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Populism and Italy: a theoretical and epistemological conundrum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 January 2022

Marzia Maccaferri Open the ORCID record for Marzia Maccaferri [Opens in a new window]
Marzia Maccaferri*
Affiliation:
School of Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary University of London
*
Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Considered by many scholars to be principally a catch-all or a useless concept, populism has rarely gone hand-in-hand with historical reflection. Building upon ‘the need to return populism to history’, this article offers an overview of the reasons why populism as a concept and as a potential sequence of historical events seems to fit well in post-Second World War Italy, and aims to suggest areas for further research. At the intersection between conceptual history, democratic theory and discourse-historical analysis, the article explores the continuities and discontinuities of Italian populisms, focusing on the resemioticisation of the concept of civil society and its legacy within historical Italian Fascism, especially during the transition to the so-called Second Republic.

Considerato da molti studiosi generico, se non inutile, l'analisi del concetto di populismo è stata raramente accostanta e integrata alla ricerca storica. Partendo dalla ‘necessità di restituire il populismo alla storia’, questo articolo intende offrire una panoramica e suggerire aree per ulteriori indagini, sulle ragioni per cui il populismo come concetto e come potenziale sequenza di eventi storici sembra adattarsi bene alla recente storia d'Italia, specialmente il secondo dopoguerra. Integrando storia concettuale, teoria democratica e analisi storico-discorsiva, l'articolo esplora le continuità e le discontinuità dei populismi italiani, concentrandosi sulla risemantizzazione del concetto di società civile e sulle eredità del fascismo storico italiano, specialmente durante la transizione alla cosiddetta Seconda Repubblica.

Keywords

populismcivil society and populismlegacy of FascismTangentopoli
Type
Special Issue
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 27 , Special Issue 1: Italian populism, ideology, culture and history , February 2022 , pp. 5 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for the Study of Modern Italy

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