For another perspective on this: although I totally agree with what you say, there's also the side of the story where in people love to blame others for failings. When greece plunges into crisis; people blame politions, blame the EU - even though those entitities are entirely and truly democratic. They're not blaming themselves. When northern europe decides to ignore the southern problems even though they're in a union, they blame perhaps their own politicians or the EU for mismanagement, and perhaps their southern neighbors, but certainly not themselves.

But this weird perspective also correlates with a drop not just in voter participation, but perhaps also in the care taken in voting. Seriously, protest votes are a kind of shooting yourself in the foot because the guy next door is so mean - but quite common, at least nowadays.

Almost certainly those who will suffer most from populism in italy will be the voters who voted for them; just as those who voted for e.g. trump are likely to achieve the exact opposite of what they're so angry to... prevent? achieve?

It's not just one country; almost every single modern democracy is afflicted to some extent. We may have misattributed democracies past successes to the technicalities of voting, missing the much larger, less trivial social context in which it works. But certainly whatever the cause - it's much deeper than something like the ECB mishandling the situation in Italy.