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When Giorgia Meloni, the leader of a party with fascist roots, was elected Italy's prime minister, liberal alarm bells went off. Concerns soon evaporated, however, as Meloni continued Italy's policy of support for Ukraine against Russia and refrained from picking fights with the European Union. Her adherence to what looked like a traditional centre-right foreign policy mystified observers across the Atlantic, who neglected her more troubling domestic policies. In liberal-minded and pro-EU quarters, the belief emerged that if Meloni showed that moderation could pay off electorally, other far-right parties could follow suit. However, Meloni's foreign policy is arguably less the result of a genuine change of heart than of contingent factors such as a strongly Atlanticist US administration, Italy's need for EU cash and a lack of competition for the leadership of Europe's far right. All these conditions may vanish in the coming years, and if they do, Meloni may find that her experiment in moderation is not politically expedient after all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growth of radical right politics raises concerns about authoritarian and exclusionary scenarios, while populism is understood as a logic that articulates democratic demands and strengthens political engagement. There is a lack of research on the democratic views of radical right populism. Moreover, the burgeoning literature on these phenomena generally examines either the supply or demand side of politics, neglecting the narrative dimension that emerges from the two intertwining. This article aims to fill these gaps by using the heuristic of the “emotion narrative” that circulates between the supply and demand sides of radical right populist parties to examine their political culture. Assuming that populism creates social identities through the affective articulation of popular demands, focusing on the “narrative of emotions” (and not only on the narrative dimension of particular emotions) allows us to analyse how social and political objects, facts, ideas, and scenarios generate political culture. Through a mixed-methods comparative study of Portugal and Italy, this article assesses the emotion narratives of the parties Chega and Fratelli d’Italia. The dataset includes 14 semi-structured interviews with MPs and an original survey with 1,900 responses regarding political realities (on the democratic system, power structures, ethnic diversity, political history, and role of the media) and hypothetical scenarios (on authoritarianism, the rise of migration and diversity, anti-corruption, securitisation of the state, and expanded use of referendums). The emotion narratives of radical right populist political cultures engender democratic visions rooted in exclusionary identities with positive affection for centralism, authoritarianism, and securitisation of the state, as opposed to innovation and participation.

This paper examines Giorgia Meloni's political rise to power within the context of the neofascist Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI), the post fascist Alleanza Nazionale (AN) and Fratelli d'Italia (FdI), as well as current populist politics. Fratelli d'Italia, I argue, embodies many of the ideas and political attitudes of what has been called a "gray neofascism": a form of populist, formally democratic authoritarianism that promotes a sanitized memory of fascism. I focus on this issue by examining Giorgia Meloni's autobiography and tracing her "roots" within the Roman neofascist and post fascist political world of Colle Oppio and her ascendance to political power. The paper concludes with an assessment of Meloni's leadership in power, her recent visit to North America, and her ambition to consolidate the political power of a new European Right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The far right has become a major political actor in Italy. In this light, this paper focusses on three issues: first, it shows that far-right political alternatives have been around for some time, and highlights the reasons behind their electoral growth; second, the Lega Nord’s Le Pen-ist turn is analysed, along with the process by which Fratelli d'Italia was formed, following the neo-fascist tradition of the Movimento Sociale Italiano; and finally, the two parties’ ideological and policy proposals are examined, showing both the changes and continuities with their origins.

The numerous literary texts quoted in Alberto Arbasino’s Fratelli d’Italia include a vast number of Latin authors, such as Petronius, Catullus, Persius, Juvenal, Horace, Martial and Macrobius, which Arbasino modified and enriched in the four editions of his work. This article aims to show how Arbasino integrated Classical texts in a context/cotext of modern avant-garde, and discusses their importance for the contemporary Italian writer.

