Growing popular concern about immigration could see the centre-right benefit in Sunday’s election
by Fabio Bordignon, Luigi Ceccarini and Ilvo Diamanti**
The politics of fear is once again affecting the Italian elections. After debates about fake news
and the promise of very expensive, and for this reason unachievable,
policies, shaped the first stage of the electoral campaign, the
immigration issue has been at the heart of public discussion over these
last few weeks (even though unemployment ranks as the highest issue of
concern for voters).
It’s not the first time: other general elections in the recent past
have been strongly characterised by the insecurity produced by
immigration flows and the actions of the political entrepreneurs of fear:
political actors who try to capitalise on xenophobic feelings to extend
their support. But, in the case of the 2018 campaign, it’s more
difficult to forecast the effects of these issues on the final result.
Opinion polls have already showed some clues about this. But, a clearer
frame will be sketched out by analysing the election outcome and
performing post-electoral surveys.
The connection between immigration and security has been quite strong
in the perceptions of Italian public opinion since the mid-nineties. A
significant portion of Italians think that the presence of migrants
poses a threat to public order and people’s safety. This perception is
reinforced by official data which say that the proportion of immigrants –
especially, illegal immigrants – amongst offenders is particularly high
for specific crimes. According to data collected by Demos & Pi at
the beginning of 2018, fear of ‘strangers’ is widespread in Italian
society: 45% of interviewed people see immigrants as a threat to their
security. If we analyse the complete time series, this index has reached
comparable levels only two times before: between 1999 and 2001, and
once again between 2007 and 2008. Both phases coincided with the run-up
to a general election. Both campaigns were won by a centre-right
coalition.
This issue has become, once again, a hot issue during the 2018
campaign as well. After reaching its highest peak at the end of 2007 –
when one Italian out of two viewed people coming from other countries
with suspicion – social apprehension about immigration had constantly
declined until 2012. But it has reassumed an upward trend over the last
five years, especially since 2016 (see Figure 1). The outbreak of the
migrant and refugee crisis in 2015 saw the issue assume a central stage
in public debate, especially regarding uncontrolled sea arrivals from
Africa to Italian shores through the Mediterranean.
Figure 1: Percentage of Italians who view migrants as a threat for public order and Italians’ safety
Source: Demos&Pi Opinion Polls (1999-2018)
In the summer of 2017, there were clashes in the streets of Rome
between the police and groups of refugees and asylum seekers protesting
for having been removed from a building they had been squatting.
Combined with other episodes of violence of which immigrants were the
protagonists (or victims), and with fears connected with possible
terrorist attacks, this event significantly increased the tensions
around the theme of immigration, and further fuelled xenophobic and even
racist sentiments.
In 2018 centre-right parties have once again promptly assumed their
role as entrepreneurs of fear. This holds in particular for Matteo
Salvini’s League, which openly reinforced its anti-immigration stance
during the campaign, saying we need to stop an ‘invasion’ and put
‘Italians first’. Once a regionalist party, the League has been
transformed by its new leader into a national(ist) euro-sceptic party,
which takes the French Front National as a model. Among its voters, 69%
see foreign people as a danger. The figure is equally high for their
other centre-right allies: around 65-66% for both Silvio Berlusconi’s
Forza Italia and Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy.
In addition, many far-right movements and parties, outside the
official centre-right, are very active in Italy and have increased their
activism (and public visibility) in the recent phase. The tension
reached its highest peak in early February, only one month before the
general elections, when a young man went on a drive-by shooting
targeting black people in the small and historically rich town of
Macerata, seat of an old university. A few days before, near the same
city, a Nigerian immigrant was accused of having murdered a young girl
whose body was found dismembered in two suitcases. What impresses about
the events is that they happened in central Italy – in the Marche region
– traditionally known as a peaceful and socially integrated area. The
Macerata gunman, who had been candidate for the League in local
elections, was arrested by the police wearing an Italian flag on his
shoulders, making a fascist salute and saying ‘I’ve done what had to be
done’. 11% of Italians, interviewed by Demos & Pi, said the man had
done ‘what many would like to do’.
