The challenge to the Italian left

The main ingredient in Renzi’s success is the idea of rupture: a rupture with the past, with the old ruling elite of the party and with the rites and values of the left. This new leadership is primarily a challenge to the old party elite: it is a generational break with an old leadership seen as worn out and inadequate. This was the substance of Renzi’s challenge to the former general secretary of the PD, Pierluigi Bersani, in the 2012 primary election for the leadership of the centre-left coalition. Renzi was able to express the anti-establishment feelings of Italian public opinion, using this as a valuable political weapon. At the core of his success is the presentation of himself as separate and different both from his own party’s elite and from the economic and bureaucratic ruling elites of the country. Even as prime minister, his goal is to demonstrate his distance from the political class that ruled Italy over the last twenty years, which he depicts as incompetent and totally responsible for Italy’s failures. This position encapsulates some of the huge dissatisfaction of citizens towards the politicians, who are at the moment the target of rage and dissatisfaction. This anger was the chief attraction for the electorate of Renzi’s main opponent, the comedian Beppe Grillo, leader of the Five Star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle, M5S), a populist party that originated in 2008 in the anti-political upsurge that has overwhelmed Italy in recent years (Biorcio and Natale Reference Biorcio and Natale2013; Corbetta and Gualmini Reference Corbetta and Gualmini2013).

In his attack on the PD’s ruling elite, Renzi paid particular attention to those politicians who came from the Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI) with its long history of political changes after the fall of the Berlin Wall – first as the Democratic Party of the Left (Partito Democratico della Sinistra, PDS) and then as the Democrats of the Left (Democratici di Sinistra, DS) – which represented the left and social-democratic side of the PD, and which fought against Berlusconi’s centre-right for 20 years (Ignazi Reference Ignazi1992; Bellucci, Maraffi and Segatti Reference Bellucci, Maraffi and Segatti2000).

Renzi’s campaign for the leadership seemed to flounder when he was defeated at the 2012 primaries by Bersani, the man who, according to Renzi, was typical of the political and cultural conservatism of the Italian left, and represented the grip of the old elite on the party. But despite his defeat at the primary election, the 2013 general election represented a real watershed in Renzi’s political life. Indeed, Bersani’s unexpected defeat and the political and institutional stalemate produced two immediate consequences: the first was the fall of Bersani’s leadership (accelerated by the PD’s inability to agree internally about a successor for Giorgio Napolitano as the president of the Republic) and the second was the rising appeal of Renzi, who was suddenly appointed as the only leader capable of saving Italy from imminent disaster.

After weeks of negotiations on the formation of the new government, interrupted only by the re-election of Napolitano as president of the Republic, Enrico Letta was elected prime minister by a large coalition of the PD and Berlusconi’s Forza Italia. But soon Letta’s government demonstrated itself incapable of promoting the structural reforms needed by the country collaborating instead with the confused policies adopted by Monti’s government. Renzi, the new PD general secretary, therefore terminated the coalition agreement and directly assumed the role of prime minister. The political paralysis of the last months of Letta’s government facilitated Renzi’s rapid ascent towards the undisputed leadership of the country.

The rupture with the past

During the primaries for the election of the PD general secretary, Renzi based his campaign on the need for a total change in the party’s ruling establishment, and consequently established himself as the ‘outsider’ who refuses to respect the cursus honorum inside the party, the only figure to challenge its ruling elite. The only way he could realise his political project was through a revolution in the political culture of the left and the defeat of the old party leadership; so he put forward the necessity of a generational break as a political weapon, underlining the split between the older elite and a potential new generation of party leaders.

The clear division between Renzi and the party oligarchy occurred in quite a new way for the Italian left because it happened through conflict and not through co-operation. Over the last twenty years the ruling elites of the left parties have always selected and promoted young leaders to top offices in the party (and in the government) from the various party factions – young politicians who have grown up in the shadow of senior leaders. Renzi’s approach has been quite different: he promoted young leaders from the rank-and-file of local administrations, with the intention of creating a brand new ruling elite in the PD (Allegranti and Ventura Reference Allegranti and Ventura2014). This is a huge transformation because the development of a new political class takes place through an open – and often quite ruthless – conflict, rather than through an agreement between the various party factions. Undoubtedly one of the key factors of Renzi’s success was the very brusque way he dismissed the old leadership, accusing them of an inability to relate to ordinary Italians and their need for change. Renzi’s ability to build an emotional contact with citizens, and his ability to speak frankly and directly to the people, represent a radical change compared to previous Italian left leaders (Bordignon Reference Bordignon2013 and 2014).

