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Abstract In this paper we analyse how populist leaders in UK and Italy – namely Nigel Farage, Nicola Sturgeon, Giorgia Meloni, and Matteo Salvini – reacted to the first and second lockdowns on their Twitter accounts, communicating directly to their people. The analysis was carried out following a combined qualitative and quantitative approach to discourse. The qualitative analysis focused on comparing populist leaders’ rhetorical and semiotic choices, while the quantitative analysis observed the response by the community of common Twitter users. This work aims on the one hand at unveiling the strategic use of social media by populist leaders and on the other at investigating conflictual interactional dynamics, especially in times of crisis.

Populist criticism has become a significant challenge for science and science communication. Such criticism maintains that allegedly corrupt academic elites and their expertise are inferior to allegedly virtuous “ordinary people” and their common sense. It suggests that the people, rather than elites, should have authority over how “true knowledge” is produced and communicated. This dissertation provides a conceptual and empirical analysis of populist science criticism against the backdrop of science communication scholarship and practice. It develops a theoretical framework for populist demands toward science, conceptualizing them as science-related populism. It also introduces a novel measure to investigate science-related populism in surveys – the SciPop Scale – and provides empirical evidence on populist science criticism in Switzerland and beyond. Moreover, the dissertation discusses implications of science-related populism for public discourse about science as well as science communication practice and proposes ways to respond to it.

The article focusses on the influence of Catholicism on contemporary constitutionalism. It argues that Catholicism has played a number of roles in shaping it through its diplomacy, its culture, and its teaching. It then identifies some key aspects of contemporary constitutionalism that owe much to Catholicism: the notion of dignity, international and supranational political and legal integration, and the principle of subsidiarity. It finally considers how a secularising trend in contemporary constitutionalism has tried to distance it from its Catholic roots, which, in turn, has persuaded increasing portions of Catholics and Christians more generally that Catholicism and constitutionalism are intrinsically irreconcilable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article recollects the political and social impact of the Covid-19 crisis in the city of Messina. Here, the general manifestations of the pandemic crisis intertwined with a local fabric characterized by economic depression and «dependency». In order to survive, vast portions of the local social classes depend on the political power of a given moment. Such local power -- in this case the Mayor -- presented «populist» traits that found in the health crisis the ideal condition to extend reputation and importance. While opposition to this authoritarian project was one trait present in the community, ambivalence and instrumentalism appeared as the most relevant sentiments and reasons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to examine the transformation of Podemos’identity from its creation in 2014 until the replacement of Pablo Iglesias as its leader in 2021. By using the process tracing methodology, the study sheds light on how institutionalization, along with changes in the country’s economic context, moved Podemos from a phase of “antagonism” to one of political “competition”. Consequently, its entry into the government placed it within the framework of “consensual pluralism” dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mutability of the populist mentality, linked to social and cultural change, to the socio-political context and to the role of the hybrid media system, tends to legitimize different forms of populist expression and changes in political positions due both to political contingency and to the change of role of the populist subject in the institutional system. This contribution analyzes in particular the difficulty for the Meloni Government in reconciling its oppositional political identity with the need to be concretely proactive and formally institutional. In this sense, it seems correct to us to define the current condition of populists in government in Italy not as the emergence of a post-populist specificity, but on the contrary as one of the possible mutations that the populist mentality can undergo as context conditions change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On December 2, 2022, the Censis report “Post-Populist Italy” posited that compounded crises have catalyzed a shift in Italian society to pressing, realistic public demands. Amidst the prolonged pandemic, geopolitical strife, historic inflation, and energy reliance, a new “post-populism cycle” has emerged, wherein populist rhetoric is supplanted by an exigency for practical responses from a political class that is gradually embracing realism and expertise, signaling a potential transformation in governance approach. In response to the ongoing “permacrisis,” the Italian populace shows no signs of mass mobilization or protest, instead further withdrawing from political and public life, as evidenced by decreasing electoral participation. This behavior aligns with Cannon’s classical psychological response models: Freeze, Fight, or Flight when facing threats. Italian society appears to be frozen, unable to take decisive action or confront the challenges directly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an analysis of the relationship among populism, processes of depoliticisation and ideology. In particular, the essay first addresses the complex relationship between depoliticisation and processes of governance, illustrating their impact on the changing public sphere. It then examines populisms - traditionally defined as ideology or political rhetoric - using the notion of social imaginary, which is also useful for a more complete understanding of the role of communicative ecosystems. Communicative processes, on the other hand, play a role both in the development of the phenomena of political polarisation and those of extremisation that increasingly accompany the emergence of new populisms. The article tries to show that contemporary populisms constitute a set of ideological narratives that usually accompany and feed the dominant social imaginary, today represented by the neoliberal one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: For political organizations, social media, far from being a space for dialogue with citizens, have become another tool for unidirectional communication. Thus, this paper aims to deepen the propagandistic use of YouTube by political parties, focusing the case study on Andalusia, the Spanish region with the largest population and the first where the far-right party Vox achieved influential parliamentary representation. Methodology: Specifically, a content analysis was applied to 999 videos published throughout 2020 by political parties with representation in the Andalusian Parliament, considering variables such as the presence of the party symbols, the type of propaganda used and the reference to a rival political party. Results: Considering the foregoing, the results are discussed in terms of de-ideologization, populism, and the reduction of programmatic ideas. Conclusions: We find differences in the type of propaganda used (with emphasis on reaction and denial propaganda), pointing to a significant inability of political parties to propose alternatives, which is related to the rise of populism and the pseudo-abandonment of ideology.

