The empty seats are an effect of populism – Paolo Branca

The effects of the double consultation of June 12 – the five referendums on justice and the administrative elections – risk not only concerning the fate of Mario Draghi’s government but also a perhaps less evident but more important aspect of democratic life: the health of popular participation. . Never in Italian history have so few voters gone to vote. Of course, for the most sensational failure, that of the referendums, there are specific reasons: not voting is a consolidated technique of those who want to express opposition to the questions. It was inaugurated in the nineties, once the first “heroic” season of the referendums was over, and many were the excellent victims, from the abolition of the hunt to the majority electoral system, from assisted procreation to the separation of the careers of the magistrates. But the inevitable alarm is triggered if abstention is associated with referendums with administrative abstention. In some important cities, the vote on mayors involved less than half of those entitled to vote, and considering that another 10 per cent of voters are lost on average in the ballot, the resulting picture is nothing short of bleak.

While it is not easy to indicate an exhaustive reason why voters do not go to vote, it is possible to identify at least a partial response in the phenomenon that has profoundly conditioned Italian politics for more than ten years: populism. Among its most damaging effects are not only the distrust – certainly not unjustified – in politics and parties as tools for solving problems, but above all the delegitimization of institutions and intermediate bodies, that is the parties and all groups that favor citizen participation in public life. Parliament thus becomes a “can of tuna to be opened”, as Beppe Grillo defined it in 2013, parliamentary seats “seats to be cut”, parties crowded with corruption and personal interests, rules and supranational laws an intolerable hindrance.

Since almost nothing is invented in politics, there is obviously no lack of precedents, as taught by Berlusconi’s twenty years: but at the time the counterweight of the institutions and democratic forces had somehow worked, certainly much more than what happens today. The apex of this phenomenon can be indicated in the political elections four years ago, when the populist and sovereign forces (cinquestelle, Lega, Fratelli d’Italia) gathered almost 60 percent of the votes, with a turnout that, although it was down, it was still high, around 73 per cent. And it is no coincidence that today Matteo Salvini and Giuseppe Conte are pawing within the government. The crisis of populism – or the inability to provide concrete answers to the country’s problems – has produced disaffection and populist leaders would like to go back to basics in the illusion of recreating the lost magical moment.

But it would be a mistake to place all the responsibility on them. The center-left has not been able to stem this trend with determination, indeed it has ended up feeding it in a way that could be defined as “homeopathic”: it was precisely the first government of “broad understandings” chaired by Enrico Letta to abolish public funding of politics, yielding to the pressing of the grillina opposition; it was another Democratic Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi, who set up his battle for constitutional reform as a “cut of the chairs”. And all the parties voted for the insane reduction in parliamentary seats, then confirmed by the constitutional referendum of 2020, without even passing an electoral law that would remedy the political and territorial imbalances that are now there for all to see.

Going back today seems more complicated than ever. Even the remedy of the primaries, which in the center-left occasionally mobilizes a part of the electorate, risks turning out to be illusory, since instead of favoring a rooting and a revival of political forces, it ends up reproducing a simple challenge between electoral committees of this or that leader.

So what is left? At the risk of appearing traditionalist, perhaps the answer can only be politics. Maybe starting again to identify themes and proposals and to build around them what were once called mass campaigns. Carlo Calenda is probably right when he says that “stemming the right” is not a government program. But programs that are mobilizing and at the same time credible are not even seen in his part.