School of Political Sciences – 2021/2022 Edition

Hybrid and asymmetrical. A roadmap for the new political narrative in the age of emergency

An unfortunate astral conjunction has meant that for at least three years the narrative of politics and its institutional projection have taken on the canons of emergency, abandoning the usual interpretations.

First, the pandemic event, unpredictable and unsettling in its intensity and duration, intervened to alter the way of being of public space, conditioning not only the political dialectic but also the institutional declination of the choices made (think of the still open debate on the Prime Ministerial Decrees issued by the government authority to deal with the health emergency), modifying the very expressiveness of public discourse (think of the massive intervention of digital communication technologies as an alternative to presence). After the pandemic, the tragedy of Ukraine, with its load of consequences, symbolic (it is a war event taking place near the heart of Europe), geopolitical (the role of the EU, the role of NATO, the issue of European defense ), economic (the problem of energy supply, the sanctions imposed by the EU on the Russian aggressor, the consequences, with regressive risk, on the national economy), humanitarian (war crimes and the explosion of the migratory flow towards 'Europe), communicational (the acrimony of war reporting that brings every detail of the horror into the homes of Italians). The extent and dramatic nature of the emergencies have, therefore, occupied the entire public debate, thus also veiling the difficulties in which politics and institutions were struggling and which emerged clearly in the troubled path that led to the new seven-year term of President Mattarella. Because, even if due to a happy heterogeneity of ends the choice of the great electors was able to guarantee to Italians the return to the Quirinale of a figure who represents, by unanimous consideration of doctrine, politics and people, one of the most appreciated experiences at the top of the State for constitutional balance and sensitivity, the uncertainties that preceded it have highlighted the difficulty that characterizes Italian politics, the crisis of the party form both with reference to the dynamics linked to internal democracy and the processes that lead to the contestability of the leaders, and having regarding the ideological-value references and the forms of its organization and its relationship with the electoral body. To this crisis must also be added the uncertainty with which Italy is preparing to face the imminent new legislature, with a Parliament reduced by around 40% of its members and in the absence of the necessary reforms to allow its start without obstacles of nature regulatory and constitutional.