The Italian Democratic Disfigurement Between Multipopulism and Depoliticization

Abstract

Over the past thirty years, Italian democracy has undergone a profound disconfiguration due to two major dynamics: multipopulist transformation and depoliticization. In this article, we aim to describe them, seeking to explain how they have taken hold over time, giving rise to multiple actors that have transformed Italian politics into a direct and unmediated form. The series of populist actors has not only changed political life in Italy but also the democratic mindset of the country and the relationship between society and institutions. Every moment of the country’s political and societal life is now stripped of its fundamental connotations. This phenomenon is called depoliticization and has decisively contributed to the democratic disfiguration of the country. Italian political society has lost many of the fundamental political characteristics of classical representative democracy. This article investigates depoliticization through the analysis of the 2018 and 2022 electoral campaigns.