Italian General Election 2022: The Populist Radical Right Goes Mainstream
| Author | Mattia Zulianello |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/20419058221147590 |
| Published date | 01 December 2022 |
| Date | 01 December 2022 |
20POLITICAL INSIGHT•DECEMBER 2022
‘We made history
today,’ Giorgia Meloni
declared on her
Facebook page once
it became evident that her party, the
populist radical right Brothers of Italy (FdI),
had emerged as the one most voted for
in the Italian General Election held on 25
September. ‘We won't betray your trust,’
Italy’s new Prime Minister added.
With a combined vote share of 43.8 per
cent, the right-wing coalition led by Meloni
obtained a safe majority, winning 235 of
the 400 seats in the Lower House. The
Brothers of Italy obtained a remarkable 26
per cent of the votes, almost 10 percentage
points more than the combined vote
share of its two main coalition partners,
the Matteo Salvini’s League and Silvio
Berlusconi’s Forza Italia. The change from
the previous election, four years earlier, is
stark: back then Meloni’s party obtained
Italian General Election 2022:
The Populist Radical
Right Goes Mainstream
Mattia Zulianello reports on September’s Italian General Election,
which saw a party with neo-fascist roots emerge as the most
powerful force in Italian politics.
only 4.4 per cent of the vote, compared
to 17.4 per cent for the League and 14 per
cent for Forza Italia. Now Meloni’s FdI has
become the leading force of the right-wing
bloc and the biggest force in Italian politics,
with Meloni the new Prime Minister Elect.
See Figure 1.
Three decades of mainstreaming
and normalisation
Meloni’s victory is the culmination of a long
and steady process of the normalisation
and mainstreaming of nativist ideas within
Italian politics which began in the first half
of the 1990s. With the entry of Berlusconi
into politics and the establishment
© GUGLIELMO MANGIAPANE / Alamy Stock Photo
Political Insight December 2022.indd 20Political Insight December 2022.indd 2014/11/2022 11:1414/11/2022 11:14
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