Populism in Power: Can flatmates change each other ? The Italian case.

New kinds of European populist parties and movements characterized by a left wing, right wing or “post-ideological” attitude have succeeded in entering the higher political institutions, not only within the parliament but also within the cabinet as major or junior coalition partners. In particular, the Italian national elections from 2018 led to the formation of an unexpected coalition between two different types of populist parties: the post ideological Five Star Movement and the radical right-wing Lega Nord. These two governed together for approximately a year, until the moment Lega Nord caused the government collapse and the Five Star Movement formed a new coalition with the left-wing Democratic Party. Such a scenario offers the right tools to investigate to what extent populist parties in government succeed in influencing their coalition partners over time, bringing them to change their policy positions on specific topics (such as economy, immigration and civil rights). According to this research based on the ideological definition of populism, the inclusive, exclusive or eclectic character of the actors involved plays a key role in this process. Taking into consideration the years 2017- 2020 the present investigation will first conduct a qualitative analysis of the actors involved in order to depict their profiles and priorities and how these have changed over time. Second, we will make use of a dictionary of populism, as well as quantitative and qualitative content analysis on parliamentary speeches and press conference statements in order to measure the degree of populism in populist and non-populist players involved. Third, through the analysis of policy position changes it will be possible to display if and to what extent the Five Star Movement and Lega Nord influenced each other during their coalition and how the Five Star Movement succeeded in influencing its next coalition partners. As a source of data, we will address public sources such as public statements, official manifestos, coalition enactments and datasets such as the “Manifesto Project Database” and the “Chapell Hill Expert Survey” (CHES). The importance of this research is threefold. First, it will contribute to the ongoing debate on populism in power. Second, it will help in understanding to what extent the ideological character plays a special role in the populist contamination. Third, the eclectic Five Star Movement is a case in point of populists in power because of its features as a post ideological actor and because it has already experienced two government coalitions with two completely different political players. These conditions provide a fertile ground to investigate to what extent the eclectic character of this populist party has represented its main strength or its condemnation within the Italian political scenario.