Populism Put to the Polarisation Test: The 2019–20 Election Cycle in Italy

Abstract

One year after the birth of an unprecedented government characterised by the strong populist stance of both coalition partners (M5S and the Lega) and amid a growing polarisation in party positions on a number of political issues, the European and regional elections of 2019-20 marked an important test for Italy. After presenting the results of the 2019-20 election cycle, the article investigates the most salient lines of party competition and the varying degrees of polarisation. Our analysis shows two kinds of polarisation: the first being the intra-coalitional polarisation which characterised the first Conte government; while the second, affecting the party system as a whole, is driven by the electoral rise of far-right parties.

Facing a ‘civilisational choice’: Images of Europe by the populist radical right in the 2019 European elections

“…While the former allows tracing a more strategic vision of the political actors, the latter represents its practical development and prioritisation in the course of the election campaign. It should be noted that one of the political forces --Italy's LN --never published its manifesto but claimed to adhere to the program of the European radical right party family (Tronconi & Valbruzzi, 2020) The preference for Twitter compared to other social media networks stems from the fact that the media allows for short and clear messages and is frequently used by all three political parties and is used with the highest intensity. Statuses posted on Twitter are also accompanied by intertextual links to articles and videos in other media, which have also been subject to examination in this paper.…”

Polarisation and Electoral Realignment: The Case of the Right-Wing Parties in Spain

“…Polarisation usually denotes, implicitly or explicitly, three different components: an ideological distance among parties, voters, or both; an element of extremism related to the presence of anti-system forces; and parties' internal homogeneity (Schmitt 2016, p. 3). The most common approach analyses ideological polarisation as based on the party distances on the left-right dimension, although ideological differences may also be captured on other dimensions and relating to specific issues (Lauka, McCoy & Firat 2018;Tronconi & Valbruzzi 2020).…”

Polarisation in Southern Europe: Elites, Party Conflicts and Negative Partisanship

“…Since 2018 party polarisation in Italy has intensified well beyond the usual topics of taxes and public spending or the leaders' personalities, and has also involved dimensions like immigration, further EU integration, and lifestyle policies like same sex marriage. As argued by Tronconi and Valbruzzi (2020), polarisation along these dimensions has been amplified and made evident to the voters, not only by the opposite positions of the Lega and the M5S in cabinet decision-making but also by their permanent electoral competition. As a matter of fact, the two parties took advantage of the EP and regional elections to compete against each other, thus fuelling even more polarisation into the system.…”