Religion, Populism and Democratic Backsliding in the 2020s: The Case of Italy

In the past three decades, right-wing populist parties and leaders have become a widespread feature of many political systems around the world. Indeed, although this new party family was first noticed in Europe in the early 1990s, an increasing number of countries in different continents have witnessed the rise of this type of political movements. In many cases, such as India, Russia, and Turkey, their success was also linked by several scholars to severe phenomena of democratic backsliding, which are the consequence of a majoritarian and often intolerant idea of democracy, and in some cases of an outright authoritarian orientation of political leaders. Although the rhetoric of populist leaders in different areas of the world is frequently imbued with religious rhetoric, the role of the religious factor in these processes of democratic backsliding is still understudied. This paper will try to contribute to fill this gap by analysing the case of Italy. This latter is a quite interesting political laboratory, since it has witnessed the success of conservative and right-wing populist parties and leaders since the mid-1990s. Particularly, in 2022 it witnessed the massive electoral victory of a new right-wing party, Brothers of Italy, rooted in the neo-fascist tradition. The paper will analyse the history of the party (and its ancestors) and its current positions on sensitive issues related to social and religious pluralism and to morality politics, to try to understand if its identity-driven and civilizational religious orientation could contribute to a new wave of democratic backsliding in Italy’s near future.