Christophe Bouillaud, Professor of Political Science at Sciences Po Grenoble and at the Pacte laboratory(@BouillaudC)

After nearly four months of health crisis in Italy, it seems to me that a certain number of lessons can be drawn from the point of view of political life in this country.

Firstly, in the face of a pandemic on a scale unprecedented in a century, the Italian political authorities were able to withstand the shock, taking a series of emergency measures to restrict the spread of the virus, including a fairly strict confinement of the entire Peninsula. Contrary to the misconception still widespread on this side of the Alps, an Italian government can take any exceptional measures necessary. It has at its disposal the weapon of decree-laws, legislative texts of immediate execution adopted by the Council of Ministers. These texts must then be validated by Parliament within 60 days, or be reiterated by the government to remain valid beyond this deadline. It can therefore take a whole series of decisions independently of Parliament. In fact, the image of parliamentary government as being powerless to govern is completely false.

Council President Giuseppe Conte, who took office in spring spring 2018 following the elections held that year, and has been retained in this position in 2019 despite the change in government majority (from a League/M5S alliance to a PD/M5S alliance) brought about by the PD/M5S alliance) brought about by Matteo Salvini's attempt to provoke provoke early general elections in autumn 2019, has been able to take all the decisions that the health situation seemed to to impose. It's not a question here of discussing their tempo, relevance or even or their effectiveness, but simply to note that Italy is governed. Italy is governed. Faced with this unprecedented situation, an old-style old-style parliamentary system as Italy knows it as well - or as badly? - than the French-style semi-presidential French-style system. In short, the myth, widespread in Italy and still at the heart still at the heart of the French Fifth Republic's legitimization, of a better the French semi-presidential system's greater capacity to make decisions. fallacious. So far, so false.

Secondly, unlike the French situation, where the opposition has been rather inaudible, all the decisions of this Conte executive have been taken under the fire of sharp criticism from three leading opponents.

On the one hand, on the right, League leader Matteo Salvini continued to express his views, pursuing his ongoing campaign. His rhetoric has, however, completely fluctuated over the course of the health crisis. health crisis: at first, he launched a violent opinion campaign for Italy to confine itself as much as possible, using the rise the rising mortality rate in Lombardy, one of his party's strongholds. one of his party's strongholds, then, on the other hand, in the last few days, he has been campaigning campaigned for accelerated de-confinement "à la Trump", in particular for everything for everything to do with shops large and small, bars and restaurants and restaurants, or for the possibility of celebrating masses for the with worshippers in churches (in keeping with the shift towards identity Catholicism of the League under his leadership). He faces competition in this criticism from the right-wing opposition Frères d'Italie (FdI), the post-neo-fascist party led by a woman, Giorgia Meloni. The latter is also putting on a show. As for the third stalwart of the right patriarch Berlusconi and his Forza Italia party, is certainly much less vocal, as its leader himself disappeared from the for the first few weeks of the health crisis. But in the last few days, he seems to want to get back into the political game. political game, by declaring his readiness to support an eventual government of national unity. government.

On the other hand, Matteo Renzi, the former leader of the Democratic Party (2014-2016), who had just created his own "personal party", Italia Viva (IV), on the eve of this health crisis yet supporting the current majority, has also been trying to push for the quickest and most severe containment possible.We've been hearing from him too for a few days on deconfinement, and the parallel with Matteo Salvini and Giorgia Meloni can be drawn. Moreover, at the head of a quarteron of MPs and senators who are loyal to him because they were elected in 2018 on PD lists, he is now threatening to provoke a crisis of government by bringing down the Conte government. He, too, would like to benefit from a redistribution of the cards when a new government is formed. He needs to take advantage of his current clout in parliament, even though, according to the polls, he remains one of Italy's least appreciated politicians (12% of confidence, according to an Ixé poll dated 03/27/20 for RAI3, less than half that of Berlusconi, 24%, and a fifth of Conte, 60%).

This barrage of criticism, in contrast to the relative lukewarmness of the in France, or the stifling of such criticism by the mainstream media government line, didn't really benefit the two male leaders. the two male leaders. Both their parties are stable in the polls, and even slightly down in the polls. in the polls. The Conte government has not been particularly popular in its handling of the health crisis: 55% of Italians were dissatisfied and 45% satisfied as of April 21, 2020 (Winpoll, 04/21/20, for Il Sole 24 Ore). On the same date in another poll (Termometro politico, 04/21/20), 56% of those questioned declared they had no confidence in the head of government, and 43% the opposite the opposite (with 1% having no opinion). More recent polls seem to show an increase in satisfaction: confidence in the Conte government Conte government would rise to 54/57%, with only 44/43% dissatisfied dissatisfied (Tecné for RTI on 26/04/20, Ixé for RAI3 on dated 04/27/20). Perhaps this is simply the result of the hope raised raised in the population by the announcement of a progressive deconfinement from May 4.