Renzi rejects the role of the party as it has always been conceived by the Italian left, as an intermediary between the leadership, the institutions and the citizens: he sees the party as nothing more than a caucus which mobilises exclusively during elections to support the national leader. It is clear that Renzi looks to the US party experience as a model for the Italian PD.

In his view, the leader is at the centre of the stage and he must have the right to take autonomous decisions that are binding on the whole party. This means that there is no more room for collective decisions taken by a group of party leaders: the new leader makes the decisions and these are judged only by the electorate. At the core of this conception is the idea that in order to improve politics a real accountability must be created between voters and the leader, who is personally responsible for the party’s political choices. Renzi’s PD is a post-ideological party with blurred borders, which is able to include leaders from several different political experiences – from radical left parties like Left, Ecology and Freedom (Sinistra, Ecologia e Libertà, SEL) to centre-right parties like Civic Choice (Scelta Civica, SC).

According to this new conception of leadership, those entitled to choose the party’s leader are not only party members – who are progressively losing their importance in the party organisation – but the citizen-voters who, thanks to the open primaries, can vote directly for the leader. This completely changes the well-established tradition of the left, of a party composed of supporters with a strong commitment guaranteed by a structured membership. The new role given to citizen-voters bypasses the party elite and deprives it of its functions: the elite is sidelined by a more powerful party leader.

In this new framework, the ruling party’s elite is no longer the product of the party’s local structures but recruited from the rank-and-file of local administration. This derives directly from the way Renzi conceives political debate, based chiefly on clear dichotomies, especially on the division between an ‘us’ and a ‘them’. The ‘us’ is represented by local administrators (Renzi was one of them, as former mayor of Florence) – virtuous politicians because they are in touch with citizens daily and directly know the problems that affect them, demonstrating in this way that they are part of the ‘people’. That is why the new PD envisaged by Renzi can be defined as ‘the mayors’ party’ (Travaini Reference Travaini2014). Renzi’s ‘us’ is the sum of private citizens and local administrators, who represent the best part of the country. The ‘them’ is personified by professional politicians and the party oligarchies, a group far removed from voters’ everyday reality and one that conceives of politics as a way to manage power, generally in a very ineffective way. By contrast, the ‘mayors’ party’ is a very light structure controlled by local administrators and in which there is no longer space for the so-called professional politicians.

This model is the result of a political outlook based on a high level of personalisation, because in Italy there is no political competition more focused on an individual than the local elections (Caciagli and Di Virgilio Reference Caciagli and Di Virgilio2005): in fact Renzi called his first proposal to reform the electoral law an election for the ‘mayor of Italy’.

The systemic and party organisational levels are facing a parallel process of personalisation. At the systemic level the de-ideologisation process which started at the end of the 1980s was consolidated by Berlusconi’s leadership, which enforced the role of the individual and charismatic leader, skilled at using the media and therefore capable of appealing directly to the electorate (Donovan Reference Donovan1998; Mair Reference Mair2008). In this new context it has been quite easy for Renzi to impose his personal leadership and to nourish the idea of elections as a kind of personal plebiscite (Donovan Reference Donovan1998).

Renzi has been helped by the ‘Patto del Nazareno’ with Berlusconi, of January 2014, which agreed on a first stage of electoral reform – the so-called ‘Italicum’ – which provides for the largest party securing 40 per cent or more of the vote to be assigned 53 per cent of the parliamentary seats. The Italicum law will allow parties to nominate most of the candidates, giving party leaders the power to control who will be elected, so reinforcing their power within their own parties.