On 15th October 2023 Polish voters decided to put an end to the 8-year period of the Law and Justice Party in power, widely seen as “authoritarian populism”. The paper analyses the electoral programmes of the major contenders (Law and Justice, Civic Coalition, Third Way, New Left and Confederation) as well as a variety of election-related statistics (e.g. by voters’ age, education, occupation and residence) revealing a more complex image of the Polish society and its political preferences in 2023. The author argues that due to remarkable ideological and socio-cultural polarization contemporary Poland remains “a house divided” or even “two nations [with] no sympathy [for each other]”. Even if Poland has now chosen a path back to the future, the new pro-EU liberal government will face a number of identifiable challenges.

Both populism and the uncontrolled spread of disinformation threaten democratic processes. Although they belong to two different disciplines, such phenomena show a relevant affinity, both on a conceptual and empirical level. For one, the relationship between populism and disinformation concerns communication strategies. In this sense, both rhetorics fuel the same type of arguments and sometimes overlap. However, from a communicative perspective, little scholarly attention has been devoted to the intersection between the populist style and disinformative mechanisms. The limited theoretical production couples with a similar lack of empirical research. The article aims at detecting the convergences between populist communication and disinformation in the Italian political landscape. By employing Digital Methods and Content Analysis techniques, the purpose of the research is to detect the presence of populist features both within the discourses of political leaders of the main Italian parties and in the currently most followed and active disinformative pages. Firstly, we will discuss the discursive style that characterizes populist rhetoric and disinformative messages. On the one hand, we will approach populism as a gradual property of political expression and associate the use of stylistic elements of populist ideology and communication to the same communication strategy. On the other hand, we will examine in depth the characteristics of disinformation, to finally identify common features between the two phenomena related to the context in which they operate, the actors they involve, and the communicative elements they employ - concentrating on the latter the attention of the analysis. Secondly, the empirical analysis will identify the relationship between the phenomena within the digital platform environment, by comparing the communication strategies of the main Italian political leaders and disinformation pages on Facebook. The Content Analysis will detect the presence of populist elements, communication functions and message topics, while the application of a multiple correspondence analysis (Acm) will identify the common communicative traits. The results show a significant convergence between disinformation and a certain type of populism in their respective communication practices. The work thus paves the way for a future joint reflection of the two phenomena in the digital environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Praised by many as a remedy for various democratic deficits and criticized by others for their capacity to promote populist agendas, referendums are key participatory devices of representative democracy. However, a rich corpus of literature describes numerous occasions in which they become merely strategic levers in the hands of politicians instead of substantive popular consultations on policy issues. The Romanian post-socialist political system is no exception to this trend. Among the referendums held between 1990 and 2020, this paper analyses a particular class, those initiated by the President of Romania according to the article 90 of the Constitution, with the aim to discern the general features and the specific context of their strategic use, emphasizing especially the 2019 referendum concerning the justice system, the most recent one of the entire series. My observations confirm and further reinforce prior generalizations regarding the instrumentalization of referendums in post-socialist Romania.

