Italy: the promised land of populism?

Since the 1990s, Italy has been considered by many social scientists as a fertile testing ground for populism, or even as a populist ‘paradise’. Understanding the underlying causes of the populist upsurge that characterised politics after the party-system transformation that came in the wake of the Tangentopoli scandal requires a long-term perspective in order to identify both the structural factors facilitating populism’s sudden growth, and the behaviour of those political actors responsible for the spread of populist arguments and communication styles. The article aims to develop this analysis by illustrating the different embodiments of the populist mentality within the Italian political system since the re-establishment of democracy in the aftermath of World War II.