Renzi’s leadership is producing the same type of transformation at party level. As Donovan outlined in the case of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) during Craxi’s leadership, the PD is now moving towards a party dominated by a leader with a weak party elite (Allegranti and Ventura Reference Allegranti and Ventura2014). The party appears highly centralised at the national level while at the local level the party is a ‘federation’ of powerful local leaders who fight each other to control local governments and their resources (Donovan Reference Donovan1998). The local party looks disconnected, with a low level of internal organisation: it is weakened by the continual use of primary elections to select the party elite and by a lack of ideological unity. At the moment the ‘glue’ that holds the PD together seems to be Renzi’s leadership.

In the clear distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and the depiction of the political elite as the citizens’ enemy we can identify a certain populist rhetoric because, as underlined by prominent scholars of the populist phenomenon such as Taggart and Taguieff, one element that defines populism is a strong anti-elite rhetoric and the need to outline a clear division between who governs and who is governed, between the corrupters and those who represent the good values of society (Taggart 2000; Mény and Surel Reference Mény and Surel2002; Taguieff Reference Taguieff2002).

It is undeniable that Renzi’s political discourse has some identifiable populist traits, but it is also true that some of these elements can be attributed to the pronounced trend towards the personification of politics that is evident in all Western democracies. This could be a response to the challenges raised by the technological, post-industrial and globalised societies in which we live. Political systems, even parliamentary ones, are moving towards a presidential model (Poguntke and Webb Reference Poguntke and Webb2005). According to this model one of the prime minister’s powers is to override the potential veto exerted by other institutions, in particular by parliament and by executive ministers. In addition to these increasing powers, prime ministers are increasingly independent from their parties due to an even stronger direct relationship with voters, allowing a personalised leadership to be free from external ties. Citizens are now more inclined to electoral volatility and disposed towards a personal vote, more based on personal trust than on ideology (Cavalli Reference Cavalli1992). At the same time leaders who are elected are freer from party directives and prefer to cultivate a more personal and direct relationship with voters.

In this context the Weberian idea of a plebiscitary democracy that supersedes liberal constitutionalism is becoming a real model for contemporary democracies (Cavalli Reference Cavalli1981; Mommsen Reference Mommsen1993; Weber Reference Weber1995). The political space that was previously occupied by political parties, which acted as intermediaries between citizens and institutions, has been replaced by individual leaderships and a form of political communication heavily based on marketing. These elements contribute to what Manin called the ‘audience democracy’, a transformation of the political arena in which the structure of representation is more flexible, allowing for a direct relationship between leader and masses, a relationship in which the only accepted channel is the media (Manin 1997).

With this new type of political discourse in which it is fundamental to stress the distinction between the new leader and the old politicians, the other element which characterises Renzi’s political position is the open hostility towards the intermediate institutions that filter social demands from the periphery of the system to the centre (Easton Reference Easton1965), a rejection of the idea of the party with its traditionally firm roots as an intermediary between leader and citizen-electors (Calise Reference Calise1992; Mair and Katz Reference Mair and Katz1994; Newell Reference Newell2000; Luther and Muller-Rommel Reference Luther and Muller-Rommel2002). But this change of paradigm also affects other representative organisations that mediate between politics and society – the General Confederation of Italian Industry and, especially, the trade unions. In Renzi’s struggle against Italian trade unions there is evidence of his aim to dismantle the old points of reference of the Italian left and to enlarge his electoral constituency beyond the confines of traditional leftist constituencies. So, in the prime minister’s discourse, trade unions are accused of being an inefficient and self-referential elite that disrupts the economic development of the country, defends corporative positions, represents retired people rather than active workers, and is unable to meet the needs of the new proletarians of Italian society, the young precarious workers (Standing Reference Standing2012). For these reasons trade unions are no longer considered as reliable representatives.

The most relevant social opposition against Renzi’s leadership is now growing due to the political positions taken by CGIL and especially by Maurizio Landini, the secretary of FIOM (the powerful metalworkers’ union). The protests are directed against Renzi’s institutional reforms, as well as his proposals for reforms of schools and the labour market, and amount to a complex anti-government opposition. The different strands of opposition are united in their concern that Renzi is building a new kind of centrist party, resembling a kind of polarised pluralism which de facto excludes leftist positions from government; in this ‘new version’ of polarised pluralism the other excluded pole is the Five Star Movement.

