Adrian Favero Introduces Government & Opposition’s Virtual Special Issue on Populism in Europe

Government & Opposition have published a Special Issue collating and showcasing leading scholarship the journal has published exploring the phenomenon of Populism in Europe. 

In his capacity as a Government & Opposition Editorial Fellow, Populism in Action’s Switzerland focused Research Fellow Dr. Adrian Favero has written an Introduction to the collection.

The selection of articles in the Special Issue is added to and updated from time to time. It currently includes work by the following other members of the Populism in Action team: Dr. Daniele Albertazzi, Dr. Stijn van Kessel and Dr. Mattia Zulianello.

Dr. Favero’s Introduction and the Special Issue as a whole can be read here.

 

PiAP Research Fellows Share Three Key Findings From Their Research

This autumn the Populism in Action Project will be publishing a Special Issue of the open access journal Politics and Governance on populist radical right party organisation, with a special focus on the extent to which parties in this family remain centralized in decision-making. The Special Issue will cover both Western and Eastern/Central Europe and include contributions by experts from all over the continent. All four of the Populism in Action Project’s Research Fellows will contribute an article exploring the findings of the research that they’ve been undertaking since 2019. Ahead of the publication of the Special Issue, in this series of blog posts our research fellows share “three key takeaways” from their articles

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Dr. Adrian Favero explores – “Leaders vs. Members: Can the Swiss People’s Party Deal with the Tension?”

 

Dr. Judith Sijstermans shows – “How Belgium’s Vlaams Belang Leads the Way in Digital Politics”

 

Dr. Mattia Zulianello surveys – “Italy’s League: A Modern Mass Party”

 

Dr. Niko Hatakka considers – “The Finns Party: Free Rein or Reining In?”

Has the Pandemic Changed Populism in Italy?

Donatella Bonansinga will be presenting the research which underpins this blog post (co-written with Populism in Action’s Dr. Daniele Albertazzi and Mattia Zulianello) at the 6th Prague Populism Conference on 18th May 2021 between 14:30 and 15:30 (Czech time). You can watch the conference live feed here.

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by Donatella Bonansinga

The Italian populist right had already changed significantly since the 2018 elections reconfigured its relations of power.

After decades of Silvio Berlusconi’s dominance, the League led by Matteo Salvini became the coalition’s biggest force. Berlusconi’s Forza Italia was sidelined with 14% support, further shrinking to 8% in the 2019 European Parliament elections. A third party, Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy), became the coalition’s minor force, gaining more than 4% of votes in 2018. Its support grew exponentially, and the party effectively displaced Forza Italia.

Then the pandemic arrived.

Politics in the Time of COVID

When Coronavirus infections began their spread across Italy in February 2020, the three parties of the Italian populist right positioned themselves cautiously vis-à-vis the national Government. They were well aware that Italians were rallying around Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte at a moment of acute crisis.

While the populist parties turned Europe into a key element of debate, they did so in starkly different terms. The more radical forces — the League and Fratelli d’Italia — attacked the European Union for its inability to help Italy, insinuating that supranational institutions were conspiring to damage the Italian economy. In line with their nativist ideology, both cast blame for the virus upon Chinese nationals and immigrants and amplified the narrative of strong border protections.

Berlusconi also diverted the debate towards the EU, but he did so with a positive welcome of European efforts during the early phases of the pandemic. The former Prime Minister had already begun distancing himself from the more radical tone of his allies since the 2019 European Parliament elections. He is using the pandemic as a further opportunity to present himself and his party as a responsible, non-populist force.

After the dramatic first wave in Italy and the movement of the virus throughout Europe, the economic and social impact of the pandemic was evident. EU member states agreed on an unprecedented mutualization of debt, the Recovery Fund.

Presented again with the opportunity to mobilize the EU as a focus of debate, the populist coalition only displayed a lack of unity. The League dismissed the Fund. Fratelli d’Italia remained cautiously sceptical. Both continued their nativist trope of illegal immigrants spreading the virus. In contrast, confirming his strategic Europhile-turn, Berlusconi celebrated the Fund’s approval.

The “Winning Formula” Remains

At the end of 2020, the League declined to 24% in the polls, from a peak of 34% in the EU elections. Fratelli d’Italia had become the third-biggest force in Italy, pushing aside the “hybrid” populist Five Star Movement which is in government with the center-left Partito Democratico. It also relegated Berlusconi, once the indisputable leader of the coalition, into a minor player with Forza Italia polling at around 7%.

Despite these significant changes, the coalition projects important elements of continuity, especially in terms of its political message and overall support. It is still a populist force counter-posing a virtuous Italian people against distant and harmful elites in Rome and Brussels. Despite Berlusconi’s softer tones and newly-found affinity for the EU, the coalition still dominates the agenda with immigration, anti-EU, and law and order themes.

The political message is shaped by populism, nativism, and Euroscepticism as it was when Berlusconi founded the coalition 20 years ago. This is a consistent political offering with a stable support remaining well above 40%.

Despite some reshuffling and new sources of division brought by the pandemic, the coalition is in good electoral health and can count on a winning formula for the foreseeable future.

Donatella Bonansinga is a PhD student in the Department of POLSIS at the University of Birmingham. You can follow her on Twitter here. In addition to the conference presentation on this topic, her research with Daniele Albertazzi and Mattia Zulianello has been published as “The right-wing alliance at the time of the Covid-19 pandemic: all change?” in Contemporary Italian Politics.

