Populism in Europe: Lessons from Umberto Bossi's Northern League 9781526133960

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Populism in Europe

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Populism in Europe Lessons from Umberto Bossi’s Northern League Daniele Albertazzi and Davide Vampa

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Daniele Albertazzi and Davide Vampa 2021 The right of Daniele Albertazzi and Davide Vampa to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7190 9607 5 hardback First published 2021 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Cover design: Abbey Akanbi, Manchester University Press Typeset by New Best-set Typesetters Ltd

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Contents

List of figures page vi List of tables viii Acknowledgements ix List of abbreviations xi 1 Introduction 2 The ideology 3 The electoral arena: North, peripheries, cross-class appeal and shifting alliances 4 The party in office 5 The Northern League as a mass party 6 Umberto Bossi’s leadership 7 Participation without power 8 Conclusion: populism in Europe – lessons from Umberto Bossi’s Northern League

1 17 36 65 90 107 129 147

References 163 Index 175

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Figures

2.1 The changing programmatic profile of the Lega Nord (Authors’ own calculations based on Volkens et al., 2018) 3.1 The distribution of LN’s support across Italian regions (1990–2010) (Italian Ministry of the Interior) 3.2 The “peripheralisation” of the LN’s vote (Authors’ own calculations based on results from Italian Ministry of the Interior) 3.3 A new national party? Dispersion of LN’s electoral support across regions from 1992 to 2018 (Coefficient of Variation) (Authors’ own calculations based on results from Italian Ministry of the Interior) 3.4 Electoral map of the LN in 2009 (Italian Ministry of the Interior, authors’ elaboration using MapChart) 3.5 Electoral map of the LN in 2019 (Italian Ministry of the Interior, authors’ elaboration using MapChart) 4.1 Average age of LN senators, 1992–2013, compared to all senators (Official Statistics of the Italian Senate (www.senato.it)) 4.2 Percentage of women elected in the Senate: comparison between the LN and the whole chamber, 1992–2013 (Official Statistics of the Italian Senate (www.senato.it)) 4.3 Number of LN mayors in Italian provincial capitals (capoluoghi), 1993–2012 (Italian Election Archive (https://elezionistorico.interno.gov.it/)) 4.4 Percentage of LN regional councillors in centralnorthern Italian regions, 1990–2010 (Italian Election Archive (https://elezionistorico.interno.gov.it/)) 6.1 The LN one month before and after Bossi’s resignation, voting intentions (%) (YouTrend

page 22 42

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59 61 62

67

68

81

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Figures vii

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(www.youtrend.it/2012/02/10/tabella-riepilogosondaggi-politici-elettorali-storico-2008-20092010-2011-2012-2013-2014-2015-2016-2017/))110 6.2 Popularity of LN leaders from Bossi to Salvini (Demos (www.demos.it/atlante_politico.php), Percentage of respondents assigning a score of 6 or above (on a 1–10 Likert scale) to the leader) 127

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Tables

3.1 LN’s performance in general, European and regional elections 3.2 LN’s electoral performance in a selection of northern and central regions 3.3 The ten northern provinces where the LN has obtained its best results (%) 3.4 The ten northern provinces where the LN has obtained its worst results (%) 3.5 Comparing the electoral results of the first and last elections of the Bossi era 3.6 Support for the LN (% of respondents) in northern Italy by occupational profile 3.7 From Bossi to Salvini: the LN’s electoral performance 2008–2018, by region 4.1 LN elected representatives in the Italian Parliament (Chamber of Deputies and Senate), 1990–2008 4.2 LN ministers in Berlusconi I, II, II and IV cabinets 5.1 Membership of the LN, 1992–2011 6.1 The ten longest-serving leaders of the main Italian parties, 1945–2012 6.2 Bossi and other populist radical right leaders in Europe

page 40 41 44 45 46 49 58 67 69 99 110 112

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Acknowledgements

This book has been a long time in the making. Daniele, who developed its original concept and approach sometime around 2014, was already working on the Lega Nord’s invention of the nation of “Padania” for his PhD in 1998. He then published his first article on the topic back in 2001. Davide, who provided new impetus to the project from 2018 onwards, had also already written extensively on this party (and, more generally, Italian regionalism) by the time he agreed to come on board. In the end, after many years of work and debates about it, completing this book has forced us to come to some sort of conclusion about what kind of party the Lega Nord has been under the leadership of its founder and long-time “party secretary”, Umberto Bossi. This task could only be accomplished after 2012, when Bossi was forced to relinquish the leadership; however, became more urgent from 2014 onwards, as it became clear to what extent Matteo Salvini was reinventing the party. As for the people who helped us complete this project, the first mention must go to the several party representatives and members of the Lega Nord who sat through interviews that fed into our analysis, starting in 2004 and at different moments in time after that. Unlike being interviewed by the press, talking to academics brings no obvious advantages to party representatives and activists, hence we are very grateful to all respondents for agreeing to take part. This is our second book together, run as a collaborative project of the University of Birmingham and Aston University. Over the years, the Politics Departments at the two institutions have joined forces to organise events on populism and Italian politics, where we could engage in enriching discussions with colleagues and visiting scholars. Our involvement in the Italian Politics Specialist Group of the Political Studies Association has also given us the opportunity to be part of an international network of experts on Italian politics and society. The research agendas of our colleagues have inspired us and helped us to situate the case of Bossi’s party within the broader Italian and European political contexts, and for this we are grateful.

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x

Acknowledgements

We also want to thank Tony Mason, former commissioning editor of Manchester University Press, and his successor, Rob Byron, for their support throughout the writing and editing process. Moreover, we are grateful to the anonymous reviewer who provided extensive feedback and helped us strengthen the content and presentation of our findings. As we have mentioned above, researching and then writing this book has taken a very long time. We would like to thank our friends and families – yet again! – for supporting us throughout. Daniele would like to dedicate this book to his mother (Mara), partner (Liz) and children (Elena and Francesca), while Davide would like to dedicate it to his parents (Raffaele and Rosaria) and his husband (Arne).

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Abbreviations

AN DC FI LAL LL LN LSP LV M5S MP MSI PCI PD PdL PLI PRI PSI SM SMEs SVP UDC UV VB

Alleanza Nazionale (National Alliance) Democrazia Cristiana (Christian Democracy) Forza Italia Lega Autonomista Lombarda (Autonomist Lombard League) Lega Lombarda (Lombard League) Lega Nord (Northern League) Lega per Salvini Premier (League for Salvini Premier) Liga Veneta (Venetian League) Movimento 5 Stelle (Five Star Movement) Member of Parliament Movimento Sociale Italiano (Italian Social Movement) Partito Comunista Italiano (Italian Communist Party) Partito Democratico (Democratic Party) Il Popolo della Libertà (People of Freedom) Partito Liberale Italiano (Italian Liberal Party) Partito Repubblicano Italiano (Italian Republican Party) Partito Socialista Italiano (Italian Socialist Party) social media small and medium-sized enterprises Schweizerische Volkspartei’s (Swiss People’s Party) Unione di Centro (Union of the Centre) Union Valdôtaine (Valdostan Union) Vlaams Blok (Flemish Block)

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Introduction

Lombardy is a nation, Italy is only a state. (Bossi in La Repubblica, 1985) [Italy] treats the Padanian people as internal colonies whose economies can be exploited and ethnicities subjugated. (Bossi in Lega Nord, 1997)

Ours is the first book written for an international readership that provides a full assessment of the Lega Nord’s (LN – Northern League) fundamental features since its founding by Umberto Bossi in 1991 and up to 2012, when he had to relinquish its leadership. One of the oldest right-wing populist parties in western Europe, and one that has accumulated considerable experience in government at both national and subnational levels, the LN has much to teach us (and other parties) about how populists can achieve rootedness and success. It is an example of how populists are not simply “challengers”, as is often wrongly assumed by the literature, but may become “established” while continuing to rely on an “anti-elite” discourse, as the LN did (Albertazzi and Vampa, 2021). Our volume will interrogate the reasons behind the party’s resilience, the importance of grassroots organisation and the involvement of party members in its activities. We will show that the LN has bucked the trend of many other European parties whose key policies and messages have become indistinguishable from those of their competitors, and whose willingness to fully engage people, explain the world to them and get them involved in politics appears to have greatly diminished in the last few decades. The fact that today’s League is the oldest party represented in the Italian Parliament and has achieved unprecedented electoral success under the new leadership of Matteo Salvini cannot be fully understood and explained without considering Umberto Bossi’s legacy. Indeed, many of the party’s recent developments – from its more marked Eurosceptic profile to its leader-centric campaigns – are rooted in episodes, decisions and ideological shifts that took place, or started, during the Bossi era. Notwithstanding his transformative role within the party, Salvini is therefore Bossi’s heir in political terms: hence this book also provides important theoretical and

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empirical tools for interpreting some of the key strategic choices made by the new party leader.1 The LN was created by Bossi in 1991 via the merger of six regionalist Leagues (Biorcio, 1997: 39–53), of which the most successful in electoral terms was also Bossi’s own creation a few years earlier: the Lega Lombarda (LL – Lombard League). This party was named after an alliance of Lombard communes that had fought the emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, in the twelfth century. Unlike other populist parties (both left and right wing) that have acquired a central role within their national political systems only after the Great Recession of 2007–8, the LN provides an excellent case study of a party that was already prominent as early as the 1990s (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2015), when it was instrumental in bringing about the demise of the main political parties that had governed Italy since the Second World War. In analysing “Bossi’s League”, the book will advance an argument about the party’s success grounded on our understanding of it as a regionalist populist party that managed to politicise the economic and social gap between the North and South of the country for the first time, and embraced the mass party as its organisational model. These claims will be briefly substantiated below, to then be explored and discussed at length, particularly in Chapters 2, 5 and 7.

A regionalist populist party embracing the mass party organisational model In this book we argue that the most descriptively useful term for defining the LN’s ideology is that of “regionalist populist”, as deployed by Roberto Biorcio (1991), Duncan McDonnell (2006) and Daniele Albertazzi and Duncan McDonnell (2015). Organised exclusively on a regional basis and aiming to cater for a regional electorate, regionalist parties aspire to government of, by and for a region (Mazzoleni and Müller, 2016: 5–6) which, they invariably say, enjoys a distinctive sense of collective identity grounded in some variable combination of ethnic, linguistic, economic, geographic, religious and historic traits (Albertazzi et al., 2018). Based on this framework, Bossi’s LN fully satisfied all the criteria of a regionalist party. It advocated a territorial cause (i.e. the alleged need to defend and promote what it saw as “its” regions, broadly defined as “the North” and/or “Padania”), consistently presented northern Italy as ontologically different and distinctive from the rest of the country (Keating, 2009: viii; Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2005) and argued that the central state had damaged the interests and identities of the people living in these areas. Therefore, under Bossi the party always sought some form of autonomy for

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Introduction 3 the North and filed candidates only in northern regions (with a couple of exceptions). Regionalist parties often present themselves as “anti-system” (Hepburn, 2009), and the LN under Bossi was, again, no exception. This links to the second fundamental defining characteristic of the party: its populism. Hence, in classic populist fashion (Mudde, 2004; Taggart, 2000), the LN has always justified its juxtaposition of northern Italians with “Rome” by positing the former as a homogeneous, hard-working community of people attached to their distinctive traditions and the latter as the place where the political and cultural elites running the country (to the benefit of themselves and “the South”) can be found. As for the party model adopted by Bossi, the evidence shows that this was that of the traditional “mass party”. Based on the available literature, we regard the three features listed below as those that define this organisational model: a. the drive to recruit a large activist membership as a way to reach out to the public through canvassing, campaigning etc.; b. rootedness on the ground and the provision of a variety of activities to members (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2015); c. most importantly, the preservation of “collective identities through ideology” (Panebianco, 1988: 268) by creating closed political communities of activists, by promoting social integration among them and by shaping their interpretations of political developments (Albertazzi, 2016). Mass parties are characterised by vertical organisational ties, a clearly defined ideology and reliance on members for their success (Panebianco, 1988: 264). Moreover, they are rooted at the local level as a way to preserve “collective identities through ideology” (Panebianco, 1988: 268). Note that, according to this understanding of the fundamental features of the mass party, “internal democracy” is not an essential ingredient of this organisational model. The League’s adoption of the mass-party model suggests that Bossi sought to actively counteract the public disengagement with politics that was exacerbated in the country by the crisis of the state at the beginning of the 1990s (see next section). Importantly, in this volume we see the LN’s ideological and organisational aspects as inextricably linked and consider the latter a natural consequence of the former. As Susan Scarrow (2014) has argued, organisational models are not “neutral”: in other words, ideologies tend to be compatible with certain organisational models, and not with others. As a self-appointed “party of the people” that wanted to take the place of pre-existing mass parties, such as the Democrazia Cristiana (DC – Christian Democracy) and the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI – Italian Communist

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Party), the League aimed to build a strong presence on the ground, including in small villages and towns, via an ever-growing network of branches. This eventually allowed Bossi to argue that his was a “people’s party” and a “territory-rooted party”, as far removed from “the elites” as it could possibly be (Bossi and Vimercati, 1992). Unable to rely on the huge financial and public relations resources that other leaders had at their disposal during those years (see later), Bossi embraced an “identitarian” and “communitarian” approach and built an organisation that brought with it several practical advantages for a brand new party such as the LN. Ultimately, the mass-party organisational model: a. was able to draw financial resources from its members, which was particularly important just after the party was founded; b. made the mobilisation of an “army” of street canvassers and campaigners possible, hence counteracting the critical coverage which the League was getting in the national media (particularly by the public service broadcaster, Radiotelevisione italiana); c. most importantly, helped to create a new subculture – which was quickly dubbed “leghismo” by the press (Diamanti, 1993: 16) – through which to shape identities and the beliefs of members and sympathisers. In this sense, the LN positioned itself as a very different party, in organisational terms and the degree of members’ participation, from its competitor (and ally) on the right, that is, the “personal party” (Calise, 2000) launched by Silvio Berlusconi in 1994: Forza Italia (FI). This alleged alterity of the LN was also a source of great pride for its activists (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2015: ch. 2). Generally, despite populism being an essential ingredient of both Bossi’s and Berlusconi’s ideologies, the two had very different needs as far as their party organisations were concerned. Berlusconi’s party had to be “personal” (and remained as such in the decades to come), due to his proprietorial conception not only of his own creature, but of politics more generally. A vehicle that would allow Berlusconi to fulfil his political ambitions, FI did not need to rely on its members and their commitment to the cause for its success. It was the direct relationship between the leader and the voter – played out through the media that Berlusconi himself controlled (Albertazzi and Rothenberg, 2009) – that really mattered. Able to communicate through the leader’s own means – and indeed even financed to a large extent by him, particularly at the beginning – FI did not embark on investing heavily in moulding and shaping the views of a committed group of dedicated followers who could then be trusted to bring its message into the world. In recent decades, much academic debate has focused on the “crisis of democracy” affecting post-industrial societies – specifically its pillars of parties and popular participation (Dalton and Wattenberg, 2000; Pharr and

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Introduction 5 Putnam, 2000), with particular attention being devoted to the parties’ declining membership (Mair, 1994; van Biezen, Mair and Poguntke 2012; Whiteley, 2011). In their seminal article “Going, Going, … Gone? The Decline of Party Membership in Contemporary Europe”, Ingrid van Biezen, Peter Mair and Thomas Poguntke (2012: 42) argued that party membership data provided evidence of no less than “the sheer extent of party transformation in Europe since the 1980s”. One reason for the drop in the number of party members that has been noted in many countries since the 1980s has been identified in the increasing dominance of “the party in public office” over “the party on the ground” (Katz and Mair, 1994). As parties have turned into “cartels” that share out resources provided by the state (Katz and Mair, 1995; 2009), they are thought to lack the incentive to build or maintain a large membership, since they no longer believe that they need the financial and organisational support that the latter can provide (Mair, 2013; Scarrow, 2000; Whiteley, 2011). The literature on party organisation has therefore been unanimous in pronouncing the obsolescence of the mass-party model as famously described by Maurice Duverger (1964), pointing to similar political, sociological and technological changes as contributing to its seemingly inevitable downfall (particularly the erosion of traditional social milieux and the shift from local canvassing to mass-media campaigning for the dissemination of political messages) (Katz and Mair, 1995; 2009; Kirchheimer, 1966; Panebianco, 1988). One of the main arguments developed throughout this book will be that while the mass party has certainly become less of “an ideal” (Scarrow 2014) to which parties necessarily aspire, its adoption by the LN has been a fundamental reason for its success during Bossi’s time, providing evidence of the model’s resilience. In Chapters 5 and 7 we will therefore show how well Bossi was able to reap the benefits of this organisational model and exploit them to their full extent. By asking representatives to constantly keep in touch with their grassroots, via the organisation of meetings and events targeted at members, and by fostering the creation of closed communities of members via the party’s presence and rootedness on the ground, the LN was able to secure a strong commitment to the party’s objectives by its activists. In turn, activists fully subscribed to the ideology and system of values put forward by their party, were happy to rely on Bossi for explanations of political and social developments and enjoyed the feelings of empowerment and sense of belonging which activism provided to them (Albertazzi, 2016). In other words, the adoption of the mass-party model by “Bossi’s Lega” worked, helping the party effectively to shape group identities and create strong emotional bonds between the party and its members. As already mentioned, the fact that Bossi was a strong believer in the virtues of the membership-based mass-party model (Bossi and Vimercati, 1992: 41, 73–74) does not mean that the LN had solid democratic procedures,

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and that members would be given many opportunities to influence its strategy, message and choice of representatives (see Chapter 5). On the contrary, and mainly due to the aura of invincibility surrounding the leader until he eventually fell from grace, Bossi was able to keep an iron grip on his party and avoid the bickering and infighting that beset populist radical parties, such as the Austrian Freedom party. As Duncan McDonnell (2016: 728) explains, “Bossi was very clearly considered by interviewees [i.e. party members] to possess unique and extraordinary powers and there was unconditional acceptance of his personal authority”. This allowed Bossi to go as far as to override the internal party rules when convenient via “the informal use of central powers” (McDonnell and Vampa, 2016: 114), hence keeping a tight grip on the party and being able to deal very swiftly with critics and opponents (normally by throwing them out). In the end, Bossi’s LN remained a disciplined, united campaigning and governing machine, highly centralised and “dominated by elites from a single region, Lombardy” (McDonnell and Vampa, 2016: 126). To sum up, in this book we study and discuss three fundamental features of “Bossi’s League” that we regard as key ingredients of its resilience and success: a. its ideological coherence and consistency, at least as far as its key regionalist themes of greater northern autonomy, federalism and decentralisation were concerned. These were framed in populist/anti-establishment terms, which, over time, became more clearly right-wing. Indeed, in the late 1990s and 2000s the party placed increasing emphasis on anti-immigration and law-and-order policy stances (Chapter 2). These, however, did not replace the original territorial mission of the party, but were subsumed to it. Thus, thanks to its ideological “core”, the LN was able to maintain continuous electoral relevance (Chapter 3) and have an influence on the political agenda by gaining significant representation in municipalities, regions, the national Parliament and government (Chapter 4); b. Bossi’s skills as leader, particularly the loyalty that his charisma – widely acknowledged within the party – was able to inspire among party ranks, as well as his very firm grip on the organisation he had created. While the LN was certainly dominated by its leader, Bossi’s dominant position was something reflected not in specific rules but, rather, in practices, communications and ways of doing things (Chapter 6); c. the features of the party’s and the membership’s organisation, including their rootedness at the local level, the close relationship that party elites were able to establish with members, and the variety of ways in which members were socialised by the party and felt they belonged to a community (Chapters 5 and 7). To introduce the reader to the party under scrutiny, in the next section we briefly summarise how the LN developed and grew by quickly moving from

Introduction 7 opposition to government, where it remained for several years in coalition with other right-wing parties. This section will be followed by a review of the book’s content, following which the next chapter considers the party’s ideology in some detail.

