What is anti-politics? How much of politics is there in anti-politics? How can we define, identify, and measure the phenomenon of anti-political politics?
Vittorio Mete tackles this elusive concept finding a privileged vantage point in the Italian political system. Italy has in fact a long-standing anti-political tradition. During and after the transition towards the so-called Second Republic, the use of anti-politics grew exponentially, affecting broad sectors of society and finding many different electoral outlets. The indices provided in the book, which are based on international surveys, show Italy ranking high in global anti-politics, as do Greece, Hungary and Brazil – all countries in which democracy and representative institutions have been under great strain recently.
Anti-Politics in Contemporary Italy, published by Routledge, is divided into three parts. The first part (Chapter 1) provides an in-depth theoretical discussion of the multifaceted concept of anti-politics. The second part (Chapters 2–5) reconstructs the role of anti-politics in the Italian context using an in-depth analysis of its main actors. The third part (Chapter 6) tackles the challenging task of measuring and studying the roots of anti-politics, offering a profile of the Italian anti-political voter and its evolution over time. The book offers an inspiring journey through the history of Italian republican history, seen through the lens of anti-politics. It is a must-read for scholars of Italian politics, but also for political journalists, pundits, consultants and professional politicians themselves.
One of the many merits of Mete's book is its acknowledgement that anti-politics is not a new phenomenon. This is so even in a country where, at the time of the Italian party democracy, politics used to be strongly embedded in society. Nevertheless, it was precisely the evolution of the golden age of (mass bureaucratic) parties into partitocracy that created the conditions for the final release of anti-political sentiments in the country through the palingenetic flames of the early 1990s. Since then, most of the successful political experiments that have gained ground in the political arena have drawn heavily from the anti-political repertoire. The anti-political challenge came from both the right and the left of the ideological spectrum, but particularly ‘from outside’ – from political actors defying (or trying to defy) the traditional political coordinates. It has been channelled by individual leaders or collective actors departing from old party models or even openly rejecting the party label. These political organisations presented themselves as movements, non-parties, or anti-party parties.
The conceptual and empirical overlap between anti-politics and anti-partyism is remarkable, and perhaps most relevant in the Italian context, but it is not the only one addressed in the book. There is a long array of connected concepts generating a veritable ‘terminological chaos’. In the author's attempted conceptual clarification, anti-politics is contrasted with political ‘cynicism’, ‘disaffection’, ‘disenchantment’ and ‘distrust’; ‘anti-establishment’ and ‘anti-system’, ‘challenger party’ and ‘critical citizen’.
But the big elephant in Mete's room is, of course, the controversial and ubiquitous concept of populism. The book does not elude this issue, concluding that ‘anti-politics is a typical aspect of populism, whereas not all anti-politics is of a populist character’. Certainly, anti-politics, in the suggested conceptualisation, largely coincides with the anti-elitist dimension of the populist ideology, that shares many of the anti-political targets – the political class, the ‘caste’ of professional politicians, political parties and representative institutions.
The theoretical map of anti-politics is further delineated into its primary dimensions. The author's conceptual map distinguishes between anti-politics from below and anti-politics from above.
The former encompasses citizens’ aversion towards politics, with their participative and non-participative behaviours identifying two sub-dimensions: active and passive anti-politics from below. The latter refers to the messages and actions of political elites. It can, in turn, be subdivided into internal and external anti-politics, depending on whether it involves institutional or non-institutional actors. Finally, the methodological part of the analysis identifies three levels at which anti-politics can be studied – citizens/voters, leaders, and the political system as a whole – and suggests the primary techniques that can be used at each level.
As anticipated, the central part of the book applies this theoretical framework to the evolution of the Italian political system. It first examines the first phase of republican history and the long path from the prototypical case of Qualunquismo, which was invented by Guglielmo Giannini's Common Man's Front, to the anti-political epiphany of 1994 with Silvio Berlusconi's rise to government. It then focuses on three main cases: the League, the centre-left camp (its democratic innovations and the rise of Matteo Renzi's Democratic Party), and the Five Star Movement. The results emphasise the versatile nature of anti-politics in terms of ideological coordinates and institutional location. Exactly like populism, anti-politics has different host ideologies. It can be found both in opposition and in government.
Another merit is that the book highlights how anti-politics is not only made up of frontal, disruptive and vulgar attacks on political elites. It also has a more presentable but less recognisable face. This can be identified in participatory ideology and practices. In this context, Mete's work seems to draw a red line connecting the myth of civil society and the use of referendums in the 1990s, the ‘deliberative turn’ of the 2000s, the introduction of open primaries at the party level, and the digital re-discovery of direct democracy. This line starts vaguely on the left of the political spectrum and proceeds into an indefinite political space in which left and right mix and blur. It connects new forms of direct citizen involvement with highly personalistic leaderships. It runs through the traditional spaces of political action and the new frontiers of cyberspace. The 5SM is the political creature that most closely captures all these tendencies. Its different facets epitomise the multiple faces of anti-politics. This explains both the interest in this political experience – well beyond the Italian case – and its electoral success.
The different elements collated by the book clearly explain why anti-politics represents a growing temptation for political actors. At the same time, it reveals that anti-politics is a double-edged sword. It is highly effective in attracting popular support, but very dangerous in terms of the durability of political paths. In Mete's words: ‘Anti-politics is like a bundle of wood thrown onto a fire: for a while the fire burns with renewed vigour, offering light and warmth; however, it very quickly burns out, leaving only a pole of ash’ (p. 197).
This brings us to perhaps the most crucial issue raised by the book – the possible responses to anti-politics. If anti-politics challenges democratic representation, how can political actors effectively challenge anti-politics? How should an anti-anti-party party party be designed? What arguments should a compelling anti-anti-political narrative present?
