The anti-establishment parties at the helm: From great hopes to failure and a limited resurrection

Abstract

ABSTRACT2019 was a year of many crucial events for the Italian government. The government of the Five-star Movement (M5S) and the League, the two anti-establishment parties, the winners of the 2018 elections, shifted progressively from an active ‘reforming mode’, to increasingly open competition between its component parties for voters’ support at the European elections, and to policy stalemate. The European elections changed drastically the electoral balance between the two anti-establishment parties – the M5S and the League – and opened the way to a period of open conflict between the main government actors. In the summer, the Government was brought to an end by an abrupt internal crisis and gave way to a new government supported by a different coalition. Matteo Salvini’s attempt to force early elections failed, and unexpectedly the M5S showed that in spite of internal problems it could build alliances first with the Right and then with the Left. Giuseppe Conte, a rather obscure outsider, promoted in 2018 for lack of alternatives to the position of Prime Minister, having governed in the first part of 2019 under the shadow of his two deputy-prime ministers, managed to emerge as the effective head of a new government and gain greater visibility. The uneasy alliance between an anti-establishment party (the M5S) resisting its dramatic decline, the main establishment party (the Democratic Party) and the new party (Italia Viva) of former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi (in search of revenge) provides little hope, however, for a new period of stable government.