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The party’s history Origins According to the League’s founder, Umberto Bossi, the party originated from a casual encounter between him and Bruno Salvadori, then leader of the small regionalist movement of the Valle D’Aosta region, “Union Valdôtaine” (Bossi and Vimercati, 1992: 31–35). Apparently moved by Salvadori’s ideas, Bossi agreed to found a similar regionalist movement in the area where he lived, the Lombard city of Varese. Hence the Lega Autonomista Lombarda (Autonomist Lombard League – LAL), later Lega Lombarda (Lombard League – LL), was born, although it was officially founded only in 1984, managing to send its first two representatives to the Italian Parliament (including Bossi himself) in 1987. However, the LL remained a very small party until the regional election of 1990, when it gained an impressive 18.94% of the vote within Lombardy. Following a brief period of collaboration between the LL and similar regionalist organisations, notably the Liga Veneta (Venetian League – LV), in 1991 Bossi managed to officially bring them together as a party, to be known as Lega Nord. After all, these parties were very compatible in ideological terms, and all relied on a repertoire of themes and key messages that had been spreading among like-minded northern separatist movements since the 1950s (Gómez-Reino Cachafeiro, 2002). As the election of 1990 had made the LL by far the strongest “League” among those operating in northern Italy, it was not difficult for Bossi to claim the leadership of the new party, which – their federalist beliefs notwithstanding – turned out to be very centralised (McDonnell and Vampa 2016). As for its strategic message, the League was successful in emphasising two key issues right from the start: what was increasingly being dubbed by the press as the “northern question” (Diamanti, 1996), that is, the claim that northern Italians had grown impatient with the need to “subsidise” the less-developed South, as the matter was framed by the League itself; and the growing sense of discontent, and even hostility, expressed by the electorate towards political elites and institutions (Bulli and Tronconi, 2011: 51). The swift collapse of the major governing parties in the country and the emergence of new actors, including the LN, can be explained by pointing

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to a combination of structural economic and political factors which were taken advantage of by Bossi’s astute agency in novel ways. The following factors have been recognised in the literature as having particular weight: a. the state deficit burgeoning during the 1980s, which translated into increased fiscal pressure for ordinary citizens and business people throughout the decade. This created the preconditions for anti-tax protest to thrive, especially in those northern regions whose model of economic development rested on a myriad of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that felt they were being disproportionally targeted by the tax man (Cento Bull and Gilbert, 2001); b. explosive revelations being made about deepening practices of corruption among governing parties (the “Tangentopoli/Bribe City” scandal), exposing the widespread practice of sharing out public money between political and business groups (Sapelli, 1997: 136 and 137). As high-profile investigations (dubbed “Mani Pulite/Clean Hands” investigations by the press) uncovered the extent and spread of malpractices for illegally funding political parties, very high-profile political leaders within the governing DC and the Partito Socialista Italiano (PSI – Italian Socialist Party), who had held power in the country for years, were implicated.2 This contributed to the swift collapse of the major political parties at the beginning of the 1990s and to a rapidly growing chasm between public opinion and the political class, which Bossi himself was ready to exploit; c. the collapse of the Berlin Wall, followed by the end of the Soviet Union, at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s. As these events were unfolding, the PCI acknowledged the end of an era by changing its name and turning, although not unambiguously, to social democracy (Bellucci et al., 2000; Vampa, 2009). A traumatic experience for the party’s activists, the move also deeply affected a considerable number of moderate and centre-right voters, who felt they could grab the opportunity to withdraw their support for the corrupted centrist parties of old and look for new political offerings, safe in the knowledge that a Communist “take-over” of the state was no longer on the cards, if it had ever been. This provided a great opportunity to the LN – and, from 1994, also to Berlusconi’s new FI party – to relentlessly target these voters by enriching their ideological offering with the offer of tax cuts and by advocating the “small state” and a fight against bureaucracy. If the factors just mentioned clearly provided the ideal environment for a whole system of power to collapse and new populist outsider parties to emerge, what remains to be explained is why it was specifically the LN that ended up benefiting. It is our claim in this book (see Chapters 2 and 6) that Bossi’s skills as a political entrepreneur able to construct a “northern question” and push it to the top of the agenda by mixing regionalist and populist claims about the damage done by the elites to “the North”, were key in

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Introduction 9 this respect (Cento Bull, 2017). Bossi went as far as redefining the concept of territory (Diamanti, 1993; 1996) in late 1980s and early 1990s Italy by convincingly reshaping the economic, political, historical and cultural reference points of the North into a new community of “interests” and “values” that had never existed before (the northern nation of “Padania”). This new community was juxtaposed to the Italian state (Roma Ladrona/Thieving Rome) and the South, accused of depriving northerners of their riches – and very identity. Via efficient communication and by relying on a capillary presence on the ground, particularly in sub-alpine areas of diffused industrialisation, Bossi was behind the introduction of a new subculture characterised by a whole new set of values (leghismo). This subculture challenged the two main subcultures that had dominated Italy since the Second World War: the Catholic one in the South and in the “white-belt” of north-eastern Italy, where the influence of the DC had been dominant (albeit for different reasons); and the Communist and Socialist one in the “red-belt” of Central Italy (see Chapter 3). Bossi’s message, put forward by adopting a coarse and vulgar language full of dialect expressions to signal closeness to ordinary people, was verbally violent, bordered on racism against Southern Italians (and, later, migrants from abroad) and hence was often able to capture the headlines and set the political agenda. In an age of rising anger towards the political class, the LN managed to mobilise voters who increasingly saw themselves as “producers” unfairly exploited by various “undeserving” groups within society: the “Roman bureaucracy”, public sector employees and, more generally, those from Southern Italy, a large number of whom worked for the state. Only a federalist reform of the state, it was argued, would empower the “producers”, based in the myriads of communes of diffused industrialisation of the “Deep North”, to take charge of their own destiny again.

A prominent political actor at national level The elections of 1992 brought the LN to the attention of the whole country, as it gained 8.7% of the votes nationally (thanks to its 17.3% in the North). As a huge political space had opened up on the right and, due to the crisis of the DC, another right-wing party was also formed in this period, just in time to fight the 1994 elections: FI. This emerged from that election as the largest party, earning a very respectable 21% of the vote. The March 1994 election ushered in the government debut of both FI and the LN as part of a new right-wing coalition led by Berlusconi. This coalition included a third main party which had been excluded from power until then (despite having existed for decades): the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI – Italian Social Movement), soon to become Alleanza Nazionale (AN

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– National Alliance). However, tensions immediately surfaced between FI and the LN on policies such as pension reform. More importantly, the European Parliament elections of June 1994 aggravated matters between the two, as it emerged that FI was eroding the LN’s support in the North. After a brief period during which Bossi attacked the acts of his own government, the LN eventually withdrew its support for Prime Minister Berlusconi, bringing the right-wing alliance to a premature end and opening the way for a new government led by a technocratic prime minister to take over. As it happened, however, the end of the right-wing alliance turned out to be only temporary. The LN stood alone at the 1996 general election and won 10.1% of the national vote. Yet, despite achieving the party’s best result until then, Bossi soon realised that this success meant little in practical terms. Indeed, having advocated independence for the North (Albertazzi, 2006) by pushing through a radical secessionist stance, the League ended up completely marginalised by the other parties and had no hope of accessing power again as part of a coalition. Infuriatingly, in this period it was also excluded from ruling at the subnational level, even in those northern regions where it was the largest party, as it could not achieve a majority on its own. As both Bossi and Berlusconi were forced to face up to the fact that they needed each other to defeat their left-wing opponents, they had no choice but to renew their original alliance. Having given up its secessionist stance, therefore, Bossi’s party rejoined the Berlusconi-led alliance in return for the guarantee that, should the coalition win the 2001 general election, it would introduce greater regional autonomy in the form of what the LN termed “devolution” (Albertazzi et al., 2011: 475–477). The reform allowed Bossi to justify his renewed alliance with Berlusconi to his own supporters, but was eventually sunk by voters in a referendum.3 Although achieving only 3.9% of the vote at the 2001 election, the LN was again part of the Berlusconi-led winning coalition and immediately placed itself at the heart of a new government. Moreover, by staying close to Prime Minister Berlusconi and reserving its vitriol for other government allies, such as the AN and the Unione di Centro (UDC – Union of the Centre), the LN found a way to preserve its regionalist populist “outsider” identity while, crucially, still being able to influence government decision making. This lasted throughout the years of the second Berlusconi executive (2001–5) (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2005: 959–960) as well as the third (2005–6). After Bossi suffered a stroke which side-lined him for over a year in 2004–5, the LN achieved another modest result at the 2006 general election, gaining 4.6% of the vote. After this election the party moved into opposition to the governing centre-left coalition until an early election was held in

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Introduction 11 2008 that brought it (and the centre-right as a whole) into power for a fourth time. In the meantime, the right-wing alliance had also become more streamlined, as FI and AN had merged into the new party Il Popolo della Libertà (PdL – People of Freedom), which Berlusconi had created in a sudden and surprise move in November 2007. The right-wing bloc was therefore reduced to just two main parties (PdL and LN); moreover, Bossi’s support for the government was again essential to its survival, which gave his party much weight. The 2008 election had also turned out to be successful for the LN in electoral terms, with the party gaining 8.3% of the vote. It continued to perform well at different levels in the years to come, too, by gaining 10.2% in the 2009 elections for the European Parliament and securing the presidencies of the northern regions of Piedmont and Veneto in 2010. Importantly, in this period the party again demonstrated itself to be well versed in achieving results in government without being seen to have become fully integrated in the very same system that it had always vociferously attacked. Hence it avoided softening its rhetoric on migration and the European Union (EU) (issues that had acquired increasing relevance in the party agenda), while securing the support of the governing majority for some high-profile laws that it wanted (for instance, on fiscal federalism and law and order) (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2015: ch. 3) The party’s time in office came to an abrupt end due to the fall of the fourth Berlusconi government in November 2011 under the pressure of a huge international financial crisis. While Berlusconi himself initially decided to support the technocratic government that replaced his own, the LN moved into opposition, putting an end to the right-wing alliance that it had helped to recreate for a second time eleven years earlier. Not long after these events, in April 2012, allegations of serious financial irregularities levelled against Bossi, some of his associates and members of his family, including accusations that he had misappropriated party funds for personal use, led to calls from within the party that he should stand down. This was the first time in the party’s history that such calls had grown into a chorus against the party’s founder and, until then, only leader. Having been forced to resign to become “Life President” of the party (a honorary role that carried no weight), Bossi was therefore unable to lead the League into the 2013 elections, in which a weakened and directionless party attracted a mere 4.1% of the vote. Since that, much of note happened to the League: from Bossi’s failed attempt to stage a come-back as leader (only to be decisively defeated by Matteo Salvini in a primary election), to its gaining an impressive 17.4% at the 2018 elections, followed by another short stint in government. However, since 2013 the League has been solidly “Salvini’s League”, a very different party that has dropped regionalism altogether in order to focus on a nativist,

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anti-immigration and law-and-order platform (Albertazzi et al., 2018). Bossi’s marginalisation within this “new League” has been apparent, and was made painfully visible in September 2017. Then, for the first time, Bossi was not allowed to set foot on stage during the important annual gathering at Pontida (which he himself had instituted many years earlier as the key identity-building event for the party), for fear that he would use the opportunity to attack the new leader.4 As it is focused on discussing “Bossi’s League”, our book will therefore cover the 1991–2012 period only. In the next section we describe how we go about doing this, by reviewing the various chapters.

The book This book provides a comprehensive assessment of the long political cycle which saw Bossi at the helm of the Northern League. We have adopted a framework which covers various dimensions, starting from ideology and programmatic stances and then moving on to the electoral performance of the party and its institutional representation at different territorial levels. The intra-party dimensions are not neglected, and we also consider how organisation, leadership and membership developed and interacted as the party became institutionalised. More specifically, Chapter 2 focuses on the programmatic profile of the LN and is based on a detailed study of key party documents, including its manifestos. In exploring the role and importance of the “northern question” in the party’s ideology, we argue that it is impossible to understand the LN from its foundation to the present day without highlighting its territorial politics. This is because, whatever policy or strategy U-turns the party has made, the raison d’être of the LN has always been the attainment of some form of northern autonomy. The populist framework of interpretation constructed by the LN will also be discussed in detail. The party has posited the existence of a virtuous and homogeneous “us” – honest, hard-working and simple-living Northern Italians, attached to their local traditions – and represented them as being under siege from above by the financial and political elites, and from below by a series of “others” (in particular, Southern Italians and immigrants). Understanding this fusion of regionalism and populism that defined Bossi’s thinking is crucial before we move on to consider what the party did and how it was organised. Chapter 3 considers electoral results and the geography of the party, with particular focus on the regional and provincial distribution of the vote. The chapter also looks at the “peripheralisation” of the LN’s support, highlighting the fact that the party thrived in the rich provinces of the North, while

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Introduction 13 increasingly struggling to attract votes in large cities. This is followed by an analysis of the social composition of the LN vote, which is characterised by a cross-class appeal. Finally, the chapter provides an overview of the interactions between the party and other political actors. In particular, it focuses on its shifting relations with the other centre-right parties while in government or opposition. Moving from the electoral to the policy-making arena, Chapter 4 looks at the party in public office. Here we analyse data on the representation of the party in the national legislature and executive. We then assess its impact on public policy, paying particular attention to those areas that were very close to its key themes: decentralisation/federalism, law and order, immigration and Europe. Given the territorial profile of the LN, this chapter also includes a discussion of the role of the party in regional and local institutions. An analysis of the party’s internal structure is developed in Chapter 5. Here it is argued that under Bossi the LN’s organisation was that of the “mass” party. It very actively cultivated a strong territorial presence and close contact with grassroots activists and local citizens – and took great pride in this. Moreover, full membership of the party was something which had to be earned and was prized by those who eventually gained it. In short, we will show that the LN maintained high levels of mobilisation, was able to “gain” much from its members and created communities of like-minded members that the people within it very much valued. A strong organisation was also matched by a strong leader at its head. Chapter 6 shows that Bossi was able to keep a very firm grip on his party for many years, and this was key to reducing infighting (especially between its Lombard and Venetian branches) and developing an effective electoral machine. In sum, Bossi combined internal and external leadership skills, consolidating support within the party and, at the same time, appealing to sectors of the electorate that remained faithful to him until the end. While Bossi invested a lot in the consolidation of his leadership, he also very much valued the participation of party members in the activities of his party, as mentioned. Thus, in Chapter 7 we argue that the party offered “participation without power” to its members, and discuss the importance of activism in shaping party members’ perceptions of their role within the organisation and their local communities. We also look in some detail at what party members gained from their activism and what the party, in turn, gained from them. The analysis will allow us to better understand: (a) the survival of the “traditional” mass party model; and (b) whether, and how, parties can shape views and identities (and what they gain from doing so). Chapter 8 brings our analysis to a close and summarises the findings of each chapter. In particular, the aim of our concluding chapter is to draw some general lessons that can be applied to the study of other populist

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parties in Europe and beyond. As also suggested by recent literature (see, for instance, Heinisch and Mazzoleni, 2016), without complementing an analysis of the ideological and electoral evolution of populist parties with an understanding of their organisational dynamics, we fail to understand how they adapt over time and thus endure. We argue that this is why our “holistic” approach to the study of the Northern League can be seen as an important contribution to the literature. Throughout the book we also try to link patterns and trends existing within Bossi’s Northern League to the more recent developments within Salvini’s League. We include a “postscript” at the end of each of Chapters 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 which provides an overview of the ideological, electoral and organisational evolution of the party under the new leader. The aim of these sections is to show that, while clearly transformative, Salvini’s agency has been deeply influenced by Bossi’s legacy. More generally, detecting elements of continuity and rupture in the recent history of a party is a crucial, yet often overlooked, analytical step when researching how populists adjust to changing external circumstances and shifts in political priorities. Our chapters rely on a wide range of data, which we have collected and systematically assessed over more than two decades. We use manifesto and original party documents to explore the programmatic profile of the LN. The electoral evolution of the party is analysed by referring to national and subnational data available in the archive of the Italian Ministry of the Interior (https://elezionistorico.interno.gov.it/). These are combined with information provided by other institutional databases to develop an overview of how the party presence in public institutions has changed over time (see Chapter 4 for more details on these sources). The study of the LN’s impact on policy-making processes is based on evidence from legislation. The discussion of organisation, leadership and membership makes extensive use of interviews which have involved respondents who remain anonymous: grassroots activists, leaders and national and subnational representatives at all levels within the party. We draw on interviews conducted at different moments in the party’s history and focusing on topics such as: the party’s ideological stance; its policy proposals; party organisation; the role of the leader; the party’s actions in government; and its relationship with other parties. Five interviews with high-profile national representatives were conducted by Daniele Albertazzi in 2005 in Lombardy and in Rome. At the time, the party was serving as a member of the second Berlusconi government (2001–5). Moreover, the book benefits from two interviews with national representatives and thirteen with subnational representatives conducted by Duncan McDonnell in 2009 and 2010 in various locations across northern Italy (and specifically in the regions of Piedmont, Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia). We also draw on one-to-one interviews with

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Introduction 15 eight ordinary party members, and three group interviews with a total of eleven ordinary party members that took place in the same period in Piedmont and the Veneto region, also conducted by Duncan McDonnell. During these years Bossi was keeping a very tight grip on his party and was increasingly surrounding himself with a small clique of close confidants (see Chapter 6). Finally, four interviews with the party’s regional leaders of key northern regions were conducted in 2016 by Daniele Albertazzi. While Salvini was the leader then, the interviews covered what had changed in the party since Bossi’s days – hence they have direct relevance to the present project. Precious information and details on key political moments have also been obtained from the analysis of over twenty years of newspaper publications, especially La Repubblica, Corriere della Sera and the party newspaper, La Padania. In sum, throughout the book a wealth of empirical data is examined and linked to the rich existing literature on the Northern League and populism in western Europe.

Conclusion In this Introduction we have clarified the aim of our book, which is to provide an assessment of the reasons behind the League’s resilience and success under Umberto Bossi, in order to tease out what the party can teach scholars working on populism and party organisation. As we will see in more detail in subsequent chapters, Bossi’s “winning formula” relied on a combination of ideological and organisational factors with effective agency. The LN leader was able to control his party and avoid the splits that other populist parties had to suffer during those years, while also managing to put forward a novel, coherent and consistent message. We now move on to the next chapter, which will focus on the fundamental features of the League’s ideology under Bossi, as a “regionalist populist” party.

Notes 1 In legal terms, the Lega per Salvini Premier (LSP – League for Salvini Premier), which has replaced the LN since 2019, is in fact a brand new party. However, for reasons that are explained in the postscript to Chapter 5, including the fact that the LSP has inherited the LN’s structures, personnel and activists, we consider it as the continuation of Bossi’s party. 2 The chief means by which parties were found to have funded their activities for many years was through kickbacks paid by companies who had been granted public procurement contracts.

