The chapter deals with the use of fear made by technocracies and populisms (in particular right-wing populist parties) in post-crisis Europe (2013-2018), and the way it contributed to the crisis of Liberal Democracy, with Institutions in need of popular legitimacy and liberal constitutionalism requiring technocratic elements to function, highlighting an "elected-unelected" unavoidable tension. Using the mythological narration of Scylla and Charybdis as a metaphor, the chapter builds upon the theoretical framework of complexity, and its connection with legitimacy, to explain the role of fear and the mutual implications between the actions of Technocracy and Populism. The central argument of this paper is that Technocracies and Populisms, as showed in Italy, take advantage of trivialization and the mis-use of complexity respectively, to implement a successful strategy based on evoking fears. In turn, these fears have profound implications, in undermining the stability of democratic societies, as demonstrated by the recent political crisis in Italy (2018).

The paper deals with the use of fear made by Technocracies and Populisms (in particular right-wing populist parties) in post-crisis Europe (2013-2018), and the way it contributed to the crisis of Liberal Democracy, with institutions in need of popular legitimacy and constitutionalism requiring technocratic elements to function, highlighting an “elected-unelected” unavoidable tension. Using the mythological narration of Scylla and Charybdis as a metaphor, the paper builds upon the theoretical framework of complexity, and its connection with legitimacy. The central argument of this paper is that Technocracies and Populisms, as showed in Italy, take advantage of trivialization and the mis-use of complexity respectively, to implement a successful strategy based on evoking fears. In turn, these fears have profound implications, in undermining the stability of democratic societies, as demonstrated by the recent political crisis in Italy.

The first decades of the 21st century have seen, at the global level, two alarming socio-political trends within democratic countries: the increasing level of economic inequality and citizens’ strong dissatisfaction with political establishments. These trends are contributing to the development of a context of social instability. Most worrying is the existence of certain political movements and elites seemingly interested in fostering tension and manufacturing divisions and fear for political gain.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, public trust necessarily shifted towards science and technical expertise worldwide. In some liberal democracies, the Constitution and Parliament have been bypassed, with Executives using scientific and technical expertise to legitimate political choices within the crisis management process. In Italy (March-August 2020), the Executive set up expert teams (such as the Comitato Tecnico-Scientifico) acting mostly by Decrees of the President of Council of Ministers (DPCM). The Italian Parliament was not sufficiently consulted. After reviewing the current research literature on constitutional changes during emergency regimes within representative democracies, and using insights from Italy, we try to frame the discourse concerning Executive's choices during emergency regimes in terms of (i) decline of political responsiveness, (ii) prevalence of output legitimation and (iii) politicization of expertise (with the possibility for expertise, in turn, to influence policy making) to contribute to the overall debate on the reconfiguration of powers in times of crises.

Since the Eurozone crisis, scholars framed different interpretations about the power role of Germany in Europe, pointing at the possible return of the “German question”. Recently, with the “Brexit”, the populist tensions within the EU and the election of Trump as US president, Germany on the contrary, was regarded as the last bastion of the liberal order by Western media. Starting from the premise that with the global economic crisis Germany acquired a supremacy position in Europe “by default”, we proceed by confuting the idea of Germany as a coercive hegemon, without falling into idealistic interpretations. To do so, we define an analytical framework distinguishing leadership and hegemony and insisting on the importance of the context of permanent multi-level crisis in Europe. The argument we advance is that between 2012 and 2015 Germany played a positive power role in Europe, exhibiting appreciable leadership skills, vast regional influence and, first of all, a style of power closer to a benign multilateral leadership than to a coercive unilateral hegemony. The empirical research is based on three case studies from dierent policy areas, the Banking Union (2012-2013), the European migration crisis (2014-2015) and the Russia-Ukraine conflict (2014-2015).

Since the Eurozone crisis, scholars framed dierent interpretations about the power role of Germany in Europe, pointing at the possible return of the “German question”. Recently, with the “Brexit”, the populist tensions within the EU and the election of Trump as US president, Germany on the contrary, was regarded as the last bastion of the liberal order by Western media. Starting from the premise that with the global economic crisis Germany acquired a supremacy position in Europe “by default”, we proceed by confuting the idea of Germany as a coercive hegemon, without falling into idealistic interpretations. To do so, we define an analytical framework distinguishing leadership and hegemony and insisting on the importance of the context of permanent multi-level crisis in Europe. The argument we advance is that between 2012 and 2015 Germany played a positive power role in Europe, exhibiting appreciable leadership skills, vast regional influence and, first of all, a style of power closer...

The key messages of this paper can be summarized in three statements: First, the new wave of populism, as neopopulism, has been shaped in the current age of information society first of all in the terms of ‘cultural’ globalization as identity politics. Second, since the outbreak of global crisis in the late 2000s there has been an ‘alienation’ between the Core and the Periphery in the EU with very marked features in the ‘East’, in New Member States as widespread disappointment of populations with the results of EU membership. Third, Poland and Hungary have been pioneering in this process of divergence from the EU mainstream and in the emergence of the anti-EU populist elites, so they represent the classical case of Eupopulism in the Eastern periphery in the EU. Thus, this paper focuses on the specificity of neopopulism in NMS within the EU first of all by analysing the emergence of authoritarian populism in Poland and Hungary.

A ‘credible’ populist strategy by the current Italian government could involve further manufacturing a political crisis through a variety of routes. The coalition could (a) produce more public debt to achieve its costly promises, alongside (b) further adopting ‘hard’ Eurosceptic rhetoric. This strategy would further blame the EU and its institutions for the current economic malaise in Italy. Therefore, the financial chaos that weakened Italy in 2011 looks like it may be repeated, given the volatility of the current political and economic situation. It is likely to become even more volatile in the weeks ahead with the unpredictability of the populist governing coalition. Italian politics currently stands on the edge of a precipice.

Contemporary Radical Right parties have tended to outperform Radical Left parties electorally in Europe, particularly in national parliamentary (legislative) elections during the post-economic crisis period. However, it is not clear why this is the case. Given the context of growing dissatisfaction towards the democratic establishment in which contemporary populism developed, which key factors can explain why the radical right are better able to “capitalize” on populism compared to the Radical Left, in terms of electoral success at the ballot box in Europe?