Hostname: page-component-6d856f89d9-76ns8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-16T05:48:17.015Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Populism and Italy: a theoretical and epistemological conundrum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 January 2022

Marzia Maccaferri Open the ORCID record for Marzia Maccaferri [Opens in a new window]
Marzia Maccaferri*
Affiliation:
School of Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary University of London
*
Email: m.maccaferri@qmul.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Considered by many scholars to be principally a catch-all or a useless concept, populism has rarely gone hand-in-hand with historical reflection. Building upon ‘the need to return populism to history’, this article offers an overview of the reasons why populism as a concept and as a potential sequence of historical events seems to fit well in post-Second World War Italy, and aims to suggest areas for further research. At the intersection between conceptual history, democratic theory and discourse-historical analysis, the article explores the continuities and discontinuities of Italian populisms, focusing on the resemioticisation of the concept of civil society and its legacy within historical Italian Fascism, especially during the transition to the so-called Second Republic.

Considerato da molti studiosi generico, se non inutile, l'analisi del concetto di populismo è stata raramente accostanta e integrata alla ricerca storica. Partendo dalla ‘necessità di restituire il populismo alla storia’, questo articolo intende offrire una panoramica e suggerire aree per ulteriori indagini, sulle ragioni per cui il populismo come concetto e come potenziale sequenza di eventi storici sembra adattarsi bene alla recente storia d'Italia, specialmente il secondo dopoguerra. Integrando storia concettuale, teoria democratica e analisi storico-discorsiva, l'articolo esplora le continuità e le discontinuità dei populismi italiani, concentrandosi sulla risemantizzazione del concetto di società civile e sulle eredità del fascismo storico italiano, specialmente durante la transizione alla cosiddetta Seconda Repubblica.

Keywords

populismcivil society and populismlegacy of FascismTangentopoli
Type
Special Issue
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 27 , Special Issue 1: Italian populism, ideology, culture and history , February 2022 , pp. 5 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for the Study of Modern Italy

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Albertazzi, D., and McDonnell, D.. 2008. ‘Introduction: The Sceptre and the Spectre’. In Twenty-First Century Populism. The Spectre of Western European Democracy, edited by Albertazzi, D. and McDonnell, D.. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Albertazzi, D. and Zulianello, M.. 2021. ‘Populist Electoral Competition in Italy: the Impact of Sub-National Contextual Factors’. Contemporary Italian Politics 13 (1): 4–30. doi:10.1080/23248823.2020.1871186.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arato, B. 2019. ‘Socialism and Populism’. Constellations 26 (3): 464–74. doi:10.1111/1467-8675.12428.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arditi, B. 2005. ‘Populism as an Internal Periphery of Democratic Politics’. In Populism and the Mirror of Democracy, edited by Panizza, F., 72–98. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Arditi, B. 2007. Politics on the Edges of Liberalism: Difference, Populism, Revolution, Agitation. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berlin, I. 1967. ‘To Define Populism’. Isaiah Berlin Online, Wolfson College, University of Oxford, https://isaiah-berlin.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/sites/www3.berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk/files/2020-12/Bib.111%28b-i%29%20-%20To%20Define%20Populism%20-%20transcript.pdf (accessed 28 October 2021).Google Scholar
Bickerton, C. J. and Invernizzi Accetti, C.. 2014. ‘Democracy Without Parties? Italy After Berlusconi’. The Political Quarterly 85 (1): 23–8. doi:467-923X.2014.12061.x.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bickerton, C. J. and Invernizzi Accetti, C.. 2021. Technopopulism. The New Logic of Democratic Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Biorcio, R. and Natale, P.. 2013. Politica a 5 Stelle. Idee, storia e strategie del movimento di Grillo. Milan: Feltrinelli.Google Scholar
Biorcio, R. and Natale, P.. 2018. Il Movimento 5 Stelle dalla protesta al governo. Milan. Mimesis.Google Scholar
Bonfreschi, L. 2022 (forthcoming). Il partito radicale nella storia italiana. Venice: Marsilio.Google Scholar
Brusenbauch Meislova, M. and Buckledee, S.. 2021. ‘Discursive (Re)construction of Populist Sovereignism by Right-wing Hard Eurosceptic Parties in the 2019 European Parliament Elections. Insights from the UK, Italy, the Czech Republic and Slovakia’. Journal of Language and Politics 20 (6): 825–51. doi:10.1075/jlp.20024.bru.Google Scholar