This blog is co-published with EA Worldview

Daniele Albertazzi’s Analysis is Quoted in Politico Europe Article on Giorgia Meloni

Analysis of the shifting dynamics of the populist radical right in Italy by Populism in Action’s Principal Investigator Dr. Daniele Albertazzi was quoted in “Could Giorgia Meloni be Italy’s first female prime minister?” an article for Politico Europe written by Hannah Roberts and published on 12/05/21.

Daniele Albertazzi explains that Meloni poses:

 “a realistic threat” to Salvini’s leadership of the right-wing alliance… She is in a very good place.”

And that:

“The right-wing parties have a long history of working together [having] governed together for twenty five years…

Meaning if the Brothers of Italy come ahead of the League in a future election:

“…it is hard see how anyone can stop her becoming prime minister,”

The article can be read in full here.

The Finns Party: Free Rein or Reining In?

This autumn the Populism in Action Project will be publishing a Special Issue of the open access journal Politics and Governance on populist radical right party organisation, with a special focus on the extent to which parties in this family remain centralized in decision-making. The Special Issue will cover both Western and Eastern/Central Europe and include contributions by experts from all over the continent. All four of the Populism in Action Project’s Research Fellows will contribute an article exploring the findings of the research that they’ve been undertaking since 2019. Ahead of the publication of the Special Issue, in this series of blog posts our research fellows share “three key takeaways” from their articles

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by Dr. Niko Hatakka

In March 2020, the populist radical right Finns Party expelled its youth organization. The increasingly overt ethnic nativism of the young activists had become a hindrance to the party’s objective: re-establishing legitimacy as a potential component of a governing coalition.

To constrain unwanted communications, the leadership had urged the youth association to revise its rules and require everyone to be members of the party. When this was rejected, the youth branch was expelled.

The episode is a telling example of how the Finns Party’s organisational approach and practice teeters between horizontal participation, autonomy, and centralised control.

Building the Formal Organisation

In the early 2010s, the Finns Party became one of the largest parties in Finland, thanks to a massive boost in funding and perceived legitimacy after a strong performance in the 2011 elections. In the following years, the leadership developed an active and extensive network of local associations, whilst also adopting some characteristics of a movement party.

The party’s formal organization combines ostensibly democratic elements, such as a party congress where all members have the right to vote, with a weakly supervised and powerful executive. The regional and municipal organisations are run autonomously by volunteers. The national party instructs and guides them, with the executive reserving the power to assume direct control of problematic associations and expel troublesome members; however, direct intervention in the actions of the local and regional levels has only occurred in dire circumstances.

A wide and active organisation with low requirements for entry and participation are key to campaigning and candidate recruitment for the party. This has been vital for the Finns Party’s success, especially in municipal elections, with candidates recruited for 98% of constituencies for elections in June. Still, while existing on paper, the network of municipal associations is patchy and not especially active in certain regions.

In areas where the organisation is strong, the party’s communities of participating activists are characterised by a vivid collective identity and a high level of ideological coherence. According to the party’s elite, this is mainly fueled by a sense of belonging and a desire for change.

Adjacent and Informal Activism

As the Finns Party’s organisation expanded between 2008 and 2012, both in members and geographical coverage, the party became a vehicle for radical right demands articulated by online movements external or adjacent to the party’s formal organization.

According to its elite, the Finns Party tries to educate its membership and shape it ideologically. In addition to local meetings and events, this relies on active intra-party communications, mentoring, socialization, and training to discourage unwanted or ideologically incongruous activism. However, a significant number of the party’s members – and its supporters and sympathizers – have little or no connection to the party’s formal organisation.

Although the party’s official activism mostly takes place at the local level, almost half of the party’s members have not taken out membership in a local association. As many sympathizers identify with the party only through the media or online, some activism contributing to the party’s performance and functioning takes place in a realm that is external to the formal organization. For these activists, the party provides a point of identification and political purpose, but the formal party organisation cannot keep an eye on their actions and online interactions.

So while party-adjacent online activism has been essential to the rise of the Finns Party, it has also stripped the party’s official bodies of some agency.

Overlapping Modes of Organisation

The Finns Party can be characterized as a modern mass party benefiting significantly from synergy with party-adjacent online activism. It has enjoyed the stability of a strong formal organisation, while also being boosted by agile and sympathetic communities of online supporters.

But this has required the party to balance between the rewards of autonomy for its formal and informal activists and the challenge of knowing when, where, and how to rein them in.

Because of the horizontal nature of the party’s leadership selection and program production, its balancing act has had a permanent effect both on party ideology and on its organizational form. The party’s mix of formal and informal modes of organization was key, for example, in the mainstreaming of nativism and in the election of Jussi Halla-aho as leader.

Even though having two interlinked modes of political organisation is beneficial to the party, this situation also necessitates the formal party organisation investing time and effort into avoiding potential threats to its legitimacy, image and internal stability. This was highlighted by the party’s recent decision to rein in its youth organisation instead of turning a blind eye on its radicalisation.

Dr. Niko Hatakka is the Populism in Action Project’s Finland focused Research Fellow. You can follow him on Twitter here.