Lega and Five-star Movement voters: exploring the role of cultural, economic and political bewilderment

Abstract

We explore the motivations behind the electoral success of the Lega and the Five-star Movement at the 2018 Italian general election. In most of the literature on populism, the success of the new European populist parties is interpreted as stemming from the process of globalisation, which has produced the so-called 'modernisation losers': 'cultural losers' (people who are disorientated by changes in values, by new waves of migration and by the loss of national sovereignty to the European Union) and 'economic losers' (those for whom the globalisation process has meant economic hardship, downward social mobility and occupational uncertainty). It is these 'modernisation losers' who are claimed to have voted for the populist parties. To this two-fold theoretical hypothesis, we added another: the rise in populism can be explained by the democratic malaise, and particularly by the crisis of mainstream parties, which have steadily lost their function as a link between the people and politics. We analyse the role of these three antecedents of populismlabelled as cultural, economic and political drawing on 2018 Italian National Election Studies (ITANES: see www. itanes.org/en) data. Votes for the Lega were motivated by 'cultural populism', while those for the Five-star Movement could be ascribed to 'political populism', stemming from citizens' growing mistrustgeneralised and latent in Western democraciesof political institutions, activated in Italy by favourable structural conditions and external circumstances.

Dangerous Worldview and Perceived Sociopolitical Control: Two Mechanisms to Understand Trust in Authoritarian Political Leaders in Economically Threatening Contexts

“…Our results provide greater insight on the mechanisms through which (low) social class has been found to be related to conservative ideology in various studies ( Jost and Hunyady, 2005 ; Napier and Jost, 2008 ; Carvacho et al, 2013 ) and also to support for authoritarian parties, both right-wing ( Corbetta et al, 2018 ; Tuticì and von Hermanni, 2018 ) and left-wing ( Corbetta et al, 2018 ). Unlike these prior studies, our research shows that the simple relationship (total and direct effects) between belonging to a disadvantaged socioeconomic status—understood in our research as lower income and lower level of education—and authoritarianism is rather weak and/or not significant.…”

Assessment of Citizens’ Populist Orientations: Development and Validation of the POPulist ORientation (POPOR) Scale

“…In the postelectoral survey, we asked participants to declare the party they voted for in the 2018 Italian national election. Based on Corbetta et al.’s study (), we computed a dummy variable, contrasting voters for M5S and Lega to participants who voted for the other parties or did not cast a vote. In the pre‐electoral survey, we assessed perceived economic insecurity via two variables taken from the Eurobarometer: (1) “How do you think the general economic situation in the country has changed over the last 12 months?…”

“…Beyond verifying the scale's unidimensionality, we also tested its convergent validity by analyzing the relations between the POPOR Scale and a series of variables that, according to the literature, are associated with populist orientation. We expected the POPOR Scale to show positive associations with (1) voting for the two most populist Italian parties, that is, Lega and M5S (Corbetta et al., ) (H2); (2) perceived economic insecurity (Guiso, Herrera, and Morelli, ) (H3); (3) a negative attitude toward immigration (Van Assche et al., ) (H4); and (4) a negative attitude toward the European Union (Tsatsanis, Andreadis, and Teperoglu, ) (H5).…”

Bread or Circuses? Repoliticization in the Italian Populist Government Experience

“…If political issues appeared particularly important in the eyes of M5S voters (Corbetta et al 2018), when compared with the electorates of other countries that voted in 2017 (Germany, France, the UK, the Netherlands and Austria), Italian voters were concerned not just about unemployment, but also about corruption and the costs of politics (Emanuele and De Sio 2018).…”

“…Second, the 2018 election saw the victory of two very different forms of populism, much more diverse than Forza Italia and the Northern League had been in the governments Berlusconi led. Finally, the socioeconomic and cultural context in which the Conte government was born was distinctive in being marked by a deep democratic malaise (Corbetta et al 2018).…”