Governing without choosing: the limits of performative politics

In this introduction to the Contemporary Italian Politics special issue on Politics in Italy in 2025 we examine political developments by drawing on the distinction between performative and transformative politics. The individual contributions to this special issue reveal a common pattern: the growing predominance of political signalling over structural policy change across a broad variety of policy domains including foreign affairs, defence, labour markets, banking, judicial reform, civil rights, higher education, and security. In our article we argue that performative politics, understood as the production of politically meaningful signals aimed at shaping identities, maintaining coalitions, and managing constituencies, has become a rational response to the constraints limiting governments’ capacity for transformative action. These constraints include fiscal pressures, demographic decline, institutional veto points, coalition fragmentation, and European governance frameworks. The Meloni government is a particularly revealing example of this dynamic, combining strong political capacity in coalition management and in narrative construction, on the one hand, with more limited ability to implement reforms capable of addressing long-term structural challenges, on the other. Collectively, the articles highlight how symbolic interventions in areas such as sovereignty, security, migration, labour policy, and civil rights often substitute for deeper institutional and socio-economic transformation. While this strategy has contributed to government stability and coalition cohesion, it also generates accumulating costs, including unresolved economic vulnerabilities, institutional tensions, and challenges to Italy’s international credibility. The Italian case is useful as it illustrates broader dynamics affecting contemporary democratic governance across advanced capitalist societies.