Based on the dignity and intrinsic sociability of the human person, this article asserts the importance of fraternity and family relationships in social life and politics. Too many dreams about political integration have been shattered lately, while new walls of aggressive nationalism and isolationism are being built. In this situation, people everywhere feel the need for good politics and for “a healthy injection of family spirit.” (AL 183) However, there can be no universal fraternity without good politics “built upon respect for law and frank dialogue between individuals.” (FT 196)

It is a worrying fact that today a considerable amount of citizens is dissatisfied and disappointed by democracy. This theme is addressed here from an essentially philosophical point of view and tries to support the preferability of the democratic form, even if the criticisms relating to the limits of its historical implementation should not be underestimated. In fact, many choices made by democratic governments seem decidedly questionable, but this must not be attributed to democracy itself, but to the bad use that some do. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This scientific article analyses the arguments and opinions used by the US Supreme Court and the Supreme Court of Brazil about air pollution control and the influence of transnational legal foundations in times of populist governments. For the development of this research, the comparative method was used, operationalized by the operational concept techniques, bibliographic research, and jurisprudential analysis. The product of the succinct comparative analysis performed allows us to classify the decision-making standard in the case of West Virginia v. EPA completely uncharted to foreigner law, while the Direct Action of Unconstitutionality n. 6.148/2019, constantly mentions transnational legal agreements and, in the case of regulatory omission by the Brazilian State, indicates the prevalence of World Health Organization standards.

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In order for a “populist moment” to occur, it is necessary that the institutional system – social and economic – is in some way in crisis. This essay aims to reconstruct the undercurrent of the moral question, which allowed populism to emerge in the crisis phase of the Republic in Italy. In particular, in the comparison between Occhetto’s Pci (later Pds) and Leoluca Orlando’s La Rete.

The article examines the evolution of the Italian right framed in the broader phenomenon of the European right. The theoretical framework of reference comforts us in analysing the ideological configuration of the galaxy of the new right, which presents itself in its substantial homogeneity and in the affirmation of a new policy that, founded on the call to the people, claims the demand for an essential modification of the current socio-economic reality and of the prevailing socio-cultural conformation. The Italian Right contains specific peculiarities outlining a path that has led it to abandon legacies, appeals, echoes of the old ideological baggage. The path has not been linear. At first it accelerated in a moderate direction, then it saw a discontinuity in the direction of the recovery of certain radical traits. Our investigation into the right and the path that today sees Fratelli d’Italia as the main political formation of the Italian right is mainly based on research that sees local administrators and the Party on the Ground in general as the object of analysis, which we will use here to infer the main orientations and relevant confirmations on important ideological aspects. All this formed the basis of a broader research project involving much of the local and national ruling class, the conclusions of which will be offered in a subsequent publication. Here, the initial results and the analysis of official documents have been extremely useful in tracing the path taken by the Italian right.

