Four types of anti-politics: Insights from the Italian case

The word antipolitica (‘anti-politics’) is widely used in contemporary Italian political debate. The concept of ‘anti-politics’ is also frequently used by social scientists in explaining the Italian political transition that took place during the 1990s and analysing the current political situation. In spite of this wide use, sociopolitical literature does not provide a consensual definition of the term. As result, the semantic field of the concept as yet appears poorly defined. This article provides a detailed look at the use of the term ‘anti-politics’ in the sociopolitical literature. Structuring the analysis around some basic conceptual distinctions, the article proposes a taxonomy of the meanings related to the term ‘anti-politics’, highlighting four different meanings of the concept. Referring in particular to the Italian political system, the article provides examples of the meanings of the concept of ‘anti-politics’ using phenomena occurring in the peninsula during the 1990s – phenomena which were central to the increasing use of the term in Italy during that decade.