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3 The referendum was held in 2006. Voters rejected proposed amendments to the Constitution that, among other things, would have increased the power of the regions on matters such as education, healthcare and law and order. 4 The annual event at Pontida has been attended every year by party members and sympathisers from all over northern Italy, and features a variety of political and cultural activities. It was from Pontida’s stage that Bossi made key announcements about the future direction of the party that often got much coverage in the media, allowing him to shape the country’s political agenda.

2

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The ideology

Introduction Under Umberto Bossi’s leadership the LN occupied a significant position in the Italian political system for more than two decades. Despite remaining a “niche” party at the state-wide level, it became mainstream and even dominant in important areas of the country, managed to overcome periods of electoral crisis and successfully adapted to changing political circumstances. By 2012, when Bossi was forced to step down from his role as Segretario Federale (Federal Secretary, i.e. party leader), the League had become the oldest party represented in Parliament. Having survived the collapse of the First Republic, to which it had actually contributed, the party was then able to remain politically relevant in a system that since 1994 had been dominated by the struggle between Silvio Berlusconi and his opponents. Much of the party’s success and resilience was undoubtedly due to Bossi himself and his political shrewdness. However, it was not only the personality of the leader that helped the League to thrive and, in the most difficult moments, survive, but also its effective and distinctive political message. The LN contributed to the mainstreaming of calls for a federal reform of the state, which had played a rather marginal role in the Italian political debate until the end of the 1980s. After the LN’s electoral breakthrough in the early 1990s, no major party aspiring to govern the country could any longer ignore the so-called “northern question”. The regionalist identity of the party, which was never questioned and remained central throughout Bossi’s era, was effectively embedded within a populist discourse. This allowed the LN to rely heavily on an “us versus them” dialectic, whereby more enemies could be included in the “them” category according to events and political developments. Indeed, whereas in the 1990s the LN focused on the struggle between allegedly exploited Northerners and corrupted Southerners, during the 2000s the importance of the threat allegedly posed by foreigners and the EU to “the North” clearly increased. In other words, the populism of the LN remained “chameleonic”

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(Taggart, 2000), while its right-wing attributes became more evident over time. Yet, as we argue in this chapter, this fact also created ambiguities and internal tensions within its ideology. If foreigners and supranational actors became the new “them”, eventually replacing Southerners as the main enemy, who were the “us” now? More specifically, could this category now potentially include all Italians? These questions are far from trivial as, after the removal of Bossi as leader, Matteo Salvini decided precisely to shed the regionalist identity of the party and reshape it as a nation-wide (and nationalist) organisation (see postscript). In this chapter we first focus on the regionalist character of the League, arguing that this remained the most distinguishing feature of the party’s ideology throughout Bossi’s time as leader. We then link it to its “chameleonic” populism and assess continuities and transformations in its ideology, relying on both quantitative and qualitative evidence. The analysis is theoretically grounded in two streams of research focusing on regionalism and populism in Italy and Europe. The chapter also includes a postscript which, as already mentioned, describes the more recent transformations experienced by the party under Matteo Salvini’s leadership. Our aim is to show that the ideological profile of today’s League cannot be fully understood without considering the legacy of Umberto Bossi.

The LN as a regionalist populist party To assess the LN’s intrinsically regionalist character we can start from the definition of regionalist parties offered by Oscar Mazzoleni and Sean Müller (2016: 5–6). These scholars see them as political parties that a) demand more regional power who [sic] are neither b) organised on a nation-wide scale nor do they c) possess the ambition to represent the interests and people over, of and in the whole territory of a country. Instead, regionalist parties are organised exclusively on a regional basis and aim to cater for a regional electorate only.

Aiming to govern on behalf of a region, these parties pursue claims for regional autonomy and authority (in the form of shared- or self-rule) to be gained via the creation of institutions able to reflect and cater for specific regional needs (Keating, 2013; Mazzoleni and Müller, 2016: 6). Calls for autonomy are typically based on the assertion that a region enjoys a distinctive sense of collective identity, grounded in some combination of ethnic, linguistic, economic, geographic, religious and historic traits, with some of these (say, a distinctive language) being activated in one context but being irrelevant in another (Albertazzi, Giovannini and Seddone, 2018).

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The ideology

19

Based on this framework, Bossi’s LN satisfied all the criteria of a regionalist party, as under Bossi’s leadership it consistently aimed to represent the needs and values of “the North”, never seeing itself as a “national” or “state-wide” party. Moreover, as we will show in the next section by analysing some of the party’s key documents, the LN consistently argued that northern Italy was characterised by distinctive cultural, social and economic traits which set it apart from the rest of the country. It conceived of northern Italy as “a single entity, ethnos and demos together, an idealised community” (Tarchi, 2003: 151), by nurturing a process of identity formation and a sense of cultural homogeneity within its borders. The party thus advocated a territorial cause, stood to defend and promote what it saw as “its” regions (broadly defined as “the North” and/or “Padania”) and consistently presented them as ontologically different and distinctive from the rest of Italy (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2005; Keating, 2009: viii). Like other regionalist parties, under Bossi’s leadership the LN aimed to alter the vertical allocation of power between the centre and the periphery by seeking some form of autonomy for the North (whether by advocating federalism, devolution or even independence, depending on changing circumstances and political opportunities). Moreover, the LN has long been characterised by regional exclusivity in organisational terms (de Winter, 1998: 211), by filing candidates only in northern regions – a couple of half-hearted and short-lived attempts to create “sister league movements” in the South during the 1990s notwithstanding.1 Originating from the LAL (later LL), which was officially founded on 12 April 1984 by Umberto Bossi and some of his associates (see Chapter 1), the LN initially followed in the footsteps of several minor regionalist parties – such as the Partito Sardo d’Azione (Sardinian Action Party), the Union Valdôtaine (Valdostan Union), and the LV – that had been active in some of Italy’s regions, by arguing that the Lombard region should be granted increased powers of self-determination. The ultimate prize was achieving some degree of fiscal autonomy – which is what a selection of Italian regions characterised by large ethnic and linguistic minorities and/ or a strong and distinctive identity, such as Trentino Alto-Adige, the Aosta Valley, Friuli Venezia-Giulia, Sicily and Sardinia, had gained many years before (Gómez-Reino Cachafeiro, 2002: 65). Unable to argue the case in favour of self-determination on the basis of the alleged existence of a language specific to the Lombard region, Bossi combined calls to defend local dialects and cultures with a focus on the “individualism, hard work and free market values” (Ginsborg, 1996: 30) that were said to be widespread among Northerners. In other words, the focus on the economic interest of “the North” was always key for the party (Giordano, 2000: 445). As the LN’s leader soon understood (see Bossi, 1996: 15), cultural/ethnic issues had to play second fiddle to claims that the Lombard (and, later, the

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Populism in Europe

Northern) economy would have benefited, had the area gained more autonomy from the central state. Indeed, by talking too much about what would have been seen by many as folkloristic matters, such as the alleged need to “rediscover” local dialects, the party would have condemned itself to irrelevance in the most advanced and productive Italian regions. Hence, already at the first LL Congress – which was held in 1989 – Umberto Bossi spoke of the need to create an alliance by bringing together regionalist parties such as the LL, the LV and others, precisely so that “geographical areas that are homogeneous due to their economic needs and their social and ethnic similarities” (Bossi, 1989: 5–6, our emphasis) could support each other against a common enemy. Such an enemy was alleged to be the elite based in Rome, said to be ruling Lombardy from afar, without any real concerns for the well-being of its people. It is this claim that shows the second defining characteristic of, first, Bossi’s LL and then his LN: these parties’ populism. In this book, we adopt Cas Mudde’s (2004: 544) widely quoted definition of populism as: an ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, “the pure people” versus “the corrupt elite”, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people.

Whatever else the party might have been under Bossi, scholars have argued that it was, at its core, populist (e.g. Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2015; Biorcio, 1997; Mény and Surel, 2001; Taggart, 2000; Tarchi, 2003). It is also uncontroversial to place the LN “firmly […] within the broader sphere of the populist Right” (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2015: 43). In other words, the LN consistently embraced an exclusionary, rather than inclusionary (Mudde and Kaltwasser, 2013), variety of populism, i.e. one that regards a series of “others” – those who are not “of the people” – as a fundamental threat to the people’s values and identity, and one just as grave as that posed by the elites. Following Albertazzi and McDonnell (2015), therefore, we conceive of right-wing populism as: A thin-centred ideology which pits a virtuous and homogeneous people against a set of elites and dangerous “others” who are together depicted as depriving (or attempting to deprive) the sovereign people of their rights, values, prosperity, identity and voice. (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2015: 5)

Reframing the “us versus them” dichotomy As the analysis that follows will demonstrate, right-wing populism and regionalism remained the guiding stars of the League’s ideology under Bossi.

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The ideology

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Not only did Bossi redefine the North of Italy as a “community of interests”, as pointed out by Ilvo Diamanti (1993: 115–116), but, importantly, he did so by juxtaposing the interests of those living in these areas to those of the political elite based in Rome and of Southern Italians. In other words, Bossi’s regionalism was infused by right-wing populism from the start. With the complicity of the “elites”, Southern Italians were accused of taking away from Northern Italians what belonged to them: their wealth, identity and right to self-determination (for instance, by occupying key positions of power in the public administration and the machinery of the state). While undoubtedly Southern Italians remained “enemy no. 1” in the party’s discourse of the 1980s, immigrants from abroad acquired increasing importance from the 1990s onwards as the number of foreign residents started increasing. Hence, Africans (usually referred to as extracomunitari, i.e. “non-EU citizens”), Albanians (following the collapse of the Albanian state in the mid-1990s), Gypsy and Roma people (usually referred to as zingari) and, following 9/11, “Muslims”, all assumed central roles in the party’s discourse as time went by, depending on migration flows and how the political events of those years were unfolding. In other words, the “us versus them” dichotomy characterising the LN’s message was being reframed over time. In the 1980s the definitions of both “us” (the Northerners) and “them” (the Southerners) were clear, and consistent with the territorial agenda of a party focused on the North–South divide. During the 1990s/2000s, however, the increasing emphasis placed by the party on immigration started to complicate the picture. The new “them” was now represented more and more by immigrants – but also by EU institutions and transnational institutional actors – while political attacks against Southerners became rarer. At the same time, the party definition of “us” became more ambiguous than in previous years. Was the party still exclusively defending and representing the interests of Northerners? Was it instead promoting policies that could potentially appeal to all Italians, via its emphasis on low taxation, attacks against migrants and criticism of “globalisation”? As explained by Alonso and Kaltwasser (2015: 28), as other Italian parties adopted a more pro-federalist position to respond to the electoral breakthrough of the LN, the party was “forced” to diversify its programmatic appeal in order to maintain its electoral niche in the party system. Ultimately, as Albertazzi and McDonnell (2005: 961) say, “the Lega […] positioned itself as the defender of the North against globalisation and the European Union”. We assess how the values of the League have changed throughout the decades by using data from the Comparative Manifestos Project (CMP) (Volkens et al., 2018). Figure 2.1 visualises different dimensions, the first

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Populism in Europe

being “support for federalism/decentralisation”, which refers to the core regionalist mission of the party,2 while the second concerns “support for anti-immigration policies, traditional values and law and order”, linked to the “right-wing”, “authoritarian” character of the party.3 For each dimension the relative share of supportive statements (quasi-sentences) is measured as a percentage of the total statements included in the manifesto. Therefore, a higher share (percentage) on the first dimension indicates a more marked preference for transferring authority from the centre to the regions. Moreover, more positive values on the second dimension point to a more pronounced socio-cultural “authoritarianism” (Norris and Inglehart, 2019). We also add a third dimension: “support for the EU/internationalism”.4 Here, higher values suggest more positive attitudes towards the EU and international cooperation, lower/negative values a move towards Euroscepticism. Figure 2.1 clearly shows how the programmatic profile of the Lega changed from the 1990s to the 2000s. The “federalist” agenda remained important during the first decade of the new millennium, but was clearly accompanied by more opposition to migration from abroad, and more pronounced law and order positions. As pointed out by Mudde (2007: 56), therefore, the LN “started as a fairly liberal party, in terms of both economics and rights, but became increasingly authoritarian”. Additionally, it went from “Euroenthusiasm” to “Euroscepticism” in the early 2000s (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2005; Giordano, 2004). Kopecký and Mudde (2004) define as “Euroenthusiast” those parties that combine support

Support for federalism/decentralisation

Support for anti-immigration policies/traditional values/law and order

Support for the EU and internationalism

0

1990s

2

4

6 8 10 % of quasi‐sentences 

12

2000s

Figure 2.1  The changing programmatic profile of the Lega Nord: comparing positions in the 1990s and 2000s.

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The ideology

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for the idea of European integration (Europhilia) with positive assessment of how EU institutions are developing (EU-optimism). Eurosceptics do not necessarily reject the European ideal but they are unsatisfied with how EU institutions actually work and the way in which they promote integration (EU-pessimism). During the 1990s the LN was a strong supporter of the idea of a “Europe of the regions” (Loughlin, 1996), based on the alliance between supranational and subnational political, social and economic actors, seeing such a kind of “Europe” as a potential ally against the central state. Arguably, the success of the party in the early 1990s was also a result of the process of Europeanisation and consolidation of the European common market, which undermined the increasingly corrupt and inefficient system of rule dominated by the Christian Democrats (Golden, 2004). The EU and the integration process were seen as important allies in northern Italy’s struggle against state centralism and inefficiency. Some may see this as a sign of the League’s “Europragmatism” (Kopecký and Mudde, 2004: 303) rather than “Euroenthusiasm”, since the process of European integration was not considered as an end in itself but, rather, as a means to advance the federalist cause. Regardless of how this generally pro-European initial phase is defined, it is clear that the position of the party started to change quite significantly in the late 1990s, particularly during the Prodi government’s successful negotiation of Italian acceptance into the European Monetary Union in 1998. Indeed, this process “deprived the Lega’s ‘Padanian independence’ stance of its potential trump card. Thereafter, the Lega was free to embrace the kind of anti-EU discourse and positions common to populists across Europe and it duly did so” (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2005: 965). Hence, in time, the EU increasingly started to be framed by the party as a constraint rather than a liberator, what Mudde (2007: 74–78) defines as the “enemy outside the state, outside the nation”. This reinterpretation of the European project was soon incorporated into the populist message of the party, which became clearly “Eurosceptic”, although not fully “Euroreject” (at least, while Bossi remained in charge). Interestingly, this development was also accompanied by increasing opposition to internationalism and “elite driven” economic globalisation, which was seen as a threat to the traditional organising principles of local communities (Zaslove, 2008). Growing concerns with the limits imposed to sovereignty thus produced a shift away from the original neoliberalism of the party (Zaslove, 2008). Generally, the summary provided here shows that the right-wing populist nature of the party was not static but, rather, dynamic. It evolved over time and adapted to changing circumstances (Passarelli, 2013: 56). However, this transformation of the LN into a more markedly anti-immigration and authoritarian party (Mudde, 2007: 22–23) did not initially threaten its core regionalist identity. For more than twenty years, Umberto Bossi stood for

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long-term aspirations for more regional autonomy (and even independence), which were never questioned by mid-ranking leaders and, arguably, were key to attracting activists and supporters. Yet, as highlighted above, at the beginning of the twenty-first century some elements of tension and ambiguity started to emerge, mainly because it became more difficult to understand how the party’s “us” could be defined and translated into political action when immigrants and non-Italian actors (rather than Southerners) had become the main “enemies”. In the stormy years that followed the downfall of the old leader, this question assumed increasing relevance and produced a political earthquake, eventually resulting in the radical transformation of the party into a state-wide, nationalist force under Matteo Salvini’s leadership. CMP data, while allowing us to uncover a general trend, do not tell us much about the details of the various policies supported by the LN under Bossi’s leadership. Yes, the party always campaigned for the transfer of powers from the centre to (northern) regions; however, one may question what that meant concretely. Additionally, by looking at specific proposals on the socio-cultural (immigration/law and order) and EU dimensions we can get a better understanding of how key ideas in these areas continued to be subordinated to the regionalist identity of the party. We provide this analysis in the next section, by discussing in some detail party manifestos and other documentation produced at key moments of the party’s history.

Continuity and change: from the Lega Lombarda to the Lega Nord The data provided by the CMP, also corroborated by some references to the literature, have suggested to us that the League gradually moved to the right on socio-cultural issues, while remaining at core a regionalist party. To further illustrate the party’s positions and their evolution at important junctures in its life this section will consider three key documents: 1 Il Programma della Lega Lombarda (“The Lega Lombarda’s manifesto”), published in 1983 (Bossi, 1996: 11–12). This document provides us with an important snapshot of the ideology of the LL – that is, the organisation that came to dominate the LN from its foundation in 1991 (see Chapters 1 and 5). In other words, studying this document will allow us to understand where the key messages of the LN originally came from. 2 The 1996 manifesto, putting forward the proposals of what, by then, had become the LN. This document is called Programma elettorale per la Padania, Elezioni Politiche 1996 (“Electoral Programme for Padania, General Election 1996”) (Lega Nord, 1996) and encapsulates the LN’s

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thinking after leaving the centre-right coalition, as it started flirting with secession, before eventually going back to the centre-right alliance at the end of the century (see Chapter 1). 3 Proposte e Obiettivi (“Proposals and Objectives”), published in April 2009. In the absence of a manifesto, this is the most detailed document we can draw upon to assess where the party stood in ideological terms during the last few years of Bossi’s tenure as leader, at the time when the LN was serving in government for a fourth time. Targeted at both voters and party representatives, this document provides an exhaustive explanation of the party’s fundamental values and principles – according to the party itself (Lega Nord, 2009: 2). We will now consider each document in turn, and show the extent to which regionalism and populism – which were always deeply interwoven throughout the party’s history – remained at the heart of the LN’s message, while being accompanied by more noticeable authoritarian and Eurosceptic positions.

