"This book provides an excellent description of the outcome of the 2022 election in Italy, which saw the rise of Giorgia Meloni and her far right party, Brothers of Italy, to the helm of government. The phenomenon is even more important given that Italy has often been a laboratory for future trends in European politics. The authors make good use of media, survey and official electoral data to analyse the campaign and electoral geography, as well as voting choices and their timing, to provide a vivid account of the election outcome in a country where instability and uncertainty have become the norm."
-Marina Costa Lobo, University of Lisbon, Portugal
"This book provides an impressive first analysis of the 2022 Italian elections, the third most volatile elections in Italy's post-war history, after 1994 and 2013. Its authors document how the widespread economic, cultural and political malaise influenced Italians' electoral choices. They help us understand how, in the fluid Italian political context, widespread insecurity among voters and resentment against the political elites led to a massive shift to the right and an exceptionally high abstention rate."
-Hanspeter Kriesi, European University Institute, Italy
Italian politics has changed course yet again. Thanks to the outcome of the 2022 general election, a coalition dominated, for the first time, by a party of the far right has taken office under Giorgia Meloni, the first woman to serve as prime minister in Italy's republican history. Italy has always been a kind of 'political laboratory' for Western democracies - one in which new political phenomena have developed with considerable potency. Consequently, the electoral analyses presented in this book make it possible for the reader to understand the challenges and related consequences that established democracies are currently facing, beyond Italy.
Fabio Bordignon is Associate Professor at the University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Italy
Luigi Ceccarini is Professor at the University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Italy
James L. Newell is Adjunct Professor at the University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Italy
