“The immortal” Silvio Berlusconi has clearly been the central figure in Italian politics for the past 30 years, Marc Lazar told franceinfo on Monday, hours after the death of the former Italian Prime Minister and media mogul was announced. .
Silvio Berlusconi “revolutionized the way of doing politics and communication for better and for worse”, estimated Marc Lazar, professor emeritus at Sciences Po, specialist in the history of the political sociology of Italy. The former Italian prime minister and media mogul has died at the age of 86. He took advantage of the breakdown of traditional political parties to create his own movement Forza Italy. “He has been at the heart of all political processes in Italy for 30 years,” he explains. He created “a form of contemporary, media-based populism”according to this specialist.
franceinfo: Did it benefit in the 90s from the breakdown of traditional parties?
Mark Lazar: Absolutely and he plays a lot of it. He launches into politics with a famous video document which will turn on his channels and which revolutionizes political communication. He presents himself as a new man, he who was already well known in Italy because he was a real estate entrepreneur, because he owned the AC Milan club, but above all because he owned half of the audiovisual landscape and that knew how to sell himself very well. He has always had a very strong marketing ability. Indeed, it takes advantage of the decomposition and accentuates it. He proposes a new product which is his own party which he calls, it is very symbolic, Forza Italia. It’s as if in France, a businessman went into politics and called his party ‘Allez les Bleus!’.
Is he a central figure during these three decades?
The answer is clearly yes. On the one hand, because he won the elections three times, he was in power three times. So he was President of the Council three times, the first time for a few months in 1994, then a second time for a full legislature and then from 2008 to 2011, just for three years. He was landed in harsh conditions for him. This is the beginning of the decline of Silvio Berlusconi. He obsessed Italy, either because there were people who adored him, not all Italians far from it, or because people hated him, but also because he is at the heart of all political processes in Italy for 30 years.
Is there a form of populism that will thrive elsewhere?
We laughed out loud with Berlusconi, in France as elsewhere, saying to ourselves ‘but what is happening in this country?’ Italy is very often a laboratory and a seismograph of the political transformations that we know. Indeed entrepreneurs who go into politics by presenting themselves as new men, you know a very famous one in the United States, Donald Trump. There are others in Central Europe, in the Czech Republic, who have tried the same experiments. Nothing tells us that comparable experiences will not be repeated in other countries. It is a form of contemporary populism, media. Some believed they could interpret Berlusconi’s successes by his control of the media and television. I don’t think that’s the only explanation. He revolutionized the way of doing politics and communication for better and for worse.
Does he have heirs in Italy?
He invented a party that depends only on him. This Forza Italia never really had the ability or the will to integrate into the territory. He has not really designated an heir, even if the current Minister of Foreign Affairs, Antonio Tajani, is certainly the one who will take up the torch. He created this new prototype of political party that we know so well in France. Emmanuel Macron has nothing to do with Silvio Berlusconi, but he too had decided to create a party which is a personal party, which depends only on his person.