Case notes
Forza Italia
Forza Italia (Let’s Go Italy, FI) is the party of Milanese Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Berlusconi is a billionaire media magnate famous before his entry into politics for his ownership of multiple private TV stations and the AC Milan football club. FI’s entry into Italian politics occupied the space left by the collapsing Cristian Democrats in the early 1990s, and after a strong performance in its debut election in 1994 FI formed a short-lived government with the NA and LN. With these coalition allies (although intermittently with LN) Berlusconi was Prime Minister between 1994-95, 2001-2006, and 2008-2011, alternating mainly with centre left rivals. FI merged with the National Alliance (formerly the populist MSI) in 2009, creating the “People of Freedom” (Popoli della Libertà, PDL). As this party was still led by Berlusconi and the FI rank and file constituted the bulk of its members and voters (McDonnell, 2013), we have characterised the PDL as a continuation of FI rather than a new party.
Berlusconi’s entrance into Italian politics came at a point when trust in established parties and politicians was at an all-time low due to the Tangentopoli corruption scandal. Due to this context, he built his political brand on a distinctly “anti-politics” (Ruzza and Fella 2011, 166; Tarchi 2008, 86; Pasquino 2007; Raniolo 2006, 437; Fella and Ruzza 2013, 39) populism that presented himself as a reluctant saviour of the people against the “old politics” of the other parties (Tarchi 2008, 86; Hopkin and Paolucci 1999, 325) and the “political elites” (Fella and Ruzza 2013, 40) (OTH_POLCLASS = 3). Although he occasionally attacked big business (Ignazi 2005, 335), Berlusconi and FI were thoroughly neoliberal and pro-entrepreneur (Ruzza and Fella 2011, 168), advocating lower taxes and constantly accusing the incompetent political class of meddling in the private sector’s affairs (Tarchi 2008, 96). A big part of Berlusconi’s own identity is of the self-made billionaire (OTH_ECONOMIC = 1).
While a Eurosceptic attitude has always been present in FI (Raniolo 2006, 442), it is not clear that this or any other foreign foe reached the level of “other” to the “people” in the party’s populist rhetoric (OTH_FOREIGN = 1), which was one of the main differences between FI and its coalition partner LN. Another was its less ethnocentric approach to defining “the people” (Ruzza and Fella 2011, 166; Tarchi 2008, 85–86) (OTH_ETHNIC = 1). Berlusconi’s immigration politics is a little bit more difficult. While his government introduced controversial legislation restricting immigration (Geddes 2008), this was attributed more to FI’s coalition partners (LN and NA), and it is not clear in the literature that anti-immigrant discourse was an important party of the party’s campaigns (OTH_IMMIGRANTS = 1). This should be confirmed.
While the coalition governments led by Berlusconi are considered “right” (an important term in Italy given its association with fascism since the war), he and FI are usually considered “centre-right” in the literature for their moderate conservatism (Sapelli 1997, 179; Tarchi 2008, 84; Ignazi 2004, 147; Zaslove 2011, 61; D’Alimonte 2019, 122; Verbeek and Zaslove 2015, 306) (LRPOSITION = CR). FI was, especially early on, dependent on the personality of Berlusconi (Hopkin and Paolucci 1999, 324; Raniolo 2006; Ignazi 2004, 147; 2005, 335; Ruzza and Fella 2011, 166; Tarchi 2008, 86; McDonnell 2013, 220), who presented himself as a savour of Italy unconnected with the establishment (Zaslove 2011, 61). McDonnell suggests that this has continued under the PDL (McDonnell 2013). While FI was originally little more than an arm of Berlusconi’s business interests (Hopkin and Paolucci 1999, 321), several scholars claim that the party attempted to become more institutionalised and less leader-dependent in the late 1990s (Zaslove 2011, 61; Raniolo 2006, 441). This however this is not enough to reduce the CHARISMA coding of FI down from 3 for its duration.
