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

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Italy: A Country of
Many Populisms
Marco Tarchi
Italian style populism
According to some observers, populism found its ‘richest testing ground’, its
‘paradise’ in Italy in the late 1990s (Zanatta, 2002: 286). As Guy Hermet
wrote, Italy ‘has transformed itself into the site par excellence of populism’s
triumph over the classical parties’ (Hermet, 2001: 396). During the five years
of the centre-right Berlusconi administration (2001–2006), composed of
Forza Italia (FI), Alleanza Nazionale (AN), the Unione dei Democratici Cristiani
e di Centro (UDC) and the Lega Nord (LN), the press has often stressed the
populist character of the government and its policies.
If we consider some of the fundamental characteristics of populism identified
in the scholarly literature, there is no doubt that the actions of
Berlusconi and his allies, both in opposition and in government, clearly
match the description of this phenomenon:
(a) the tendency of its leaders to claim for themselves an extraordinary and
instant capacity to interpret and articulate the needs of the people;
(b) the impatience with the formal rules of liberal democracy which get
in the way of their ‘mission’ to promote the public good;
(c) the repeated references to the common sense of ‘ordinary people’ and the
traditions shared by the majority of the community;
(d) the attacks on professional politicians and their long drawn-out procedures,
and those on intellectuals and trade unionists, accused of wishing
to divide the people along class lines.
(Canovan, 1981; Mény and Surel, 2000; Taggart, 2000)
And yet, if we look at the electoral results of the so-called ‘Second Republic’
(1993–2006), during which time there have been substantial changes in the
Italian party system, we do not find any populist movement that has won
success comparable to that obtained by the Freedom Party (FPÖ) in Austria,
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