Following the critical discourse analysis approach, this article intends to highlight how the anti-immigration perspective is (re)produced within the Facebook page of the Italian political leader Matteo Salvini during the pandemic scenario between March 2020–March 2021. Quantitative and qualitative analysis have been applied to Salvini’s posts and users’ comments aiming at identifying the linguistic strategies that contribute to instrumentalizing the emergency and aim to reinforce the process of “securitization” of national borders as well as the re-legitimation of national identities. Findings suggest that the main discursive strategies used by the political leader do not include migrants as a danger for the spread of the virus. Rather, Salvini systematically organized the migratory narration on negative campaigning blaming political opponents and recontextualized the moralization of borders. The contribution helps to reveal how the anti-migration discourse is reproduced during the COVID-19 outbreak and how the politicization of the migration serves as a context for the normalization of migrant’s exclusion.

The recent rise of populist politicians in Western democracies is often associated with their allegedly successful use of digital media. However, for a long time, there has been little research specifically on populist online communication. To address this substantial research gap, the thesis pursues two major research aims: First, it investigates drivers of populist communication in politicians’ online self-presentation and online news media representation. Second, the thesis examines the effects of populist online communication on citizens’ behavior in the form of user reactions to politicians’ social media posts and reader comments on online news articles. Based on five internationally comparative studies and the overarching synopsis, the cumulative thesis demonstrates that populist online communication is driven by the reciprocal interactions among politicians, journalists, and citizens and is influenced by various factors on the macro, meso, and micro level. Furthermore, it shows that populist online communication resonates with citizens and is multiplied by them – specifically by citizens with prior strong populist attitudes. By analyzing the interactions of three key actor groups – politicians, journalists, and citizens – and by following a multimethod approach the dissertation connects research on both the supply and demand side of populism.

The relationship between food and identity is long-standing, and it has been proficiently studies by social scientists in a variety of fields and disciplines. This article wants to contribute to this literature, with an original thematic and methodological approach. By showing the key elements that gastronomic place-branding and (gastro)populist styles of communication share, this article builds bridges between the two disciplines. With (gastro)populism is intended the exploitation of food products as performed by politicians to fuel populist messages. This empirical study provides a visual analysis of the practices of gastropopulism as performed on Instagram by two leaders of right-wing, populist parties: Matteo Salvini and Giorgia Meloni. First, I detail some key elements that make food so central in place branding, and in the establishment of collective identities. Second, I explain its strict connection to politics and introduce the concept of gastropopulism. Third, I provide some key elements useful to better understand the Italian political landscape. Fourth, I describe the approach I developed to disentangle the leaders’ communicational strategies and how they become tied to gastronomies. In a nutshell, I grounded my methods in some of the most influential works on visual analysis to find the dominant elements in the analysed images, and the recurring topics in the attached texts. Subsequently, I use the results emerged from this approach to focus on some specific instances of gastropopulism, where food politics and gastronomic place-branding contaminate each other. The main contention of this article is that when high-visibility characters, like national party leaders, implement gastronomy in their communication strategies, they can influence the public perception of food as an identarian element. Thus, gastronomic place-branding actors need to confront themselves with the association that gastropopulists make between the local identities connected to cuisines and a set of right-wing, populist values.

Social-identity creation is crucial for politicians to rhetorically build their political community, legitimise specific actions and mobilise supporters by appealing to specific values or discursive argumentations. Combining a critical discourse analysis perspective derived from van Dijk’s socio-cognitive approach with Conceptual Metaphor Theory, this paper investigates people-building discourse strategies in Donald J. Trump’s speech prior to the Capitol Hill riots and President Joseph R. Biden’s Inaugural Address. The research aims to compare strategies adopted in populist and anti-populist discourse. Results show that, while the distinction between populism and anti-populism is still underdeveloped, similar discourse strategies and metaphorical mappings chiefly revolving around the ideas of nation and democracy may be deployed with opposite ends. Furthermore, the study highlights how the populist/anti-populist frontier is not clear-cut and may shape different civic identities and ideals of democracy according to the ideology underpinning each politician’s discourse.

