Neo-authoritarianism as molecular transformation. The reordering of political space in Italy

This article analyses the neo-authoritarian trajectory of the Italian radical right under Giorgia Meloni, conceptualised as a molecular transformation within the broader authoritarian shift in liberal democracies. While existing scholarship has examined Fratelli d’Italia’s ideology, organisation, and electoral breakthrough, this study focuses on the interlinked domestic reforms that reveal the government’s deeper political project: the constitutional premierato reform and the 2025 Decreto Sicurezza. Taken together, these measures exemplify a strategic reordering of political space that fuses hyper-personalised leadership with the containment of opposition, moving beyond episodic authoritarian drift toward an integrated project of executive dominance and punitive governance. By conceptualising these reforms as molecular transformations, the paper develops a framework for analysing how incremental, yet cumulative interventions crystallise into a wider authoritarian constellation. This approach highlights how authoritarian neoliberalism unfolds not only through spectacular ruptures but through granular institutional and legal adjustments that restructure both state apparatuses and the boundaries of permissible contestation. Situating the Italian case within transnational radical-right networks and comparative trajectories of democratic backsliding, the paper thus argues that Meloni’s government exemplifies a neoliberal-authoritarian configuration illuminating current global patterns of political space reordering.