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Right wing populism and Euroscepticism have experienced an important growth in the last decades all around Europe. Italy has also been highly affected by this phenomenon and, since the early 1990s, various populist parties appeared on its political scene.
Since the early 1990s Silvio Berlusconi`s Forza Italia, Umberto Bossi`s Lega Nord and Gianfranco Fini`s Alleanza Nazionale became the hegemonic forces of the conservative political area. However, since 2012, Beppe Grillo transformed Italian politics introducing a new form of populism: his Movimento 5 Stelle, not following the traditional left-right paradigm, represented a shock in the static world of the Italian politics.
The working paper is going to focus on the phenomenon of right wing populism and Euroscepticism at national level, exploring the reasons for the success of Forza Italia, Lega Nord and Alleanza Nazionale- Fratelli d`Italia.