The 1983 manifesto The first manifesto ever published by the League lists only twelve objectives the party set out to achieve, sketched in less than two pages. The document includes some extremely general and vague statements (e.g. Point 11, calling for an end to the “degradation of Lombardy”) and very specific requests, the relevance of which can be grasped only with reference to debates that were taking place in the mid-1980s. An example of the latter is Point 8, calling for Lombards to be allowed to complete their compulsory military service in their own region.5 The party’s regionalist and populist nature shines through this document from the very start. Hence points 1 and 2 unequivocally position the LL as a party focused on defending the interests of the community of “Lombardy” vis-à-vis the threats allegedly posed to it by the central state: 1. We want to achieve self-government for Lombardy, by aiming to overcome the centralised state via a modern federal state willing to show respect for all its constituent peoples. 2. We reaffirm the value of our culture, history, the Lombard language and our social and moral values. Against any threat posed to the national Lombard identity. […]. Here self-government means, first and foremost, fiscal autonomy. As explained under Point 4, this would give local communities the chance to manage a larger share of their own resources, hence putting Lombardy on a par with the regions that enjoy special status (see earlier). Federalism is not only said to be fair and entirely right in principle, therefore, given that “the resources

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Populism in Europe

that come from the Lombards’ hard work and taxes should be controlled and administered by Lombards” (Point 4), but is also conducive to wider reforms that citizens can quickly come to appreciate. For instance, a reorganisation of the pension system on a regional basis like the one proposed here (Point 6) is said to make it more likely for pensions to be managed prudently and in the interest of local citizens, so that resources are no longer drained by the “many invalidity pensions” allegedly handed out in the South of the country. The LL’s position on European matters – what, at the time, was the European Economic Community – was inspired by the same principles. Hence, in this document, the party stresses the need to place self-determination at the heart of the European project so as to build Europe on the basis of values such as “autonomy, federalism, respect and solidarity between all peoples” (Point 12) – very different language from the Euroscepticism of later years. It is by considering the reasons why Lombardy is said to be unable to take control of its own destiny that we can get a better sense of the extent to which Bossi’s federalism was imbued by populism from the very start. This is because, ultimately, even at this stage, the main cause of the country’s ills was said to be the political elite. Hence the “Roman parties” (Point 11) are said to be “opportunistic” (Point 11), since they keep hold of Lombardy’s considerable economic resources while at the same time turning a blind eye to the “frauds” (Point 3) committed (by unspecified agents) for the benefit of Southerners. The LN’s populism is unquestionably of the “exclusionary” (Mudde and Kaltwasser, 2013) variety already at this stage, although mainly targeting Southerners. Hence the party adopts a welfare chauvinist approach by saying that it sees federalism as a means to make resources available only to the “natives”, which in this case are the Lombard people. It therefore argues that “[public administration] jobs, public housing, assistance, financial help” (Point 3), should all be handed out to Lombards first, while the regional PA and public schools should also be “returned” to Lombards “and not denaturalised” (Point 7) (presumably due to the presence of a large number of Southerners within both). In short, the analysis of the LL 1983 manifesto shows that regionalism and populism were at the heart of the LN’s ideology from the very start. The discussion that follows reveals that they maintained their central role in the party’s discourse in subsequent years too.

The 1996 manifesto The analysis of this document will allow us to understand what the party meant when proposing that the country should become a federation and that

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more powers should be exercised at subnational level.6 Unlike the document that we have just discussed, the 1996 manifesto runs into sixty-two pages and covers a long list of topics, with sections being further divided into subsections which address very specific themes. Hence there are dedicated sections on all of the following: (a) Productive Activities; (b) Agriculture, Fishing and Hunting; (c) Competition and the Privatisation of State Industries; (d) State Revenues; (e) Work and Pensions; (f) the Environment; (g) Territory, Public Works and Urban Planning; (h) Transport; (i) Foreign Affairs and Europe; (l) Defence; (m) Mafia, Criminality and Justice; (n) Culture; (o) Education; (p) Reforming the Health Service; (q) Social Affairs. Interestingly, only one and a half pages of the whole document are focused exclusively on the issue of federalism/self-determination. However, the importance of this theme is reiterated in several places throughout the document, as the party argues that federal reforms are a precondition for achieving progress in all other areas. Moreover, by repeating an argument already advanced in the 1983 LL manifesto, federalism is said to make subnational administrations more responsive to citizens’ needs, and hence, overall, more accountable. Federalism, we learn, would allow citizens “to find out who is responsible for not delivering for them […] [since] everyone [i.e. local and regional leaders] would have the power to take decisions concerning his or her territory and would have to take responsibility for them” (10). With the usual anti-Southerners’ “twist”, this argument is then wrapped up by saying that “finally, those who work and produce will not be penalised by the work-shy and parasites anymore!” (10). In fact, several sections of this document reiterate the party’s faith in federalism as a way to help resolve the issues the country is said to be facing, whether these be the need to fix the media (25) and the “unjust” fiscal system (26–28), or the desire to look after the environment (32), invest in culture (48) or reform the health system (56) and the welfare state (58–60). Alongside regionalism, populism also underpins much of what is said in different parts of this manifesto, showing great continuity with the 1980s. Hence, when addressing defence matters, for instance, the LN attacks the “waste, profiteering and lack of productivity” (44) that are said to be constant features of state intervention in this area, ultimately aimed at strengthening the privileges of the few. Equally, the national health service is said to have been led to the verge of bankruptcy by politicians who have focused on their own, or their parties’, interests, to the detriment of everything else (55). Even the fight against the Mafia has allegedly been weakened by the behaviour of the political elite. The LN thus lambasts the practice of “confino” (i.e., relocating high-profile people linked to the Mafia to northern regions, under police surveillance) by arguing that the “hard working people of the North” (45) have always opposed the practice but have been left

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Populism in Europe

powerless to stop it, possibly due to state officials being in cahoots with Mafia organisations.7 If the criticism of the elites is harsh, the tone adopted in this document on immigration and law and order is still quite restrained (in comparison with what follows in later years). This being said, however, the substance of the League’s message is entirely consistent with the party’s line on these matters from the very beginning. Hence, having rejected accusations that it is a racist party, the League talks of the need to “control migration” (11) so that migrants can be “absorbed” (11) by the host society. Limiting the number of people who can access the country, the document argues, inevitably results in foreigners being able to better integrate, thereby posing less of a threat to law and order and security. In other words, here the LN frames immigration simply as a problem that needs to be addressed, for both cultural and security reasons. However, it is also true that – at this stage – not much is said about the issue, particularly in comparison to the attention dedicated to the virtues of federal reform. We will see in the next section that the LN further radicalised its positions on immigration in later years – consistently with the picture provided by our analysis of the CMP data (see Figure 2.1).

Proposals and Objectives Published in 2009, this document is as long as the one we have just considered (i.e., sixty-three pages overall), and also covers a variety of themes. Although it is not a manifesto, its significance is stated in its preface, from which we learn that it provides “explanation and discussion of the principles and values which have constantly constituted the Lega Nord’s strength” (Lega Nord, 2009: 2, our emphasis). To corroborate this claim, federalism/selfdetermination is given pride of place at the very top of the document. Hence, besides the reproduction of a wall poster sporting the slogan: “Federalism = Masters in our own homes”, the document states that: The objective which has always inspired the political actions of the Lega Nord has been that of transforming our country – which is highly centralised – into a modern federal state, that is, by introducing federalism. This is clearly a revolutionary objective which will bring about a true revolution for the country: a federalist revolution. (Lega Nord, 2009: 5)

Reiterating the usual claims we have already come across in previous sections of this chapter about the alleged virtues of federalism, the party again stresses how federalism would empower subnational administrations to more effectively address the problems of the citizens they serve (5). Once again, we are told that local people are best placed to address local needs,

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as they are the only ones who can decide what should be prioritised in specific areas (5–6). Enhancing the power of local/regional administrations, therefore, is instrumental to delivering better services – and would also impact positively on the quality of democracy. By bringing decision making closer to the citizens, it is argued, people would feel empowered to affect the political process in their areas, hence having an important incentive to participate more (5–6). Besides addressing federalism in a dedicated section, the document also returns to it later on, for instance when talking about Europe, the family, agriculture, the economy, infrastructure, and elsewhere. As for immigration and law and order, there is no doubt that, particularly after 9/11, the party’s rhetoric radicalised, signalling a change in the League’s relationship with its Northern constituencies. Rather than trying to appeal to centrist pro-business Northern Italians, as it had done in the past (for instance, by proposing to lower the tax burden and improve local/regional infrastructure), the LN increasingly focused on identity issues, by fully owning the “defence” of the North against threats that were now said to originate mainly outside Italy’s borders (rather than the South of the country and “Rome”). In primis, these threats were said to be posed by migrants – particularly those from Islamic countries – while at the same time the restrictions placed on EU members’ ability to pursue their own fiscal and economic policies after the introduction of the euro were also identified as posing a considerable challenge. It is this more radical approach to immigration, Europe and globalisation, in line with the discourse characterising many other right-wing populist parties across Europe (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2008) that has evidently inspired “Proposals and Objectives”. Hence, when the document discusses “Immigration and Security” (which are, again, conflated), just after the section on “Federalism”, opposition to “illegal immigration” (Lega Nord, 2009: 9) is reiterated. However, the impression one gets is that the party has problems generally with the presence of all outsiders (be they legal or not). Thus, this section starts by reminding the reader of the legislation on law and order and immigration which the LN pushed through Parliament while in government (i.e., law 189/2002, discussed in Chapter 3), and justifies its provisions as being “serious and tough”. Without realising the inherent contradictions in its argument, however, the LN then claims that foreigners in fact continue to make streets “unsafe, and [turn] piazzas [into] no-go-areas after sunset for anyone who is not a foreigner” (9). Hence, the 2002 legislation may have introduced sweeping changes; however, foreigners are somehow still at liberty to engage in criminal activities, such as violence, drug dealing, prostitution, armed robbery and theft, more or less at will (9). In addition to this, the party also objects to what it sees as the attempt by Muslims to

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impose alien cultural and religious values on the local population – that is the cultural challenge that it sees foreigners posing to the communities of northern Italy. Therefore, in the subsection dedicated to “places of worship” we learn that “the Lega Nord has always fought to stop and make it less likely for mosques to be built on our territory, and to keep a close eye on those that have been built already” (37), as the document proceeds to single out Muslims as posing a fundamental threat to liberal values. Here notions of equality between the sexes are said to be particularly at risk, as Muslims are accused of showing little respect for the values of the host country (and, indeed, its Constitution). Hence, not allowing “Islamic communities” to build mosques on Italian territory is said to be a necessity if one does not want the country to end up being ruled according to the principles of “Koranic law” (38). It is also worth noticing that, despite its title, the subsection “Places of Worship” in fact covers no religious group other than Muslims. Consistent with what we have seen happening since the turn of the century, the document also puts emphasis on the alleged importance of Christian values as powerful markers of identity. Hence, in the last section of the document the party celebrates its (unsuccessful) attempt to insert a reference to the Christian roots of Europe in the European Constitution (which was later abandoned), aiming to demonstrate that it was a courageous attempt to defend key features of European identities. Religion is thus defined as “the cement that binds the peoples of Europe together, despite their different languages and traditions” (62), and the claim is made that its importance goes well beyond the many ways in which it influences those who regularly attend church. As for the issue of Europe, “Proposals and Objectives” reiterates the LN’s uneasiness with being defined as “Eurosceptic”, and claims that it is hardly “against Europe per se” (60). This being said, however, the EU is attacked here for allegedly aiming to create “a genuine continental super-state” (60) and promoting globalisation and the merging and confusion of different cultures. If this were not enough, the EU is also accused of challenging people’s very livelihood by encouraging high finance to “abandon the real economy” (53), thus leading to tragedies such as the Great Recession of 2008. The party’s new-found interest for Christianity and the radicalisation of its rhetoric on issues having to do with tradition and identity also affected its understanding of how Italy’s foreign policy should change. Hence, by criticising the approach adopted by successive Italian governments (including right-wing ones, of which the LN had been a member) in favour of creating the conditions for Turkey to join the EU, this document expresses hostility to the idea of further enlargement, and particularly to Turkey, on economic, political and cultural (i.e., religious) grounds. Citing the emergence of “Islamic

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integralism” in the country (a reference to the strength of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party at the time) and the fact that, as mentioned above, the party had failed to put the Christian roots of Europe at the heart of the European Constitution, the document thus mentions the need to be “vigilant” (63) or else “the idea of Europe being founded on certain cultural and spiritual roots” (63) will become a thing of the past. There probably could not be a more fitting conclusion for a document permeated by the strategy defined by Hans-Georg Betz and Carol Johnson (2004: 318) as one of “selective exclusion”, that one hingeing on the claim that “certain groups cannot be integrated into society and therefore represent a fundamental threat to the values, way of life and cultural integrity of the ‘indigenous people’” (Betz and Johnson, 2004: 318, our emphasis). In short, the LN’s determination to defend its “heartland” (Taggart, 2000) against all sort of threats allegedly brought about by globalisation, immigration and the changing nature of the EU, emerges repeatedly throughout this document, as issues having to do with tradition, identity and law and order are all given great prominence. In particular, it is fair to say that Christianity had never been an issue in the early years of the party, and it is only after 9/11 that it acquired such centrality in its discourse. In the end, the analysis of the three documents discussed in this section provides additional qualitative evidence in support of our argument. We see Bossi’s League as a party fundamentally focused on promoting federalism and decentralisation (with a pro-independence parenthesis in the late 1990s) and consistently framing its regionalist claims in populist terms. As we have seen, elements of exclusionary populism were already evident when the LL was created, as it treated Southerners as “aliens” and targeted them as “enemies” of “Lombardy”. However, over time the party shifted even further to the right by emphasising its socio-cultural conservatism and authoritarianism until, during the 2000s, its anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric assumed a central role in its discourse. This was also accompanied by increasing criticism of the EU, although attacks against the latter never constituted the core of the party’s discourse throughout its history (and, arguably, even after Bossi left its position as leader).

Conclusion The analysis of party documents provided above clearly shows that, from the late 1980s until Bossi’s resignation, the ideological profile of the LN included many elements of continuity. However, these coexisted with some shifts. As we have seen, the territorial focus of the party remained consistent throughout the period considered and, as a consequence, the Lega Nord

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never ceased to be a truly regionalist party. However, territoriality was embedded in a broader populist discourse, which was quite clearly “chameleonic” (Taggart, 2000). Therefore, the party was able to shift from pro-federalist to secessionist positions (albeit very briefly), and then move back to supporting a much milder form of self-government, while the “us versus them” dichotomy underpinning its populist claims was constantly redefined and adapted to changing political circumstances. The right-wing character of the party’s populism became considerably more evident in the 2000s and, since then, has radicalised even further (as shown in the next section). Bossi proved able to combine a strong and clear message, which allowed the party to quickly occupy a “territorial niche” that had been ignored by most of the political establishment, and he did so with pragmatism and adaptability. He then understood that his “identitarian” appeal, initially focusing on the local and regional dimensions, could be effectively broadened to provide new (and electorally rewarding) responses to the alleged “threats” posed by immigration, globalisation and Europeanisation. Bossi’s LN managed to combine territorial politics and socio-cultural authoritarianism in unconventional ways by adopting a “two-dimensional” strategy (Elias et al., 2015), with European issues being debated more during the 2000s, but still retaining an “ancillary” role vis-à-vis federalism and immigration. The two key dimensions, regionalism and socio-cultural authoritarianism, were not strictly dependent on each other or hierarchically related, but co-evolved side by side. In this respect, the Lega Nord was a rather peculiar case in the European context and stood in between purely regionalist movements and state-wide populist radical right parties. This formed the basis for the unprecedented success of Bossi’s disciple, Matteo Salvini. Indeed the latter, despite distancing himself from the old leader and his federalist mission, built his new political project on the radicalisation of (mainly socio-cultural) themes that were already deeply rooted in the identity of the party he had inherited.

Postscript: party ideology under Salvini Throughout this chapter we have highlighted the fact that the programmatic profile of the LN was far from static. In fact, it was reframed and adapted several times since the late 1980s; however, its regionalist nature was cherished by the leadership throughout. Without the so-called “northern question” the party would have lost its identity and, consequently, the support and loyalty of its core constituencies. Yet the rise of Matteo Salvini after the downfall of Bossi (and the short transition that followed it) shows that the dynamic character of the “us versus them” dichotomy, which the League has insisted

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upon, can be successfully pushed to the extreme. Hence, in recent years the traditional themes of federalism and regionalism have been almost completely abandoned and the territorial dimension of the party’s struggle totally reframed (Albertazzi, Giovannini and Seddone, 2018). Instead of claiming that a territorial cleavage exists, pitting a wealthy and economically competitive North against a poor and economically dependent South, the focus has now shifted to the European arena. In this new context, Italy as a whole is seen as being part of a “peripheral” region in a European “super-state” dominated by the “core” countries of central-northern Europe (Vampa, 2017). Moreover, Salvini’s League can now be defined as a “populist radical right party” in Cas Mudde’s (2007) terms, insofar as it is characterised by nativism, authoritarianism and populism. Indeed the nativist and authoritarian dimensions that, as we have shown in this chapter, started to assume increasing importance during the early 2000s are now dominant within the party’s ideology (Albertazzi, Giovannini and Seddone, 2018), while a shift towards more radical forms of Eurorejectionism, rather than Euroscepticism, is also noticeable. The French Rassemblement National (National Rally) seems to have become the organisational and ideological model of the new League, and this is particularly reflected in its struggle against the EU and in its new “patriotic”, pro-Italian (rather than “pro-Padanian”) rhetoric (Ivaldi et al., 2017). The changes introduced by Salvini still coexist with a legacy from the past that risks now becoming meaningless. For instance, Article 1 of the current party statute (Lega Nord, 2019) still states that the party is officially called “Lega Nord per l’Indipendenza della Padania” (Northern League for the Independence of Padania) and that the final aim of this “confederal political movement” is “to achieve full independence of the Padania”. And yet, totally contradicting this objective, Salvini decided to drop the term Nord (“North”) from the party logo altogether in December 2017, just a few months before the triumphal election of March 2018, when the Lega obtained 17.4% of the vote. In this period Salvini went even further by creating a new political party called Lega per Salvini Premier (LSP – League for Salvini Premier) which, since the party congress of 2019, has started absorbing all League representatives and members into a new legal entity (see postscript to Chapter 5). Importantly, there is no trace of regionalism left in this new party. This coexistence of past ideas and radical innovations has also led to visible tensions and programmatic inconsistencies. Emblematic is the case of the two autonomy referendums promoted by the governments of Lombardy and Veneto and led by two members of the League’s “old” guard, Roberto Maroni and Luca Zaia, which were held in 2017. Whereas the regional

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branches of the LN remained faithful to the original federalist mission of the party, Salvini conducted a lukewarm campaign on the matter and did not place any particular emphasis on the final results (Giovannini and Vampa, 2020). Furthermore, the success of the autonomy referendums, particularly the Venetian one, was not used to advance meaningful institutional reforms in the immediate aftermath of the vote and was not even exploited as a central political issue in the general election campaign of 2018. Indeed, when Salvini – after performing well in the election in 2018 – agreed to form a government with the Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S – Five Star Movement), the theme of regional autonomy was only briefly mentioned in the coalition’s agreement, the Contratto di governo (Contract for Government) (Vampa and Giovannini, 2019: 78). It is not a coincidence, therefore, that autonomy reforms failed to be approved and implemented during the year that the League spent in power. Despite paying lip-service to the alleged need for federalism in the country, Salvini has in fact turned his attention to other issues, such as immigration, law and order and (to a lesser extent) the EU. In sum, he has dropped Bossi’s two-dimensional programmatic strategy and has adopted what Elias et al. (2015) have defined as a “blurring strategy”: avoiding taking a clear position on one dimension of political competition, while focusing entirely and radicalising on the other. In this specific case, Salvini has sacrificed the dimension of territorial politics for an emphasis on socio-cultural authoritarianism.

