Populism in Italy and Its Implications for PA (Non-)Reforms

The chapter focuses on the relationship between populism and public administration, with a specific reference to the Italian case in the past decade when the so-called populist parties became increasingly relevant. The key research question is: are there key differences in the understanding and evaluation of public administration in the electoral manifestos and ruling of exclusionary and inclusionary populist parties? After a brief introduction, the first section focuses on the notion of populism and introduces the variants of populist parties (exclusionary vs. inclusionary). The second section focuses on the link between populism and public administration and identifies some research hypotheses to be applied to the Italian case. The third section investigates empirically the electoral manifestos 2013–2022 of the current four major populist parties (Fratelli d’Italia, Lega/Lega per Salvini Premier, Popolo della Libertà/Forza Italia, Movimento Cinque Stelle) in order to identify the policy preferences in terms of public administration reforms. The fourth section will analyse the various ‘populist governments’ (2018–2023) in order to verify if specific public administration reforms have been formulated and/or adopted. A discussion concludes.