Italian golden age of populism: an analysis of Movimento 5 Stelle and Lega TV agenda in 2018 General Elections

The current political scenario shows how that composed kind of political proposals and strategies that might be called “populist” seem to meet the request for political change characterizing Western electorate (Inglehart, Norris, 2016). In particular, Italy has been the theatre of a trend that can be summarized in the Urbinati’s formula “populism golden age” (Urbinati, 2015). As an ideal completion of it, the 2018 General Elections saw an extraordinary success for both Five Star Movement and Lega Nord, two political actors that might be seen as the most important “driver” of “populist” protest against the traditional party system (Biorcio, 2016). The paper’s aim is to find some clues for the reason of this success in the way Five Star Movement and Lega took advantage of existing TV agenda and succeeded in influencing it. Starting from issues treated in political talk shows during the last four weeks of electoral campaign - from Monday, February 5 to Friday, March 2 -, a first distinction will be done between “pure” and “induced” issues (Patterson, 1980; Mazzoleni, 1998). An example of the first is the case of the man who shot a group of immigrants in Macerata; an example of the second is the “refundgate” launched by TV program “Le Iene” against some members of the Five Stars Movement. In both cases, the political actors that have come victorious in the voter’s choice had to manage issues that could enhance or demolish their political credibility. And in both cases seem to have won “the battle of the agenda”.