Notes 1 This changed after Bossi’s departure, as already mentioned. 2 This is measured by calculating the difference between CMP category 301 (Federalism) and 302 (Centralisation). 3 This is measured by adding CMP categories 601 (National way of life: positive), 603 (Traditional morality: positive), 605 (Law and order: positive), 608 (Multiculturalism: negative) and subtracting CMP categories 602 (National way of life: negative), 604 (Traditional morality: negative), and 607 (Multiculturalism: positive). 4 This is measured by adding CMP categories 107 (Internationalism: positive) and 108 (European Community/Union: positive) and subtracting CMP categories 109 (Internationalism: negative) and 110 (European Community/Union: negative). 5 If there was uncertainty about whatever function a manifesto should even fulfil at this stage, this was most probably due to what the party was at the time – little more than Umberto Bossi himself and a handful of relatives and friends who had little previous political experience (Bossi and Vimercati, 1992). 6 Following this election, the LN radicalised its message for a few years, arguing that the North of the country (renamed as “Padania”) should be treated as a nation and that, as such, it had a right to seek independence. This move did not

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find the favour of the northern electorate, though, not least because the idea of northern regions sharing enough features to be regarded as a national community lacked credibility (Albertazzi, 2006). Hence, this short separatist period can now be treated as a parenthesis in the party’s history (albeit certainly an interesting one that tells us a lot about how nationalist claims are performed). 7 The fight against confino had characterised regionalist movements across northern Italy well before the LN was even created. According to Bossi, this practice provided evidence of the extent to which the central state treated northern regions as colonies by exporting the problems of the South to them without any consideration of the dangers Mafia members would then pose to local communities.

3

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The electoral arena: North, peripheries, cross-class appeal and shifting alliances

Introduction As seen in Chapter 2, the LN has been a cleavage-based party (Lipset and Rokkan, 1967) from the very beginning, with Umberto Bossi proposing a redefinition of Italy’s problems that focused on the centre–periphery cleavage (i.e., Lombardy/the North of Italy versus “Rome” and the South). This was also immediately framed in populist terms as a clash between good and evil, “us versus them”, whereby the good ones would of course be the honest and hard-working people of the North and the evil ones the political elites based in the capital, Rome, supported by southern Italians. Hence, if the importance of the centre–periphery cleavage in a country like Italy, which was indeed profoundly divided across regional lines, had been partially defused after the Second World War by giving several Italian regions special powers (see Chapter 2), Bossi’s success from the end of the 1980s onwards meant that this cleavage was put, once again, at the very centre of the political debate. In this chapter we focus on the LN in the electoral arena and we show how important “geography” has been to its success. We first look at how the LN was able to create a regionally concentrated political subculture that replaced the old, Christian Democratic one. After this section, we look at the variation in the party’s electoral support across regions and across provinces by highlighting continuity (as most of the votes were consistently concentrated in Lombardy and the Veneto region) and change (as an increasing number of votes were won in non-urban areas, thus resulting in the “peripheralisation” of the party). After this, we move on to a discussion of the composition of the League’s electorate and we provide evidence of the party’s strength in a rather heterogeneous set of northern Italian constituencies, including both small entrepreneurs and blue-collar workers. Finally, we focus on inter-party competition and discuss how the LN interacted with other forces in the electoral arena. Over time, it shifted from isolation to stable collaboration with other centre-right parties (also as a response to



The electoral arena

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the incentives of electoral systems rewarding coalition building). The chapter also includes a postscript which considers how the party has evolved under Matteo Salvini’s leadership. In particular it shows that, in recent years, the LN vote has experienced a significant territorial expansion, which reflects the programmatic nationalisation of the party discussed in the postscript of Chapter 2.

Replacing the Christian Democrats: the success of leghismo in northern Italy Among Bossi’s achievements we can certainly point to his ability to create a subculture – dubbed by the press as leghismo – that soon ended up replacing the pro-Christian Democratic one that had been dominant before, at least in some regions of the North (such as the Veneto region). To understand how this happened – and led to the electoral success of the LN – we need to briefly consider the two subcultures that faced each other for decades in Italy following the birth of the post-war Republic: the Catholic and the Communist ones. Characterised by distinctive values – indeed whole, different ways of life – and with their power bases in different regions, the two subcultures had competed with each other for decades by the time Bossi created the LN, each one trying to secure political and cultural hegemony throughout the country. For reasons related to how events developed towards the end of the Second World War and the varying intensity of the Resistance against the German army that had invaded the country, of which the Left had been a protagonist, the DC dominated the “white” north-eastern regions of Veneto, Friuli Venezia Giulia and the autonomous province of Trento, as well as southern Italy, while the Left (i.e., the PCI and, to a lesser extent, the PSI) enjoyed very strong support in the central regions of Emilia-Romagna, Toscana, Umbria and Marche (Bagnasco, 1977; Cartocci, 1990; Diamanti, 2003; Trigilia, 1986). In the north-west of Italy – and particularly in the industrial and financial powerhouses of Lombardy and Piedmont – the situation was more complicated. Here the Left was strong in the industrial suburbs of Turin and Milan; however, many provincial and rural areas were again dominated by the DC. Hence, across the whole of the North the DC was usually particularly strong in sub-alpine areas characterised by small or medium-sized urban centres, but much less so in the big cities were large working-class quarters were to be found. It is precisely in sub-alpine areas of diffused industrialisation that the predecessors of the LN (that is, mainly, the LV and the LL) had taken roots and where the LN itself achieved its first successes. Since the end of the 1970s, the impressive economic growth of these areas had been made possible mainly by the dynamism and success

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38

Populism in Europe

of SMEs that had become widespread, bringing unemployment down and enabling a large, independent middle class to thrive (Cento Bull and Gilbert, 2001: ch. 3; Diamanti, 1993: 25–42; Mannheimer 1991). Backed by business associations keen to limit the influence of the Left, and enjoying a privileged channel of communication with its governmental representatives in Rome, the DC took it upon itself to give voice to the needs and grievances of the communities living in northern provincial Italy vis-à-vis the state (Diamanti, 2003: 58–60). As incomes grew and as these areas developed, however, locals became less understanding of the huge gap between levels of taxation (which, if anything, had increased throughout the 1980s, despite the still burgeoning state deficit) and the low quality of public services and infrastructure offered by the state. One way for the state to decrease taxation and increase investment in infrastructure would have been to cut welfare, health services and other public services, and/or to reduce the waste that often took the form of handouts distributed to specific areas of the country. However, since the poorest areas in Italy (particularly in the South) had been treated by the DC as safe “banks of votes”, to be gained in exchange for handouts and what were presented as “favours” (a system known as clientelismo – clientelism), the DC may not have had much of an incentive to try to accomplish this after all. This was one important reason why the tax burden continued to rise; the consequence, however, was that in the most productive parts of the country support for the Christian Democrats started to wane. A heavy tax burden and the sense of frustration for the inefficiencies of the state created the preconditions for anti-tax parties such as the LN (and, later, Berlusconi’s FI) to thrive, especially in the productive industrial North that was, arguably, putting into the public purse much more than it was taking out. Analyses of electoral data show that LN voters were in fact more likely to have voted DC in the past than for any other party, and that a majority of them were in fact concentrated in provincial areas of diffused industrialisation (Cartocci, 1994; Cento Bull, 2000; Mannheimer, 1991; 1993). Two events acted as triggers of what became a widespread electoral revolt against the DC and its satellites, which ended up restructuring Italy’s party system in a very short space of time. To briefly recap what has been discussed at greater length in Chapter 1, these events were the following: a. the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent decision by the PCI to turn into a more moderate centre-left party, which allowed centrist voters to switch their allegiance to brand new parties for the first time since the Second World War. Voters no longer felt compelled to support the then governing DC in order to keep the “red menace” at bay;



The electoral arena

39

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b. the “Tangentopoli” (Bribes Ville) scandal of 1992, and subsequent spreading of investigations into political corruption which uncovered a sophisticated system of illegal funding by political parties through securing kickbacks from companies that had been granted public contracts (Bull and Newell, 2005: 39–62). This further weakened the standing of the parties that had governed Italy for years in the eyes of voters – first and foremost, the pivot of the party system: DC. Although excluded from national government, the PCI had created its own strongholds in central regions such as Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany and Umbria, where it had been able to rule many communes and lead regional administrations since the introduction of regional government in the 1970s. In these areas the PCI soon acquired a reputation for efficiency, good management and supporting SMEs. Here the party introduced economic and social policies that helped small industries to grow (Cento Bull and Gilbert, 2001: 86) and business-friendly legislation (Cento Bull and Gilbert 2001: 82; Cooke and Morgan, 1994; Leonardi and Nanetti, 1994), not to mention business service centres in regions such as Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany (Garmise, 1994). If, at the beginning of the 1990s, “the DC lost its key role as ‘broker’ between the centre and the periphery” (Passarelli and Tuorto, 2012a: 421), due to the developments that have been mentioned above, “the PCI (and its epigones) took advantage of its dual role as local ruling party and opposition party at the national level” (Passarelli and Tuorto, 2012a: 421). Hence, while the LN managed to overthrow the DC as the dominant party in white areas (Diamanti, 1996: 21), eventually contributing to its demise and change of name in 1994, the same could not be said of the “red” regions in which the PCI retained its reputation as a competent administrator.1 As the DC retreated, and then collapsed, amid accusations of corruption and inefficiency, the new political subculture dubbed as leghismo took deeper root in northern Italy. As explained in Chapter 2, the core features of this subculture were regionalism and populism. And just like the “white” subculture before it, leghismo also performed an important economic role, by initially focusing on the needs of industry and by fostering “an environment of mutual trust and social cooperation which was conducive to the development of clusters of small businesses” (Cento Bull and Gilbert, 2001: 79).2 As it dislodged the DC as the dominant party in these areas, the LN thus reproduced some of its subcultural characteristics, such as fostering a sense of community and territorial and social solidarity (Cento Bull and Gilbert, 2001: 172). Hence, in the end, in many areas across the North the LN ended up taking the place of the DC and enjoying levels of support that were not dissimilar to those achieved by the latter for several decades after the Second World War.

40

Populism in Europe

In the next section we consider in more detail the LN’s electoral performance since its foundation; in particular we look at the geographical distribution of its vote, which clearly shows how well-rooted the party was in a rather circumscribed, albeit very important, part of Italy.

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Electoral performance and geography of the vote With Bossi as leader, the LN’s electoral results fluctuated between its worst result of 3.9% in the national election of 2001 and the 12.3% gained in 2010 in regional elections. Table 3.1 provides the data covering the whole period that concerns us in this book. For a party such as the LN, it is however essential to also consider the geography of the vote, as this clearly shows that it never managed to fulfil its ambition of speaking on behalf of the whole of the “North”. Indeed, the party’s performance in the various regions making up the northern part of the country was always varied – and the same can be said of its success (or lack of it) within this area. Generally speaking, the LN’s strongholds always remained Lombardy, the Veneto region and, to a lesser extent, Piedmont (Table 3.2).3 Interestingly, towards the end of Bossi’s tenure as

Table 3.1  LN’s performance in general, European and regional elections Year

Type of election

1992 1994 1994 1996 1999 2000 2001 2004 2005 2006 2008 2009 2010

General General (proportional European General (proportional European Regional General (proportional European Regional General (proportional General (proportional European Regional

%

part) part)

part)

part) part)

8.7 8.4 6.6 10.1 4.5 5.0 3.9 5.0 5.6 4.6 8.3 10.2 12.3

Note: General election results refer to the Chamber of Deputies. In 1994, 1996 and 2001, general election results refer to the proportional share of the vote. Regional election results exclude the five autonomous regions that enjoy a special statute. Source: Italian Ministry of the Interior.

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Table 3.2  LN’s electoral performance in a selection of northern and central regions (regional: R; general: G).

Region

G.94

R.95

G.96

R.00

G.01

R.05

G.06

G.08

R.10

23 17.3 16.3 14.3 19.2 8.9 9.6 3.1

22.1 21.6 15.7 11.4 16.9 7.6 6.4 2.2

17.7 16.7 9.9 6.5 – – 3.3 0.7

25.5 29.3 18.2 10.2 23.2 13.2 7.2 1.8

15.4 12 7.6 4.3 – – 3.3 0.6

12.1 10.2 5.9 3.9 8.2 3.7 2.6 0.6

15.8 14.7 8.5 4.7 9.3 – 4.8 1.3

11.7 11.1 6.3 3.7 7.2 4.5 3.9 1.1

21.6 27.1 12.6 6.8 13.0 9.4 7.8 2.0

26.2 35.2 16.7 10.2 – – 13.7 6.5

The electoral arena

Lombardy Veneto Piedmont Liguria Friuli V.G Trentino-South Tyrol Emilia-Rom. Tuscany

G.92

Note: General election results refer to the Chamber of Deputies. In 1994, 1996 and 2001 general election results refer to the proportional share of the vote. The party’s support has been negligible (i.e., always well below 3%, with only one exception) in the central regions of Tuscany, Marche and Umbria, until the very last years of Bossi’s tenure as leader. This being the case, only the results related to elections in Tuscany have been provided here as an example. Source: Adapted from data provided by the Italian Ministry of the Interior and Passarelli and Tuorto, 2012b: 67, Table 2.1.

41

Populism in Europe

leader (i.e., mainly from 2010 onwards), the party also started to grow in the regions of the so-called “red belt”, such as Emilia-Romagna. However, the party was never as successful here as it was in its just mentioned strongholds (and this has continued to be so since Bossi’s removal, albeit the LN’s growth in central Italy has been truly remarkable from 2018 onwards). Figure 3.1 demonstrates the extent to which the LN relied on the heavily populated regions of Lombardy and Veneto for its electoral success. In 1990 the League was still a loose alliance of small regionalist parties, but Lombardy clearly dominated, as it accounted for around 70% of the votes gained by them. In the following years, Bossi’s party still managed to gain between 40% and 50% of its total support in this region – providing some justification for the fact that it was always dominated by its Lombard branch (see Chapter 5). As time went by, however, the importance of the Veneto region also increased. Initially accounting for less than one fifth of the party’s vote, by 2010 more than one fourth of LN votes were being gained from this region. Hence, adding it all up, it is easy to see how a good twothirds of the party votes were coming from either Lombardy or the Veneto region. As we have already seen, the LN thrived in particular in the many subalpine areas characterised by diffused industrialisation and the presence of

100% 90% 80% 70%

Other Tuscany

60%

Trentino-A.A.

50%

Em Rom

40%

Liguria

30%

FVG

20%

Piedmont

10%

Veneto Lombardy

eg io na l1 G 99 en 0 er al 19 G 92 en er al 19 R eg 94 io na l1 G 99 en 5 er al 1 R 99 eg 6 io na l 20 G en 00 er al 20 R eg 01 io na l2 G 00 en 5 er al 2 G 00 en 6 er al 20 R eg 08 io na l2 01 0

0%

R

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42

Figure 3.1  The distribution of the LN’s support across Italian regions (1990–2010)

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The electoral arena

43

many small and medium-sized towns and villages (rather than big urban centres). These were the same ones that, after the Second World War, had been dominated by the DC for decades. Tables 3 and 4 show the ten provinces in northern Italy where the League achieved its best and worst results in various elections.4 We include data from the 1992 general election – when the party experienced its first electoral breakthrough in a national electoral competition – and the 2008 general election – the last under Bossi’s leadership. Comparing these two elections is particularly interesting because the party obtained a similar aggregate result (8.7% and 8.3%), which, however, was differently distributed at the provincial level. The tables also include results of the 2009 European election, when the party won its highest share of the vote nationally, and of the last regional elections, most of which took place in 2010, two years before Bossi’s resignation. A look at the data suggests the following: • Table 3.3: In 1992 the LN clearly was a Lombard party, as eight out of ten provinces in which it was most successful were in Lombardy. Interestingly, the metropolitan area of Milan was not one of them. In more recent elections we notice a more balanced distribution of votes between Lombard and Venetian provinces. Varese, where Bossi was born and started his political career, lost its position at the top and was replaced by Sondrio, and then Treviso (the home province of the powerful Venetian governor Luca Zaia). The only Piedmontese province to appear in the top ten once (in 2009) was Cuneo, a sub-alpine rural (but very wealthy) area. • Table 3.4: The LN of 1992 was considerably weaker in the provinces of Emilia Romagna, a region then dominated by the heirs of the PCI. Only in the provinces of Parma and Piacenza, in the northern part of the region and closer to Lombardy, did the party perform a bit better. By the last regional elections fought under Bossi’s leadership, however, Modena, Reggio Emilia and Ferrara had moved out of the bottom group, suggesting a strengthening of the party in some areas within the Emilia-Romagna region. The cases of Trieste and Bolzano are quite peculiar, given their status of “interface” peripheries (Rokkan 1980), in which tensions between local ethnic minorities and Italian nationalism hindered the success of a strong macro-regionalist party like the LN. Lastly, in the last years of Bossi’s leadership the party also performed relatively poorly in three out of four provinces of Liguria (only La Spezia had been in the bottom ten in 1992). Genova was one of these, confirming the weakness of the League in important metropolitan areas (the Piedmontese city of Turin being another example). Table 3.5 presents data from the first and last elections of the Bossi era, showing the provinces in which the party’s share of the vote increased most substantially (and those in which it declined). The process of “Venetisation” undertaken by the party throughout the years looks unmistakable, with

1992 (General) Province Varese ComoLecco* Belluno Sondrio Bergamo Brescia Pavia Mantova Treviso Cremona

Result

Region

29.5 28.6

Lombardy Lombardy

27.9 25.9 25.7 24.8

2008 (General) Province

2009 (European)

Result

Region

Province

Result

Region

Sondrio Verona

35.9 33.1

Lombardy Veneto

Sondrio Treviso

41.5 34.3

Lombardy Veneto

Veneto Lombardy Lombardy Lombardy

Bergamo Vicenza Treviso Belluno

31.2 31.1 30.9 27.6

Lombardy Veneto Veneto Veneto

Verona Vicenza Bergamo Brescia

33.8 33.2 33.0 28.9

Veneto Veneto Lombardy Lombardy

22.1 22.1

Lombardy Lombardy

27.2 25.8

Lombardy Lombardy

Veneto Lombardy

25.0 24.0

Lombardy Veneto

Belluno ComoLecco Varese Cuneo

27.0 26.5

21.5 21.4

Brescia ComoLecco* Varese Padova

26.3 24.9

* The province was split after 1992. Source: Italian Ministry of the Interior.

2010 (Regional) Province

Result

Region

Treviso Sondrio

48.5 42.4

Veneto Lombardy

38.1 36.9 36.1 33.0

Veneto Lombardy Veneto Lombardy

Veneto Lombardy

Vicenza Bergamo Verona ComoLecco* Belluno Padova

32.8 31.4

Veneto Veneto

Lombardy Piedmont

Brescia Varese

30.1 30.0

Lombardy Lombardy

Populism in Europe

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44

Table 3.3  The ten Northern provinces where the LN has obtained its best results (%)



Table 3.4  The ten Northern provinces where the LN has obtained its worst results (%)

Province

La Spezia Trieste Bologna Ferrara Ravenna Forlì – Rimini* Bolzano

Result 10.8 10

Region

2008 (General) Province

Result

Region

2009 (European) Province

Result

Region

2010** (Regional) Province

Em. Rom. Savona Em. Rom. Gorizia

8.3 8.2

Liguria FVG

Savona Gorizia

11.8 11.4

Liguria FVG

8.5

Veneto

Ferrara

7.7

Em. Rom. Ferrara

10.2

8.2

Liguria

6.6

FVG Em. Rom. Em. Rom. Em. Rom. Em. Rom.

6.4 6.1 5.3 4.9 4.8

Em. Rom. Forlì – Rimini* Liguria Ravenna Em. Rom. Genova FVG La Spezia Em. Rom. Trieste Liguria Bologna

10.1

8 7.7 7.7 6 5.9

Forlì – Rimini* Genova Ravenna Trieste Bologna La Spezia

Em. Rom. Forlì – Rimini* Em. Rom. Imperia

3.6

TrentinoA.A.

