Books by Francesco Maria Scanni
SAPERI, CONOSCENZE ED ESPERIENZE IN FORMAZIONEAtti della V conferenza nazionale delle dottorande e dei dottorandi in scienze sociali, 2021
Una delle dimensioni fondamentali per comprendere il fenomeno populista è quella comunicativa. Di... more Una delle dimensioni fondamentali per comprendere il fenomeno populista è quella comunicativa. Diversi autori, infatt i, hanno analizzato le caratt eristiche essenziali del fenomeno populista a partire dal registro discorsivo e dallo stile
comunicativo peculiare che gli att ori populisti presentano
(Kazin 1995; Taguieff 1997). All’interno di questo fi lone
di pensiero, alcuni autori hanno posto l’accento sulle performance di mobilitazione politica (Gidron-Bonikowski
2013) che i nuovi att ori populisti propongono sulla base
dello strett o legame con la nuova frontiera della tecnologia
comunicativa 4.0 (Mancini, 2015).
Papers by Francesco Maria Scanni
Politikon, Dec 25, 2021
Until the first decade of the 21th century, scholars and reporters have identified contemporary p... more Until the first decade of the 21th century, scholars and reporters have identified contemporary populism as an element of anti-systemic revolt; furthermore, they have also recognized an incompatibility between populist phenomenon and government function. However, some recent cases of populist parties in power seem to be able to put into crisis more than one certainty regarding the nature and scope of the populist phenomenon. This observation raises the questions of this work: what harmful effects does populism in government produce on liberal institutions, pluralism, and representation in constitutional democracies? Do these effects merely erode the liberal component, or do they extend to produce a degeneration of democracy as a whole? And finally: what are the risks for democracy? The article corroborates the diarchic theories of democracy and aims to demonstrate the lack of compatibility between the principles of liberal democracy and populist principles, which have a negative impact not only on the liberal component, but also on the quality of democracy in its entirety.
Comparative European Politics, Mar 18, 2023
The growing success of populist parties in western democracies has generated lively academic deba... more The growing success of populist parties in western democracies has generated lively academic debate surrounding the changes this populist wave has created in various political systems. These parties have demonstrated their ability to shift from protest to governing parties, consequently shifting experts' attention toward the effects of populism in power on democratic institutions. In light of examples in South America and Easter Europe, scholarly debate has centered on concerns that populist governments will deform democracy and democratic institutions, limit institutions and reduce both checks and balances and pluralism. Here we argue that in the context of a consolidated western democracy, populist governments identify themselves with government 'as usual', and that the populist ascent produces a greater impact on the political system as a vehicle for protest than it does on institutions once in power. We analyze the three examples of populism represented by the 5 Star Movement, Podemos and La République En March in order to examine the transformations produced by their successes in their relative political systems and their various effects on institutions once in government.
Theoria (Pietermaritzburg), Jun 1, 2020
The 2008 crisis and economic transformations (globalisation and financialisation) fuelled signifi... more The 2008 crisis and economic transformations (globalisation and financialisation) fuelled significant political phenomena, such as a deep distrust of politics, electoral volatility and the decline of bipolarity and/or bipartisanship in the face of growing outsider party affirmation. In this context, the dialectical model of the Gramscian 'social totality' provides an analytical tool capable of analysing those 'transition' phases characterised by a fracturing 'dominant historical bloc', in itself a precursor to an organic crisis of traditional political parties' separation of social classes.
Comparative European Politics
The growing success of populist parties in western democracies has generated lively academic deba... more The growing success of populist parties in western democracies has generated lively academic debate surrounding the changes this populist wave has created in various political systems. These parties have demonstrated their ability to shift from protest to governing parties, consequently shifting experts' attention toward the effects of populism in power on democratic institutions. In light of examples in South America and Easter Europe, scholarly debate has centered on concerns that populist governments will deform democracy and democratic institutions, limit institutions and reduce both checks and balances and pluralism. Here we argue that in the context of a consolidated western democracy, populist governments identify themselves with government 'as usual', and that the populist ascent produces a greater impact on the political system as a vehicle for protest than it does on institutions once in power. We analyze the three examples of populism represented by the 5 Star Movement, Podemos and La République En March in order to examine the transformations produced by their successes in their relative political systems and their various effects on institutions once in government.
The 2008 crisis and economic transformations (globalisation and financialisation) fuelled signifi... more The 2008 crisis and economic transformations (globalisation and financialisation) fuelled significant political phenomena, such as a deep distrust of politics, electoral volatility and the decline of bipolarity and/or bipartisanship in the face of growing outsider party affirmation. In this context, the dialectical model of the Gramscian ‘social totality’ provides an analytical tool capable of analysing those ‘transition’ phases characterised by a fracturing ‘dominant historical bloc’, in itself a precursor to an organic crisis of traditional political parties’ separation of social classes.
Administration & Society
The purpose of this paper is to examine the characteristics of two political phenomena: populism ... more The purpose of this paper is to examine the characteristics of two political phenomena: populism and technocracy. Often seen as opposites, the two factors are linked by some elements: both are described by their proponents as remedies to the legitimacy crisis that modern representative democracies are going through; both tend to define certain practices and principles of constitutional democracy that are insufficient to ensure effective governance of society; both see as their main remedy a restriction of the classical functions of representation and of the institutions of mediation (parties and parliament among all). Nevertheless, the two phenomena seem to follow the dynamics of opposite extremes: in the phases when the democratic order is increasingly identified with technocracy, the populist democratic eschatology gains confidence on the basis of the promise to return to citizens the power stolen from them by non-elective institutions. We will attempt to identify some key feature...