Berlusconi build a “politics of doing” to contrast the accused “politics of chatting” of the political class (Fella and Ruzza 2013, 40), which involved pushing back against state institutions that checked on executive power. From 1994, the judiciary in particular was constantly accused of being partisan, corrupt and inefficient (Ignazi 2005, 335; Tarchi 2008, 95; Verbeek and Zaslove 2016, 306). Berlusconi’s ownership of such a large section of the media (in addition to his hostility to critical media) also constituted a threat to media freedom vis-à-vis the government (Statham 1996, 91). This is enough to consider FI/PDL a mild threat to liberal democratic norms, even if not an outright threat to democracy (LIBDEMNORMS = 2). While Berlusconi was very well-connected to the previous governments, he had no actual politics experience, and therefore is coded as 1 on INSIDER in 1994, and 3 afterwards.
Lega Nord / Lega
Lega Nord (Northern League, LN) was founded in 1991 out of a number of regional “legas” in northern Italy advocating for more political autonomy from Rome. For most of its life it has been led and dominated by founder Umberto Bossi. The party drifted in and out of partnership with Forza Italia in the 1990s – initially standing together in the breakthrough 1994 election, then bitterly falling out with Berlusconi after a few months in office, before re-joining in 2001. It has for most of its life advocated federalism (even secessionism) to protect the “Padania” northern region. In 2013 LN was taken over by Mateo Salvini, and its identity shifted away from its regionalist origins and toward a more national and non-secessionist profile – as evidenced by its dropping the “Nord” from its name to become simply the “Lega” before the 2018 elections.
Alongside its demand for regional autonomy in the late 1980s, the original LN developed a populist opposition to the dominant political parties in Rome who formed a cordon sanitaire against several of the Lega’s early elections. Bossi railed against the incompetence and corruption of the “partitocrazia” in Rome (Gilbert 1993, 100; Albertazzi, Giovannini, and Seddone 2018, 648; Ignazi 2004, 153; 2005, 345; Fella and Ruzza 2006, 180; Ruzza and Fella 2011, 165), in part riding a wave of anti-establishment sentiment after the corruption scandals of the late 1980s (see Tarchi 2008). In Ignazi’s words, “the Lega offered itself to the northern ‘honest and laborious’ people as a sanctuary from the sleaze, corruption and selfishness of the traditional parties and politics” (Ignazi 2005, 345). Although Salvini shifted the geography of the “elite” from Rome to include Brussels (Vampa 2017, 34), this anti-political class rhetoric has continued under his leadership (OTH_POLCLASS = 3).
The Lega’s early platform of regional autonomy was rooted in both the ideology of devolution and a hostility to non-northern cultural/ethnic others: initially Southern Italian immigrants to the North and later immigrants from developing countries, in particular North Africa (Betz 1994, 122–23; Ignazi 2004, 153; Fella and Ruzza 2006, 180; Ruzza and Fella 2011, 165; Zaslove 2011, 57; Furlong 1992, 354). While Betz mentions that Bossi and the party attempted to moderate xenophobic rhetoric in the early 1990s, there was clearly enough explicit anti-Islamic and anti-African discourse in the party to warrant 3 on both OTH_IMMIGRANTS and OTH_ETHNIC in the 1990s under his leadership (Giordano 2004, 69; Woods 1992, 60; Ignazi 2004, 154; Tarchi 2008, 85; Fremeaux and Albertazzi 2002, 154; McDonnell 2006, 129). Under Salvini this has continued
There are a number of relevant points regarding OTH_FOREIGN. Under Bossi the Lega “ferociously criticised” the USA for its financial capitalism and pro-globalisation imperialism. However after 9/11 this subsided as Islam became a more important threat and the USA an ally (Ignazi 2004, 155; see also Verbeek and Zaslove 2015, 533). Interestingly the party was very pro-European as it considered the EU as advantageous to regional safeguards (Verbeek and Zaslove 2015, 531–32), before turning sharply Eurosceptic from 1998 (Kritzinger, Cavatorta, and Chari 2004, 958; McDonnell 2006, 128–29). It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when anti-EU rhetoric reached the point of a 3 on our coding scheme, but Giodano suggests the 2001 election as the best candidate (Giordano 2004, 73). For this reason the party’s OTH_FOREIGN coding elevates from 2 to 3 in that year. Under Salvini, hostility to the EU has grown to become an even stronger component of the Lega’s populist discourse (Vampa 2017; Brunazzo and Gilbert 2017, 625), which it now accused of being “totalitarian” (Albertazzi, Giovannini, and Seddone 2018).
