A former student of the École Normale Supérieure, Christophe Bouillaud has been an associate professor of political science at the Grenoble Institute of Political Studies since 1999 and an associate professor of social sciences. He specializes in Italian politics and international relations.
FIGAROVOX. - The Italian legislative elections, which will be held on September 25, 2022, put a large number of parties in competition. How to explain it?
Christophe BOUILLAUD. -
First of all, we must not forget that Italian political life has always remained very pluralist since the return to democracy after 1945 – in contrast to the single party imposed by the fascist regime during the twenty years of dictatorship.
Above all, no political current that had its hour of glory in the past is really resolving to disappear.
No Italian party therefore really and definitively dies, there are always takers to try to save it from nothingness.
Then, since a first time at the beginning of the 1990s, then a second time at the beginning of the 2010s, political forces have managed to break through electorally from nothing, to the point of arriving in a very short time at the business of the State - the Northern League and
Forza Italia
(the party of Silvio Berlusconi) in the 1990s, the M5S (Movement 5 Stars) in the 2010s - any party creator, even the most fanciful, believes also hold the martingale that will lead him to the most dazzling successes.
So almost anyone tries their luck.
Finally, the conditions for presenting candidates or lists are very open for parties that already have parliamentarians, and not very restrictive for the others.
Now most parties are tied in their electoral appeal to the personality of their leader.
However, a leader disavowed by his followers will tend to create his own party, counting on his residual popularity with the electorate to rebuild himself.
Christophe Bouillaud
Does this reveal a fragmentation of Italian opinion?
Yes, if this very durable partisan pluralism exists, it is because it corresponds to divisions in the Italian electorate, economic, sociological, geographical and generational.
They are rooted in the long political history of the country, but also for the more recent period in the twists and turns of the personalization of political life.
Now most parties are tied in their electoral appeal to the personality of their leader.
However, a leader disavowed by his followers will tend to create his own party, counting on his residual popularity with the electorate to recover himself, such as Matteo Renzi, a former leader of the Democratic Party (PD), or Luigi di Maio, a former leader of the M5S.
These personal adventures greatly complicate the landscape, but, in general, they end in failure.
Frequent political recompositions and the phenomenon of splitting of parties seem usual in Italy. One gets the impression that they often change not only names, but programs or allies. Is it correct ?
In reality, beyond this impression of multiplication of parties, the political offer in its main orientations is much more stable than the apparent shimmering which can confuse the observer.
There are actually four main camps.
That of the right, called "center right" in Italian, which since the 1990s has included the same four forces: Silvio Berlusconi's party,
Forza Italia,
which created this camp in 1994;
the League, resulting from the merger of the regionalist leagues of the north in the 1990s and which since 2013 has become a nationalist party under the leadership of Matteo Salvini;
the party heir to the electoralist tradition of neofascism, currently named
Brothers of Italy
(FdI) and led by Giorgia Meloni;
and a dust of small centrist parties all from the right of the former Christian Democracy before 1992. This camp has always remained, especially at the local level, united since the beginning of the 2000s.
That of the left, called "center left" in Italian, which was organized around the Democratic Party (PD), itself a merger between the left wing of the Christian Democracy before 1992 and the moderate wing of the Party Communist Party (PCI) before 1989. Since its creation in the 2000s, the PD has been the center of a coalition marked by Europeanism and moderate reformism.
For his September 2022 elections, he is allied on his right with a few small Europhile centrist parties, including that of Luigi di Maio, on his left with what remains of the Italian ecologists and his own left splits.
The one in the center.
It was in the post-war years the camp, essentially that of the Christian Democracy, which dominated Italian politics.
Since the 1990s, it has disappeared as a force capable of winning elections on its own.
However, personalities with excessive egos believe since then that they can restore him to his former glory.
For its elections, two leaders, Matteo Renzi and Carlo Calenda, both from the PD, joined their meager forces to try to embody this centrist pole, which is defined by its Europeanism and its economic liberalism.
They want to be the strongest supporters of Mario Draghi's government action.
Finally, that of Giuseppe Conte's M5S.
The M5S had been created in 2009 by Beppe Grillo as the party of those who refused to recognize themselves in one of the three previous camps, the party of all disappointed in short.