The extensive presence of names and toponyms in Alberto Arbasino's works makes it an ideal case study for exploring the significance of proper names and lists of names in literature. This paper aims to examine the role of names in Arbasino's work, starting with an analysis of the names found in the paratexts, such as titles, intertitles, indexes, and indexes of names. These names serve as structural elements that reflect the author's inclination towards classification and combination. Moving forward, I examine the role of names within the main text itself. By comparing them to the works of Proust, Flaubert, and Auden, it becomes evident that names in Arbasino's writing take on a dual nature, encompassing both seriousness and facetiousness. This duality allows his prose to oscillate between memoir and biting satire, as well as between self-portrayal and self-parody. This applies to various forms of his writing, whether it be prose, non-fiction, or hybrid works like Fratelli d'Italia. In conclusion, I offer some observations on the use of homonyms and synonyms in Arbasino's work, employing semiotic tools to analyze their significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The snap election held in September 2022 saw the victory of the right-wing coalition, with a remarkable performance of the populist radical right party Fratelli d'Italia and its leader, Giorgia Meloni, who has become the first female Prime Minister of the country. Another unprecedented element concerns participation, which was the lowest in post-war Italy for a national election. Throughout this article, we first shed light on the background of this election, by highlighting how the specificities of the electoral system and previous developments during the last legislature affected the alliances among of political parties. We then proceed to the illustration of the results, with a territorial analysis of participation figures, vote share and competitiveness of electoral constituencies. Finally, we assess the implications of this election for the institutionalization of the party system. What emerges is a picture of growing abstention, disproportionality, fragmentation and electoral volatility, which suggests an overall consolidation of instability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the fatal grip of the Covid-19 pandemic started to ease, in summer 2022 Italy underwent seismic political developments, which saw the establishment of the first totally populist radical right government in Italian history. On 25 September 2022, the general elections shook up the Italian political scene, with Fratelli d'Italia (FdI) scoring a resounding victory that earned the party the seat of the Prime Minister. Despite fears of a radicalisation of FdI resulting in a neofascist government, evidence points in a different direction. Therefore, the aim of this article is to investigate whether, in the first 100 days in government, FdI moderated, radicalised, or displayed continuity with its trademark ideology and manifesto pledges. While acknowledging the copious amount of bills, decrees, and laws proposed by the governing coalition, as well as a plethora of speeches they released, in the interest of space, the scope of this article is circumscribed to the analysis of the new executive, with a special emphasis on FdI, in the timeframe between the election results and the first 100 days of the new government. Considering this evidence, this article argues that FdI is definitely acting as a populist radical right party, tilted towards moderation, and, mostly, continuity with the 2022 electoral pledges, albeit with some oscillations to radicalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The far right has become a major political actor in Italy. In this light, this paper focusses on three issues: first, it shows that far-right political alternatives have been around for some time, and highlights the reasons behind their electoral growth; second, the Lega Nord's Le Pen-ist turn is analysed, along with the process by which Fratelli d'Italia was formed, following the neo-fascist tradition of the Movimento Sociale Italiano; and finally, the two parties' ideological and policy proposals are examined, showing both the changes and continuities with their origins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2022 Italian general election marked a new step in the unprecedented instability experienced by the Italian party system over the past 15 years. This article presents and discusses the outcome of the election within the deinstitutionalised Italian party system. The most remarkable results were the unprecedented success of the radical-right FDI (Fratelli d'Italia – Brothers of Italy) led by Giorgia Meloni (who would become the first female prime minister in Italy) and a historic drop in voter turnout. In particular, by employing original individual-level survey data, we investigate the impact of territory on the vote, the individual-level dynamics behind the results, and the overall picture emerging in terms of the Italian party system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fratelli d'Italia (FdI) is the new rising star of Italian politics. Scholars and pundits briskly categorised it as a (new) populist radical right (PRR) party. Still, FdI's newness needs to be properly framed. A splinter party of the Popolo della Libertà, it claims a direct lineage with the Alleanza Nazionale – two cases not easily agglutinated into the PRR family. The article analyses the (dis)continuity associated with FdI, examining ideology, organisation, and the continuity of elites. It demonstrates that FdI's organisation and political elites largely overlap with its predecessor parties. However, FdI accomplished a major ideological rebranding, positioning itself as radically different from both the mainstream centre-right and the post-fascist tradition of the Italian right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the corruption scandals of the early 1990s, the birth of the electoral coalition led by Silvio Berlusconi, and its occupation of government in 1994, 2001 and 2008, was interpreted by many as a sign of a new era of success for the Italian centre-right. Yet, after narrowly losing the 2013 national elections, the centre-right appears to have fallen into a political abyss. While opinion polls suggest that its potential electorate is still wide, the former allies that made up the coalition have been fragmented and weakened by a series of splits, leaving the centre-right divided into a more moderate component and an openly populist one. The centre-right's old ruling elites have lost credibility, but the new younger leaders, like Matteo Salvini and Giorgia Meloni, are not able to re-unify the former coalition. The centre-right has been riven by several factors that explain its difficulties during the decade of the economic crisis: the personalisation of its leadership, factionalism, a divergence of programmes, a failure of institutionalisation and ongoing corruption and legal problems. These factors also look set to condition its political future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]