Persona and Politics: The Democratic Staging of Personality-Driven Leadership in Italy

This dissertation examines the democratic effects of personality-driven politics in contemporary Italy. It defines personality-driven politics as an influential type of political narrative that builds its political visions and ambitions upon the very personality of individual politicians. That includes the politician’s background, family, lifestyle, experiences, and appearance. Personality-driven politics is related to existing theories of individuals in power, namely personalised politics, and charismatic authority. Furthermore, personality-driven politics is communicated in a way resembling politainment. To establish personality-driven politics as a novel phenomenon, the dissertation makes an overview of leadership history in Italy in the 20th century. Here, it is accentuated how former discussions of strongmen and father figures in political leadership positions might have had a pioneering role in relation to personality-driven politics, yet personality-driven politics differs from this historic negotiation of leadership as its focus on personality has more to do with the focus of attention than the focus of power.
The dissertation then continues by analysing the staging and positioning of three identified examples of personality-driven politicians in Italy: Silvio Berlusconi, Matteo Salvini and Giorgia Meloni. This is done through a representational lens of dualities consisting of reason and instinct, distinction and identification, and distance and intimacy. The investigation suggests that their personalities are moulded and defines their relation to their voters.
The dissertation discusses the democratic implication of this type of politics. On one hand the potential threats namely the risk of oversimplification and the perspective of personality-driven politics as concealed authoritarianism are underlined. On the other hand, the hope that personality- driven politics with revitalise and even reenchant politics is presented.
Finally, the dissertation discusses personality-driven politics’ relation to technocratic leadership as well as its global appeal.