Copyright of Rivista di Politica is the property of Rubbettino Editore and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The aim of this essay is to understand how the concepts of right and left continue to be relevant in defining the relationship between citizens and politics, in shaping belonging and being cardinal points from which to observe and interpret the world. In the face of lines of thought which, in a context marked by anti-politics and populism, tend to consider the left-right ideological axis a tool of the past. We argued on the meaning of the right and the left starting from a research handed out over a thousand of students enrolled at the University of Urbino. Subjects who represent a particular component of the population, those who have no experience with the «Prima Repubblica», but certainly capable of expressing reflections, ideas and political readings attributable to the leftright dichotomy. What is proposed is, therefore, a case study whose results, although limited and not generalizable, appear particularly useful in providing indications and trends with respect to the topic set. According to the left-right dichotomy data collected allow us to investigate on aspects that concern politics and society as well as the daily life activities of each individual: relationship with politics, knowledge of its institutions and of its actors, participation, trust, values and, therefore, ideas and opinions. They allow us also to highlight inclinations, positions and thoughts which are believed to continue to attribute meaning to the old ideological tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article shows the effect of the cultural dimension on participation. At first it describes democratic impasse caused by the disaffection of citizens, from political force. Two shortcuts are born: populism and plebiscitarism. Then it outlines some reasons: no guarantee of equality, change of party structure, involution of public opinion. Subsequently, the article observes the weight of culture through the comparison between the level of education of Italians and some dimensions of participation. Finally, this suggests some concepts of Karl Mannheim to qualify participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the current level of legal protection of climate migrants in international and EU law and the repercussions that the present approach might have on the rule of law. It first analyses whether the current binding instruments of refugee and climate change law offer any protection for climate migrants and identifies a legal gap in this regard. It then briefly addresses the progress made by recently adopted soft law instruments and the UN Human Rights Committee decision in the Teitiota case, at the same time pointing out that the latter decision has set criteria which might jeopardise the realisation of the non-refoulement right which it aims to guarantee. The paper then analyses the literature on the link of climate change and migration, using the example of the Syrian civil war, the rise of anti-immigration populism which subsequently occurred, as well as the threat that such movements might pose for the rule of law. The authors conclude that the planned and systematic response of the international community to climate migration and continued good regional and bilateral practices are more likely to prevent sudden spikes in mass migration which could lead to anti-immigration populist movements.

The article analyses the novel Carnaio by Giulio Cavalli, published in 2018. It re-elaborates the reality descripted by the contemporary racist and populist discourse, to imagine a possible dystopic development of that reality. The society created by this novel is governed by a zombiepolitics. The zombiepolitics is a metaphor to indicate a government device to manage all human categories considered by the society as an excess, as a stranger to be expelled in order to preserve peace. The aim is to show how the dystopian genre is useful for reflecting on ideological discourses, throw the construction of possible worlds that visualize the worlds of ideological perception of reality.

The article examines the evolution of the Italian right framed in the broader phenomenon of the European right. The theoretical framework of reference comforts us in analysing the ideological configuration of the galaxy of the new right, which presents itself in its substantial homogeneity and in the affirmation of a new policy that, founded on the call to the people, claims the demand for an essential modification of the current socio-economic reality and of the prevailing socio-cultural conformation. The Italian Right contains specific peculiarities outlining a path that has led it to abandon legacies, appeals, echoes of the old ideological baggage. The path has not been linear. At first it accelerated in a moderate direction, then it saw a discontinuity in the direction of the recovery of certain radical traits. Our investigation into the right and the path that today sees Fratelli d'Italia as the main political formation of the Italian right is mainly based on research that sees local administrators and the Party on the Ground in general as the object of analysis, which we will use here to infer the main orientations and relevant confirmations on important ideological aspects. All this formed the basis of a broader research project involving much of the local and national ruling class, the conclusions of which will be offered in a subsequent publication. Here, the initial results and the analysis of official documents have been extremely useful in tracing the path taken by the Italian right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following article aims to analyze how the representation of gangster in Hollywood movies (1905-1939) has changed according to the transformations of the American society and the embedding of neo-populist mythology by the New Deal Administration: the gangster, before immigrant and “alien by nature”, from the Thirities on becomes the incarnation of unregulated capitalism. This paper would like to suggest a map of the relations between cinema and society and how one was influenced by the other (and vice versa) in order to show on the Big Screen the phenomenon of gangsterism, a theme deeply connected with American Society and the idea of “Americaness”.

