As Italy slips back into a political crisis, it is all too easy to dismiss it as a bizarre case of endemic instability. But today’s Rome might actually be a forerunner of things to come elsewhere. Here is what today’s situation can teach us.
From Benito Mussolini paving the way for fascism in Europe to Silvio Berlusconi anticipating Donald Trump’s bombastic populism, Italy has a long record of predicting historical trends – and not necessarily in a positive way.
It is impossible to understand today’s political situation in Italy without considering the turmoil that reshaped the political system in the early 1990s. A nationwide scandal called Tangentopoli uncovered widespread corruption at all levels of Italian society, leading to the rapid dismissal of the entire political class.
At the same time, Italy was undergoing what in media studies is known as mediatisation, perhaps one of the most fundamental concepts to understand modernity. Mediatisation is the process whereby the media spread across society and increasingly influence people’s behaviour based on their logic.
In politics, mediatisation started with the media becoming the primary source of communication between political actors and citizens.
However, it was only with the rise of private television channels that the media became increasingly independent and followed their commercial interests. Politics quickly adapted by becoming more personalised and embracing marketing elements.
Politicians who try to influence media content become media personalities while citizens are reduced to spectators. The extreme consequence is that political decisions are taken based on the expected media reaction, and politics becomes a constant electoral campaign.
In Italy, the mediatisation of politics took an extreme form, as the rise of media influence corresponded to a profound discrediting of the entire political system. The Italian media played a crucial role in dismantling the existing parties, cultivating anti-political feelings that persist today.
As the old system crashed, the media took centre stage and contributed to shaping the new system. In 1994, media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi entered politics with a TV announcement. He formed a party 45 days before the elections and defeated the left, a party with a decades-old political tradition.
The 1994 campaign was defined as a ‘Copernican revolution’ in Italian politics, ratifying the parties’ irrelevance and the media’s newfound centrality. Berlusconismo defined the entire political season, forcing his opponents to adapt to the new modus operandi.
The anti-political narrative cultivated by Berlusconi and his commercial television networks found a new voice in the Five Star Movement (M5S) thanks to digital technologies. The movement started at the initiative of Beppe Grillo, a showman who managed the most-read blog in the country, developing as a grassroots organisation thanks to online meetups.
The M5S evolved to embody a marketing-based conception of politics. Instead of adapting one’s policies to the electorates via opinion polls, its idea of direct democracy involved making the electorate tell politics what they wanted.
The consequence of such primacy of media over politics is the increasingly short-lived path of Italian political leaders. Matteo Renzi reached the peak of his popularity in 2014 but was forced to resign as prime minister in 2016. Matteo Salvini was the most popular politician in 2020, but in 2021 had to pass the baton to Giorgia Meloni.
Overexposure, the perceived need to dominate daily headlines, and the taste for conflict over compromise, all contribute to the fact that every political leader lasts less than the previous one, mirroring the acceleration of the news cycle.
To make things worse, all successful leaders from Berlusconi onward have presented themselves as being in discontinuity with the past. This tendency refers to the continuous search for novelty, but is self-defeating and reinforces the overall discrediting of the political class.
At the same time, Italy is undoubtedly complex to manage due to the ongoing economic stagnation, low productivity, inefficient public spending, and a declining population. Once per decade, the government lead is given to a technocrat to avoid financial default, again certifying the weakness of the political system.
As the historian Alessandro Barbero said, democracy is not necessarily the best way to take decisions. Still, society is inherently more robust if people feel their opinion is worth something.
However, contemporary Italy shows us that if the mediatisation of politics is not managed, the system risks breaking down. A society in dire need of structural reforms remains stuck in a cycle of conflictual and simplistic narratives.
Italy should function as an example not to be followed. Otherwise, Italy’s characteristic instability might become the common trait of a new political era well beyond its borders.
The Roundup
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Last but not least, check out our Green Brief.
Look out for…
- European Parliament in recess until 22 August 2022
- Economy Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni meets with Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Qu Dongyu in Rome on Thursday.
- Informal meeting of the European Peace Facility Committee in Prague Thursday-Friday.
Views are the author’s.
[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic/Nathalie Weatherald]
Source: euractiv.com
