Listening to the media, you would think that yesterday’s Italian referendum results were yet another victory of right-wing populism against democracy. The situation, however, is much more complex than this, and the No victory is a victory for democracy and for the defense of social rights worth celebrating.

The constitutional reform proposed by Matteo Renzi’s government was politically illegitimate in its method and antidemocratic in its content. The current parliament was selected with an electoral law that has been judged as unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court. Moreover, Renzi’s government was created after he managed to hijack the Democratic Party (PD), marginalizing its left and the former majority by secretly organizing a “No” vote in the parliament against the presidential candidate — Romano Prodi — put forward by the PD leadership.

Finally, Renzi adopted disgraced former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s style in putting forward the constitutional reform, by not trying to reach a large consensus across the parliamentary spectrum, but rather using institutional tricks to block parliamentary discussion, to the point that the opposition decided not to participate in the vote on the reform, in protest. As for the content, this constitutional reform was the last of a long series of attempts at revising the constitution in direction of stronger executive power and at the expense of democratic representation.