The Italian election of 2018 and the first populist government of Western Europe

The 2013 election had heralded an unprecedented tripolar era for Italian politics, with the two traditional forces of the Second Italian Republic (Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right and variously assorted centre-left alliances) eventually matched, in terms of size, by the Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S) – to date, the most successful rookie of Italian politics with 25% of valid votes at its first national election (Garzia 2013). Such an impressive result, although insufficient to grant it the majority bonus in the Lower Chamber, had nonetheless been enough to complicate, to a large extent, the formation of a parliamentary majority. Indeed, the problematic nature of the electoral outcome resulted in a correspondingly long process of government formation, which took over two months. On 28 April 2013, the President of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, appointed Enrico Letta as the head of a unity government featuring personnel from both Partito Democratico (PD) and Popolo delle Libertà (PdL). This parliamentary majority, however, only lasted until November 2013, when Silvio Berlusconi led the PdL’s withdrawal from the government and the simultaneous reversion of the name of his party to its original denomination Forza Italia (FI). This event led in turn to the formation of a smaller fringe party – Nuovo Centro Destra (NCD) – which, under the leadership of Angelino Alfano, decided not to withdraw from government. a matter of just a few weeks, the process of political change took another turn with the ‘primary’ elections for the leaderships of both the PD and the Lega Nord (LN). On 8 December, Matteo Renzi became the new leader of the PD, while Matteo Salvini became leader of the LN. Persistent tensions followed Renzi’s election as Secretary of the PD, and eventually culminated in Letta’s resignation as Prime Minister in February 2014. Renzi quickly took over as a result and formed a new government based on the same coalition of parties supporting Letta’s cabinet (PD and NCD). A strong mandate from his party and high government popularity figures allowed Renzi to lead PD to a strong showing in the 2014 European Parliament election (Segatti et al. 2015). , this deferred honeymoon came to an end with the constitutional referendum proposed by Renzi’s government. Eventually, the constitutional reform was rejected on 4 December 2016 with 59 percent of votes against it. Following defeat, and as a result of his strong personalisation strategy (Ceccarini and Bordignon 2017), Renzi stepped down as Prime Minister and was replaced by his Minister of Foreign Affairs and co-founder of the PD, Paolo Gentiloni. Under Gentiloni’s leadership, the government carried the country to general elections at the natural end of the legislative term, yet under totally different (proportional) rules, as will be seen below. On 29 December 2017, President Sergio Mattarella dissolved parliament and a new general election was called for 4 March 2018.