The present article posits a re-reading of the fairy tale «The Devoted Friend» (Oscar Wilde, 1888) as a critique avant-la-lettre of populist discourses of hegemony. After a theoretical definition of the principles that constitute the populist discourse, the article conflates pragmatic and semantic discourse strategies to construe meaning in the story in search of these principles. The article discusses ideas such as the dialectical opposition between friend and foe, the hegemonic construction of the collective identity «us» vs. «them» and the vertical political structure these atrategies, more often than not, spawn. Ultimately, the article assesses the value of the story as a critical «blueprint» to debunk the social construction of the self in present contexts.

(Series Information) European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2020 5(1), 107-117 | Article | (Table of Contents) I. Historians against memory laws. - II. Historical memory and criminal law. - III. Universal values and particularistic memories. - IV. Populism and memory in Eastern Europe - V. Concluding remarks. | (Abstract) This Article examines historians' protests against memory laws that criminalize certain statements about the past. Most typically, historians protest these laws in the name of freedom of research. However, the chronology of their protests, which became widespread only in the 2000s, a decade and a half after the adoption of the first bans on Holocaust denial, suggests that their opposition to memory laws had other reasons as well. The author argues that these reasons had to do with the evolution of the legislation of memory, namely, the expansion of such prohibitions on topics other than Holocaust denial, which many historians interpreted as a manifestation of the "competition between victims" and of the decay of democracy as a universal project. The Article further considers the changes that occurred in this legislation as a result of the rise of national populism, especially in Eastern Europe, where bans on certain statements about the past are increasingly used to promote national narratives. The 2014 Russian memory law, which criminalizes "the dissemination of knowingly false information on the activities of the USSR during the Second World War" and protect the memory of the Stalin regime, is an extreme example of this tendency. The author suggests that the memory laws' focus on concrete historical events that function as sacred symbols of national and other communities, has facilitated their emergence as a preferred instrument of populist history politics based on particularistic memories rather than on the cosmopolitan memory of the Holocaust.

What can we still learn from Hannah Arendt’s political categories and reflections on the public realm in an era that sees the growing spread of populisms? The large critical literature on Arendt’s work has been spreading over the years a sort of standardized vision, according to which Arendt was a nostalgic and anti-modern thinker, whose aim was to rehabilitate the greek polis model against the modern decline of the public sphere, so that very few of her conceptual categories are still useful to understand contemporary phenomena. The purpose of these notes is to offer a different reading of the complex relationship between Arendt and the modern age. With the help of most recent literature – characterised by a more critic approach to her work – it seems possible, quite to the contrary, to draw from Arendt’s thought a deep “modernist” attitude, not just regarding her judgement on modernity, but above all in terms of upto- dateness of some of her suggestions.

Political authority and popular power. The article aims at identifying the deep roots of populism in the divide between political authority and popular power. Whereas political authority finds its legitimacy in the modern imaginary, characterized by the rational order of the State and the design of the social, popular power finds its foundation in the social underground flows linked to the new modalities of being-together. The social effervescence generated by people’s barbaric power allows us to discern those processes of change which, despite their dangerous ambivalence and heterogeneity, are re-establishing the political imaginary.

(Series Information) European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2019 4(3), 907-912 | European Forum Insight of 12 January 2020 | (Table of Contents) I. Background. - II. The national context. - III. The reference in preliminary ruling. - IV. The aftermath of the Court of Justice's judgment. - V. The response of the national court and its implications. - VI. The response of the government. - VII. Outlook for the future. | (Abstract) The Insight analyses the recent judgment of the Court of Justice in joined cases C-585/18, C-624/18 and C-625/1, A.K. v. Krajowa Rada Sądownictwa and CP, DO v. Sąd Najwyższy, hereafter A.K. and Others. The ruling has had considerable impact on the crisis of the rule of law in Poland and the note evaluates its immediate effects.