Looking at the various polls available on the official Italian website dedicated to their publication, the impression is that the political situation has remained static, with the unchanged since summer 2019. The only party that seems to have really grown over the last year in terms of voting intentions, is FdI. This breakthrough reflects the more general state of the right, on the one hand, the former dominant party of the right, Forza Italia, well below 10% of voting intentions, with its leader and not very capable of embodying the future, on the other, the new dominant right-wing party, the League, which since since 2013 to Matteo Salvini's ongoing campaign. It is possible the former's old age and the latter's repetitive outrageousness of the latter will eventually weary even the most willing of right-wing voters resigned to giving their vote to FdI, despite the neo-fascist tradition neo-fascist tradition it embodies. However, FdI should not be seen more right-wing than Mr. Salvini's League. Its roots, and therefore its main leaders, are linked to the history of neo-fascism. neo-fascism, but its current discourse and attitude are (slightly) more moderate more moderate than Mr. Salvini's hyper-right-wing League. It should be noted, for example, that last week, the League embarked on a protest operation in the very precincts of Parliament Parliament - an attempt to occupy the premises permanently - but that FdI, let alone FI, did not join in.

Thirdly, the pandemic has re-emerged as a political conflict between North and South, as well as between regions in the North. As in France, the epidemic initially hit certain areas, in this case communes in Lombardy and Veneto. The spread of the epidemic is closely linked to the international flow of travellers from the Chinese outbreak, so it was the north of the country that took the first shock. As a result, with the containment measures that have now been taken, central and southern Italy have been spared. Regional authorities in the south in particular blamed people from the north for bringing them the disease - when you consider the history of internal migration in Italy, this turn of events is rather ironic, all the more so as the people who rushed to catch a means of transport to reach the center and south of the country are essentially from these regions. For the time being, with Lombardy, its capital Milan, and the cities that symbolize the "Deep North", Bergamo and Brescia, hard hit by the epidemic's death toll, a little music of revenge has sounded from the "southerners" against those arrogant "northerners" who have scorned the rest of Italians for decades. It has to be said that one of the reasons why those in charge of the southern regions of the country have reacted in this way is that they are well aware of just how shabby the health structures they manage are overall. The hospital management of the epidemic, if it were to take hold in southern Italy, would most likely be a disaster. Indeed, the people of southern Italy seem to have anticipated the situation well, at least initially, by embracing the containment approach.

In addition to this revival of north/south acrimony, there are also strong differences between northern regions (Piedmont, Liguria, Lombardy, Veneto, Emilia-Romagna, Trentino-Alto Adige, Friuli-Venezia Giulia). Regional regional differences in the scale of the epidemic the scale of the epidemic in the north of the country, which are not simply due to factors of simple diffusion from outbreaks. The Veneto region, led by League member Luca Zaia, is faring rather well (no doubt because it was able to quickly carry out more tests than elsewhere), and, conversely, Lombardy, led by another League member, Luciano Fontana, is doing very badly. There's even a mystery to the mortality in Lombardy. It is said to account for more than 10% of unheard of anywhere else in the world. Piedmont, another region governed by the right (but only since 2019), is not doing much better. not much better. As a result, a survey (Winpoll, 04/21/20, for Il Sole 24 Ore) on the efficiency of a number of key regions is unambiguous: Veneto stands out with 86% satisfied and only 14% dissatisfied. Conversely, in Piedmont, only 27% of respondents were satisfied, and 63% dissatisfied. dissatisfied, and in Lombardy, 54% dissatisfied and 46% satisfied. satisfied. This situation has rekindled a historic conflict within the between Lombardy and Veneto. Above all, Luca Zaia ended up embodying the tradition of "good government" which the North has been claiming since Italian Unity, leaving Lombardy and Milan to their difficulties. Added to this is the fact that, as Zaia directly managed the health crisis, while Matteo Salvini while Matteo Salvini has been content to occupy social networks and talk shows. This is a fracture within the League itself between its national national "populist" wing and one of its regional "managerial" and "autonomist" wings, which had already been seen in 2017, when the when the Veneto Region organized a referendum on its autonomy autonomy (like its neighbor Lombardy).

Fourthly, this conflict reflects the fact that healthcare has been a regional prerogative since the 1970s. We all know that the health sector, which provides jobs and public contracts, is highly differentiated from one region to another in terms of efficiency. In principle, the north of the country is better in this respect than the south, where the sector is also reputed to be highly corrupt and clientelist. But the violence of the health crisis in Lombardy, then in Piedmont and Emilia-Romagna, showed that the north is far from homogeneous in this respect. Regional differentiation is now reflected in the debate on the pace and nature of decontamination. Each region would now like to choose its own pace and method. For the time being, the difference with France can really be explained by institutional considerations: our regions (badly redistributed under F. Hollande) have no health competencies, so their leaders have little legitimacy to intervene in crisis management. Management by the ARS (Regional Health Agencies) in France is therefore very different from the Italian situation, and it also explains why all the difficulties encountered here end up in the hands of the central government. In such a crisis situation, Italy is confirmed as a quasi-federal, regionalized state. France, by contrast, remains a centralized state, despite decades of decentralization, because no locally-elected body has the political legitimacy to take important decisions in the healthcare field, and because the state as currently led by E. Macron wants to prevent any local initiative that might overshadow it or demonstrate its total imperialism.

To sum up, for now, at the beginning of May 2020, the Italian political response is really "along the path", largely explicable by quite classic partisan and institutional considerations. There are no surprises here. At least for the time being. I'll leave aside European considerations for the moment, as they would require a separate article, but they too are replaying a familiar scenario.

This analysis was originally published on the Contemporary Italian Politics research notebook on May 04, 2020.