While the party under Bossi had a low-tax liberal economic outlook that valorised small businesses and small entrepreneurs (Bull and Gilbert 2001, 90; Zaslove 2011, 57), there are some scholars who claim that this included attacks on big business, banks and capital who stood in the way of the small northern producer (Tarchi 2008, 90–91; Biorcio 2003, 72–73; Bull and Gilbert 2001; McDonnell 2006, 128). This seems sufficient to code LN 2 on OTH_ECONOMIC under Bossi’s leadership, but as sources on Salvini’s leaderhip make no mention of this, we have dropped this down to 1 from 2013.
Ignazi suggests that the early LN should be considered somewhat centrist (Ignazi 2004, 153–54; see also Verbeek and Zaslove 2016, 306). However the bulk of the literature identifies it as far right from its inception (LRPOSITION = FR). Bossi’s charismatic and “demagogic” leadership defined the party (Fella and Ruzza 2006, 180; Ruzza and Fella 2011, 159; Gilbert 1993, 100; Ignazi 2004, 153; Tarchi 2008, 90; McDonnell 2016), speaking with a “language that was clear, practical, evoking the everyday life of ordinary people” (Biorcio 2003, 84; see also McCarthy 1997, 343; Fremeaux and Albertazzi 2002, 150) and possessing an “uncanny ability to mobilise voters” (Zaslove 2011, 58). According to McDonnell, Bossi is “held to possess extraordinary personal qualities and a fiuto politico (political sixth sense) which put his actions and U-turns beyond reproach” (McDonnell 2006, 130). The party's leader-dependence is equally true under the personal leadership of Salvini as it was under Bossi (Albertazzi, Giovannini, and Seddone 2018, 651), when charismatic leadership was necessary to overcome the contradictions of the party’s expansion into the south. However the party has become more institutionalised over time (McDonnell and Vampa 2016), and after Bossi stepped down in 2008 it seems more worthy of being coded 2 on CHARISMA (3 before this).
According to Ignazi (Ignazi 2004, 154–55), the Lega has a history of violent party propaganda, the denigration of rules and institutions that it claimed hindered the people’s will, and even a paramilitary of sorts in the Camicie Verdi (“green shirts”) who staged mass ritual events and “Padana Patrols” (Biorcio 2003, 90). Lega members and leaders have occasionally used violent rhetoric to discuss the party’s political rivals and immigrants, but there is not quite enough evidence of this to elevate it above a 2 on LIBDEMNORMS by the standards of other parties so coded. As the party participated briefly in the post 1994 Berlusconi government, it is coded 2 on INSIDER since that election. However as Salvini had no part in that government, we’ve taken it back down to 1 after he took control of the party.
Five Star Movement
The Five Star Movement, (Movimento 5 Stella, M5S or FSM) is the creation of comedian Beppe Grillo. Grillo had commentated on politics since the 1970s, and was noted for his sharp attack on ruling politicians (Cremonesi 2017, 253). He became something of an underground figure after being kicked off public television in the 1980s for being too critical of Socialist Prime Minister Bettino Craxi, and in 2005 he formed a highly successful political blog (Bortoluzzi and Semino 2016). His informal following grew into a movement via both performances and online organisation. Starting around 2007 Grillo – by all accounts an “explosive speaker” (Ruggiero 2012, 317) – held a series of “V-Day” rallies (unofficially vaffanculo, “fuck off”) that attracted large audiences in town squares (Tronconi 2018, 164). Simultaneously, his blog readership was transformed into a sophisticated platform for polling members on policy stances via the new “Rousseau” software and linking members with each other via the “Meetup” website. FSM started to run candidates in 2010, and broke out in the 2013 general elections to become the most voted party with 25.5%. After years of resolutely ruling out any form of coalition with other parties, its increased success in the 2018 election (32%) led to a “populist coalition” with the far-right Lega, and after the collapse of that coalition in 2019, with the Democratic Party.