Right-wing populism has a long tradition in Switzerland. Nevertheless, only little is known about how populist messages in the media contribute to the success of the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) and to the acceptance of the party’s anti-immigration policies. In this study, we combine data from a large media content analysis (including newspapers and TV news shows) with data from a panel-survey in order to address this research gap. Thereby we differentiate between effects driven by the content and the form of right-wing populist communication. While right-wing populist content depicts immigrants and the political elite as a threat to the Swiss people, populist style evokes the sense of a crisis by emotionalizing and dramatizing the message. Populist style is therefore assumed to increase the persuasiveness of populist claims. The results of this study suggest that this is the case only for some voters, while it backfires for others.

The paper concerns the hypothetical crisis of the "populist moment" in Italy, with reference to the possible contradictions between the alleged populist nature of Lega and M5S and the participation of these two parties in the Draghi national unity government. The examined contradictions - some actual, others only apparent - concern the themes of Europeanism, the themes of the pluralism of democratic representation and the themes of the relationship with technocratic models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting from the Transformation of Democracy (1921; engl. 1984), one of the last works by Pareto, this paper aims to highlight firstly the key aspects of the Pareto’s idea of politics and democracy, particularly concerning their functioning mechanism. Secondly, it helps to analyse the crisis of democracy and the populism wave experienced today by the advanced countries as well as the political situation in Italy. The paper is structured as follows. The first section is devoted to a Pareto’s profile as sociologist, trying to understand his historical, social and cultural framework. The second section is focused on his theoretical sociological activity and particularly on the distinction between logical and non-logical action. In the third section we are going to scrutinize the topic of the Transformation of Democracy. According to Pareto, the crisis of the sovereignty is due to the weakening of the State. It’s caused by the access to the power by those not qualified to be member of the ruling class. Consequently, the practice of democracy turns into spurious majorities, called by Pareto “demagogic plutocracy”. This kind of majorities manage power for their own benefit and not in favour of the whole community.

In the past decade, populist movements have vindicated another form of democracy that, from the perspective of constitutional law, is rooted in the claim of identity rather than representation. This has also resulted in a general rejection of the political and legal forms that are at the basis of the liberal constitutional form of government. However, the state as a system of rules that enables order – a nomos – has not been questioned and it still performs its function of emancipator and restrainer. Carl Schmitt seems to have best synthetized these two concepts by resorting, on the one hand, to the concept of identitarian democracy, a type of democracy based on the identity between rulers and ruled, and, on the other hand, to the Katékon, the form of political power that prevents the eruption of chaos. It is where these two elements meet that a bi-dimensional framework for political action, based on time and space, emerges.

In this contribution I will try to relate some of the categories that characterize the philosophicalpolitical reflection of German classical philosophy with some issues related to our contemporaneity and in particular with that set of phenomena that are catalogued under the label of "populism". I move from a brief analysis of populism; then I will try to show how it is a coherent declination of the typically modern way of thinking politics. Therefore, not the intrusion of an anti-modern movement into the folds of the modern political dispositive, but rather one of the possible outcomes of it, perhaps the outcome more consistent with the organization of political institutions that characterizes neoliberal societies. Leaning above all on some Hegelian analyses, I therefore intend to show that what we call populism is one of the derivations of an abstract and intellectualistic way of thinking the State rooted in modern political thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on Angelo Tasca and the history of his time with fascism and twentieth century politics. It mentions relations between authoritarianism and democracy, between masses and power, between populism and pluralism, between nationalism and globalism, as well as, albeit indirectly, between historical socialisms and societies capitalists of the last century. It also mentions Tasca's politics and intellectual between 1918 and 1922.