Bolzano

2

TrentinoA.A.

Bolzano

Ravenna Torino

Result

Region

12.4 12.1

Em. Rom. Piedmont

12.1

Em. Rom.

12

Liguria

9.7 8.8 7.7 7.7 7.3

Em. Rom. Liguria Liguria FVG Em. Rom.

Bologna Genova Gorizia La Spezia Trieste

9.6 9.5 8.6 7.7 6.1

Em. Rom. Liguria FVG Liguria FVG

4.8

TrentinoA.A.

Bolzano

2.1

Trentino - A.A.

The electoral arena

Modena Reggio Emilia Rovigo

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1992 (General)

* The province was split after 1992. ** In Trieste and Bolzano regional elections took place in 2008. Source: Italian Ministry of the Interior.

45

46

Province

Treviso Vicenza Padova Sondrio Verona Rovigo Venezia Bergamo Ravenna Forlì –Rimini*

Largest gains

Largest losses

Difference 1992–2010* (%)

Region

Province

Difference 1992–2010 (%)

Region

+27 +18.5 +16.5 +16.5 +15.4 +14.2 +12.6 +11.2 +6.4 +6.2

Veneto Veneto Veneto Lombardy Veneto Veneto Veneto Lombardy Em. Rom. Em. Rom.

La Spezia Milano-Monza-Lodi** Bolzano Torino Trieste Gorizia Savona Udine Imperia Genova

-0.5 -0.8 -1.5 -1.7 -1.9 -3.9 -4.2 -4.3 -4.7 -4.9

Liguria Lombardy Trentino-A.A. Piedmont FVG FVG Liguria FVG Liguria Liguria

* The last important election under Bossi’s leadership is the 2010 regional election. In Trieste, Gorizia, Udine and Bolzano the last regional election took place in 2008 because they belong to “Special Statute” regions, which have a different electoral calendar. ** The province was split after 1992. Source: Italian Ministry of the Interior.

Populism in Europe

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Table 3.5  Comparing the electoral results of the first and last elections of the Bossi era: ten provinces with the largest gains and ten provinces with the largest losses

47

The electoral arena

six out of ten provinces that had experienced the largest increases being in Veneto region, and only two in Lombardy. Interestingly, Ravenna and Forlì-Rimini (in Emilia Romagna), two provinces that are always in the bottom group in Table 3.4, regardless of the election being considered, are also among the ones in which the party grew more significantly. It is also worth noticing that the LN support stagnated or declined in most of Liguria and Friuli Venezia Giulia, areas which are outside the Lombardo-Veneto core. Possibly the most interesting finding, however, is the party’s failure to gain support in all the largest metropolitan areas of the North: Milan, Turin and Genoa. This last finding points to an interesting process of provincializzazione (peripheralisation) of the party during Bossi’s leadership, that is, its further strengthening in rural/provincial areas and weakening in the urban ones. In order to measure this phenomenon, we have calculated the share of the vote that the League would have won if only the Italian “periphery” had voted, that is, if the largest Italian cities had not been included in the vote count.5 We then divide this result by the one that the party would have obtained if only the largest cities had voted, thus obtaining an index of peripheralisation of electoral support: Peripheralisation =

% of the vote in the periphery ote in the largest cities % of the vo

A final score above 1 would indicate a larger support in the peripheral areas of the country, while a score below 1 would suggest a more urban electoral base. Figure 3.2 clearly shows that, throughout its history, Bossi’s party remained under-represented in the main Italian cities and, in fact, between

3.5

2.93

3

Peripheralisation

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3.06

2.63

2.36

2.5 2

1.92 1.51

1.5 1 0.5 0

1992

1994

1996

2001

2006

Figure 3.2  The “peripheralisation” of the LN’s vote

2008

48

Populism in Europe

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1992 and 2006 it increasingly became a party of the peripheries.6 If in 1992 the League’s share of the vote was “only” 50% higher in the peripheries (peripheralisation score = 1.51), in 2006 it was three times as high as in the urban areas (peripheralisation score = 3.06). This trend was only slightly reversed in 2008 (when the party gained the same score nationally as in 1992; however, its vote was much more concentrated in the provinces, when compared with that election).

The voters As mentioned above, throughout Bossi’s tenure as League’s leader (and indeed after that, too) one of the noteworthy features of the economy of northern Italy was the importance of SMEs competing at the global level while battling state inefficiency at home and high levels of taxation. Hence, given the geography of the League’s vote and its consistent anti-statist, pro-small business rhetoric (see Chapter 2), the reader will not be surprised to find that the party was always supported by large numbers of small business owners, self-employed people and artisans. The data in Table 3.6 shows the occupational profile of the LN’s voters in northern Italy throughout most of the Bossi era. It demonstrates that small business owners, farmers and artisans were indeed among the keenest supporters of the party in the early 1990s. Moreover, the data show that blue-collar workers were also attracted by Bossi’s message. Following the League’s decision to come out of Berlusconi’s right-wing coalition and fight the 1996 election on its own (see later), blue-collar workers became for a while the party’s dominant constituency. Heidi Beirich and Dwayne Woods (2000: 142) have written about this development and argued that, in the late 1990s, artisans and workers who felt threatened by globalising forces that they felt were “beyond their control” were particularly susceptible to Bossi’s message. The fact that the PCI was undergoing a process of transformation and attempting to shed its image as the party of factory workers certainly helps to explain this development. However it was also part of a deeper shift affecting political systems across the whole of Europe since the 1990s, whereby the Left found it considerably harder to hold on to its working-class constituencies vis-à-vis new populist challengers (Eatwell and Goodwin, 2018). As Daniele Albertazzi and Duncan McDonnell (2005) have pointed out, from the late 1990s the League revisited its liberal positions on the economy – famously identified by Herbert Kitschelt (1995) as one ingredient of the “winning formula” of “radical right” parties in the 1990s – and quickly moved to protectionist positions. This was especially noticeable with reference to competition from China – which the party became increasingly



49

The electoral arena

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Table 3.6  Support for the LN (% of respondents) in northern Italy by occupational profile Profession

1991

1994

1996

Entrepreneurs/Managers White-collar workers/Teachers Owners of small businesses/ Farmers/Artisans Blue-collar workers Unemployed All respondents

14.0 13.3

15.8 16.0 26.5

12.4 18.8 23.9

7.6

14.2 16.9

17.3 19.8

5.9 8.2

11.2 14.1

2001

2006

2008

4.4 8.2

13.5 10.9

8.1 8.5

15.5 17.2

Source: Various polls included in Ronchi (2010). Categories with values above the “all respondents” percentage are in bold-italics.

vociferous in labelling as “unfair”. The shift was accompanied by a growing focus on socio-cultural issues, such as the alleged impact of immigration on northern Italy. The first studies on the League published at the beginning of the 1990s confirm its success among business owners and artisans. Ilvo Diamanti found that, among “party sympathisers”, as he called them, living in the Lombard region, the percentage of self-employed people working in the industrial sector was above average (24% vs 19% for the Lombard electorate as a whole) (Diamanti, 1991: 172, Table 3). As for the educational level of the typical League voter, the same study found that the percentage of those who had attended only compulsory school was the same as for the Lombard electorate as a whole (at 33%). In other words, in the period when the LL became the LN (by incorporating various autonomist movements across the North), the party’s electorate was not skewed towards people at the very bottom of the education ladder. Although the League’s voters in Lombardy were less likely than the average Lombard voter to hold a university degree, many of them had, however, undertaken vocational studies. Hence Diamanti (1991, Table 3: 172) found that the smaller presence of university graduates (17% vs 25%) among the League’s sympathisers, as compared to the Lombard electorate as a whole, was offset by the higher percentage of people holding diplomas (50% vs 41%). As far as age is concerned, the League was successful in attracting young sympathisers in the region of Lombardy (15% vs 13% in the regional electorate as a whole) (Diamanti, 1991: 172, Table 3) – a finding that tallies with what Renato Mannheimer (1993: 92) found in the same period while

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50

Populism in Europe

studying League voters in the Milanese area. Furthermore, Gianluca Passarelli and Dario Tuorto (2012b: 190, Table 3.23) show that the age of the leghista voter remained considerably lower than that of the average northern Italian voter throughout the whole of Bossi’s “era”. As for gender, Diamanti (1991), Mannheimer (1993) and Passarelli and Tuorto (2012b) all show a predominance of men over women among League sympathisers and voters, which, again, is in line with what has been found among similar parties in the same period. While these features of the League’s electorate could still be noticed towards the end of Bossi’s time as leader, as we have mentioned, the differences between the LN electorate and the northern electorate as a whole started to level off to an extent as years went by. In 2008 the LN voter’s average age was still lower than that of the average northern voter (i.e., 48.8 vs 51) (Passarelli and Tuorto, 2012b: 190, Table 3.23), but now by about two years, as opposed to between three and four years in 2001 and 2006. Equally, while there were still more male voters than the average, the gender gap had been reduced to half a percentage point by 2008 (Passarelli and Tuorto, 2012b: 190, Table 3.23). Generally speaking, it is fair to say that, with the passing of time, there has been a tendency towards a slow but steady “normalisation” of the LN, again in line with what was happening to populist radical right parties in Europe in the same period (Eatwell and Goodwin, 2018) – with the exception of the social composition of the League’s electorate (as the self-employed/artisans/ businessmen and blue-collar workers continued to disproportionally support the party).

Alliances and competition with other parties Having considered the party’s electoral performance under Bossi, the geography of its vote and the composition of its electorate, we now offer a brief analysis of where the party positioned itself at each general election and how it interacted with other political actors. This is also done by considering the “rules of the game”, that is, the voting system, which during Bossi’s leadership was changed twice. We will see that the League’s relationship with its allies (first and foremost, the fulcrum of the centre-right alliance in this period: Silvio Berlusconi) changed, together with its relative strength, which, as we have also seen, fluctuated significantly over time. However, what is certain is that, overall, Bossi’s League remained a party able to punch above its weight as an agenda setter, despite its contingent of representatives in Parliament being at times (e.g., after the 2001 election) rather small.



The electoral arena

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1992 and 1994 These were, respectively, the last general election of the so-called First Republic and the first election of the Second (see Chapter 1), with the latter certifying the collapse of the parties that had governed Italy without interruption since the Second World War (the DC being the largest one). In 1992 Bossi’s party was able to attract about a quarter of the vote in the richest and most productive regions in the country (see Table 3.2), and this translated into an 8.7% share of the vote nationally. While this provided further confirmation of the crisis of traditional mainstream parties that was soon to lead to their demise, at this stage the result did not translate into government seats for Bossi’s party. Neither did Bossi wish the League to be coalitionable with the hated mainstream parties that it was contributing to destroy, nor was it regarded as such by the mainstream parties themselves. However, the presence of a new political force of a considerable size in Parliament, i.e., the League, significantly reduced the chances of forming a stable governmental majority including the five parties that had ruled Italy from 1981 to 1991 (DC, PSI, PRI, PLI and the Partito Socialista Democratico Italiano (Italian Democratic Socialist Party), the so-called penta-partito, or “five-party party”). It also contributed to the destabilisation of a consociational power system, which, as we have seen, was under increasing judicial scrutiny and rapidly losing the support of large chunks of the electorate. By the time of the 1994 elections, a new “bipolar” dynamic had come to characterise Italian politics, whereby a centre-left coalition would now have to compete with a centre-right one, of which the LN was a member, in order to govern. Such a dynamic was fostered mainly by two factors: (a) the fact that the electoral law was changed from a proportional to a mainly majoritarian one (D’Alimonte and Bartolini, 2002), and (b) the creation of Silvio Berlusconi’s FI party at the end of 1993, as this acted as the glue binding together the various right-wing parties determined to stop the Left from governing (see below). The electoral laws adopted before the general election of 1994 (and also applying to the 1996 and 2001 elections) were laws 276 and 277/1993. They were approved by Parliament following a referendum held in 1993 that was widely interpreted as indicating the electorate’s desire to shelve a purely proportional system of representation and adopt a more majoritarian one to facilitate the formation of strong governing majorities. Hence, a mixed electoral system was introduced via this legislation, whereby 75% of parliamentary seats were assigned by Simple Majority Voting (First Past the Post) and only 25% by a proportional method – the latter in order to secure some degree of representation in Parliament to all parties. The effect of these laws was indeed to provide a very strong incentive for parties to join one of the two

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broad electoral coalitions (either centre-left or centre-right), as these were the only ones that now had a realistic chance of “capturing” uninominal seats, by competing to secure a plurality of votes for their unitary candidates in the various constituencies into which the country had been divided. In this context, the 1994 election was particularly important for the LN. While in 1992 the party had found itself competing with discredited parties for the anti-left vote, by 1994 Silvio Berlusconi had created a brand new party, FI, that was targeting the very same voters that had initially been attracted by the LN (with the important difference that FI’s appeal could also be felt in central and southern Italy). Despite Berlusconi’s party gaining more votes than the LN in this election (21%, against the LN’s 8.4%), the League still ended up with an inflated number of seats that gave it great strength, thanks to a seat agreement the two parties had reached before the election that was in fact highly advantageous to Bossi’s party. A large number of leghisti having been chosen as the centre-right coalition’s unitary candidates to stand in uninominal seats to be assigned in northern Italy, the LN found itself with as many as 180 representatives in Parliament – a feat that was never repeated under Bossi’s leadership. And yet clouds were already gathering on the horizon for the LN. As the analysis of electoral flows following the 1994 European elections held less than three months after the general election clearly showed, many voters who had backed the LN in 1992 and 1994 were now migrating to the brand new FI. The European elections made this very apparent, as the LN’s support dropped to 6.6% while FI’s went from 21% to 30.6%. Some disagreement on policies notwithstanding (which was used by Bossi as an excuse to sink the centre-right alliance), the LN’s haemorrhage of votes towards FI provides the most rational explanation as to why the first Berlusconi government eventually lost the LN’s support after a few months, hence coming to a very premature end by the end of 1994 (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2015: 35).

1996 Following the collapse of the first government led by Silvio Berlusconi, after an interim period, fresh elections were called, which were held in the spring of 1996. Having pulled out of the centre-right alliance, as we have seen, the LN fought the 1996 election in splendid isolation, proposing itself as an alternative to both left- and right-wing coalitions. To achieve greater distinctiveness, since 1995 the party had started arguing, somewhat unconvincingly, that northern Italy was in fact a nation in its own right, renamed as “Padania” (Albertazzi, 2006), and that it should secede from

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Italy. Bossi’s strategy of radicalisation and differentiation paid off in electoral terms by turning the LN into a niche party that could appeal to a minority (however large) of radical northern voters. Hence, as the most voted-for party throughout the North (Biorcio, 1997: 86), with peaks of 42% in sub-alpine areas, in 1996 the LN managed a very respectable 10.1% nationally and put in its best general election performance since its foundation. Having fought the election on its own, despite an electoral law which, as we have seen, benefited large coalitions, the party’s tally of Members of Parliament (MPs) and senators inevitably shrunk. The party thus ended up with eighty-six representatives in Parliament, and if it did not reduce further this was thanks only to its impressive rootedness in sub-alpine areas of the North, where it was in fact able to defeat both the centre-right and centre-left coalitions. The LN spent the subsequent years clashing with both the governing centre-left and the centre-right opposition, but was unable to influence either of them and risked becoming irrelevant (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2010). As the regional elections of 2000 approached, therefore, it became apparent that Bossi and Berlusconi would have to accept the inevitability of what remained a mutually beneficial alliance, leading to a renewed alliance between the LN and others on the right before the general election of 2001.

2001 In terms of both vote percentage and tally of senators and MPs, the 2001 result represented the LN’s worst general election performance since its foundation. As its vote share slid to 3.9%, its team of parliamentary representatives was halved since 1996, being reduced from eight-six to forty-three. In its strongholds of Lombardy the party saw its vote share halved too, while it was slashed by two-thirds in other important northern regions, such as the Veneto region and Piedmont (see Table 3.1). Similarly, in areas where it had always found difficult to penetrate, such as the “red region” of Emilia-Romagna, its vote was also slashed by two-thirds. While there is no certainty about the actual causes of such a dramatic slump in support, it is at least reasonable to blame it on the most noticeable change in party strategy that had occurred since 1996: Bossi’s sudden abandonment of the claim for independence. There was, however, a silver lining amid the flurry of bad news: while in 1996 the LN had found itself isolated and unable to influence policy, from 2001 onwards it could again do so, albeit as a very minor partner. Hence, Bossi received assurances from second-time Prime Minister Berlusconi that a reform introducing “devolution” of some powers to the regions would be approved within the life of that Parliament, with support from all members of the

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centre-right alliance. Such reform was duly passed in 2006, only to be thrown out by the electorate in a subsequent referendum.

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2006 The general elections of 2006 and 2008 were both fought under a new electoral law: law 270/2005. Following an established tradition or giving electoral legislation Latin sounding names, this was dubbed “Porcellum” in common parlance – the name deriving from the fact that its main proponent, the leghista Roberto Calderoli, had himself defined it as “una porcata” (a “rubbish/obscene law”, from the Italian word for pig: porco). The law had evidently been introduced to scupper the Left’s chances of winning the 2006 election outright (see later) by reintroducing an electoral system under which the Right was expected to do better – that is, one based on proportional representation. Although proportional, however, the “Porcellum” still fostered bipolarism, by combining proportional representation with a majority prize for the party (or, more likely, the electoral coalition) attracting the highest number of votes. In this election the LN benefited from a small increase in its share of the national vote (from 3.9 to 4.6%), despite the centre-right alliance as a whole losing votes; however, in its stronghold of Lombardy the League’s vote share decreased again, as it had done in the previous election. One of the side-effects of the new electoral law was that the party’s overall tally of parliamentary representatives also decreased (from forty-three to thirty-nine). Most importantly, however, and despite its less than satisfactory record in government, the Berlusconi-led coalition was beaten by the centre-left by only the narrowest margin in Italian history. Hence in the Chamber of Deputies the centre-left secured the majority premium that had been introduced as part of the reform of the electoral system by less than 25,000 votes. As for the Senate, here Berlusconi’s centre-right received circa 270,000 votes more than their rivals, but it still got slightly fewer seats than the centre-left, due to the regional basis on which the Senate’s majority premium was awarded (Chiaramonte, 2008). However, there was a silver lining on this occasion too. As the centre-left enjoyed only a very slim majority, was internally divided and was subjected to a well-orchestrated rhetorical onslaught by a united opposition led by Berlusconi, in the end it managed to govern for only two years, after which early elections were called.