In the centre-right coalition, Silvio Berlusconi is trying to present
himself as a moderate barrier against the many different versions of
Italian populism. But after the Macerata events, the old leader has
called for the expulsion of 600,000 illegal immigrants, describing
immigration as a ‘social time bomb’. This statement can be interpreted
as a defensive move against the internal challenge represented by
Salvini, who claim the League will be the leading centre-right party,
and he will be the next prime minister. The new electoral system has
favoured the re-unification of a strongly divided centre-right and given
Berlusconi the opportunity to ‘enter’ the field again after years in
the background. Those parties have been able to build a coalition, which
led the last polls published before the electoral blackout, at around
35-37%. It might not be enough to avoid a hung parliament scenario, but,
if they are going to win, it will be crucial to check the actual
balance inside the coalition to understand where the new majority would
stand on an ideal moderate-radical political spectrum with regards to
immigration as well as other policy issues.
It’s not easy to assess how this social climate will impact on the
results on 4th March and to understand if the security syndrome is going
to play the same role as in 2008. Since then the configuration of the
main political blocs has somewhat changed. In particular, the governing
centre-left seems to have changed – or, at least, redefined – its
traditional pro-immigration outlook, which used to promote solidarity
and integration and was always ready to deny the immigration-criminality
equation. Its Interior Minister, Marco Minniti, has gained popularity
in recent months through his measures to reduce arrivals of African
migrants through the Mediterranean. While the Democratic party leader,
Matteo Renzi, has even tried to ‘steal’ some of Salvini’s slogans,
saying that immigrants should be helped ‘at home’ (i.e. in their
countries).
Moreover, Italian politics, since 2013, has assumed a tri-polar
format. And the Italian ‘third pole’, represented by the Five Star
Movement, has always expressed a very ambiguous attitude on the
immigration issue. Some of its leaders have not hesitated to express
hard words on the theme of migration, using arguments and tones very
similar to those used by the right. Even though these positions has
often been ‘balanced’ with opposite views expressed by other Five Star
representatives who stressed the exploitation of Africa territory and
society by multinational companies. In accordance with this ambiguous
stance, its supporters appear to be almost equally divided as regards
its attitudes on the migration issue. During the 2018 campaign, Roberta
Lombardi, the Movement’s candidate for the Regional elections in Lazio,
declared her territory should ‘welcome more tourism, which helps local
economy, and less immigrants, who weigh on the local economy’. ‘It’s not
a question of left and right, but a question of common sense’, she
added.
The Italian 2018 general election will help (among other things) to
check whether, in a (supposedly) post-ideological era, the immigration
issue still has definite political colour.
** This article was originally posted on the SPERI website
as part of an IPSG blog series on the 2018 general election. Over the
coming week more blogs will be posted which will be available to read here.
Berlusconi’s reputation as one of Europe’s most remarkable politicians of recent decades remains fully deserved
by James Newell**
When he was booted out of office in 2011, Silvio Berlusconi’s political
career appeared to enter a new, and seemingly final, phase. He was
occupied less frequently in setting the political agenda than in
reacting to agendas set by others. He was already elderly and support
for his Forza Italia (FI) dwindled as the “anti-establishment” mantle
was assumed by the Five Star Movement (M5s).
Then, at the end of 2013, he was expelled from the Senate and banned
from holding public office following a conviction for tax fraud.
Resigned to the fringes, Berlusconi’s role as the driving force in
Italian politics was, until the end of 2016, assumed by the centre-left
Democratic Party (PD) leader Matteo Renzi, with his constitutional
reform agenda. But since then, his fortunes appear to have revived
somewhat. So, with an election coming, is he about to make a political comeback?