The emergence of a new leadership for Italy in time of crisis

Renzi’s success can really be understood only if we take into account that the trajectory of his leadership, so new and overwhelming, actually intersects with the structural crisis of Italy, which exploded with the 2008 economic crisis.

As regards the Italian left, it has been quite easy for Renzi to conquer a hegemonic position due to the political and cultural weakness of the old leaders of the PD. This weakness has been confirmed by their inability to propose clear and alternative solutions to Italy’s structural problems (labour market, institutional reforms etc) and by their cultural subordination to the policies of Mario Monti’s government, policies which were closer to conservative than leftist ideology. Renzi has been able to present proposals that broke many traditional taboos of the left, following the example of Tony Blair’s New Labour. Like Blair, Renzi is shifting the PD’s political position towards the centre of the political spectrum, trying to attract centrist voters, as New Labour did in the UK in the 1990s.

Tony Blair is, in fact, the political inspiration for Renzi, whose clear aim is to increase his distance from the traditional Italian left and also from European social democracy. In the era of the opinion vote and of high electoral volatility, the Italian PD must be successful in anticipating new electoral demands: according to Renzi, the left should discard some of its distinctive features. Following Blair, the task of Renzi’s new party should be to formulate a post-ideological political programme that could make the PD a real ‘catch-all party’ (Kirchheimer Reference Kirchheimer1966). Not only should the old socio-political cleavages be superseded (class and capital/labour confrontation) but also the traditional left/right division on which alternative political programmes are structured (Mair Reference Mair2008). The idea of rupture with the past and with the social democratic tradition is particularly evident in economic issues, where the influence of neo-liberalism is quite striking. Despite these more centrist political positions, it was Renzi who led the PD into the Party of European Socialists, ending the party’s prevarication about entry into the socialist family which was still present under Bersani’s leadership.

Renzi’s political appeal is the product of changes in the Italian political system, changes that are common to all the parliamentary systems in European democracies. As outlined by Mair, European political systems are currently facing major transformations, such as de-ideologised politics, mainstream parties that are becoming markedly less cohesive, great electoral volatility, the bipolarisation of the party systems and the gradual presidentialisation of political leadership (Mair Reference Mair2008). All these features suggest that we are experiencing the growth of a stronger direct link between political leaders and the electorate, with parties that are losing their mediation function (Mair Reference Mair2008).

The strength of this new leadership is also linked to Italy’s deep systemic crisis, which led the country into economic and institutional stagnation, producing a dysfunction in Italian democracy. The political system’s inability to guarantee minimum stability and the inefficiency in governance of complex political processes, resulted in the strengthening of the great anti-political and populist movement that currently dominates the political scene. Now Renzi no longer has to fight with Berlusconi telepopulism – which had defeated the old PD elite – but with the new populism represented by Beppe Grillo and the M5S.

The radical criticism of politics and parties that in Italy has been labelled ‘anti-political’ and that has found its electoral expression in the M5S, is a complex and variegated phenomenon (Campus Reference Campus2006; Tarchi Reference Tarchi2003). The widespread unease in Italian society has led to cross-party success for the M5S (Biorcio Reference Biorcio2013; Tronconi Reference Tronconi2013). Beppe Grillo’s movement has been able to mobilise the huge dissatisfaction of Italians towards party politics, arising from the explosion of the economic crisis and the worsening of inequalities already present in Italian society; Berlusconi’s fall and his replacement by the technocratic government led by Mario Monti, which has been perceived as too dependent on the European Union; the inability of the EU to provide valid solutions to the crisis; the fragmentation and instability of the Italian political system; and the continual corruption scandals involving Italian parties. Every leadership that is perceived to be connected to the world of professional politicians has seemed destined to fail.

But the deep-rooted anti-political and anti-party feelings currently characterising Italian society amount to more than simply a critical juncture: they are cyclical in nature and, as Gramsci identified, are almost structural and deeply imbedded in the relationship between masses and elite in Italy (Gramsci Reference Gramsci2007). The economic crisis has made this more visible and politically relevant. Grillo’s populism is founded on a strong anti-institutional critique, particularly focused on parliament: according to the M5S, representative democracy is no longer a viable political arrangement, because the real future of democracy means the strengthening of direct democracy instruments (referenda, petitions etc…) and recognising that the internet is the only real tool of democratic participation (Bentivegna Reference Bentivegna2013; Cosenza Reference Cosenza2013). This connects both with the anti-elite feelings of the popular classes and the deep dissatisfaction of the educated middle classes, who cannot see how their social and economic conditions can be improved.