2008 This was the last general election fought by Bossi at the head of the LN and is remembered as a very successful one for his party and the centre-right

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as a whole. The League almost doubled its share of the vote (from 4.6 to 8.3%), and gained eighty-five representatives in Parliament (up from thirtynine two years previously). As the undisputed leader of the centre-right alliance, Berlusconi had many reasons to celebrate too. Not only had his coalition been returned to office with clear majorities in both houses of Parliament, but, with fewer coalition partners to manage than had been the case in 1994 and 2001, he could now look forward to leading a possibly less fractious centre-right coalition. What had happened was that the centreright coalition had been reduced from four main parties (FI, AN, UDC and LN) to just two (LN and PdL). Of the two parties that were now “missing”, the UDC had abandoned the governing alliance, mistakenly thinking it would be able to occupy the place of kingmaker in between the two left and right alliances, while AN had agreed to merge with FI into the PdL (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2009). Like in 1994, however, the government’s survival this time depended on continuing support from the LN, “the big winner of these elections” (D’Alimonte, 2008: 24). Bucking the depressing trend that had characterised the last two elections, the League now appeared to be making serious inroads into the FI/AN (i.e., PdL) vote in northern regions, which explains its outstanding result in the Veneto region and, in part, also its remarkable performance in the formerly Communist region of Emilia-Romagna (see Table 3.1) (see also Passarelli and Tuorto, 2012b: 102–3). The consequence of this success was that – unlike after the 2006 election – this time the League was able to secure ministries that really mattered to the party’s chances of dominating the government agenda on the two themes it really cared about: federalism and immigration/law and order. Hence, Bossi himself was made Minister for Institutional Reform, in charge of pushing through yet another reform of the state aimed at achieving “fiscal federalism”, following the defeat of “devolution” by referendum, while the prominent League member and ex-minister, Roberto Maroni, was made Minister of the Interior, hence able to act on migration and law and order. We will discuss the party’s achievement and behaviour in government in the next chapter. Our brief discussion of how the League performed in general elections has shown that its electoral fortunes fluctuated quite considerably under Bossi’s leadership. Hence, there was never a lasting trend upwards or downwards that could be identified, rather, the party’s performance was characterised by inconsistency throughout the whole of the 1990s and 2000s. This was due to a variety of factors, including the party’s relationship with other actors on the right and the extent to which Bossi felt the LN’s message needed to be distinctive, as compared to Berlusconi’s (as when, in the 1990s, he radicalised its message, leading to a temporary reversal of the electoral decline noted just after the 1994 election). Importantly, however, each time Bossi decided that

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it was in the League’s interest to collaborate with other parties within the centre-right and to privilege office seeking above vote seeking, his party always looked as if it could punch well above its weight as a member of coalition governments. In particular, the League was always noted for its activism on the issues it cared about: immigration/law and order and federalism (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2010; 2015). This matters to us here, as one of the main arguments advanced in this book is precisely that, despite its fluctuating performance and the fact that under Bossi the party never managed to get out of its northern strongholds, and certainly never became a nation-wide party, it remained a very important and influential actor within the right-wing alliance. Indeed, both in 1994 and in 2008, there would have been no Berlusconi governments, had it not been for the support of the League.

Conclusion In this chapter we have focused on the League’s electoral performance during the two decades of Bossi’s leadership, by highlighting continuities as well as changes. The party’s ideological dynamism (discussed in Chapter 2) was accompanied by its ability to recover from electoral crises, expand its success in particular areas of the country (thus offsetting lost ground in others) and pragmatically shift its alliances and relations with other parties. As far as its electoral strength was concerned, throughout Bossi’s time the party remained a small to medium-sized political actor at national level. We have shown that, within the North, the party tended to do particularly well in sub-alpine provinces, characterised by extensive networks of SMEs, rather than in the metropolitan areas dominated by large industries and the service sector. We have also pointed out that, while Lombardy remained the main base of support for the party (also due to the size of the region), a process of “Venetisation” occurred towards the end of the Bossi era. This led to the consolidation of a Lombardo-Veneto electoral core. The party failed to achieve the same success in Piedmont, the third-largest region of the North, mainly because around half of its population lives in the metropolitan area of Turin, where there are fewer SMEs and many more working-class voters. Despite a significant proportion of these migrating to the LN, as we have seen, many others were also sticking with left-wing parties, hence making it more difficult for Bossi to replicate here the success enjoyed in much of Lombardy and Veneto. Liguria and Trentino–South Tyrol remained at the margins of the LN’s “area of influence” – and were anyway less important to it, due to their smaller populations, as compared to Lombardy and Veneto (and so was Friuli Venezia-Giulia, where the party was doing well, but the population was small). During the last years of

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Bossi’s leadership the party finally managed to achieve some considerable successes south of the river Po (see its performance in some provinces of Emilia Romagna in the 2010 regional elections). These areas, dominated by the Left for many decades after the war, were also characterised by very strong SMEs and high income levels. While culturally and politically distinct from Lombardy and the Veneto region, their productive systems were therefore not that dissimilar from those of these regions. Over the years, the LN also underwent a process of “peripheralisation”, losing support in the main cities and gaining even more votes in the rural and suburban areas of the North. This reached a peak in 2006 (see Figure 3.2) – the last general election but one fought by Bossi. In sum, Bossi’s LN will be remembered as a party representing the periphery of the North, which, while being economically dynamic and prosperous, increasingly feared some of the effects of cultural and economic globalisation and global competition (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2005; 2010). Our analysis in this chapter has shown that the party’s performance was never stable during Bossi’s tenure as leader. As we have already noted, however, when Bossi decided that it was in the League’s interest to collaborate with other parties, the LN ended up playing a crucial role within centre-right coalitions, despite its limited size (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2015). In the next chapter we will show that this also had effects on the political agenda of the Right and policy outcomes of the government led by Silvio Berlusconi.

Postscript: the party’s electoral performance under Salvini Despite some attempts to go beyond the border of northern Italy, Bossi’s party never managed to achieve considerable success south of Rome (in fact, not even south of Florence). After all, the party maintained its (macro-) regional focus for the whole period, lacking resources, personnel and willingness to create a nation-wide electoral machine. After Bossi’s downfall there were no clear signs that the electoral geography of the party was significantly changing. As shown in Table 3.7, in a context of general decline – as the party’s vote share shrunk from 8.3% in 2008 to 4.1% in 2013 – support for the LN remained concentrated in the LombardoVeneto. Worryingly for the party, it did particularly badly in the “red” regions of central Italy, into which it had only recently expanded (Istituto Cattaneo, 2013). In fact, the party seemed to play a much more relevant role at the regional level, leading the governments of the three main regions of the North, than nationally.7 Yet things started to change in late 2013, when Matteo Salvini replaced Roberto Maroni (elected secretary in 2011) as the party leader. After this,

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Table 3.7  From Bossi to Salvini: the LN’s electoral performance 2008–2018, by region Region

2008

2013

2018

Piedmont Lombardy Liguria Veneto Friuli-Venezia Giulia Trentino-Alto Adige Emilia-Romagna Tuscany Umbria Marche Latium Abruzzo Sardinia Molise Campania Basilicata Apulia Calabria Sicily National

12.6 21.6 6.8 27.1 13 9.4 7.9 2 1.7 2.2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 8.3

4.8 12.9 2.3 10.5 6.7 4.2 2.6 0.7 0.6 0.7 0.2 0.2 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.1 0.1 0.3 0.2 4.1

22.6 28 19.9 32.2 25.8 19.2 19.2 17.4 20.2 17.3 13.4 13.8 10.8 8.7 4.3 6.3 6.2 5.6 5.2 17.4

Source: Authors’ own calculations based on results from Italian Ministry of the Interior.

the process of nationalisation of electoral support occurred in a rather short period of time. In the 2018 general election the party did not just achieve an astonishing national result (17.4%) but made very significant inroads into central and even southern Italy. As shown in Table 3.7, the new League led by Salvini achieved double-digit results in all central Italian regions, even in Latium, the region of the ancient enemy: Rome. In the South, where the party was basically non-existent during the previous three decades, percentages ranged from a respectable 4.3% in Campania to 10.8% in Sardinia. Interestingly, Salvini was elected MP in Calabria, in the deep South. Figure 3.3 shows even more clearly how radical the change in the geographic distribution of the vote has been under Salvini. We consider the coefficient of variation (CV), measuring the dispersion of LN’s electoral results across all Italian regions from 1992 to 2018. The CV is obtained by dividing the standard deviation of the results’ distribution by the mean

1.8

1.46

Coefficient of Variation

1.6

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1.4

1.46

1.56

1.27

1.46

1.5

1.16

1.2 1 0.8

0.53

0.6 0.4 0.2 0 1992

1994

1996

2001

2006

2008

2013

2018

Figure 3.3  A new national party? Dispersion of the LN’s electoral support across regions, 1992–2018 (Coefficient of Variation)

(Caramani, 2004). Therefore, the larger the score, the less territorially homogeneous the support for a party. We can see that until 2013 the CV was consistently well above 1, meaning that the standard deviation of the results was actually higher than the mean. The lowest level of dispersion during Bossi’s leadership was achieved in 2006, when the LN’s lists included some members of the southern Movimento per le Autonomie (Movement for Autonomies), which was particularly strong in Sicily. Yet the 0.53 CV obtained in 2018 is unprecedented and suggests that the change in the ideological and programmatic profile of the party discussed at the end of Chapter 2 has also had significant electoral effects. Between 2011 and 2018, the League remained an opposition party. It did not join Berlusconi’s party in supporting Monti’s technocratic government in 2011–13 and, in fact, strongly opposed the austerity policies implemented by the latter. As a result, relations with its traditional ally deteriorated, although a right-wing coalition was recreated in the following general election (and never ceased to exist at the local and regional levels). Yet, in 2013, the M5S, a new anti-corruption party led by the activist and actor Beppe Grillo, achieved a stunning success, which significantly changed inter-party and inter-coalition dynamics. Due to the M5S receiving 25.6% of the national vote in 2013, Italy ceased to be a bipolar system and became a tripolar one, in which centre-left and centre-right now had to face a third political actor, as well as competing with each other. As for the national government, given the M5S’s unwillingness to cooperate with the other parties, and the broad agreement about the undesirability

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of fresh elections, it was eventually formed with the support of a grand coalition between Berlusconi’s party and the centre-left Partito Democratico (PD – Democratic Party). After Berlusconi decided to agree to this, the LN went into opposition, thus breaking for the second time an alliance that had continued uninterrupted from 2000 to 2011. Although Berlusconi’s party left this government soon after its leader was convicted of tax fraud, during most of the period preceding the 2018 election the links between it and the League significantly weakened. This was also a consequence of the change in LN’s leadership. Whereas Bossi established a strong personal relationship with Berlusconi, Salvini had a much more cautious approach towards the former ally and even questioned the opportunity to forge alliances with a party led by a convicted politician (Adnkronos, 2018), thus echoing the anti-corruption and anti-establishment rhetoric of the M5S. The relationship between Salvini and Berlusconi further deteriorated when the latter decided to support some of the constitutional reforms proposed by the centre-left government led by Matteo Renzi. A centre-right coalition including both League and FI (and two minor parties) re-emerged in 2018. Despite years of tensions and significant strategic and ideological differences, the two parties decided to join forces to maximise their chances of winning parliamentary seats. This move was also encouraged by a new electoral law approved in 2017. The “Rosatellum”, as it was colloquially known (after Ettore Rosato, the MP who promoted the law), is a mixed voting system, with one third of seats allocated using a firstpast-the-post electoral system and two-thirds using a proportional method, with one round of voting (Chiaramonte and D’Alimonte, 2018). The mechanisms of this law are very complicated, but a key factor is that the election of first-past-the-post candidates in each constituency is linked to the proportional part of the system, which allows for the formation of pre-electoral multiparty coalitions. Thus, broader coalitions are more likely to win a larger number of constituency candidates than parties running on their own. As shown in Table 3.7, the election results were astonishing. For the first time the League became the largest party of the Right, overtaking Berlusconi’s FI. This significantly changed the equilibria and dynamics within the rightwing coalition, with Salvini in charge of post-election negotiations, which eventually led to the creation of a new coalition including both the M5S and the LN, but excluding FI. Once again, the paths of the two main parties of the Right seemed to diverge, although locally and regionally their cooperation continued. Thus, after seven years of opposition, the League was back in government but in a totally different position, no longer acting as Berlusconi’s junior partner but establishing an equal relationship with the M5S (even though the latter obtained almost twice as many votes and seats as

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Figure 3.4  Electoral map of the LN in 2009. Note: Darker area means stronger support. White = vote 30%; intermediate categories are 5–9.9%, 10–19.9% and 20–29.9%.

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Figure 3.5  Electoral map of the LN in 2019. Note: Darker area means stronger support. White = vote 30%; intermediate categories are 5–9.9%, 10–19.9% and 20–29.9%.

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the former). In fact, the immediate effect of the LN’s new governmental experience was a significant surge in the polls in the months following the creation of the government, which placed the party ahead of all the others (including the M5S) for the first time in its history. This surge was confirmed by the results of the 2019 European election, when Salvini’s party managed to win more than one third of the national vote. This was the last step in the process of nationalisation of the LN vote, which had already accelerated in the 2018 general election. Maps in Figures 3.4 and 3.5 comparing the last national election of the Bossi era (2009 European election) and the most recent one under Salvini’s leadership (2019 European election) clearly show that in ten years the geography of party support has changed radically and that today’s League acts as a key political force in most of the Italian peninsula. This is a truly astonishing achievement for Salvini, who, as far as we know, is the only leader of a European regionalist party ever to turn his organisation into a large force at national level, not to mention doing so in the space of very few years.

Notes 1 Things started to change only during the last few years of Bossi’s tenure (in particular, from 2006 onwards), when the problems of the centre-left (by then on its second stint in power at the national level) opened up new electoral space for the League in these regions. After Bossi was forced to step aside and was replaced by Salvini as leader, this process of growth of the League in (now “ex”) red regions accelerated further. 2 Territorial political subcultures refer to areas “characterised by a specific political tradition and by a number of institutions – parties, interest groups, cultural and voluntary organisations – which are rooted in the territory and share the same political-ideological origin” (Trigilia, 1986: 13, cited by Cento Bull and Gilbert, 2001: 79). Not only did Bossi put forward a new ideology based on regionalism and populism, through which he reinterpreted the relationship between northern Italy and the central state (as well as the South), but he also supported the spreading of such ideology by creating a variety of organisations parallel to his party (see Chapter 5). 3 While the party often performed equally well in Piedmont and Friuli-Venezia Giulia percentage-wise, the latter’s population is much smaller than Piedmont’s (circa 1.2 million vs 4.3 million), hence the region was never as important to its success as Piedmont (see Figure 3.1). 4 We considered provinces in the following regions: Piedmont, Liguria, Lombardy, Veneto, Trentino Alto Adige, Friuli Venezia Giulia and Emilia Romagna. Toscana was not included, because until 2010 the LN’s support in this region was negligible. 5 We select the twenty-one largest cities, one in each of the nineteen regions and two autonomous provinces (Bolzano and Trento).

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6 This time we focus only on general elections, because we are looking at aggregate national results, and the fact that regional elections occurred at different times (i.e., regions voted in different years) makes the comparison with general elections problematic. 7 In 2013 the then leader of the League, Roberto Maroni, was elected president of the Lombardy region. The party had already won the presidencies of the Veneto region and Piedmont in 2010.

4

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The party in office

Introduction Radical as it may have been, the LN remained an eminently “coalitionable” party throughout its history (Albertazzi, McDonnell and Newell, 2011). Given the features of the electoral laws discussed in Chapter 3, which either combined proportional representation with first-past-the-post or else awarded a bonus of seats to the coalition that managed to gain a plurality of votes, Berlusconi’s centre-right electoral alliance was left with no chance of winning elections against its foes on the centre-left unless it could ally itself with the LN (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2015: 34–37). In other words, Bossi’s party remained too strong in far too many northern areas for Berlusconi to hope he could win outright without securing its support. Hence, as their disagreements of the 1990s were put behind them, a new pact was signed between the two leaders, leading to the LN taking part in three more coalition governments led by Berlusconi, after the one that had ended in acrimony in 1994. These were: Berlusconi II (2001–5), Berlusconi III (2005–6) and Berlusconi IV (2008–11). While the exact composition of these governments varied, their fulcrum inevitably remained the party that was, by far, the largest within it: FI, which in 2007 was renamed Popolo della Libertà (PdL), only to return to its original name in 2013. Interestingly, the centre-right governments of the 2000s were characterised by a close working relationship between Bossi and Berlusconi, and what appeared to be a much better understanding of each other’s priorities than had been the case in the 1990s (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2005; 2010). Yet, the League was also an important governmental actor at the regional and local levels. Some of the main northern cities have at times been led by LN mayors since the 1990s, and these sometimes gained national popularity (for instance, Marco Formentini, who led the Milan administration between 1993 and 1997). In March 2010 (that is, towards the end of the Bossi era), prominent party representatives Luca Zaia and Roberto Cota won the presidency of two of the northern economic powerhouses: the Piedmont

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and Veneto regions. Not only was this a first in the history of the party, but in these regional contexts, and particularly in the Venetian one, Berlusconi’s party also acted as a junior coalition partner, the opposite of what had happened at the national level for many years. Hence, the subnational level is also an important forum in which to assess what the League did as a party of government, even more so, given the federalist values which the party was supposed to espouse. In this chapter we first focus on the League’s representation in legislative and executive bodies at the national level, and then consider its role in successive national governments and its impact on key policy areas. Following on from this, we provide a short overview of the role of the party at the subnational level, particularly in regional governments. Interestingly, while Bossi’s party was arguably able to only partially fulfil its aims in successive national governments, its subnational representatives managed to come across to the northern electorate as constructive and pragmatic administrators on many occasions. Hence, we will consider the subnational level too, before offering some concluding thoughts on what the party’s experiences as a member of successive executives actually mean.

The LN in public office at the national level: Parliament and government Since its foundation the LN, managed to form parliamentary groups in both the Chamber of Deputies (the lower chamber) and the Senate (the upper chamber). As shown in Table 4.1, the best result in terms of representation was achieved in 1994, when, thanks to the alliance with Berlusconi’s FI, the LN obtained almost one fifth of the total number of senators and deputies, despite winning just 8.4% of the vote.1 In the same year the party also managed a feat that has never been repeated since, as it managed to see one of its members, Irene Pivetti, take the Presidency of the Chamber of Deputies (the third highest-ranking office of the Italian Republic). For the rest of this period, the share of seats won by the party roughly reflected its share of the vote. Data provided by the Italian Senate also show that LN senators elected during the Bossi era were generally younger than the average age of all senators, as shown in Figure 4.1.2 This gap remained large, and even increased towards the end of the Bossi era. At the same time, reflecting the characteristics of its electorate, the League’s group remained quite male dominated. Again, the statistical database of the Senate shows that in a general context in which women were consistently and significantly underrepresented in the upper chamber, the LN performed



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The party in office Table 4.1  LN elected representatives in the Italian Parliament (Chamber of Deputies and Senate), 1990–2008 1994

1996

2001

2006

2008

80 8.5

177 18.7

86 9.1

47 5

36 3.8

85 9

Sources: Archives of Chamber of Deputies (https://legislatureprecedenti.camera.it/) and Senate (www.senato.it/sitostorico/home).

