Abstract

The article aims at investigating the relationships between political communication and monocratic trends in politics and public decision-making. After having framed the study within the theories about monocratization of democratic regimes, the paper introduces a typology of institutional personalization, which is then employed for a comparative analysis of the official Facebook page of the Presidency of the Council of the Ministers. The analysis compares the use of that page over four months and covers the last sixty days of the second government led by Giuseppe Conte and the first sixty of Mario Draghi’s government. What are the communication styles of the Italian Presidents? What connections can be traced with the paradigm of personalization and monocratization of government functions? Findings suggest that different communication styles (Conte’s emotional and massive communication, and Draghi’s informative and discreet style of communication) are both compatible with a progressive centralization of government functions, and depend on different institutional and political contexts.