In a political framework characterised by a continuous delegitimisation of representative democracy, by a political debate entrenched in anti-institutional rhetoric (we cannot forget the presence on the political scene of Berlusconi, part of whose success was based on his attack on the institutional settlement of the Republic), by the disgust of citizens toward parties and by Grillo’s demagogy, Matteo Renzi seems to embody not only the founder figure of the new Italian left, but also the one and only possible bulwark against the populist drift of Italian politics – a leadership that has the ambition to forge a new political-institutional phase in Italy.

What it is currently occurring at systemic level in Italian politics is the establishment of a ‘media leadership’ in the PD which is able to compete with the anti-systemic populism represented by Grillo. Renzi employs a certain level of populist rhetoric which allows him to compete on the same ground with Grillo, but is at the same time compatible with his governmental role and with the current political set-up. It could be defined as a kind of ‘populism from above’ – or institutional populism – and its task is to reform the system from within, avoiding the process of dismantling and reconstruction that is Grillo’s goal, which we can call ‘populism from below’. This institutional populism is not a revamped version of the concertazione (consultation) between social interests which characterised Italian politics in the mid-1990s, or a way of strengthening a model of consensual democracy but, on the contrary, it is rather a potential way of strengthening the executive power and keeping the government in a neutral position in social conflicts, while centralising the ultimate decision-making power.

This political position, focused on the centrality of a decision-making leadership and on a dominant executive equipped with broad powers, excludes some ‘eminent victims’ that perform fundamental tasks in representative democracies – the intermediate bodies that are now labelled corporative organisations and defenders of the status quo. On the other hand, it satisfies the hostility towards parliamentary politics, which accuses it of impeding the government’s work and holding up reform.

A media and personalised leadership for the Italian left

Renzi’s leadership clarifies an element that remained unsolved for the left during the Berlusconi years – the relationship between personalised leadership and party structures (Calise Reference Calise2000, Bordignon Reference Bordignon2014). Berlusconi broke up the centrality of parties (parties that were collapsing under the judicial inquiry of Tangentopoli) and due to the new majoritarian electoral law – the so-called Mattarellum – a system of party coalitions has taken centre stage; one of the major features of Berlusconi’s leadership was the ability to build winning electoral alliances. Berlusconi imposed a leadership style based on the leader’s personal qualities, using the organisational model of his movement Forza Italia, which was totally subservient to the leader’s will, with low levels of internal democracy and the selection of a party elite through the boss’s favouritism. All these features initiated the era of the ‘personal party’ as defined by Calise (Calise Reference Calise2000 and Reference Calise2006). To these qualities should be added the huge media power exerted by Berlusconi, becoming the most relevant example of ‘telepopulism’ (Taguieff Reference Taguieff2002; Fabbrini Reference Fabbrini2011).

Berlusconi’s political revolution completely demolished the ruling elite of the centre left, who thought they could confront the new direction of Italian politics with the old tools of the mass party. But Berlusconi imposed a new way of conceiving politics, with a leadership that was post-ideological, anti-political, highly personalised, out of the political-institutional circuit, inspirational and deeply innovative in its communicative style (Bordignon Reference Bordignon2013).

This kind of leadership chimes with that imposed by Renzi in the PD, clashing with the organisational model traditionally embraced by left parties, which have always been quite hostile towards a strong decision-making leadership, and more inclined to favour the party’s organisational structures and a collective decision-making style. The PD was founded in 2007 partly as an answer to this dilemma, with the ambition to overcome the limits shown by the left in its challenge to Berlusconi. Especially with its first general secretary, Walter Veltroni, the party tried to prioritise an organisational model derived more from the US than from the European tradition: a party that gives less importance to its members, is more ‘fluid’ and less based on the local party structure, with a selection process for the top offices based on primary election and a more marked personal and charismatic leadership. The failure of Veltroni’s project paved the way to return to the old idea of a heavily structured party and precisely at this point Renzi began his challenge – the charismatic leader versus the party oligarchy.

