Questions About Other Countries' Politics that You Were Too Afraid To Ask

[Battista Minola 1616]

Apologies for the very belated response; I am only seeing this thread now. But as the most prominent poster who lives in Italy I feel bound to add my answers on the topic.

Italy really confuses me in general, but one thing really confused me from the recent election - what do people mean by saying M5S is a parody of an old-school labor party?

Nathan already answered this quite well but I have a couple nitpicks to make.

It has the internal political culture of a weirdo extremely-online e-utopian techbro party (by design!) yet its main actual policy accomplishment, at least on the national level, is also the only major leftist social/welfare policy achievement in Italy for a long time (the citizen's income, basically a diminished form of UBI). As of last month's election it also now has the voter pattern--in the South, its main remaining stronghold--that one expects of a traditional left-wing party, namely gritty working-class cities and especially deprived areas of the rurals.

The citizenship income is a sort of guaranteed minimum income with weird hoops, but I think using the term "UBI" is misleading (it's very much not universal!). And I disagree with the implication that its voting pattern looks more left-wing in the South, it does just as much in the urban North and I doubt deprived agricultural backwaters in the hills are what people typically imagine as an area where a labour party overperforms significantly.

They also made putting in place a minimum wage (which Italy currently doesn't have) the centerpiece of their campaign this year. They've stumbled ass-backwards into this being their role in the political system rather than intending it, but they seem comfortable with it for now. And even if some of their views continue to be stupid and/or self-defeating, having a party that actually does see that as its role again (since it hasn't had one, no matter how flawed, arguably since the PCI stopped being the PCI) should be a good thing for Italian politics.

I disagree with this actually, the centerpiece of their campaign was much more defending the citizenship income. The minimum wage was still important of course, but so goes for the PD as well.

Apparently Italy doesn't have a minimum wage? Is this common in southern Europe?

Common all across Europe, but IIRC it's not universal. In many northern European countries sectoral bargaining creates de facto minimum wages. No idea if that's also the case in Italy. Its enormous economic divide between north and south also probably makes it harder to set a minimum wage that works everywhere.

Italy has no minimum wage but a large majority of workers is covered by collective bargaining agreements that way indeed (although surely fewer than in the Nordics). It's also not exactly common in Europe, 21 countries out of 27 in the EU have a national minimum wage.

[Battista Minola 1616]

How come communism never took off in Ireland the way it did in other Catholic countries that weren't fighting wars of independence? Particular focus on the late 1910s to the early 1930s.

You should probably be somewhat clearer (I would not say communism really "took off" in any Catholic country before the early 1930s) but at least in Latin Europe which is the part I know best I can think of three obvious common strands in future communist strength. Class voting in heavily industrialized areas where it built off pre-existing socialist strength (Italy, France, perhaps Spain), strong association with anti-fascist resistance movements (Italy, France, Spain, perhaps Portugal) and class voting in areas dominated by sharecroppers seeking land reform (Spain, Portugal, Italy, perhaps France). This is certainly not the full explanation, but you can see none of these applied in independent Ireland.

[Battista Minola 1616]

In relative terms, what is probably the most "clientelistic" European country, politically?

I am not an expert on all countries of course, and I am not entirely sure what you mean by "clientelistic", but what I've read about state capture and vote buying in Romania seems to trump everyone else (even Bulgaria, DPS notwithstanding).

[Battista Minola 1616]

Now my serious, somewhat less stupid question: Is there a viable or noteworthy separatist movement in Galicia, with the potential to be on par with the Basque and Catalan independence (or just more self-government) movements?

The Galician Nationalist Bloc has had its electoral up and downs but enjoys somewhat sizable support, especially in local elections. However they seem to have changed their mind a few times on whether they are separatist, perhaps because the BNG is actually an alliance of multiple parties. I'm not aware of more radical alternatives with meaningful support. In any case the movement is definitely not on par with Basque and Catalan nationalists and I can't see it becoming such (except maybe in a world where Vox literally kills the PP - which has always done very well in the region - and runs on a platform of shutting down Televisión de Galicia?), though this is something where Spanish posters would have better insight.

[Battista Minola 1616]

What is the most libertarian region of Wales?

Nowhere as the Welsh are a people ever prone to taking The Rules extremely seriously (and to the point of pedantry, really), no matter what The Rules might be at any given moment.

I am reliably informed that Ceredigion in particular used to be a fiscally conservative but socially liberal stronghold, even in the very populist 2015 federal election (although now it's realigned to left-wing nationalism, like northwestern Slovakia). Maybe that's what he meant?

[Battista Minola 1616]

Since I'm going to Italy next week:

-How do the parties in the right coalition differ?  Especially Lega (Salvini) versus FDI (Meloni).

-Where does M5S fit in?  Is it basically the replacement for PD in the South of Italy?

-Why is Rome relatively conservative, with Lazio even a right-leaning region?  And, why are Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna the only two more left-leaning regions in the North of Italy?  It seems like there's a general trend towards well-off areas liking the right, so those two surprise me a bit.  Is E-R just about Bologna being the Berkeley of Italy?

#1 I think I am going crazy with how often this question comes up. Oryx covered their histories... fine (until halfway into the FdI section, coming back to that). As of their current policies they have somewhat different approaches to things the justice system and regionalism for historical reasons, but their main difference is probably just that Meloni has been trying to build an image as a dependable mainstream conservative and Salvini is busy acting out his role as a shouting buffoon barely concealing his Russian sympathies.

#1b The MSI's and later AN's base of support never really stopped being defined by original post-fascist sympathies and, more visibly later (like at the AN's peak in 1996, of which Al made a map once) it was not necessarily poor, if anything skewing bourgeois in cities. This incidentally is the exact opposite of Lega Nord. The Meloni Tolkien thing leads to a very strange and fascinating rabbithole about neofascist circles but I wouldn't use it to talk about party voters in general.

#2 No, no, no, no and no. But also in an awkward way... they are two parties with very contrasting characteristics (the PD is the partial heir to the two largest political traditions of the so-called First Republic while the M5S is a novel party almost completely unrelated to what came before; the PD is the most institutionalist party while the M5S was founded on being very strongly anti-system; the PD is incredibly factionalist while the M5S never stops being a personality party even though it's been that for at least three different personalities; the PD has a lot of respected local administrators but nobody who knows how to campaign while the M5S has a lot of cranks but incredibly effective populist campaigns in national elections; etc.) which have converged on the same side of not being the Right. That said keep in mind the M5S vote is a lot more Southern than the PD vote is Northern.

#3 Rome is not really relatively conservative (in 2022 it voted twelve points to the left, so to speak, of the country as a whole!), however it is massive and includes a lot of suburban areas the equivalent of which would be separate municipalities elsewhere, and it has a strong post-fascist tradition for reasons that are probably obvious. The rest of Lazio is genuinely rather right-wing - it's a middle-income region without that much industrial history, large cities or universities while again having post-fascist traditions, especially in the Latina area a large amount of which are marshlands that were drained under Mussolini. Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna are... see my post that palandio linked plus discussion of cultural legacies. Nowadays there have been a lot of internal changes and yes, the massive and fairly activist university presence in Bologna nets the PD and allies a lot of votes as well (to a smaller extent also true of Pisa or Florence - note that a long time ago in the 1950s the cores of these cities were conversely much less Communist than their industrial surroundings). However I did not understand the tone of your question. Did you expect a North to South, right to left gradient or something like that?