Europe Up for Grabs: an Italian Perspective

Emboldened by the success of populist parties in the most recent legislative elections, leading Italian politicians have openly challenged the European agenda. On several occasions, widespread forms of criticism towards Brussels have involved into aggressive stances that overtly pitch voters against the EU institutions – although, in most cases, the leaders of the governmental coalition have backed away from an explicit call to leave the European Union. Within this context, in a chapter focused on the Italian arena, we address empirically the frames adopted in the 2019 European parliamentary election campaign with regard to the European Union. For this purpose, we focus on a heterogeneous group of populist parties and use data collected from Twitter, including the accounts of both leaders and parties that collected at least 1% of the votes. Our sample gathers eight parties: the M5S, the League, the Democratic Party, Forza Italia, the Brothers of Italy, + Europe, the Left and Green Europe. Our analysis demonstrates the limits of the Second Order Election theory with regard to the Italian context. More specifically, the 2019 Italian EP elections seem to have performed a plebiscitary function and, as in 2014, the parties in government successfully mobilized voters in favor of a domestically-tailored political, economic and socio-cultural project