Abstrakt
This chapter considers the weight of populist arguments in the season of constitutional reform in Italy since the early 1990s. The understanding of populism is based on a dualistic perspective, in which democracies are subject to a fundamental tension between constitutionalism and populism.
Two failed reform projects-respectively undertaken by the Berlusconi government in 2004-06 and the Renzi government in 2014-16-are considered in light of three typical aspects of the interplay of populism and public law: majoritarianism, instrumentalism, and legal resentment. Those attempts at constitutional reform were unsuccessful; however, a populist attitude seems to have become the prevalent flavour in Italian constitutional politics debates.