Italy’s Populist Victory Is Both Tragedy and Farce

PARIS—Will a certain dream of Europe end with a bang or a whimper, with a calamity or a thousand paper cuts, with a grand dramatic moment or a tawdry local melodrama? That’s the question that has been swirling around in Europe ever since two populist, Euroskeptic parties triumphed in Italy’s national elections in March. The vote a solid majority, plunging the country into weeks of confusing backroom negotiations that have made serious people despair and . But this week, the anti-establishment Five-Star Movement and anti-immigrant League party, which joined together in an unsettling last week, announced they’d picked Giuseppe Conte, an unknown lawyer, law professor and expert in “de-bureaucratization,” to be prime minister. On Wednesday, after weeks of twists and turns, Italian president Sergio Mattarella gave Conte a mandate to form a government. The deal isn’t