The shift that is now occurring in the PD’s leadership structure – from a collegial to a personalised leadership – is a kind of normalisation for the largest party of the Italian left, compared both to other large European parties and other European parliamentary systems (the quasi-presidentialisation process). The de-ideologisation of parties and governments is encouraging the importance of individual candidates, thanks also to local and national electoral laws (Donovan Reference Donovan1998).

The interest and involvement of the voters, and the oversimplification of political messages, are the prominent features of Renzi’s new left leadership: these are the instruments used to create a direct link between the leader and the citizen-elector-spectator. If this is the main task, it is clear that the party structures and party members on the ground are going to lose relevance, and the main issue becomes how to efficiently transmit the leader’s political messages. There is no longer the necessity for an intermediate body when a leadership is narrated as directly present among citizens and anchored in the daily life of people.

That is why Renzi embodies a revolution for the left: he changes its traditional values to give more attention to individuals and their ambitions and less to traditional social classes and their needs: he imposes a new way to deal with society.

‘Renzism’ as a new type of charismatic leadership?

It is probably too soon to define ‘Renzism’ as a particular Italian form of populism, especially if compared to the leadership styles of Berlusconi and Grillo, which have populist rhetoric as a distinctive feature of their communication style. What seems clear is that Renzi’s leadership has pushed the Italian left to embrace some elements of the anti-political and anti-party propaganda. Undoubtedly Renzi is interpreting the Italian zeitgeist and has understood that the ability to make some populist issues his own in order to mobilise political support is a useful political asset. To effectively challenge the populist movements, according to Renzi, it is impossible to use the old slogans of the left, its traditional values and its conception of politics: in a framework dominated by anti-political feelings, it is the solitary leader, presented in opposition to the party oligarchies, who can, alone, reverse the fate of a declining country (Fabbrini Reference Fabbrini1999; Campus Reference Campus2006).

Another peculiarity of Renzi’s political style is the importance given to rapport/confrontation with his ever-present political opponents, whom he always characterises as ‘enemies of change’: this recalls Carl Schmitt’s dualistic friend-enemy concept (Schmitt Reference Schmitt1988). In Renzi’s discourse there is always an enemy representing the conservatism that he must defeat: at first, the enemy was the ruling elite of his own party (and more in general the whole political class), then the trade unions and associations of interests, and most recently everyone who criticises the reforms proposed by his government.

In this political vision there is a more general dilemma which concerns our modern democracies: that is, the relationship between political decisions – interpreted as the need/ability to produce decisions that are binding for the whole of society and the speed with which these decisions are taken and implemented – and the role of the democratic procedures and of institutional checks and balances. If Renzi presents himself to the citizen-voters as a leader who is able to supersede the old political divisions (left/right, pro/anti Berlusconi), to create wide support around him and to repair the torn fabric of Italian society, the way he positions himself within the political and institutional arena is totally different, because the key word of his political strategy is conflict. A conflict against his own party, his opponents, the parliament and its functions, the European Union and the bureaucratic leadership of the country. What is striking about this approach is the clear separation between the institutional structure of the Republic that provides for a more consensual behaviour in the political process and the confrontation that characterises Renzi’s leadership. This idea of politics is based on the assumption that the leader has a powerful legitimacy founded on the direct relationship between leader and masses: because he embodies the popular will directly expressed by the voters, he has the right and the duty to take decisions on which the only judge is the electorate.

This leadership represents – as never before in the Italian left – the country’s desire for change and the need to put an end to the disastrous so-called ‘Second Republic’, through a young leader who is charismatic and post-ideological and who presents himself as an outsider compared to professional politicians.

The high level of personalisation linked with a more unbiased and modern use of the media are at the core of the Renzi revolution – two elements that can modify both the organisation and the values of the Italian left (Di Cuia Reference Di Cuia2014). These elements also influence Renzi’s idea of the institutional reforms that Italy requires: he refers incessantly to the need for a stronger and more powerful prime minister and to the ideal model of the mayor figure, confirming his desire to substitute party democracy with a leader democracy (Fabbrini Reference Fabbrini1999; Poguntke and Webb Reference Poguntke and Webb2005).