Today, the most disturbing political question seems to be of a psychodynamic nature: what occupies the minds of individuals and society in general, other than a wealth of contradictions and a great emptiness? The accumulation of insensitivity and cruelty towards the world and towards oneself seems to be shaping up as the biggest problem facing this new century.To this end, the present study lays out an innovative psychodynamic reading of the political and cultural attitude of populism. The phenomenon is herein analyzed using a psychodynamic perspective, which will enable us to deduce just how such an orientation, in its phenomenological aspects, lends itself to fundamentalist connotations typical of saturated thought. If it can be said that the individual often acts in a manner that seeks to consciously utilize reason and emotion through the intermediary of the Ego, the masses tend to act impulsively and without any conscious awareness of their actions, on the basis of unmediated instinctual drives. Understanding the unconscious dynamics that underlie the attitudes and behaviors which the general population assumes in the face of crises, social emergencies, diversity, economics, and ecology is an essential step towards developing sustainable, concrete solutions at the psychological, social, and political levels, precisely by taking as a starting point a profound awareness of the psychodynamic mechanisms which dictate the orientation of the perception of reality and the resulting decision-making process.

The aim of this paper is to suggest a link between, on the one hand, the work of Samuel P. Huntington and of Shmuel N. Eisenstadt and, on the other hand, some recent trends in the reflection on global relations and the role of religions and civilizations. The original concepts of Clash of civilizations and Multiple modernities have, indeed, originated very different ways of thinking the nature and even the possibility of some kind of relation between religions and cultures. Specifically, it’s of particular interest the nexus that can be traced between this two approaches and two different developments of secularization theory: desecularization and the postsecular. A structural coherence between, on the one hand, conceptions of civilization derived from Huntington and a desecularization approach and, on the other hand, the multiple modernites approach to civilizations and the postsecular, can be clearly seen. And different trajectories, derived from this approaches, emerge in the contemporary debates on the future of global society between conflict and dialogue.

Considering the challenges posed by populism and religiously motivated political engagement to liberal democracies, the present study sets out to examine, specifically, the role played by Pentecostal actors in the conflictive rearrangement of the democratic game in Brazil and worldwide. The engagement of Pentecostals in Brazil’s 2018 general election represented a milestone in that regard and constitutes, thus, the main focus of the present investigation. Given the novelty and nature of both phenomena in question, viz. Pentecostal political engagement and the crisis of democracy, the analysis is carried out, methodologically, from a descriptive, theoretical vantage point, rather than a normative one. To that purpose, the study builds on Manow’s recent work on the current crisis of democracy so as to shed new light on this issue and engages with scholarly studies of Pentecostal political engagement in Brazil and Nigeria alike, where similar developments may be observed, thereby placing this predicament in a global perspective. The role played by Pentecostals can best be described as ambivalent, as, on the one hand, they contributed largely to democratizing contemporary democracies and, on the other, they played a significant part in undermining the very foundations of liberal democracies.

European Parliament elections have often been defined second-order elections, focused on national rather than transnational issues. This paper investigates the combined impact of Eurosceptic populism and social media in the development of the campaign during the 2019 European Parliament elections. It evaluates how populist and non-populist politicians and parties campaigned for the European elections on Twitter by using the case study of Italy. Computer-assisted quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis of social media content are used to assess the relevance of Europe in political communication and the strategies used by different political actors. Findings show that the concept of nation plays a central role in the campaign, with Europe depicted either as an enemy (by nationalist populism) or a saviour (by pro-Europeans). Moreover, there is e tendency towards a “populist shift” in the communication style.

The Great Recession changed the political landscape of the European democracies with the electoral success of populist protest parties in different countries. In this article, we wonder if there are features that characterized these political parties about the issues of gender equality and women’s rights. Populism and feminization of politics are recurring topics in the scholars’ debate, but the relationships between these two phenomena are still little studied. Seeing as the issue is linked to context, and not only to the political parties’ differences, we will focus on three illustrative cases, in different European nations – Spain, Finland, Poland – analysing scientific literature and documents. The hypothesis is that the issues of gender can be an additional contentious line useful for defining identity and differences in the heterogeneous set of populist parties.