Abstract
This paper documents and analyses how populist discourse was used in very different ways by political entrepreneurs of the Italian right, leading to three specific manifestations. The empirical range of populist ideologies is identified through a frame analysis of party materials and connected to the varying political and cultural opportunities of different kinds of parties. However, it is argued that at the same time a common reliance on some common populist tenets constituted an innovative strategy of the Italian right, and that as an ideology one of it's distinctive functions has been to act as a conceptual glue in a coalition which would otherwise be deeply internally divided.
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Notes
In 2009, a number of media outlets within and outside of Italy began reporting on Berlusconi's relationships with a number of young women, some of whom were identified as paid escorts, and allegations of promises by Berlusconi in terms of help in their media and political careers (including their possible insertion onto party electoral lists), and political interventions to aid their business interests. In October 2010, a story broke that Berlusconi had personally called a police station to secure the release of a 17-year-old woman who had apparently previously attended one of his notorious parties and then later been arrested for theft. It was reported that Berlusconi had falsely claimed that the young lady in question was the grand-daughter of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. In relation to the latter case, it was reported in the Italian press in January 2011, that Berlusconi had been put under investigation by Milan prosecutors for allegedly paying for sex with an under-age prostitute.
These findings are examined at greater length in Ruzza and Fella (2009). The documents analysed were the founding document of the AN in 1995, and the texts of its programmatic congresses of 1998, 2001 and 2006, the electoral programmes (or guides for candidates) of the LN for the 1994, 1996, 2001 and 2006 elections. For Forza Italia and in view of its dominant role on the entire coalition we considered the FI election manifestos of 1994 and 2004 (European elections) and joint manifestos of the Polo or CDL for 1996, 2001 and 2006, as well as the FI Carta di Valori (Charter of Values).
The authors would like to thank Paolo Pasi, Mara Dalmonech and Giulia Bigot for their work in collating and analysing the documents and elaborating the data. Thanks also to Enzo Loner for his help with the methodology.
The frames presented are, in the main, not the result of aggregation of smaller frames into larger all-encompassing frames. However, two aggregation of frames were conducted for presentational purposes in Figure 1. First, the frame ‘federalism’ and ‘devolution’ were initially kept separate but then unified to tap into the underlying dimension in all its aspects. Second, anti-immigration was initially operationalised in terms of a set of dimensions which included concerns for personal security and rivalry for welfare state resources and jobs. However, for presentational purposes these dimensions were later aggregated.
This was a large rally organised on 11 May 2007 by Savino Pezzotta, a Catholic ex-trade-unionist and well attended by the right. See Family Day, anche Berlusconi in piazza. Il Corriere, 11 May 2007.
Figure 5 shows the results of a one-way Anova (test F of difference between groups: sign.=0.007). The anti-politics index was created with the following questions (possible answers from totally disagree to completely agree on 1 to 4 scale: ‘Che governi la destra o la sinistra, le cose non cambiano’; ‘I politici sono in maggioranza corrotti’; ‘Negli ultimi vent’anni, la classe dirigente italiana ha completamente fallito’. (‘Things do not change whether the right or the left rule’; ‘The majority of politicians are corrupt’; ‘In the last twenty years the Italian political class has completely failed’). The one-dimensionality of the index has been evaluated by means of principal component analysis (per cent of variance explained from the first component extracted: 53.5 per cent). According to these questions a score ranging from 0 to 9 was assigned to each respondent.
Figure 6 shows the results of a one-way Anova (test F of difference between groups: sign.=0.000). The index of xenophobia was created with the following questions (possibile answers from totally disagree to completely agree on 1 to 4 scale: ‘E’ giusto permettere ai musulmani di costruirsi delle moschee sul territorio italiano’; ‘Gli immigrati, se sono regolari e pagano le tasse, dovrebbero votare alle elezioni amministrative del comune dove abitano’ (‘It is right that Muslims should be allowed to build Mosques in Italy’; ‘If they are legal residents and paying taxes, migrants should be able to vote in local elections’). The one-dimensionality of the index has been evaluated by means of principal component analysis (per cent of variance explained from the first component extracted: 69.6 per cent). According to these questions a score ranging from 0 to 6 was assigned to each respondent.
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Ruzza, C., Fella, S. Populism and the Italian right. Acta Polit 46, 158–179 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1057/ap.2011.5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/ap.2011.5