Populist parties and movements. A securitizing strategic reinforcement? Italy and Germany compared

Populist parties and movements. A securitizing strategic reinforcement? Italy and Germany compared During the last three decades, populist parties have strongly influenced the public opinion and have registered successful electoral outcomes all over Europe by presenting an agenda where issues such as anti-elitism and open contestation to immigration, if not xenophobia, have played a major role. Their critical attitude towards the current forms of representative democracy aims at developing feelings of insecurity through the exploitation of citizens’ anxiety. The recent global financial and economic crisis has created a fertile ground for a further stigmatization of the” people’s enemies”. In this scenario, migrants play a major role. The recent migration crisis has underlined the EU’s incapability to successfully manage crucial issues such as integration, people’s fluxes across the European States and migrants identification. Populist parties and movements denounce the European Democracies’ ineffectiveness in guaranteeing safety for their citizens and in protecting the European identity. Feelings of insecurity are also exacerbated by an aggressive agenda and a xenophobic political language. This is not a new phenomenon, as populist parties have been successful in Europe since the mid 80’s. However, the contemporary populist scenario has become more effective in recent years, as parties and movements seem to have joined forces to exacerbate a feeling of insecurity that strongly affects populations’ decisions and behavior. Through an empirical analysis of the Italian and the German political system, this paper will describe the evolution of the relationship between populist parties and movements in relation to their common anti-immigration positions. The Pegida movement in Germany plays an undoubtable influence on the public opinion, thus pushing the Alternative für Deutschland towards the reinforcement of the AFD’s nationalist and anti-immigrant faction. The Northern League in Italy exploits the influence that the extreme right movement CasaPound plays on younger, deprived generations, in order to gain political terrain in southern and central Italy. The directions of these influences change rapidly over time, since the structure of movements and parties largely depends on the reactions of the traditional parties to the issues proposed by populist actors. Still, the overall outcome is an exacerbation of issues relevant to security and migration and of the insecurity perceived by citizens, which is then further exploited by populist and traditional parties. This paper will compare the reinforcement strategies of populist parties in Germany and Italy and the role they play in the formulation of policy proposal, political communication and language. It will also investigate the influence played by these phenomena on the public opinion and the transformation of traditional parties.