Populism and Technocracy in Italy

The aims of this paper is to control a possible correlation between the decrease of consensus for the Italian government in the public opinion, the rise of Populism and the political and economic consequences for the international credibility of Italy. Populism and political extremism are quite often the responses, to a different degree, for a lack of legitimacy or its bad performance in a democratic system. Technocracy and technocratic governments are the examples of poor politics that Populism seeks to overcome. In Italy, the government of Mario Monti was considered technical for the absence of political leaderships affiliated to a party, deemed to be composed from distinguished professionals, highly skilled, excelling in their fields. It was succeeded by the government of Enrico Letta and then the government of Matteo Renzi, that is accused for populist tensions in the last year. The current Italian Prime Minister is using some degree of Populism as a political tool for responding to the political, economic and social crisis affecting Italy in the recent period. In the absence of a universal agreed definition of Populism by the mainstream leading literature, the task to build valuable indicators for measuring the level of Populism in a system is demanding. Moreover, in order to evaluate the international consequences for Italy of having some rhetorical emotional populist feature in the government (possibly under siege of an intense minority) some empirical indicators will been chosen. For a country with a credibility bias like Italy, this kind of political stance could be highly costly, indeed. Then, leading opinion pools and relevant empirical indicators for the Populism and the international credibility of Italy will be considered. In particular, the paper will explain the attacks led by Populism to the “enemies” represented by the technocratic powers. In reality, Populism and Technocratic governments have in common the poor quality of the ruling class and the incapacity of political parties to play a meaningful rule in the political system. At first analysis, it seems to be a relationship of causality between Populism and Technocracy, with the latter acting as a solution for the poor results of the second. Populism is is affected from the same lack of democratic legitimacy that weakens technocratic governments. Moreover, it could endanger the already weak democratic legitimacy of some political systems building the well known direct relationship between the populist leadership and its citizens, ignoring the other political actors that usually represents the citizens in the democratic institutions. As an Arabian Phoenix, populism and political extremism disappear and it has return in the Italian political system when needed. Considering the last 25 years, since the first government of Silvio Berlusconi in 1994, political leaderships in difficulties quite often play the card of Populism, avoiding any political extremism.