Caiani, M. and Graziano, P.. 2016. ‘Varieties of Populism: Insights from the Italian Case’. Italian Political Science Review/Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica 46 (2): 243–67. doi:10.1017/ipo.2016.6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caiani, M. and Guerra, S.. 2017. Euroscepticism, Democracy and the Media: Communicating Europe, Contesting Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campani, G. and Pajnik, M.. 2017. ‘Populism in Historical Perspectives’. In Understanding the Populist Shift. Othering in a Europe in Crisis, edited by Lazaridis, G. and Campani, G., 13–30. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Canovan, M. 1981. Populism. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Canovan, M. 1999. ‘Trust the People! Populism and the Two Faces of Democracy’. Political Studies 47 (1): 2–16. doi:10.1111/1467-9248.00184.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Canovan, M. 2002. ‘Taking Politics to the People: Populism as the Ideology of Democracy’. In Democracies and the Populist Challenge, edited by Mény, Y. and Surel, Y., 101–19. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Cantarano, G. 2000. L'antipolitica. Viaggio nell'Italia del disincanto. Rome: Donzelli.Google Scholar
Castelli Gattinara, P. and Froio, C.. 2014. ‘Opposition in the EU and Opposition to the EU: Soft and Hard Euroscepticism in Italy in the Time of Austerity.’ Rising Populism and European Elections. Collection of Selected Contributions. Spring (14).Google Scholar
Chatterjee, P. 2011. Lineages of Political Society: Studies in Postcolonial Democracy. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Corbetta, P. and Gualmini, E.. 2013. Il Partito di Grillo. Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
Corduwener, P. 2017. ‘Challenging Parties and Anti-Fascism in the Name of Democracy: The Fronte dell'Uomo Qualunque and its Impact on Italy's Republic’. Contemporary European History 26 (1): 69–84. doi:10.1017/S0960777316000163.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Cleen, B., Glynos, J. and Mondon, A.. 2018. ‘Critical Research on Populism: Nine Rules of Engagement’. Organization 25 (5): 649–61. doi:10.1177/1350508418768053.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Cleen, B. and Stavrakakis, Y.. 2017. ‘Distinctions and Articulations: A Discourse-Theoretical Framework for the Study of Populism and Nationalism’. Javnost: The Public 24 (4): 301–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Donovan, M. 2015. ‘Berlusconi's Impact and Legacy: Political Parties and the Party System’. Modern Italy 20 (1): 11–24. doi:10.1080/13532944.2014.985582.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eatwell, R. 2017. ‘Populism and Fascism’. In The Oxford Handbook of Populism, edited by Rovira Kaltwasser, C., Taggart, P., Ochoa Espejo, P. and Ostiguy, P., 363–83. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Finchelstein, F. 2010. Transatlantic Fascism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Finchelstein, F. 2017. From Fascism to Populism in History. Oakland: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finchelstein, F. 2020. A Short History of Fascist Lies. Oakland: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Formisano, R. P. 2008. For the People: American Populist Movements from the Revolution to the 1850s. Chapter Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Freeden, M. 2021. ‘Discourse, Concepts, Ideologies. Pausing for Thought’. Journal of Language and Politics 20 (1): 47–61. doi:10.1075/jlp.20051.fre.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Froio, C. and Ganesh, B. 2019. ‘The Transnationalisation of Far-Right Discourse on Twitter’. European Societies 21 (4): 513–39. doi:10.1080/14616696.2018.1494295.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gambarota, P. 2019. ‘Uomo Qualunque: The Transnational Making of Italian Post-War Populism’. The Italianist 39 (1): 44–63. doi:10.1080/02614340.2019.1586318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerbaudo, P. 2018. The Digital Party. Political Organisation and Online Democracy. London: Pluto Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Germani, F. 1978. Authoritarianism, Fascism, and National Populism. New Brunswick: Transaction Books.Google Scholar
Gianolla, C. 2017. ‘Populism, a Thread and a Chance. Between Demagogy and Participation’. SocietàMutamentoPolitica 8 (15): 327–51.Google Scholar
Goodwyn, L. 1976. Democratic Promise: The Populist Moment in America. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Griffin, R. D. 1996. ‘The “Post-Fascism” of the Alleanza Nazionale: A Case Study in Ideological Morphology’. Journal of Political Ideologies 1 (2): 123–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Griffin, R. D. 2018. Fascism: An Introduction to Comparative Fascist Studies. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Heinisch, R., Masetti, E. and Mazzoleni, O., eds. 2020. The People and the Nation: Populism and Ethno-Territorial Politics in Europe. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hermet, G. 2001. Les populismes dans le monde. Une histoire sociologique, XIXe–XXe siècle. Paris: Fayard.Google Scholar
