Are they all the same? The Italian populist parties in parliament

Abstract

Italy has a thirty-year tradition of populist parties, starting with the foundation of Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (FI) in 1993 . Since then, the Italian parliament has counted anoth- er three major populist parties – Northern League (Lega Nord – LN), Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia – FDI) and Five Star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle – M5S) –, while the first fully-fledged populist government in Western Europe (Conte I, formed of Five Star Movement and League) won office in Italy in 2018 . With the sole, although fundamental, exception of the Five Star Movement, which is considered as a valence populist party, all the other Italian populists are rightist parties . This work consequently intends to compare the behavior of right-wing populists (FI, League, FDI) with that of valence populists (M5S) in parliament, but also that of rightist populists between each other . In addition, focusing on the last three Italian legislative terms (XVII, XVIII and XIX) will allow us to explore if and how these parties’ behavior changed due to their different institutional role (govern- ment or opposition) . Using data about parliamentary party groups’ voting behavior and different parliamentary activities (oral and written questions, and interpellations) at the Chamber of Deputies, this work speaks both to scholarship on populist parties and legislative studies and contributes to understanding how populist parties conceive and carry out their representative role within the institutions .