Re-Inventing the Italian Right: Populism, Post-Fascism and Territorial Identity

The principal aim of this book is to provide an understanding of the nature of the re-invented political forces on the Italian right, explaining their growth and development and exploring how the social and political peculiarities of Italy have allowed such controversial political formations to emerge and conquer the electorates of an advanced European democracy. The book seeks to explain the success of the right with reference to a combination of factors. In relation to these, it is stressed that the success of the right has taken place in a state of continuing political turmoil – the transition to the much trumpeted ‘second Italian republic’. We posit that the right has been better able than other political forces to govern this continuing state of transition and the turmoil that has ensued. To explain the performance of the right we emphasise ideological factors, the changing structural characteristics of Italian society and the resources at the disposal of political actors. The book documents the process of reinvention of the Italian right through an empirical analysis of its ideology.