M5S’s most important “other” is the political class, namely the established parties, which it described as one of two “castes” ruling the country unaccountably (the other being the media) (Bordignon and Ceccarini 2015, 455; Mosca 2014, 42). As an “anti-political” (Fella and Ruzza 2013, 39; Maggini 2013, 2), “anti-establishment” (Mosca 2014, 44) and “anti-system” (Fabbrini and Lazar 2013, 110) movement, it considered all the parties to be essentially the same (Bortoluzzi and Semino 2016, 2), and ran on slogans like “all politicians have to go home” and “all professional politicians are corrupt” (Hartleb 2013, 139). Considering itself a “free association of citizens” rather than a political party (Lanzone 2014, 68; Cosenza 2014, 90), Grillo claimed political parties and representative democracy itself were dead as instruments for serving citizens’ interests, and that MPs should merely be passive servants of the people’s demands (Diamanti 2014, 4). In his words, “We want 100% of Parliament, not 20% or 25% or 30%. When the movement gets to 100%, when the citizens become the state, the movement will no longer need to exist” (Manucci and Amsler 2018, 18). Eschewing any form of ideological pedigree, he therefore chose politicians on the basis of their ordinariness rather than any kind of political experience or leadership (Bordignon and Ceccarini 2015, 458). In campaigns, Grillo also used his considerable rhetorical skill to personally demean leaders of other parties (Bortoluzzi and Semino 2016; Franzosi, Marone, and Salvati 2015, 110), including their private lives (Hartleb 2013, 139), and maintained this high level of antagonism after forming government (Corso 2019, 463). All of this clearly warrants 3 for OTH_POLCLASS.
Aside from this very consistent opposition to the political class, the ideological and programmatic profile of the M5S is extremely difficult to pinpoint. A number of analyses suggest that the movement is somewhat left wing (Hartleb 2013, 139; Mudde 2016, 15) or “left libertarian” (Verbeek and Zaslove 2016, 307), which may be due to Grillo’s initial focus on environmentalism and sustainability, the movement’s linkages with the anti-globalisation discourses of the early 2000s, and the fact that many of its initial members were members of left wing associations (Manucci and Amsler 2018, 7). However the majority of scholars consider the movement more difficult to categorise, describing its ideology as “catch all” (Mosca 2014, 46), “post-ideological” (Maggini 2013, 7; Manucci and Amsler 2018), “eclectic” (Mosca and Tronconi 2019), out of the left-right dimension” (Chiaramonte et al. 2018, 482). Grillo himself has described the movement as “beyond” the categories of left and right (Bordignon and Ceccarini 2015, 460; Bortoluzzi and Semino 2016, 3). This difficulty is in part due to Grillo’s focus on somewhat technical and “post-material” issues like transport, water, and internet access (Cremonesi 2017, 254; Corso 2019, 469), but also due to the seemingly contradictory nature of its policy stances on traditionally contentious matters. On economic matters for example, Grillo and the party have advocated some left-leaning policies in favour of state intervention and a universal income and opposition to austerity, but simultaneously taken an anti-tax line that comes close to defending tax evasion (Mosca and Tronconi 2019, 1276; Bordignon and Ceccarini 2015, 460). The party shows similar ambivalence to immigration and Europe (see below). Manucci and Amsler, who have focused directly on the movements’ ideological profile, define it as a “‘purely populist’ party because it has no thick ideologies attached to its thin ideological core” (Manucci and Amsler 2018, 3). With this in mind, the party is categorised as C on LRPOSITION.
This ideological and policy ambiguity makes its opposition to “others” aside from politicians equally difficult to determine. Occasionally Grillo’s rhetoric has targeted “global financial powers” (Miconi 2015, 1044) and the national telecommunications company Telecom (Manucci and Amsler 2018, 7) and “some expressions of economic oligarchy” (Lanzone 2014, 62), but on the whole these groups only seem relevant when they relate to the Italian political class’s corruption, and it does not appear that the movement’s discourse should register on the OTH_ECONOMIC scale (= 1).
