ELECTORAL RESULT OF POPULIST PARTIES IN SOUTH EUROPE, CASES OF ITALY AND SPAIN

Abstract

Populism represents a political orientation that is built on fundamentally fighting for the interests, proposals and needs of the vast majority of people, with the absence of a specific political ideology. The trend of forming new populist parties in Europe has been escalating in recent years. Factors that contribute to that fact are ranging insufficient income to requests for a more democratic political system, depending of the political period. South of Europe, in modern politics, represents a geographic area with turbulent political affairs, where leftwing and rightwing parties exchange governmental position in almost every electoral process. That situation has led to the making of a solid ground for new populist parties and ideas, be the ones on the left, or the right. Italy and Spain have had a similar historical backgrounds, when it comes to governmental changes. Both states went throw fascist dictatorships, but also had strong communist movements, who were keen on taking governmental power and transform the country into a socialist utopia. Also, both states today have representative populist parties, be it on the right or left of the political spectrum, that have power in national governing bodies and the European Parliament. The paper uses mixed methods of research, predominantly using comparative and analytical methods, when it comes to the movements in both countries, where it goes into detail of the nature and form of political activism. Also, the paper explains reasons for their success in electoral cycles, on the national and European level. The correlation between historical movements in the countries is also analysed, as well as their effect on the movements of today. The hypothesis is that the escalation of populism has been increasing as an effect of peoples discontent in Italy and Spain, which is historically ingraved in political and economic problems of Europe’s southern countries.