, 45 Progress Party (FrP), 120 Protectionism, 20, 23, 29, 31, 35, 36 Provincial versus urban vote, 87 Public office, 11, 44, 45, 107, 119 R Red Belt, 84, 85 Region, 44, 84–87, 99, 102, 118, 122 Renzi, Matteo, 50, 69 Representation, 3, 10, 17, 108, 109, 116 Republican Party, 73, 130 Rodden, Jonathan A., 10, 87, 130 Rokkan, Stein, 87 Rome, 44, 47, 50, 68, 69, 73, 84–86, 88, 101, 115

S Salvini, Matteo, 11, 16, 22, 26, 47, 49–53, 55–58, 65, 69, 71, 72, 82, 85, 86, 90, 91, 98, 99, 126 Senate, 42, 106, 108, 109, 113 Social media, 11, 32, 48, 51–55, 57, 58, 127 South, 84–86, 88, 99, 113, 117, 130, 131 Sovereignism, 8, 10, 17, 18, 21, 22, 27, 29, 30, 33, 36, 127, 129 Spain, 11, 34, 54, 75, 77, 99, 120–122 Statute, 11, 41, 42, 44 Sweden Democrats (SD), 72, 99, 120 Swiss People’s Party (SVP), 99

T Taxation, 28, 31, 115, 133 Trump, Donald, 73, 74, 130 Twitter, 52, 53, 55, 57, 58, 127

U Ukraine, 32, 33, 113 United Kingdom (UK), 71, 87, 90, 129, 131 United States (US), 73, 87, 130, 131

V Vox, 34–36, 54–57, 72, 74–77, 100–103, 120–122, 131

W Weidel, Alice, 55, 57, 58, 128 Welfare, 18, 23, 25, 28, 29, 31, 32, 34 Werner, Annika, 9, 11, 64, 71, 72, 129

INDEX

Z Zemmour, Eric, 73, 132

Zulianello, Mattia, 11, 62, 63, 72, 74–77, 90, 92, 128

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