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Techno-sovereignism: the political rationality of contemporary Italian populism

Maglione, Giuseppe

Authors

Giuseppe Maglione



Abstract

This article provides an original exploration of the self-identified populist coalition leading the Italian government between 2018 and 2019. The analysis, informed by a governmentality approach, starts by scrutinising the economic, social, and cultural issues framed as political “problems” by the coalition, also highlighting the tensions underlying such constructions. The second step charts how this political subject sought to address those problems by deploying an array of political technologies. From examining these two dimensions, the article then can discern the composite rationality—techno-sovereignism—that drove precariously the coalition’s art of government. Finally, the article sketches out some forms of contestation against the techno-sovereignist operations, whose significance may stretch beyond the Italian borders. Overall, although the Italian populist coalition turned out to be ephemeral, the dynamics that characterized its emergence and functioning could still be used heuristically to understand the interactions and reciprocal adjustments possibly used by right-wing and technocratic populist groups to exert political power conjointly.

Citation

Maglione, G. (2021). Techno-sovereignism: the political rationality of contemporary Italian populism. Theory and Society, 50(5), 791-813. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-021-09429-1

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jan 10, 2021
Online Publication Date Feb 7, 2021
Publication Date 2021-08
Deposit Date Feb 8, 2021
Publicly Available Date Feb 8, 2021
Journal Theory and Society
Print ISSN 0304-2421
Electronic ISSN 1573-7853
Publisher Springer
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 50
Issue 5
Pages 791-813
DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-021-09429-1
Keywords Five Star Movement, Governmentality, Italy, Mythological machine, Populism, The League
Public URL http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/2719058

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This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/





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