Giorgia Meloni has a long history of defying expectations. She holds the record as Italy’s youngest cabinet member, at 31, and is its first female prime minister, thus overcoming two of Italian politics’ most formidable obstacles, gerontocracy and machismo. After she took office in autumn 2022, she quickly put to rest concerns that her post-fascist background would make her a foreign policy radical. Staunch support for Ukraine and a pragmatic relationship with EU leaders won her international credibility.

Against this backdrop, the defeat she suffered in this week’s referendum – where Italians rejected the government’s proposed constitutional reform of the judiciary by 53.2% to 46.8% – appears all the more significant.

Things were not supposed to go this way. Approval ratings for Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party have remained largely stable since 2022, a remarkable feat in Italian politics. She has also regularly outperformed most fellow European leaders in terms of popular support. And not long before the referendum, polls still had the yes campaign ahead. So what happened?

One reason is that Meloni overestimated – and oversold – the appeal of a reform that had long featured in her coalition’s agenda. Approved along party lines in parliament, the reform proposed fully separating the careers of judges and public prosecutors, and consequently dividing the Consiglio Superiore della Magistratura........

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