Politics in Italy 2020. A tale of two populisms: The League and the Five-star Movement in power. Introduction

Politics in Italy in 2019 revealed a series of discontinuities as well continuities with regard to previous years. The discontinuities were clear: two populist parties–the League and the Five-star Movement–gained power with a platform of radical promises on the social and economic front, even if one of them, the League, left the government prematurely (a sign of its growing electoral strength in the country), allowing the centre-left Democratic Party, which had dominated Italian governing coalitions from 2013, to return to power in Conte II. The continuities were no less obvious: the populist government’s radical promises were substantially 'normalized' due to inescapable macroeconomic constraints and the debt policing powers of the European authorities (‘radicalism meets reality’), as well as barely concealed or open conflict over policy priorities among the coalition partners (‘radicalisms in competition’).