Twenty-First Century Populism: The Spectre of Western European ...

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the people and its leaders, is connected to an exaltation of the popular will
that any populist would subscribe to. As Berlusconi says: ‘We want the
people to lead the state, not the state to lead the people. We want the popular
spirit to fill these institutions’ (Berlusconi, 2001: 174–5).
On other occasions, he has argued that an electoral mandate, once broken
by those who have received it, becomes a dead letter. Interestingly, the first
target of this criticism was Umberto Bossi, when the Lega left the government
coalition in 1994. In such cases, the people, who have been tricked or
fooled, must be able to revoke their mandate, as otherwise their right to
decide their political future is de facto confiscated. Naturally, all of these
statements are weighed and spun according to the needs of the moment.
They can serve to reinforce the legitimacy of governmental action, or to
deny the legitimacy of rivals when in opposition. Similarly, there are frequent
calls for the people to remain united around an idea of the common
good which rises above partisan disputes and societal ills like envy and class
hatred. However, while not entirely absent, the emphasis put on the dangers
that immigration, criminality and corruption pose for the ‘healthy’ people
is much more marginal and sober compared to that found in the rhetoric of
other European populists.
Along with the considerable media resources at his disposal, Berlusconi’s
plebiscitary-based populism played an essential role in enabling him to win
over a large part of the electorate hostile to the Left, at a time when the
Christian Democratic-dominated party system collapsed amid judicial
investigations into corruption and fraud. Given his populist vision of politics
and society, Berlusconi is convinced that the sovereignty of public
opinion cannot, in a democracy, be limited, even by the actions of elected
institutions. As a result, the activities of his government must not be
obstructed by restrictive rules because, in expressing the wishes of the
majority that elected it, the government must be free to grant those wishes,
thus building a ‘true’ democracy. Woe betides those independent actors,
not elected by the people, who interfere, such as the judiciary. Any intervention
of this type is cast as impermissible interference which must be
rejected, because, in cases of conflict between different branches of the
state, ‘the last word must always go to the legitimating power of the people’
(Berlusconi, 2001: 255).
This plebiscitarianism can also be read in reverse: if a government led by
political opponents obtains little support in newspapers and television
opinion polls, then this is sufficient to deem that government illegitimate
and to call for its replacement. Indeed, the same principle, in this ‘audience
democracy’ vision of politics, applies equally well to both Parliament and
the Head of State (Manin, 1997).
The ‘appeal to the people’ has been a constant and essential component
of Berlusconi’s discourse, both in opposition − when it served to discredit
the legitimacy of those opponents who had forced him to resign by a First