On the one hand, support for his party remains well below the levels
seen in the past. Before the pre-election ban on the publication of poll
results kicked in, it stood at 16.1%, which means Berlusconi continues
to have to vie with the 44-year-old Matteo Salvini for
leadership of the centre right. Salvini has succeeded in transforming
the Northern League from a regional-autonomy party into a national
populist force.
On the other hand, the rivalry between the two has become less
arduous in recent months as polling results have seen Berlusconi’s
party’s numbers slowly rise and place him, once again, in front of the
League.
Whatever the outcome of this election, Berlusconi cannot assume the
role of prime minister because of his conviction. However, there is even
a question mark over that because the law banning him from office
applies to offences he committed before it was introduced in 2012.
Berlusconi has appealed to the European Court of Human Rights arguing
that the ruling contradicts the Italian Constitution, which provides
that “no punishment may be inflicted except by virtue of a law in force
at the time the offence was committed”. He also claims it contravenes a
similar provision in the European Convention on Human Rights.
The elder statesman
The prospects of Berlusconi’s centre-right coalition emerging with an
overall majority in this election look slim indeed. Given the electoral system,
which distributes a third of the seats according to a
first-past-the-post system, and given the showing of the M5s as a
significant “third force”, the smart money is on none of the three main
contenders emerging as an outright victor.
That said, Berlusconi has had a good campaign. He is clearly aware
that, though he may no longer be at the centre of Italian politics, he
might still act as kingmaker. Attempting to appeal to moderate voters
put off by Salvini’s stridency, he has sought to project the image of a
wise elder statesman who has turned his back on his flamboyant past. He
has made pronouncements designed to reassure Brussels and the
international financial markets.
It’s a far cry from the past. In 2002 he lost his foreign minister thanks
to his attempts to capitalise on the initial stirrings of popular
resentment about austerity, immigration and security, and to channel it
in the direction of Brussels. But the transformation should not surprise
– Berlusconi is a salesman, after all; campaigning is the activity at
which he excels.
His coalition, as an electioneering entity, works very well. Its
three main components each appeal to different varieties of more-or-less
right-wing sentiment. So if he appeals to moderates, and Salvini to
those with far-right, anti-immigrant views, his third ally, Giorgia Meloni and
her Brothers of Italy, appeals to those for whom being on the right
means a feeling of affinity with the ideals of national pride never
entirely relinquished by the heirs of Mussolini. If the specific profile
of each party potentially drives away voters, then the presence of one
of the other two serves to reassure them and keep them on side.
And the barely hidden rivalry of the three putative allies has helped
Berlusconi to keep his options open when it comes to the inter-party
negotiations that will be needed to form a government after the
election. If neither M5s, which is without allies, nor the centre left,
which is hopelessly divided, have realistic prospects of forming the
next government, then the only alternative will be a more-or-less grand
coalition. As things currently stand, the most viable option for that
appears to be one based on an arrangement between Forza Italia and the
Democratic Party.
So as he continues to compete for an overall majority, Berlusconi is
aware that in the event of failure, he might abandon his more extreme
partners for an arrangement that would still place him close to the
centre of power. Love him or loath him, then, his reputation as one of
Europe’s most remarkable politicians of recent decades remains fully
deserved.
** This article was originally posted on the SPERI website
as part of an IPSG blog series on the 2018 general election. Over the
coming week more blogs will be posted which will be available to read here.
Torn between centre-left respectability and anti-establishment
protest, the Italian radical left struggles to devise a coherent and
appealing political project
The
electoral campaign of the forthcoming Italian election on 4 March 2018
is being dominated by three main poles: a centre-right coalition led by
Forza Italia (FI) and Lega Nord (Lega); the anti-establishment Movimento
5 Stelle (M5S), running alone; and a centre-left coalition led by the
Partito Democratico (PD). Most radical left and left-wing organisations
are running for office outside of these three poles. Some have converged
in the list of Liberi e Uguali (LeU), others have given birth to the
competing list of Potere al Popolo (PaP), and three smaller groups are
fielding candidates in parts of the country. Despite a relatively
favourable social and political environment, characterised by an economy
still working below the levels of 2007, widespread dissatisfaction with
all established parties, a good salience of traditional left-wing
issues over the past few years, and major left-wing splits from the PD,
these lists are not expected to have a major impact on the election.
