A sovereignist revolution? Italy’s foreign policy under the “Yellow–Green” government

In Italy, the Five Star Movement (M5S) and the Northern League (LN) formed a coalition government after the legislative elections of March 2018. What has been the actual impact of the populist executive in the Italian foreign policy? Relying on the (few) existing analyses that have developed specific hypotheses on the expected international repercussions of populist parties-ruled governments, the paper examines Italy’s foreign policy under the Italian “Yellow–Green” cabinet (June 2018–August 2019). The manuscript advances three hypotheses. First, the foreign policy of the Conte’s government has been featured by a personalistic and a centralized decision-making process. Second, the Yellow-Green executive has adopted a vocal confrontational stance on the world stage, especially within multilateral frameworks, to “take back control” over national sovereignty. Third, such sovereignist foreign policy was largely symbolic because of “strategic” populist attitudes toward public opinion and due to domestic and international constraints. The manuscript—which is based on secondary and primary sources, such as interviews with former ministers, MPs, and diplomats—aims at offering a new perspective on populist parties and foreign policy, alimenting the rising debate on foreign policy change.

The Territorial Representativeness of Italian Ministerial Elites: From the Regional “Parity Norm” to the Rise of Technocrats

The territorial composition of governments (that is, the geographical origin of its members) has received little attention from political scientists. However, prime ministers, ministers, and junior ministers clearly have a territorial characterization and preferential attachments to specific places that can potentially affect the way decisions are made and resources are allocated. In this article, we focus on these aspects, showing the evolution of the territorial representativeness of Italian governmental elites over the last four decades and proposing some interpretations of its changes. In particular, we describe the transition from a balanced regional representation (the “parity norm”) to a multitude of different patterns of territorial representation that we observe across parties nowadays. We propose three explanations for such changes: the first is based on the transformation of the party system in the nineties, with the emergence of parties such as the Northern League, with a specific regional focus; the second is based on the regionalization of the Italian state and its consequences on political career paths; the third is based on the increasing recruitment of technocrats in ministerial offices.

The League of Matteo Salvini

The Lega Nord (LN – Northern League) has undergone a profound process of transformation since 2013, byreplacing its historical regionalist populism with a new state-wide populist radical right outlook. However,very little is known about how such transformation impacted its organizational model, particularly the masspartyfeatures that characterized it under its founding leader, Umberto Bossi. This article explores theorganizational evolution of the party under Matteo Salvini by means of a qualitative in-depth analysis of 41semi-structured interviews with representatives of the League from four regions (Calabria, Emilia-Romagna,Lombardy and Veneto) and primary documents. It underlines that the LN was turned into a disempoweredand politically inactive “bad company”, charged with the task of paying the debts of the old party, while itsstructure, resources and personnel were poured into a new state-wide organization called League for SalviniPremier. This new League has not simply maintained the key features of the mass-party in the LN’s historicalstrongholds but also pioneered a modern form of this organizational model grounded on the continuousinteraction between digital and physical activism, i.e. phygital activism, which boosts the party’s ability toreach out to the electorate by delivering the image that the League is constantly on the ground. The Leaguehas sought to export this modern interpretation of the mass-party in the South; however, in that area itsorganizational development remains at an embryonic stage, and the party’s nationalization strategy has sofar produced a “quasi-colonial” structure dominated by, and dependent on, the Northern elite.

Anti-Immigration Propaganda in the Northern League and the Freedom Party of Austria

Over the past two decades, populist-radical parties of Western Europe arguably re- vised their propaganda towards the rejection of Muslim migrants with gender-sen- sitive arguments. Among these parties, the Northern League (LN) and the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) achieved their electoral breakthrough thanks to their anti-mi- gration campaigns, which, inter alia, aligned peculiar gender perspectives with long- term attitudes towards ethnicity, welfare and Islam. Drawing on the LN’s and FPÖ’s election programmes, visuals and leader statements from the early 2000s, the present article discusses the common assumptions regarding the populist radical right’s dis- cursive changes towards anti-Islamism. The paper argues that the two parties in the mentioned period forged their propaganda against the rejection of Muslim migrants in religious and gender-sensitive terms, but their ethnic and class-oriented exclusions equally remained. The documents in question also revealed that these parties recent- ly softened their attitudes towards migrant caregivers to preserve traditional gender images in Austria and Italy. The LN’s and FPÖ’s long-term preoccupations with Ital- ian and Austrian women’s roles in worklife, family and reproduction are likely to bring about changes in the conceptions of female migrants in the care sector. The question still remains whether the parties began to tolerate Muslim female workers, since their propaganda, in contrast to the literature, did not suggest the acknowledgement of Muslims in any of the labour fields.

A matter of representation: Populism and the pandemic in Italy

This chapter deals with how populist parties reacted and engaged with the pandemic in Italy, one of the European countries most affected by the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The main argument of this chapter is that populist actors are successful in profiting from a crisis when they can credibly frame it as a failure of representation. The case of Italy, which has been defined as a “country of many populisms” (Tarchi 2008), is particularly insightful. Since the outset of the pandemic at the end of February of 2020, there were two populist parties in the system , both on the right of the political spectrum: the League (former Northern League) and Brothers of Italy. After a first period known as “rally around the flag” the two parties' strategy was somehow similar until they started to diverge substantially in February 2021. In general terms, we can say that—until the breakdown of the second Conte government—the League discursively attacked the government on managing the pandemic, focusing mainly on two issues: migration and the economy. When the League entered the government, supporting Mario Draghi’s cabinet, its discourse changed even if its loyalty to the government has been flaky, at least. This strategy of keeping one foot in and one out of government (see Albertazzi and McDonnell 2005) has always been a trademark characteristic of the (Northern) League since the 1990s. Conversely, Brothers of Italy, while sharing with the League the critique to the government supported by the Democratic Party and the Five Star Movement during the first year, has later changed its strategy becoming the only relevant party in opposition to Mario Draghi’s government. This allowed FdI to systematically challenge the government's actions and depict itself as the only party to act in the interest of the people, opposing to the elite. Even if the pandemic is still unfolding, vote intention shows that Brothers of Italy has become the first Italian party, demonstrating to have taken advantage of the crisis, through a framing that was more functional with its populist appeal and in turn resulted more credible to voters.

Why Did Italian Democracy Become Vulnerable? Theorizing the Change from Neo- to Quasi-Militant Democracy

Embedded in scholarship on militant democracy, this research aims to explain how Italian legislation was positioned to militant democratic measures and how this changed over time. Drawing on the qualitative source analysis and the explanatory frameworks of democratic vulnerability tests two competing theory-grounded assumptions. While the first one assumes that Italian democracy became vulnerable when traditional militant democracy instruments were outmoded, the second considers the misuse or abandonment of those means with social consent as the source of vulnerability. The crisis-induced socioeconomic inequality and uncertainty weakened the Italian political nation. As a result, the latter supported populists in return for a promise of political change. The anti-democratic legal means employed to extend power competencies and prevent the exchange of ruling parties were the way to and the costs of the expected political change. At the same time, the political nation became unable to self-organize to strengthen democracy self-defense. As a result, Italians co-produced a quasi-militant democracy that turned vulnerable because militant democracy measures were misused or not used with the consent of Italians that relinquished their political subjectivity in favor of the Northern League and the Five Star Movement.