Perfectly overlapping with this idea is the proposal by Renzi’s government for institutional reform. The projected constitutional reform – the transformation of the upper chamber into a weaker chamber with fewer and ill-defined powers, not directly elected by citizens – combined with the reform of the electoral law (the so-called Italicum), could be the channels that institutionalise charismatic leadership and enforce the tendency towards a major personalisation of the Italian parliamentary system.

Renzi is shifting the value axis of the left away from the idea of strong parties in the framework of a parliamentary democracy to a quasi-presidential model, with parties built around the figure of a strong leader, whose only function is to be at the service of the leadership during electoral contests. This appears to comply with the figure of the charismatic leader as theorised by Max Weber – a boss who can win a parliamentary majority for his personal decisions due to his influence and his demagogic rhetoric, relegating parliament to a marginal position and using the party structure to favour his political rise (Weber Reference Weber1995). The charisma becomes the real force that mobilises support within and outside the institutions and exploits the passivity of the masses, who are more influenced by propaganda and by charisma than by political programmes (Mommsen Reference Mommsen1993; Weber Reference Weber1995).

At the moment it is quite difficult to define the future trajectory of Renzi’s personal leadership and to outline the impact that it could have on Italy. It will be fundamental whether this leadership takes the shape of a ‘progressive or of a regressive caesarism’, using Gramsci’s famous dichotomy (Gramsci Reference Gramsci2007). According to Gramsci, the term ‘progressive’ defines a strong leadership that can produce radical changes and begin to modernise the political-institutional structure. A leadership is ‘regressive’ when it represents an obstacle to every type of change and becomes the instrument of conservative forces.

In Renzi’s leadership it is possible to identify some elements of a caesaristic leadership: first, all political responsibilities are on the shoulders of this leader – especially because of the weakness of the new political elite which surrounds him; second, this leadership has emotional and sentimentalised features (this helps the identification of a high number of followers with the leader); third, it is a charismatic leadership; and finally it is a leadership which has risen in a phase of a profound de-institutionalisation both of the Italian political system and of the PD. Renzi’s leadership seems to possess what Nye called ‘soft power’ (Nye 2008), a kind of power which merges charisma – an individual’s ability to attract people – and a great communicative capacity which allows the leader to use media in order to mobilise and produce support.

This kind of leadership, even in its caesaristic nature, is mainly based on the power exerted by a charismatic leader in the sense theorised by Max Weber. According to Weber, a condition of crisis and a situation of social and economic difficulties are good prerequisites for the rise of a strongly charismatic leader who is able to mobilise wide support among the masses. The charismatic leader enjoys a ‘summons’ which often results from a situation of disorder that makes a community more responsive to his fascination. The great focus on Renzi and the expectation of his reforms match perfectly with the Weberian theory that the leader’s charisma is the instrument for institutional and political changes: this is the power that is able to modify existing institutions or even to create new and better ones (Cavalli Reference Cavalli1981).

This phenomenon that welds together the elements of Weber’s theory of charisma and the features of the caesarist leadership – both features of Renzi’s leadership – are extensively present in our democracies, so that we can use the term ‘plebiscitary democracy’ coined by Weber (Weber Reference Weber1995). It is easier for this kind of leadership to prosper due to extensive use of television and new technology, allowing a deep penetration of public opinion and a guarantee of reaching the entire population. It is no coincidence that Renzi has a truly media leadership, and that he is extremely skilful in using television and new communication instruments like social networks. In this he is a real master, dominating a virtual space that until a few years ago seemed really impervious to professional politicians, and which actually allows him to establish direct contact with people, especially with the new generation.

Notes on contributor

Eugenio Salvati holds a PhD from the University of Pavia, where he is a teaching and research assistant. His research interests focus on political institutions, comparative politics, political elites, parliamentary institutions and the process of European integration, in particular the development of supranational institutions. He has recently published articles in Quaderni di Scienza Politica and (with Francesco Marone and Paola Franzosi) in the International Spectator.