The three pieces that follow by Morena Piccinini, Riccardo Terzi and Mario Tronti, are based on thoughts already presented by them at the Forum. Morena Piccinini’s contribution reflects above all on the «inverse» relations between populisms and universalistic social policies, underlining the unions’ role in promoting the latter, and so also promoting and safeguarding democratic systems. Riccardo Terzi’s thoughts criticize the idea of populism as the only definition of a differentiated variety of phenomena, movements and parties that – being also the consequence of contemporary social fragmentation – should not be combated on the moralistic or «metaphysical » plane of ideas, but starting from concrete social change. reconstructs the (altered) nexuses between the idea of a people and populist action and offers some highly topical thoughts on the commitment and strategies that politics should adopt to reconstruct the damaged ties between society and institutions, political choice and organized representation.only subscribers can see the full article

The author considers the limits both internal and external of Gdp and growth as indicators of wellbeing and the state of social health. The increased legitimacy of the arguments developed on this has led to a proliferation of new indicators, above all social ones, and the article gives some examples of them. Particular attention is given to the American and French Iss (Index of social health). As social health should reflect the state of social cohesion in a land, its social capital and its individual and collective capacities to take part in the economic and social project of the country, the French experiment of Iss, basing its legitimacy on an innovative procedure, underlines the desire to tie the question of «indicators» to the democratic process from which they may emerge. only subscribers can see the full article

Just as Italy has seen an imperfect version of consensual democracy, based on coalitions between parties, and a version of neo-corporatism no less imperfect and incomplete, so it has experienced a partial and sketchy version both of new free-market policies, and of post-party based and majority democracy. To describe this imperfection it has become customary to refer to the dilemma of populism/anti-politics, explaining its problems exclusively in terms of politics. This is a misleading simplification, as the reasons run much deeper. So-called populism is an offshoot of the problematic Italian transition from Fordism to post-Fordism, of the changes caused by this transition n the texture of Italian society, as well as of the adventurous transition from a consensual to a majority system. The fragility of the economy and the weakness of politics were handled, and combated are plausible explanations for the radicalization rightwards of part of the electorate and the party programmes, as well as the style adopted by Berlusconi.only subscribers can see the full article