Voting intentions in the week from 10 to 16 February, the last
available before the pre-election ban on opinion polls, estimate the
support of LeU to be around 5.6 per cent of valid votes, the support of
PaP around 1.5 per cent (but this is quite volatile, with polls ranging
from below 0.5 to 2.7 per cent), and the smaller lists are ignored
completely. Unlike their counterparts in the Southern European radical
left (e.g. SYRIZA, Podemos, and the France Insoumise) or in mainstream
Labour parties (e.g. Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters), they have so far
failed to attract a surge of public interest, mobilisation, and
support. Why?
From 2007 to 2017: the missed opportunity of the Great Recession
The catastrophic defeat of the 2008 general election still looms
large on the state of the Italian radical left. In that year, its total
vote shrunk from 7.9 to 4.4 per cent and, for the first time since 1945,
no radical left MP was elected. Deprived of national parliamentary
representation, weakened electorally and organisationally, and divided
in a multiplicity of rival organisations, the radical left completely missed the window of opportunity opened by the Great Recession
and watched helplessly the emergence of a new party representing
widespread protest against austerity and the political establishment:
the Five Star Movement.
In 2013, the more conciliatory wing of the radical left (Sinistra
Ecologia Libertà, SEL) managed to return to Parliament thanks to an
alliance with Bersani’s PD, but with little electoral weight (3.2 per
cent of valid votes) and overall influence (solitary opposition). The
more intransigent wing built a short-lived list (Rivoluzione Civile, RC)
which gathered 2.2 per cent of valid votes and no seats;
anti-capitalist lists stopped at 0.3 per cent.
In the following years, this fragmented landscape of more or less
radical left-wing organisations sought to benefit from the explosive
socio-economic legacy left by the Monti government (2011–13) and the
subsequent ‘grand coalition’ or centrist governments led by the
Democratic Party (Letta, Renzi, and Gentiloni): GDP and wage stagnation,
high unemployment and poverty, drastic austerity measures, and major
reforms of the pension system and of labour law.
Moreover, several attempts were made to reunite the radical left in a
common party or coalition and to integrate the dissidents which started
to leave the PD in droves as Matteo Renzi’s hold over the party
consolidated. However, efforts on both fronts achieved little success.
Programmatically, the radical left remained divided on all key issues:
first, the relationship with the PD, where intransigent advocates of a
clean break faced conciliatory advocates for a ‘new centre-left
(coalition)’, with or without Renzi; secondly, the attitude toward the
M5S, where supporters and opponents of forms of collaboration clashed
with each other; and, finally, the attitude toward the European Union,
where far-fetched ideas of a progressive ‘other Europe’ coexisted with
minority opinions advocating ‘disobedience’ against many EU treaties and
even an exit from the Eurozone. Electorally, this oscillation between
centre-left respectability and anti-establishment protest reduced the
appeal of the radical left, whose potential voters drifted toward
abstention or preferred to chose the more clear-cut options of either
the Democratic Party or the Five Star Movement.
The run-up of the 2018 election: Liberi e Uguali and its discontents
In 2017–18, the official split from the Democratic Party of an
important section of its former post-communist and social democratic
leadership, including party secretaries Massimo D’Alema, Pierluigi
Bersani, and Guglielmo Epifani, upset the delicate balance between
radical left organisations. The resulting splinter party, Articolo 1 –
Movimento Democratico e Progressista (MDP), rapidly gained a hegemonic
position in this field, attracted the former SEL (now Sinistra Italiana,
SI) and Civati’s Possibile as its junior allies, and ultimately formed
the backbone of the new electoral list Liberi e Uguali
(Free and Equal). The list chose the President of the Chamber of
Deputies Pietro Grasso (independent formerly close to PD) as its leader,
drafted a traditional social democratic programme
centred on public investment, redistribution, and expansion of the
welfare state, and adopted a Corbyn-like rhetoric (‘for the many, not
the few’).
