![]() The response of the party system has always been to call for new electoral laws as if the problem was the “demand of politics” by the citizens rather than the “supply” provided by the political forces. Since 1994, at each election, voters have punished the governing parties. Even the highest levels of Italy’s institutional establishment were prone to demagogy, but without the financial means to fulfill it, resulting in the volatility of popular consensus. Italian society and economy have lacked far-sighted impulses from policymakers who were mainly concerned with assuring short-term consensus while struggling with financial instability. Despite some quality administrations, Italy’s political system has failed in terms of effectiveness and consistency during the last three decades. It must be able to guarantee fundamental freedoms, but also the effectiveness of political decisions. In a context of strong global interaction, a democratic state must rely on its ability to govern based on a balanced division of constitutional powers. In fact, the euro has institutionalized - but also made more transparent - the external constraints with which Italy was already struggling in earlier phases of globalization. Blaming Europe and the euro will permit populist politicians to neglect the fact that most of Italy’s problems are homemade. In the coming months, Italy will benefit from EU economic recovery funds but suffer from the tightening of monetary conditions in the eurozone. It is easy to imagine that these issues will be important during the campaign for next year’s general elections. In past years, the Brothers of Italy, the League, and M5S have also questioned the need for Italy to remain in the eurozone, blaming European integration for the dismal performance of the Italian economy in the last 30 years. Nevertheless, their function as a guarantor of stability has become increasingly important in the last 20 years as new political forces have grown more vocal in challenging Italy’s traditional pro-European Union economic policies and Atlanticist foreign policies. Italy’s president does not wield executive powers. It was probably that possibility that led a reluctant Mattarella, urged by Draghi, to accept a second mandate before it was too late. This anti-establishment and potentially anti-European and anti-Atlantic alliance could control a parliamentary majority and might have had its presidential candidate elected. At the height of the confusion, the mother of all political ghosts appeared: a renewal of the 2018-19 radical populist alliance between the League and the Five Star Movement (M5S), flanked by the extreme-right Brothers of Italy. Improvised strategies were thrown in the fan one after the other in a flurry of tweets and leaks political leaders were discredited while their coalitions were breaking into pieces, failing to agree on candidates for the presidency. But the election process, carried out as a sort of real-time televised whack-a-mole game with no less than 12 candidates smashed in less than a week, was a spectacle that once again exposed the fragility and confusion of Italy’s political system.
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