Ionescu, G. and Gellner, E.. 1969. Populism: Its Meaning and National Characteristics. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Kazin, M. 1995. The Populist Persuasion. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Kissas, A. 2020. ‘Performative and Ideological Populism: The Case of Charismatic Leaders on Twitter’. Discourse & Society 31 (3): 268–84. doi:10.1177/0957926519889127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koselleck, R. 1988. Critique and Crisis: Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society. Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Koselleck, R. 2002. The Practice of Conceptual History. Timing History, Spacing Concepts. Stanford: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krzyżanowski, M. 2013. ‘Discourses and Concepts: Interfaces and Synergies between Begriffsgeschichte and the Discourse-Historical Approach in CDA’. In Critical Discourse Analysis. Vol. 4, edited by Wodak, R., 201–14. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Krzyżanowski, M. 2016. ‘Recontextualisation of Neoliberalism and the Increasingly Conceptual Nature of Discourse: Challenges for Critical Discourse Studies’. Discourse & Society 27 (3): 308–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laclau, E. 2005. On Populist Reason. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Maccaferri, M. and Newth, G. 2022 (forthcoming). ‘The Delegitimisation of Europe in a Pro-European Country: “Sovereignism” and Populism in the Political Discourse of Matteo Salvini's Lega’. Journal of Language and Politics.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mammone, A. 2015. Transnational Neofascism in France and Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mammone, A. and Veltri, G. A., eds. 2010. Italy Today: The Sick Man of Europe. London and New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mastropaolo, A. 2005. La mucca pazza della democrazia. Nuove destre, populismo, antipolitica. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri.Google Scholar
Mastropaolo, A. 2020. ‘Tra fascismo e populismo’. Italia Contemporanea 294 (3): 152–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mazzoleni, G. 2008. ‘Populism and the Media.’ In Twenty-First Century Populism: The Spectre of Western European Democracy, edited by Albertazzi, D. and McDonnell, D., 49–66. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McDonnell, D. 2013. ‘Silvio Berlusconi's Personal Parties: From Forza Italia to the Popolo Della Libertà’. Political Studies 61 (S1): 217–233. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9248.2012.01007.x.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGee Deutsch, S. 1999. Las Derechas. The Extreme Right in Argentina, Brazil and Chile, 1890–1939. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Mény, Y. and Surel, Y. 2002. ‘The Constitutive Ambiguity of Populism’. In Democracies and the Populist Challenge, edited by Meny, Y. and Surel, Y., 1–21. London: Palgrave-Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moffit, B. 2016. The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style, and Representation. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Mondon, A. and Winter, A.. 2020. Reactionary Democracy: How Racism and the Populist Far Right became Mainstream. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Mosca, L., Vaccari, C. and Valeriani, A.. 2015. ‘An Internet-Fuelled Party? The Movimento 5 Stelle and the Web’. In Beppe Grillo's Five Star Movement. Organization, Communication and Ideology, edited by Tronconi, F., 127–52. Farnham: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Mouffe, C. 2005. ‘The “End of Politics” and the Challenge of Right-Wing Populism’. In Populism and the Mirror of Democracy, edited by Panizza, F., 72–98. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Mouffe, C. 2018. For a Left Populism. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Mudde, C. 2004. ‘The Populist Zeitgeist’. Government and Opposition 39 (4): 541–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mudde, C. and Rovira Kaltwasser, C.. 2014. ‘Populism and Political Leadership’. In The Oxford Handbook of Political Leadership, edited by Rhodes, R. A. W. and Hart, P., 376–88. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mudde, C. and Rovira Kaltwasser, C. 2018. ‘Studying Populism in Comparative Perspective: Reflections on the Contemporary and Future Research Agenda’. Comparative Political Studies 51 (13): 1667–93. doi:10.1177/0010414018789490.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Müller, J.-W. 2011. Contesting Democracy: Political Ideas in Twentieth-Century Europe. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Müller, J.-W. 2016. What's Populism? Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Musso, M. and Maccaferri, M. 2018. ‘At the Origins of the Political Discourse of the 5-Star Movement (M5S): Internet, Direct Democracy and the “Future of the Past”.’ Internet Histories. doi:10.1080/24701475.2018.1457295.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newell, J. L. 2019. Silvio Berlusconi. A Study in Failure. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Orazi, F. and Socci, M. 2014. Il grillismo. Tra democrazia elettronica e movimento personale. Rome: Carocci.Google Scholar
Orsina, G. 2014. Berlusconism and Italy: A Historical Interpretation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Orsina, G. 2018. La democrazia del narcisismo. Breve storia dell'antipolitica. Venice: Marsilio.Google Scholar
