Italy’s Turn to the Right
Europe continues to embrace populism—but Meloni’s coalition may prove unstable.
The biggest break for Giorgia Meloni, the winner of Sunday’s Italian general election, came a year and a half ago. In 2021, former European Central Bank president Mario Draghi was called to lead the country out of the COVID-induced economic crisis. Not for the first time, Italy turned to a technocrat to solve its problems. But while the other parliamentary leaders joined together to support Prime Minister Draghi, Meloni kept her party, the radical right-wing Fratelli d'Italia (Brothers of Italy), out of government.
Her wager paid off—big time. Meloni was well placed to capitalize on the anti-establishment anger and frustration prevalent in Italian society. On election night, the populist rightwing coalition she led—which also included Matteo Salvini, a former deputy prime minister who refashioned the Lega from a movement for northern autonomy to a far-right nationalist party, as well as Forza Italia, the party founded and still headed by 85-year-old billionaire and three-time populist prime minister Silvio Berlusconi—secured a comfortable majority in parliament, and are likely to form a government within a month or two. Brothers of Italy secured 26 percent of the vote, up from only 4 percent in 2018. This was the largest of any party, and Meloni now stands to become Italy’s first female prime minister.
Meloni co-founded Brothers of Italy in 2012 after resigning as a youth minister from Berlusconi's government. It was founded as a successor to the post-war movement of admirers of Benito Mussolini, meaning that for the first time since WW2, Italy will have a leader stemming from fascist roots. The party’s flag features the flame associated with the dictator’s grave in Predappio in central Italy.
Even moderates and left-wingers agree that, in person, Meloni is more considerate and hard-working than she comes across in public appearances. But she has never fully distanced herself from her party’s far-right origins, and she is very ambiguous on what she really intends to do once she formally assumes power.
One important reason for Meloni’s rise was the economic crisis that has weakened Italy’s middle class in recent years. According to the Bank of Italy, the incomes and assets of the richest households have grown since 2016. The average income of the poorest households also increased by 12 percent. By contrast, the wealth and income of middle class households stagnated or even declined. The current energy crisis and the resulting inflation compounded this effect: government household subsidies went to lower incomes, leaving out middle class families that live on tight budgets.
Meloni was the most successful at riding this wave of middle class frustration. The fact that she has remained in opposition during Draghi’s national-unity government led voters to view her as a fresh face in an otherwise discredited political class. According to a July survey by Ipsos, the Brothers of Italy poll highest among voters of middle income.
But what Meloni’s victory will actually mean in practice is not at all clear. Her right-wing coalition is characterized by a series of concerning and contradictory ideas that raise doubts about its ability to sustain a coherent or sensible government.
First, there is the question of how Brothers of Italy relates to its dark past. One of Meloni’s successes is that she has managed to make it impolite to ask her what she really thinks about fascism, frequently expressing impatience about the topic. Last month, she tried to close the issue by recording a video in English, French and Spanish—but, notably, not in Italian—in which she condemned the suppression of democracy by Benito Mussolini.
But this contradicts a quarter century of open far-right activism. Her party is still packed with hard-right personnel: one of its regional officials in Rome, Francesco Lollobrigida (who now stands to become a key figure in Meloni’s government), supported the building of a monument to war criminal Rodolfo Graziani, the man who enforced Mussolini’s policies in Libya and Ethiopia by setting up concentration camps and gassing thousands of civilians. Meloni’s attempts to moderate her party’s image are arguably too little, too late.
In terms of policy, Meloni is even more ambiguous. Up until 2021 she was a rabid anti-European, advocating Italy’s exit from the euro—only to preach fiscal orthodoxy in the run-up to Sunday’s election. Last June, she gave a raucous speech at an event organized by Vox, the hard-right Spanish party, screaming “No to big international finance! No to the bureaucrats of Brussels.” But earlier this month, I heard her address a roomful of selected businesspeople in Northern Italy with a mildly protectionist and interventionist speech that would be the bread and butter of any Gaullist politician in France.
Likewise, her much-publicized relationship with Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s illiberal leader, is confusing at best. In both 2019 and 2021, Meloni invited Orbán to be the guest of honor at her party’s conferences. This month, the Brothers of Italy voted against the European Parliament’s majority opinion that Hungary is an “electoral autocracy.” “Orbán has won elections several times, therefore Hungary is a democracy,” Meloni said, glossing over the gerrymandering of electoral districts, the suppression of independent media and the political control of the judiciary exerted by Orbán’s party Fidesz. Yet at the same time, Meloni added that her ideas on how to run Italy were “different” and stressed that she doesn’t share Orbán’s pro-Russia foreign policy agenda.
The only point where Meloni has been clear so far is about constitutional reforms—she wants to concentrate more executive power into the hands of a leader who would be directly elected by voters. But even then, she never specified how she sees the balance of powers between different independent institutions in Italy, and despite Sunday’s victory lacks the supermajority to push such reforms through parliament. Furthermore, Italy’s institutional checks and balances are such that it might not be easy to turn the country into an Orbán-style “illiberal democracy,” even if she tried. Italy might simply be too messy, financially fragile, and hard to govern for anyone to turn it into an authoritarian system.
Despite these constraints, Meloni’s ascent remains deeply worrying. It has revealed that Italy’s ability to resist illiberalism is far from assured. Large swathes of the country’s elites proved too keen to greet Meloni as their new political master, without asking hard questions on who she really is and what she stands for. Business leaders, civil servants and media representatives have been band-wagoning for months.
Ultimately, if the country preserves its liberal democracy, it will be mostly thanks to an exoskeleton of constitutional arrangements set up 75 years ago, as well as the current constraints of being within the European Union. This is why her coalition’s strange mix of views and aspirations might come home to roost sooner than Meloni expects. To counter inflation, the European Central Bank is raising interest rates and reducing support for Italy’s high public debt. Meloni and her allies will likely lack the guts and competence to take the unpopular fiscal measures that may prove necessary in the next few months.
Meanwhile, the coalition’s vague and contradictory policies on everything from economic to foreign policy might hasten its collapse. Before too long, Italy could end up back in the hands of some trusted technocrat. This election day, populism was the name of the game—but given how fragile Italy’s economy and how volatile its political system is, technocrats may be back in charge before too long.
Federico Fubini is editor-at-large of the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, where he covers economy and finance.
Follow Persuasion on Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube to keep up with our latest articles, podcasts, and events, as well as updates from excellent writers across our network.
This paragraph fascinates me:
"Her party is still packed with hard-right personnel: one of its regional officials in Rome, Francesco Lollobrigida (who now stands to become a key figure in Meloni’s government), supported the building of a monument to war criminal Rodolfo Graziani, the man who enforced Mussolini’s policies in Libya and Ethiopia by setting up concentration camps and gassing thousands of civilians. Meloni’s attempts to moderate her party’s image are arguably too little, too late."
'too little, too late' *for whom*? Clearly not too little too late for Italian voters, much of the establishment, and swaths of Italian media this very reporting? Too little too late for the self-appointed moral gatekeepers and other elites that are the very source of populist rage in part due to this exact kind of scolding behavior? I honestly don't know.
Sadly, this is a recurring theme of Persuasion - it's only "liberal democracy" when the Davos elite approves of the electorate's choices.