Securitarian populism and local sovranism

Abstract

Italian political and administrative culture still appears to be hopelessly centralist, incapable of fully grasping the inner meaning of the principle of subsidiarity, perhaps the most significant innovation of the constitutional reform of 2001. Yet, ever since 1900s, Italian political culture itself has undergone profound transformations (e.g., the rise of populism) that have also occurred in other major Western democracies. Given this background, the essay aims at assessing the crisis of regionalism and local autonomy using the rise of populism as its methos of inquiry.