Resilience Without Resistance: Public Administration Under Mutating Populisms in Office in Italy

This chapter describes the dynamics of administrative change and bureaucratic resilience under populist governments in Italy, focusing on the first two decades of the 2000s, which have been characterized by the intermittent presence of populist parties in government. Our key explanandum is the effect on public administration of populist govern- ments in office, and the main traits of bureaucratic reactions in these circumstances. Our main argument throughout this chapter is that populist governments in Italy have displayed a marked chasm between rhetoric and deeds, between the level of talk and the level of action, when it comes to public administration and the reforming of the bureaucracy, and that the level of administrative continuity has been significant. This has been due partly to populist governments having not attached great priority to administrative reforms in the governmental agenda, and partly to bureaucratic resilience.