The dominance of people who had been part of centrist governmental
majorities until a few months before the election and who did not
identify with traditional European radical left networks (e.g. GUE/NGL
and PEL), however, did not satisfy everyone. These discontents, which
included two neo-communist parties (Partito della Rifondazione
Comunista, PRC, and the recently rechristened Partito Comunista
Italiano, PCI) and further sections of the extra-parliamentary radical
left (centri sociali, radical trade unions, ‘LULU’ movements,
anti-capitalist political organisations, and so on), initially took part
in the discussions geared at establishing a common electoral list with
its more moderate partners, but coalesced at the last minute around a
separate list launched by the Neapolitan squat Je so’ Pazzo and called Potere al Popolo! (Power to the People!). The list chose the unknown university researcher Viola Carofalo as its leader, drafted a pugnacious programme of anti-neoliberal opposition, and drew some rhetorical inspiration from contemporary left populism.
Three other radical left lists are also running in 2018, but are
present in less than 60 per cent of the constituencies: Rizzo’s Partito Comunista (PC), Ferrando’s and Bellotti’s Per una Sinistra Rivoluzionaria (SR), and Ingroia’s Lista del Popolo per la Costituzione (LPC).
During the electoral campaign, the two main radical left actors have gained some media exposure through Grasso’s proposal of scrapping the tuition fees and with the anti-fascist demonstrations of 18 February,
but their core socio-economic message has been inaudible.
Anti-austerity and anti-establishment protest remains solidly
appropriated by the Five Star Movement, despite its moderate turn under
Luigi Di Maio, and by Salvini’s Lega, which combines xenophobic
(‘Italians first!’) and pro-business (a 15 per cent flat tax on income)
policy planks with an economic programme
focused on Keynesian stimulus, state intervention, and social
protection. Moreover, the campaign of LeU has been marred by ominous
strategic disagreements on its future course: independent party or
potential ally of a ‘new centre-left’ without Renzi? Opposition or
governmental participation? In the latter case, together with the PD,
the M5S, or within an all-party ‘President’s government’?
Perspectives
If the final election results reflect the latest voting intentions,
the outcome will be deeply unsatisfactory for the Italian radical left:
only LeU will gain seats, and a modest increase in vote shares compared
to 2013 will have been purchased at the price of a complete
subordination to the moderate leadership of former PD officials.
Moreover, the strategic ambiguity of the LeU coalition makes it liable
to a sudden explosion after the election, should its seats become
necessary to form a viable governmental majority. PaP, in turn, may
still end up being the last episode in a long series of short-lived and
unsuccessful electoral coalitions forged by the PRC to recover some of
its former power and parliamentary representation.
More importantly, the Italian radical left has yet to develop a
coherent and credible response to the crisis of the neo-liberal and
Europeanised developmental model pursued by the country since the early
1990s. Vague appeals against stagnation, inequality, and austerity are
not enough, if concrete plans (no matter if at a national or at an
EU-wide level) vis-à-vis public ownership, deficit spending, state
intervention, monetary and economic sovereignty, regulation of trade and
capital flows, and similar matters remain sorely absent.
To sum up, and barring unexpected surprises, the 2018 general
election does not seem likely to revive the fortunes of the Italian
radical left, nor to deliver it from its current state of fragmentation,
programmatic weakness, and strategic confusion.
** This article was originally posted on the SPERI website
as part of an IPSG blog series on the 2018 general election. Over the
coming week more blogs will be posted which will be available to read here.