The 2008 crisis and economic transformations (globalisation and financialisation) fuelled signifi... more The 2008 crisis and economic transformations (globalisation and financialisation) fuelled significant political phenomena, such as a deep distrust of politics, electoral volatility and the decline of bipolarity and/or bipartisanship in the face of growing outsider party affirmation. In this context, the dialectical model of the Gramscian ‘social totality’ provides an analytical tool capable of analysing those ‘transition’ phases characterised by a fracturing ‘dominant historical bloc’, in itself a precursor to an organic crisis of traditional political parties’ separation of social classes.
In Pier Giorgio Ardeni's last work, the author proposes an analysis of the success of populism in... more In Pier Giorgio Ardeni's last work, the author proposes an analysis of the success of populism in relation to the level of inequalities, identified as the main propulsive of the growth of consensus among populist actors on the Italian scene. The proposed approach is multidisciplinary in nature and tries to integrate socioeconomic analysis with political analysis to offer a exhaustive explanation of the populist success in Italy. The hypothesis advance is that, as discontent, social unrest and levels of inequality growth, populism strengthens (see Rosanvallon, 2017) until it reaches positions of power. The originality of the work is tied not only to the theoretical hypothesis, but also to the methodology adopted: for the empirical verification, the author proceeded to trace the socio-demographic and economic profiles of the inhabitants of the lower territorial levels, that is the municipalities, taking as reference the ISTAT data coming from the registry offices to intersect them with the electoral results. The aim is to shed light on the connection between unequal income distribution, territorial gaps and voting behavior in the different areas of the country. In the first chapter of the work, attention is focused on the historical reconstruction of the underlying causes of the increase in inequalities in Italy. After the economic boom that culminated in the early 1990s (see Toniolo, 2013), the Italian economy underwent a sudden slowdown, until the recession of the 2000s during which real per capita income produced returned to the levels of twenty precedent years. The survival of Italian companies, over the years, has increasingly been tied to a progressive decrease in wages rather than to a series of product and process innovations-stimulated by public and private investmentscapable of increasing the added value of production (see Montoroni, 2000; Felice, 2005; Carreras and Felice, 2010) and the total factor productivity (TFP, indicator that measures the degree of economic efficiency of the system in it's complex). Furthermore, growing inequality has been accompanied by a reduction in social mobility (see Lipset and Bendix, 1991; Sorokin, 1998; Breen and Breen, eds. 2004) and class mobility, elements that contribute to the widening of social gaps that pockets of discontent are swelling. Another central theme of the first chapter is that concerning education. The author highlights, based on the last OECD data, that Italy has a low level of qualified and specialized education compared to the average of European countries. The percentage of people with only a primary or lower secondary school certificate is around 40%, only Spain and Portugal have higher figures. Tertiary education is achieved by only 17.7% of Italians, compared with a European average of 33.4% and an OECD average of 36.7%. On the basis of what is expressed in the report, it also emerges that Italy is one of Work licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non commercial-Share alike 3.0 Italian License
Politikon: The IAPSS Journal of Political Science
Until the first decade of the 21th century, scholars and reporters have identified contemporary p... more Until the first decade of the 21th century, scholars and reporters have identified contemporary populism as an element of anti-systemic revolt; furthermore, they have also recognized an incompatibility between populist phenomenon and government function. However, some recent cases of populist parties in power seem to be able to put into crisis more than one certainty regarding the nature and scope of the populist phenomenon. This observation raises the questions of this work: what harmful effects does populism in government produce on liberal institutions, pluralism, and representation in constitutional democracies? Do these effects merely erode the liberal component, or do they extend to produce a degeneration of democracy as a whole? And finally: what are the risks for democracy? The article corroborates the diarchic theories of democracy and aims to demonstrate the lack of compatibility between the principles of liberal democracy and populist principles, which have a negative imp...
Francesco Maria Scanni and Francesco Campolongo, 2020
The 2008 crisis and economic transformations (globalisation and financialisation) fuelled signifi... more The 2008 crisis and economic transformations (globalisation and financialisation) fuelled significant political phenomena, such as a deep distrust of politics, electoral volatility and the decline of bipolarity and/or bipartisanship in the face of growing outsider party affirmation. In this context, the dialectical model of the Gramscian 'social totality' provides an analytical tool capable of analysing those 'transition' phases characterised by a fracturing 'dominant historical bloc', in itself a precursor to an organic crisis of traditional political parties' separation of social classes.
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Books by Francesco Maria Scanni
comunicativo peculiare che gli att ori populisti presentano
(Kazin 1995; Taguieff 1997). All’interno di questo fi lone
di pensiero, alcuni autori hanno posto l’accento sulle performance di mobilitazione politica (Gidron-Bonikowski
2013) che i nuovi att ori populisti propongono sulla base
dello strett o legame con la nuova frontiera della tecnologia
comunicativa 4.0 (Mancini, 2015).
Papers by Francesco Maria Scanni
comunicativo peculiare che gli att ori populisti presentano
(Kazin 1995; Taguieff 1997). All’interno di questo fi lone
di pensiero, alcuni autori hanno posto l’accento sulle performance di mobilitazione politica (Gidron-Bonikowski
2013) che i nuovi att ori populisti propongono sulla base
dello strett o legame con la nuova frontiera della tecnologia
comunicativa 4.0 (Mancini, 2015).