Likewise, the party’s position on OTH_IMMIGRANTS is difficult. Early on the party completely avoided the sensitive subject (Mosca 2014, 47; Turner 2013, 206; Mosca and Tronconi 2019, 1277)(Mosca, 2014:47; Turner, 2013:206; Mosca & Tronconi, 2019:1277), but according to D’Alimonte, when Salvini started to voice strong anti-immigrant sentiment in the 2018 election Grillo “followed suit” (D’Alimonte 2019, 117). Other scholars have noted that the Grillo and the party have occasionally veered toward anti-immigrant policies (Bordignon and Ceccarini 2015, 460). However this does not necessarily mean that immigrants are an “other” to the party’s version of the people, something that is captured best by Bulli and Soare:
the M5S’s stances on immigration are essentially filtered by their emphasis on the people’s will. There is no a priori exclusion either in terms of welfare chauvinism or in terms of a cultural or religious threat. It is mainly the denunciation of the way immigration is managed by the corrupt national elites and/or the technocratic elites in Brussels that characterises the M5S discourse (Bulli and Soare 2018, 149).
This makes it difficult to categorise the party as anything other than a 1 on OTH_IMMIGRANTS. OTH_ETHNIC is easier to code (=1), given that all scholars agree that ethnic identity and xenophobia does not play a part in the Movement’s discourse (Corso 2019, 464; Lanzone 2014, 63; Mosca and Tronconi 2019, 1277). There is also no evidence to suggest OTH_MILITARY populism (= 1)
The party’s attitude to Europe is also very murky, and has been the subject of much debate in the literature (Cremonesi 2017, 257). Like on other matters, Grillo initially avoided taking a stance on Europe (Mosca 2014, 47), and has always tried to have it both ways (Franzosi, Marone, and Salvati 2015, 113). Similar to immigration, Grillo’s criticism of Brussels often seems to be filtered through his opposition to the Italian political class; for example by criticising Europe for funding Italian politicians and excusing their corruption (Corbetta and Vignati 2014, 56–57). Grillo has called for a referendum on the Euro, and his speeches suggest he is opposed to the currency (Corbetta and Vignati 2014, 58). While this is not OTH_FOREIGN populism per se, several scholars point out that since the 2014 European elections, Grillo and the party have taken a harsher line against European elites. Franzosi, Marone and Salvati claim that the party represented Prime Minister Mateo Renzi as “an agent of German interests in Italy”, and that members sometimes lashed out at the “brussels caste” in a similar way as they did against the Italian establishment (Franzosi, Marone, and Salvati 2015, 116). While this a difficult call, we’ve decided to code 2 for OTH-FOREIGN in 2018 (1 for 2013).
All analysis suggests that Grillo is central to the movement’s meaning and identity (Bentivegna 2014; Lanzone 2014; Mosca 2014, 43), and FSM has been called a “personal party” (Bordignon and Ceccarini 2015, 465) and a “one man show” (Hartleb 2013, 140). Grillo has often been accused of authoritarian management of the movement (Hartleb 2013, 139), and some members have been thrown out for voicing these concerns (Bordignon and Ceccarini 2015, 458; Bortoluzzi and Semino 2016, 3). He personally appoints all of the party’s representatives (Miconi 2015), and the Movement’s formal documents certify that he is the sole “guarantor” of the party’s brand (Cosenza 2014, 90). While some question the degree to which it can be called a personal party due to its usage of participatory polling to make policy decisions (Diamanti 2014, 4; Tronconi 2018, 176), in practice these grass roots instruments seem to be “relegated to a marginal role and employed only when compatible with the directions from above” (Manucci and Amsler 2018, 5). Hence the coding of 3 for CHARISMA seems to be clear.
Having never held any national political office, Grillo and M5S are clearly not INSIDERs (=1). Grillo’s vitriolic attacks on the media (Cosenza 2014, 90; Bordignon and Ceccarini 2015, 463), which he has called the other “casta” alongside politicians (Cremonesi 2017, 256), don’t quite rise to the point of threatening liberal democratic norms, and the party does not show any contempt for the rule of law or the judiciary (Corso 2019, 463) (LIBDEMNORMS =1).
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