The Rise of the Brothers of Italy: Organisation, Leadership and Ideology

This book offers a comprehensive account of the Italian party Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy), covering the period from its foundation in December 2012 to the summer of 2025, marking almost three years of the Meloni government. It examines the factors that have contributed to the rise of Brothers of Italy and its leader, Giorgia Meloni, establishing the party as the cornerstone of Italy’s right-wing coalition and of the current government. The authors, Valerio Alfonso Bruno and Mara Morini, place the key dimensions of Meloni’s party at the centre of their analysis, including its ideology, leadership, policy agenda, and electoral base. They also explore the party’s relations with the other members of the right-wing coalition--Salvini’s Lega and Berlusconi’s Forza Italia--as well as with far-right movements in Italy and abroad.

The first part of the book analyses the party’s first decade (2012-2022), tracing its trajectory from the breakaway from Berlusconi’s Popolo della Libertà, amid the sovereign debt crisis and the technocratic government led by Mario Monti, to its victory in the 2022 general election. The second part focuses on the organization, structure, ideology, and leadership of the party, concluding with an in-depth examination of its policies. This book will appeal to students, scholars, and researchers of political science in general, and electoral studies in particular, seeking a deeper understanding of the Brothers of Italy party and contemporary Italian electoral politics.

Valerio Alfonso Bruno is Research Fellow and adjunct Professor at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, where he collaborates with Polidemos, Center for the Study of Democracy and Political Changes, and fellow at the Far-Right Analysis Network (FRAN). Bruno is a specialist on the Italian far-right and has contributed to the ＂Routledge Handbook of Far-Right Extremism in Europe＂, the ＂Handbook on Non-Violent Extremism＂ and co-authored the book ＂Th e Rise of the Radical Right in Italy. A new balance of Power in the Right-Wing camp＂ (Ibidem/Columbia University Press) with J.F. Downes and A. Scopelliti. His analyses have appeared, among others, on Al Jazeera, Financial Times, Economist, France 24 and Sunday Times.

Mara Morini is an Associate Professor in Comparative Politics at the Department of Political and International Sciences (DISPI) at the University of Genova (Italy) where she teaches ＂Parties, Lobbies, and Pressure Groups＂, and ＂Comparative Politics＂. Morini is an expert on populist parties and Russian politics. She is co-author of the book ＂The Presidentialization of Political Parties in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus (Palgrave 2023) and author of a chapter dealing with the rise of anti-establishment parties in the handbook ＂Comparative European Politics: Distinctive Democracies, Common Challenges＂ (Oxford University Press 2021). She is an editor for the Italian Newspaper ＂Domani＂ and a political analyst for many TV broadcasts.