Arcadia Italy

We asked Prof. Eva Garau for a last-minute attempt at making sense of these most confusing and potentially uproarious elections for our English-speaking community. Italians have a phrase they use quite often, “the least worst”; never as in these elections have we heard the phrase repeated over and over again, all seem to be hoping not for the best, but for the “least worst”. Could this be a sign of our times the globe over or does Italy have a particular claim to such a divisive and almost surreal set of circumstances?

Prof. Eva Garau is a graduate in Political Philosophy. She holds a PhD in European Studies (2010, University of Bath, UK) and a PhD in Contemporary History (2016, University of Cagliari, Italy). Between 2003 and 2010 she worked as a Teaching Fellow at the University of Bath, Bath City College and King’s College (London). Her research focused on Italian national identity, immigration to Italy, religion, the Catholic Church, populism and extreme Right-wing “niche parties” (the Northern League in particular). Eva teaches The Economics of Organized Crime and Social Innovation and Sport, Nationalism and Identity for our Rome Center.

It was 1992 when the Christian Democratic Party, the centrist party in power in Italy since 1948, crumbled under the pressure of the “clean hands” scandal, a police investigation into corruption and the relation between the masonic lodge P2, the industrial sector and the political system. The parade of well-known politicians in handcuffs marked the end of the First Republic, a snapshot iconic of the frenzy and the falls of the self-proclaimed “sick man of Europe”. Almost three decades later, the “grande centro” could come back, this time in the shape of a Große Koalition, German style. A forecast unthinkable until very recently.

Italians, who will cast their vote this Sunday, March 4th, have witnessed a much fragmented and complex electoral campaign, characterised by the presence of a constellation of small parties resulting from partition of the Democratic Party (centre-Left) and positioned on the left-hand side of the parliamentary spectrum. Beside internal dissent, the Democratic Party has gone through a steed downfall in consensus, aggravated by the defeat of leader Matteo Renzi at the 2016 referendum aimed at constitutional reform, with the party shifting from 40% at 2014 European elections to the 23% estimated by opinion polls in the run to this round of elections. Liberi e Uguali (Free and Equal), Più Europa (More Europe) and Potere al Popolo (Power to the People), just to mention a few, are all new formations running on their own when not openly competing to steal votes to PD, while some of them will struggle even to reach the threshold of the 3%, needed to be granted parliamentary representation*.

If the Left has been described by media and opinion makers as divided, the Centre-Right is also composed by a number of parties, which do not share much in terms of ideology but were nonetheless kept together in past governments under the charismatic leadership of Silvio Berlusconi (Forza Italia) the “new man” whose rise to power coincided with the birth of the Second Republic. 

Back then another group, The Northern League, a protest party demanding the secession of the North and denouncing the corruption of central government, moved its first steps in the Italian ever changing political scene. Since then, the Lega (the “North” connotation has been dropped to allow the party to gain consensus throughout the peninsula) known for its provocative style and controversial claims, has evolved into a nationalist party, presenting itself as the last stronghold of Christianity and the fortress for the defence of true Italianness. Immigration and law and order, the hot topics in the League’s agenda, have rapidly become a Trojan horse to legitimise a restrictive and highly exclusionary approach towards foreigners in Italy. With the advent of the new millennium, the Lega was able to institutionalise its policies and “normalise” its deeply identitarian discourse, exploiting the Catholic tradition and the anxiety linked to the growing arrivals of migrants to Italian shores.

Further on the Right of the Lega a number of extreme Right-wing parties, some of which born from an openly stated nostalgia of Fascist times (Fratelli d’Italia, Casa Pound, for example), have contributed to exasperate feelings of “victimisation” of Italians, adopting a harsh language and controversial initiatives to “preserve the purity of the race”, following the spreading of populist and racist sentiments all across Europe and beyond.

If in the past few years the League was (mistakenly) described by observers and political scientists as dying and destined to disappear, a new “catch-all party” channelling Italians distrust and rage towards mainstream political parties started emerging. Born as an exercise of “direct democracy”, the Five Star Movement founded in 2009 by popular comedian Beppe Grillo, combines an anti-elite/anti-corruption sentiment with an aggressive rhetoric, amid the ambiguity on their programme, still much to be defined. Aimed at catalysing popular discontent (its first slogan was a bold and generic “vaffanculo” -fuck off- addressed to the whole political class, past and present), the five star movement managed to agglutinate the support of the deluded, the disenchanted (among both the Right and the Left), those who did not feel represented by existing parties and the nostalgic of the League of the early days. The determination of the 5SM representatives to enter government for the first time, defeat corruption once and for all and reform the country, is matched in strength only by the ambiguity of their program, with many grey zones concerning health, immigration, Europe and the economy.

Although opinion polls allocate the highest consensus to the Five Star Movement (around 27%), at the moment it does not seem enough for them to form a government. Not a secondary issue for a party which bases its political communication on the impossibility of dialoguing with the other parties, let alone form a coalition.

In this climate of high uncertainty – the results of national elections have rarely been so unpredictable in the history of Italy – what is ascertained is that no party has the numbers to form a government. Building alliances without betraying the programmatic statements of the perspective MPs will prove “hard as a hard game of tennis”. The 5 star movement’s leaders have obsessively promised there will be no dialogue with the other parties, which they despise for they brought Italy on the verge of collapse (“economic and moral” it is). The small parties of the Left were born out of protest towards the mainstream Left (the PD). If they form a coalition with Renzi the whole point of separating from the PD will be lost.

In the past Berlusconi has proved capable of uniting the Right under a generic “anti-Communist sentiment” and would certainly try again. Unfortunately, following his problems with the judiciary, the rejuvenated and botox-stuffed Silvio will not be allowed to become MP but at the same time he does not seem keen to leave the lead to the League’s secretary Matteo Salvini.

Italy’s response to weak majorities has often been that of transitional governments under the leadership of the so-called “tecnici” (usually European Union bureaucrats such as Mario Monti, MP from November 2011 to April 2013). There are only two alternatives, both discharged by all interested parts. The first: an agreement between the two protest parties, the League and the Five Star Movement (after all the latter is little more than an updated and more web-centred version of the former). The two leaders deny any contact but logic (the overlapping of most claims, expressed in a similar language) and previous (secret) exchanges between the “spin doctors” of the two groups) make this hypothesis much more likely than it is officially stated. Click here for more details.

The second option: an alliance between Renzi (increasingly close to the centre) and Berlusconi, with the extreme fringes of both the Right and the Left excluded from government. Ruled out by most political analysts for reason linked to a possible reaction of the electorate (Berlusconi has been the Left’s worse enemy for too long) this option is seen with favour by international markets (spread down to 90 v. 150 if new parties win) and the other European countries and their leaders (yes, even Angela Merkel, whose hatred of Berlusconi is well known).

“Europe is demanding it” is a mantra repeated in Italy to justify all sort of manoeuvres (from taxation to immigration). A “Renzusconi” government could represent an unprecedented scenario and a turning point in Italian history. More specifically, it would turn the page back to 1992, when everything was good, and people could stick to the centre and relax, relying on the solid Christian Democratic Party. Politicians were not particularly honest as we now know, but they understood the game. And they played it until they were taken to jail. “Everything must change, so that everything can stay the same” said Tancredi in the celebrated novel The Leopard. Fast forward to the past.

*The current Italian electoral system is a hybrid between FPTP (First Pass The Post) with PR (Proportional Representation), which means that the candidate who gets more votes in each constituency is automatically elected while the remaining seats are allocated according to the share of votes collected at national level.