For these elections, although the M5S was allied with representatives of these same camps during its time in government from 2018 to today (with the League first, with the PD and the centrists then, and with the League , the PD, the centrists and FI to finish), it tries to recreate a third identity around ecological and social issues and to capitalize on the disappointment of the Italians with the action of the Draghi government.
Each of these camps corresponds to a specific electorate, and Italians rarely change sides.
On the other hand, they can change parties or preferred leader within a given camp.
This is what we observe in particular within the “center right”, with the tilting of preferences from Silvio Bersluconi in favor of Salvini after 2013, then in favor of Meloni, after 2021.
The breakthrough of Meloni and consequently of her party in right-wing public opinion is due to the fact that she has chosen not to participate in the various governments that have followed one another since 2018.
Christophe Bouillaud
On the right, many liked Salvini. And now his star has faded in favor of Meloni. How to explain that opinion is changing so quickly?
The breakthrough of Meloni and consequently of her party in right-wing public opinion is due to the fact that she has chosen not to participate in the various governments that have succeeded one another since 2018. FdI has always remained in the opposition, on its sovereignist line.
However, due to the very long-lasting economic, social and demographic crisis that Italy has been experiencing since the beginning of the 2000s, any Italian government ends up being unpopular and the forces that supported it pay the electoral price.
Matteo Salvini by taking part in the government Draghi believed that he could play the very classic game for the League, "a party of struggle and government" as the Italian expression goes, of taking part in a government and at the same time criticizing it for avoid paying the electoral price of his participation.
This time it didn't work because the FdI's presence in the opposition offered an alternative to disgruntled right-wing voters.
Meloni did not hesitate to point out the inconsistency of Salvini participating in the Draghi government.
Moreover, Matteo Salvini ended up appearing as an unserious character in his commitments.
During the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, he first tried, very clumsily, to make people forget his Muscovite acquaintances, which are well known to everyone.
He attempted a humanitarian trip to Poland which saw him publicly humiliated by an elected Polish nationalist.
He then even said positive things about Pope Francis, whom he had not spared from his sarcasm as a good Christian.
He has since returned to a pacifist and Russophile line, justifying it by the needs of Italian entrepreneurs in terms of energy and export markets.
Probably his tendency to say everything and its opposite ended up being noted by the right-wing electorate,
and the character of the actor he represents is tired.
Its current electoral campaign tends to return to the basics of the success of the League in 2018: fight against illegal immigration, security, radical reduction in direct taxes with a
15%
flat tax .
He is obviously trying to give himself the image of a serious politician.
Meloni's advantage is clearly that with her no one doubts the reality of her conservative beliefs.
The actors of Italian political life have conceived of it since the 1970s as that of a country in economic, social and demographic crisis.
Christophe Bouillaud
How is Italian political culture different from ours?
The notion of political culture, which is too difficult to characterize, is no longer used by contemporary political science, which prefers to insist on the political and institutional history of each country.
In the context of this interview, it would take too long to detail everything.
The two countries are in any case very similar as old democratic and developed nations in relative decline in all respects.
Personally, however, I would see two major differences between Italy and France.
On the one hand, the actors of Italian political life have conceived of it since the 1970s as that of a country in economic, social and demographic crisis.
This gave rise to the incessant search for an institutional solution that would allow the country to emerge from this crisis.
The latest solution is none other than the reduction by a third of the number of parliamentarians elected in the two Chambers, a drastic reduction which was desired by the M5S and which will apply from this new legislature.
This search for institutional solutions, which have multiplied since the 1990s, has not so far prevented the fundamental crisis from lasting and even worsening.
It seems to me that in France, the questioning of the institutions of the Fifth Republic is comparatively only
at its beginnings.
The Italian example should also warn us that institutions matter much less than public policy ideas.
On the other hand, if these players in Italian political life showed themselves to be very imaginative in reforming the 1948 Constitution, they ultimately had very few ideas to put forward on the changes in public policy to be implemented.
From this point of view, the Draghi government was a good illustration of the Italian impasse.
Thanks to the European manna, the financial constraint has been greatly reduced, but the public policies which have been chosen, in agreement between the major political forces present in the government (M5S, PD, League, FI and centrists), have in the end been particularly classics and seem to me very far from being able to solve the problems posed.
It seems to me that, in the same situation, the hexagonal framework would still offer more new ideas.
I suspect that the