Orsina, G. 2019. ‘Party Democracy and its Enemies: Italy, 1945–1992’. Journal of Modern European History 17 (2): 220–33. doi:10.1177/1611894419835752.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Padovani, C. 2015. ‘“Berlusconi's Italy”: The Media between Structure and Agency’. Modern Italy 20 (1): 41–57. doi:10.1080/13532944.2014.988605.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Panizza, F., ed. 2005. Populism and the Mirror of Democracy. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Pappas, T. S. 2016. ‘Are Populist Leaders “Charismatic”? The Evidence from Europe’. Constellations 23 (3): 378–90. doi:10.1111/1467-8675.12233.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paxton, R. 2004. The Anatomy of Fascism. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Rhodes, M. 2015. ‘Tangentopoli – More than 20 Years On’. In The Oxford Handbook of Italian Politics, edited by Jones, E. and Pasquino, G., 309–24. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ricuperati, G. 1997. ‘The Historiographical Legacy of Franco Venturi (1914–1994)’. Journal of Modern Italian Studies 2 (1): 67–88. doi:10.1080/13545719708454940.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosanvallon, P. 2009. ‘Democratic Universalism as a Historical Problem’. Constellations 16 (4): 539–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosanvallon, P. 2012. Counter-Democracy. Politics in the Age of Distrust (second edition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rummens, S. 2017. ‘Populism as a Threat to Liberal Democracy’. In The Oxford Handbook of Populism, edited by Rovira Kaltwasser, C., Taggart, P., Ochoa Espejo, P. and Ostiguy, P., 554–70. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ruzza, C. 2018. ‘Populism, Migration, and Xenophobia in Europe’. In Routledge Handbook of Global Populism, edited by de la Torre, C., 201–16. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ryo, Y. 2017. ‘“Populism” and “populism”: Aporia of the Historiography of American Populism’. Nanzan Review of American Studies 39: 101–22.Google Scholar
Schroeder, R. 2020. ‘The Dangerous Myth of Populism as a Thin Ideology’. Populism 3 (1): 13–28. doi:10.1163/25888072-02021042.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scoppola, P. 1997. La Repubblica dei partiti. Evoluzione e crisi di un sistema politico (1945–1996) (second edition). Bologna: il Mulino.Google Scholar
Setta, S. 2005. L'Uomo Qualunque, 1944–48. Rome: Laterza.Google Scholar
Stathi, S. and Guerra, R.. 2021. ‘Unpacking the Social Psychology of Populism: A Brief Introductory Note’. Journal of Theoretical Social Psychology 5 (2): 50–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stråth, B. 2006. ‘Ideology and History’. Journal of Political Ideologies 11 (1): 23–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taggart, P. 2000. Populism. Buckingham, Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Taggart, P. 2004. ‘Populism and Representative Politics in Contemporary Europe’. Journal of Political Ideologies 9 (3): 269–88. doi:10.1080/1356931042000263528.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taguieff, P.-A. 2002. L'Illusion Populiste. Paris: Berg.Google Scholar
Tarchi, M. 2007. ‘Italy: A Country of Many Populisms.’ In Twenty-First Century Populism. The Spectre of Western European Democracy, edited by Albertazzi, D. and McDonnell, D., 84–99. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Tarchi, M. 2015a. ‘Italy: Promised Land of Populism?’ Contemporary Italian Politics 7 (3): 273–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tarchi, M. 2015b. Italia populista. Dal qualunquismo a Beppe Grillo. Bologna: il Mulino.Google Scholar
Tarragoni, F. 2021. ‘Populism, and Ideology without History? A New Genetic Approach’. Journal of Political Ideologies. doi: 10.1080/13569317.2021.1979130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tranfaglia, N. 1999. Un passato scomodo. Fascismo e Postfascismo. Bari: Laterza.Google Scholar
Traverso, E. 2019. The New Faces of Fascism. Populism and the Far Right. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Treccani. Vocabolario online. n.d. https://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/sdoganare/ (accessed 6 November 2021).Google Scholar
Urbinati, N. 2014. Democracy Disfigured. Opinion, Truth, and the People. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Urbinati, N. 2019. Me the People. How Populism Transforms Democracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Venturi, F. 1966. Roots of Revolution: A History of the Populist and Socialist Movements in Nineteenth-Century Russia. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Wejnert, B. and Woods, D., eds. 2014. The Many Faces of Populism: Current Perspectives. Bingley, UK: Emerald.Google Scholar
Wodak, R., de Cillia, R., Reisigl, M. and Liebhart, K.. (1999) 2009. The Discursive Construction of National Identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Zappettini, F. and Maccaferri, M. 2021. ‘Euroscepticism between Populism and Technocracy: The Case of Italian Lega and Movimento 5 Stelle’. Journal of Contemporary European Research 17 (2): 239–57. doi:10.30950/jcer.v17i2.1184.CrossRefGoogle Scholar