58 56 54 Age

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Seats % of total seats

1992

52 50 48 46

1992–94

1994–96

1996–2001

Average age: all senators

2001–6

2006–8

2008–13

Average age: LN senators

Figure 4.1  Average age of LN senators, 1992– 2013, compared to all senators

worse than all other parties. Indeed, in two legislative terms (1996–2001 and 2006–8) it did not manage to elect even one female senator (Figure 4.2). Only the last term under Bossi’s leadership marked a significant improvement, with one female LN senator, Rosi Mauro, being elected vicepresident of the Senate.3 The dominant role played by male politicians within the party becomes even more apparent when considering the ministerial positions that it obtained in the four cabinets led by Silvio Berlusconi from 1994 to 2011, none of which was ever held by a woman. Table 4.2 also shows which ministries were controlled by the party, and the region where the designated minister had been elected to Parliament. This helps to provide a first overview of the policy areas which the League regarded as crucial to its agenda, and also of the geographical distribution of governmental roles. We can see here that the overwhelming majority of LN ministers were from Lombardy,

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20

% Women in the Senate

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18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 1992–94

1994–96

1996–2001

% Women: total

2001–6

2006–8

2008–13

% Women: LN

Figure 4.2  Percentage of women elected in the Senate: comparison between the LN and the whole chamber, 1992–2013

confirming the region’s centrality within the party, which will also be discussed in the next chapter. This happened regardless of the LN’s success in other regions, too, particularly in the Veneto region. Indeed Luca Zaia, future President of the Veneto region, was designated Agriculture Minister in 2008, but this remained a one-off in the party’s history. In terms of policy priorities, it is clear that the party’s control of the Ministry of Reforms was instrumental to advancing its federalist agenda. It is therefore not surprising that Bossi himself held this ministry twice from 2001, and left it to Roberto Calderoli only between 2004 and 2006, when his health dramatically deteriorated after a stroke.4 The party also controlled the Ministry of the Interior twice, in 1994 and 2008–2011. The position was held on both occasions by the future party leader and future President of Lombardy, Roberto Maroni, allowing the party to establish its credentials as the champion of “law and order” and anti-immigration policies.5 Other ministries that the League controlled include Budget, EU Affairs, and Industry and Commerce (held briefly, due to the early collapse of the first Berlusconi government), as well as Justice, Labour and Welfare, Legislative Simplification and Agriculture. Leaving Justice aside, clearly Bossi’s party was mainly interested in exerting its influence in areas that mattered to its electorate and that the party could be said to “own”: (a) the functioning of bureaucracy and institutions (linked to its campaign against the inefficiencies of state institutions and the need for simplification of administrative procedures); (b) shaping the



Cabinet

Berlusconi I (1994)

Berlusconi II (2001–5)

Berlusconi III (2005–6)

Berlusconi IV (2008–11)

Name of Minister

Ministry

Roberto Maroni Domenico Comino Francesco Speroni Giancarlo Pagliarini Vito Gnutti Umberto Bossi Roberto Calderoli Roberto Castelli Roberto Maroni Roberto Calderoli Roberto Castelli Roberto Maroni Umberto Bossi Roberto Calderoli Roberto Maroni Luca Zaia

Deputy Prime Minister/ Interior EU Affairs Institutional Reforms Budget and Economic Planning Industry, Trading and Craft Institutional Reforms (until 19/07/2004) Institutional Reforms (from 20 July 2004) Justice Labour and Welfare Institutional Reforms Justice Labour and Welfare Institutional Reforms Administrative Simplification Interior Agriculture (until 16 April 2010)

Minister’s region Lombardy Piedmont Lombardy Lombardy Lombardy Lombardy Lombardy Lombardy Lombardy Lombardy Lombardy Lombardy Lombardy Lombardy Lombardy Veneto

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Table 4.2  LN ministers in Berlusconi I, II, II and IV cabinets.

Source: Italian government’s archive: www.governo.it/it/i-governi-dal-1943-ad-oggi/i-governi-nelle-legislature/192.

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territorial distribution of authority (in particular, the relations between central government and the regions); and (c) impacting on law and order and immigration issues (in line with its identification of foreigners and criminals as “enemies of the people”) (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2010: 1322–1324). Control of the Ministry of the Interior proved especially important for the League towards the end of the Bossi era, and it is no coincidence that a high-profile Interior Minister such as Maroni managed to succeed Bossi in 2012 for a brief period, before Salvini was eventually elected as leader. Of course, this does not mean that the party neglected economic issues altogether. Yet, rather than trying to implement a comprehensive economic agenda, it preferred to run ministries focusing on specific sectors of the economy that were more relevant to its core constituencies of the productive North: Industry, Commerce and Agriculture.6 At the same time, the fact that the LN was never handed back the EU Affairs Ministry after 1994 suggests that its increasing Euroscepticism (which grew after the introduction of the euro at the turn of the century) made its representatives less and less suitable to directly engage in EU negotiations, from Berlusconi’s perspective. The next section will consider the influence exerted by Bossi’s party during its several years in government, showing that this was exercised mainly in two areas: the decentralisation of the state and immigration/law and order.

Impact on public policy We will now consider what Bossi’s League did as a member of successive governments throughout the 2000s, i.e. from 2001 to 2011 – ignoring the first Berlusconi government since, it lasted less than nine months. During the early years of the century, the LN’s key objectives did not significantly change, and were indeed very consistent with the party’s ideology (see Chapter 2). Such objectives can be summarised as follows: (a) achieving greater northern autonomy (predicated upon the need to gain either “federalism”, “devolution” or “independence”, depending on whatever strategy was adopted by the party in different periods and the key words chosen to define such strategy); and (b) defending the people from its “enemies” – essentially, criminals and migrants. Study of the party’s key documentation and strategic communication, in addition to the analyses of the views of its members and representatives, underlines the centrality of these themes (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2010: 1329–1335; 2015: ch. 7). In addition to these, we also consider what the party did concerning Europe/the EU, as this allows us to keep track of the radicalisation of the LN’s positions under

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Bossi due the accelerating pace of European integration. Indeed, at the beginning of the 1990s the LN had been broadly supportive of the EU – hoping the process of integration would help to shift power from the national to the regional levels across the whole European continent (Verbeek and Zaslove 2015: 531), if not even help to free “the North” from the “Roman yoke” altogether (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2005: 955; 965). The party then performed a U-turn on all things European as soon as Italy was admitted into the European Monetary Union (Conti and De Giorgi, 2011: 271), as discussed at length in Chapter 2. In the second half of Bossi’s tenure as leader, therefore, the League became very critical of monetary union and the “Brussels elites”. While this level of Euroscepticism was new in Italian politics, Bossi was not the only leader engaging in it. On the contrary, as we will see below, he received backing from Prime Minister Berlusconi, who, having also been in favour of the euro in the past, was now keen to deflect criticism of the government’s stewardship of the economy onto the common currency. It is also important to stress that, while the LN remained critical of the EU when it came to campaigning, the governments it was part of never put a spanner into the workings of the Union (see below). In the next sections we will consider what the LN did in government concerning this topic, and then move on to immigration/law and order and greater northern autonomy.

Berlusconi II and III (2001–6) The experiences of the second and third Berlusconi governments (which followed each other) were marred by constant infighting between government allies, as these relentlessly focused on what they perceived to be the interests of their different constituencies. The centre-right’s constituent parties were the following: FI and the LN (enjoying a particularly close relationship in this period, as mentioned); AN, a “post-fascist” party trying to redefine itself as more centrist; and the Unione dei Democratici Cristiani e di Centro (Union of Christian Democrats and Centre Democrats, UDC). While both the FI’s and LN’s leaders were proud Northerners and self-professed admirers of Lombardy’s ability to produce wealth and compete globally – despite FI being strong in the South, too – the power base of their allies was entirely located in Italy’s centre and south (Diamanti, 2003). The fact that the governing parties were rooted in very different areas of the country brought specific challenges to the League, which now controlled the newly constituted Ministry for Reform – which Bossi wanted to be the driving force behind the devolution of power to the regions. Apart from this ministry, the party had been given: (a) the Ministry of Justice – where, against the wishes of LN members, Minister Roberto Castelli had to push

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for the approval of legislation helping Berlusconi in some of the trials and investigations that concerned him in this period (Albertazzi and Müller, 2013); and (b) Work and Welfare – where Minister Roberto Maroni had to contend with the controversial and unpopular question of pension reform. In the end, an assessment of the LN’s performance in government during this period must conclude that, while not being completely ineffective, the party did not achieve much of note (in fact nothing at all on European matters). Europe and the EU During the period under discussion, Bossi voiced constant criticism of European institutions, with the assent, if not the backing, of Berlusconi. Particularly from 2004 onwards, as the rifts within the governing alliance deepened and the government’s ineffectiveness in improving Italy’s economy became more apparent, both leaders were happy to single out the new European currency as the major cause of the ills of northern Italian industry. First and foremost, the euro was said to have caused the loss of competitiveness on the international markets that Italian industry had suffered during the previous years (e.g. Il Corriere della Sera, 2004; La Repubblica, 2004b). However, the euro was not the LN’s only target, as far as European matters were concerned: alongside it, the party also criticised EU expansion to the East and the European Constitutional Treaty (which, however, never came into force). The former was alleged to be damaging of the interests of northern workers, while the latter was branded as an attempt to create a totalitarian “super-state” (Verbeek and Zaslove, 2015: 537). While Europe provided an easy target for Bossi’s verbal attacks, there was effectively no chance that his controversial proposals (such as arguing that Italy should reintroduce the lira) (La Repubblica, 2005a) would be pursued by the government. In other words, the League could create a niche for itself by putting forward radical ideas on all things European, while knowing that they would never be put to the test, hence using the EU to keep “one foot in and one foot out” of government (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2005).7 In turn, Berlusconi was happy to turn a blind eye to this because it helped to shift the attention of the public from his lacklustre stewardship of the Italian economy (not to mention his problems with the judicial authorities). In the end, given the fundamentally pro-European instincts of many within FI, AN and the UDC, the actual policies pursued by Berlusconi on Europe were in fact not at all dissimilar to those of his predecessors (Croce, 2005). Take, for instance, the drafting and approval of the European Constitutional Treaty – by far the most important EU-related development of those years. The document was meant to replace EU treaties with a single

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text, and speed up decision making: by expanding Qualified Majority Voting on a variety of issues, it would ultimately have curtailed the power of individual governments. Throughout 2002 and 2003, as the details of the treaty were being negotiated, the LN representative, Francesco Speroni (a member of Italy’s negotiating team), cut a very isolated figure and wielded hardly any influence at all even within Italy’s own group of representatives, let alone in discussions with other countries (Fabbrini, 2004: 242). Toeing a quite uncritical pro-EU line, the Italian government ended up not tabling any amendments to the text of the Constitution (Fabbrini, 2004: 242) – hardly the behaviour of a government worried that too much power was being transferred “to Brussels”. Moreover, despite Bossi duly instructing his party to vote against the Constitution when it came to Parliament, its ratification by Italy was never in doubt, since all other parties but the radical left Rifondazione Comunista (Communist Refoundation) declared their support for it and voted in favour (Corriere della Sera, 2005).8 Indeed, knowing this allowed Bossi to safely play the part of the odd one out, thus confirming his reputation as someone who had not been “tamed” by his experience in government. The process leading to the drafting of the European Constitution and its approval by Italy is not the only example of the League’s lack of influence within its own government on Europeans matters. The party (and this time also FI) had to give way on a measure that both Bossi and Berlusconi had much opposed: the introduction of the European arrest warrant, which would allow prosecutors from EU member countries to order the arrest and transfer of suspects to their own state without having to initiate complex (and usually lengthy) extradition procedures. At the time, Berlusconi was accused of opposing this due to “the inclusion of crimes such as fraud and corruption” (Zaslove, 2011: 187) in the text, for which he knew he was at risk of being prosecuted. As for the LN, it was “concerned that it [the arrest warrant] would include provisions to fight racism and xenophobia” (Zaslove, 2011: 187). In the end, on 22 May 2005 this measure was also duly approved by the Italian Parliament – although the LN voted against it (but not FI) (La Repubblica, 2005b). Finally, the LN also opposed the idea that accession talks should continue with Turkey (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2005: 966) and that the EU should be further enlarged to include formerly communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) (Zaslove, 2011: 188–189). While opposition to Turkey was predicated on the basis of an alleged clash of values between Europe’s Christian and Turkey’s Islamic traditions, with Minister for Welfare Roberto Maroni calling for a referendum on the issue, which, under Italy’s constitution, could not be held (La Repubblica, 2004a), EU enlargement to CEE countries was criticised on the expectation that it would affect low-paid workers by

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allowing workers from the East to move freely (Zaslove, 2011: 188). In the end, the government did not change its position on any of these themes either. However, as a small consolation prize, Bossi succeeded in making the position of the fervently pro-EU Minister for Foreign Affairs, Renato Ruggiero, untenable by attacking him every other day. This led to Ruggiero’s resignation in January 2002, and at least this was interpreted as a personal victory for Bossi. However, it was effectively the only “gain” made by the party on European matters during that period, if it can be regarded as such. In fact, for all its posturing and complaining about government policies, in the end the LN did not seem to have any impact on Italy’s approach to EU-related matters on any occasions in the first half of the decade. This conclusion is also reached by Nicolò Conti and Elisabetta De Giorgi (2011) on the basis of a study of how the LN voted on European-related issues in the Italian Parliament more generally between 1996 and 2008. They define the party’s Euroscepticism: “in name only”. Law and order and immigration As discussed in Chapter 2, the “defence” of the people from criminals and migrants was a key theme for Bossi’s League. Not unexpectedly, therefore, the LN made migration (particularly from Islamic countries) an important theme of its 2001 general election campaign, and continued to talk about it once in government. For instance, writing in January 2001 about a bombing campaign waged against Christians in Indonesia, the party’s paper La Padania ended up accusing all Muslims of being champions of intolerance (Mazzetto, 2001), while another article from the same issue focused on the “shocking series of violent attacks perpetrated by illegal migrants [extracomunitari] from outside the EU” (Bassi, 2001) in Italy. The events of 9/11, which took place just a few months after the new centre-right government had been sworn in, only strengthened the LN’s resolve to focus on what it now defined as a “clash of civilizations” between Christianity and Islam. Thus the party insisted that there was a need to defend western civilisation against those (i.e., Muslims) who had “waged war” against it (Baiocchi, 2001), and led local initiatives across northern Italy by campaigning to close mosques (La Repubblica, 2003) and by opposing the creation of what it dubbed “Islamic schools” (Monestiroli, 2005). If the actual legislation passed during those years did not quite match the party’s radical rhetoric, it was, however, inspired by the same principles. Bossi started working on new legislation on immigration shortly after the government was sworn in, alongside the AN leader Gianfranco Fini. Law 189/2002 (commonly known as the “Bossi-Fini” law) established the principle that immigration was admissible only to the extent that foreigners could

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demonstrate they were contributing to Italy’s economy. For instance, the law stated that would-be migrants would now be allowed into the country only when in receipt of a signed contract of employment (although, when recruiting, employers were also required to favour the local workforce vis-à-vis non-EU applicants). In addition to this, employers’ responsibilities towards migrants (and society as a whole) were increased by this law, as they were now expected to provide the “guarantee of round-trip travel to and from Italy [to foreigners] and adequate housing” (Pojmann, 2009: 179). The mandatory fingerprinting of immigrants and the use of the navy to fight clandestine immigration were further symbolic measures introduced in this period to please the LN. Importantly, however, the measures just mentioned were passed only in exchange for the approval of a large amnesty of illegal foreign workers, sponsored by the League’s ally in government, the UDC (Colombo and Sciortino, 2003: 208). The amnesty’s impact was considerable, as it led to the legalisation of no less than 650,000 immigrants – more foreign workers than all previous amnesties passed by Italian centre-left governments put together (Colombo and Sciortino, 2003: 195). Indeed, this was the secondlargest amnesty of its type in the world (Pastore, 2004). Nonetheless, seen from the LN’s perspective, at least the Bossi–Fini was a step in the right direction, insofar as it established the principle that people should be admitted into the country only when able to contribute to its economy. In other words, while Law 189/2002 may not have been the “very harsh legislation” (Baiocchi, 2001) that the prominent LN member and future minister Roberto Maroni had promised would be passed by the governing majority, it could still be sold as a victory to LN supporters. Greater northern autonomy The League already had an indirect impact on regional autonomy while in opposition. Indeed, in order to respond to the regionalist pressures of Bossi’s party and address the new centrality of the “northern question” (see also Chapter 2), the centre-left coalition governing Italy between 1996 and 2001 approved a Constitutional Law (18 October 2001, N. 3), which modified Title V of the Constitution, dedicated to territorial autonomies – introducing substantial changes in the allocation of powers between state and regions (Giovannini and Vampa 2020; Vandelli, 2014). Crucially, this involved a revision of Article 116, allowing “the attribution of particular forms and conditions of autonomy to ordinary status regions” (Clause 3). While marking a significant step towards the “federalisation” of Italy, the reform was deemed insufficient by Bossi’s party, which, after entering government in 2001, sought to achieve a more radical restructuring of

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territorial governance, promoting further decentralisation. Yet, by the end of its stint in government, the LN’s gains on self-government for northern Italy were on a par with those concerning Europe, i.e., non-existent. In fact, the party did manage to force its allies to approve a reform of the Constitution devised by Umberto Bossi which would have transferred powers in some areas to the regions; however, voters ultimately rejected it. The plan had been to allow the central state to grant more powers to regional governments in the areas of education, health and local policing (Loiero, 2003). However, understandably, the issue remained controversial for AN and the UDC, insofar as any perceived weakening of the constitutional principle according to which minimum standards of service provision had to be provided by the state across the whole nation would not have gone down well among these parties’ southern constituencies (Donovan, 2004: 108). Therefore, the life of the government was beset by clashes on the issue of “devolution”, particularly between Bossi’s party and the UDC. Eventually, the UDC’s parliamentary support for the reform was secured, but only in exchange for the approval of further legislation endorsing the notion of the “national interest”, and, more importantly, the introduction of the already-cited “Porcellum”. This was electoral legislation reintroducing proportional representation in the country, which was seen as benefiting small parties such as the UDC (Amyot and Verzichelli, 2006: 32). Despite the LN going through a lot of trouble to secure the approval of this constitutional reform by Parliament (which eventually happened in November 2005), it failed to gain the endorsement of voters in a referendum held in June 2006. Due to the lukewarm support given to the reform by some of the LN’s allies, its defeat by popular vote was not entirely surprising. The fact remains that in the end, and for all the LN’s posturing, these events had shown the clear limits of the LN’s influence. While it could reach agreements with its recalcitrant allies in the institutions, it could obviously not force them to actively campaign in favour of reforms that their constituencies would always regard as suspicious. Indeed, as a party rooted only in the North, making changes to the Italian Constitution remained a huge challenge for the League in the years to come.

Berlusconi IV (2008–11) In electoral terms, the 2008 general election was very successful for the LN, as the party doubled its support since the previous general election (see Table 4.2). Since Berlusconi’s coalition had won the election by a large margin, there were never any doubts that he would be the prime minister again. Moreover, the key parties supporting the new government had been reduced to just two: Berlusconi’s newly formed PdL and the LN. The exclusion of

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the UDC from the centre-right alliance and the merging of AN and FI into the PdL (under Berlusconi’s leadership) were both good news for the LN, given the problems it had had with AN and UDC in the past. Equally, the fact that Bossi’s contingent of MPs was once again essential to Berlusconi’s hopes of remaining in power, as it had been in 1994, meant that the LN could expect to exercise more influence this time around than had been the case in the 2001–6 period. The LN’s strong bargaining position was reflected in the importance of the ministries that the party gained, and the fact that these were all related to its key themes (notably the Ministry for Federal Reform, given to Umberto Bossi, and the Ministry of the Interior, given to Roberto Maroni). By controlling these ministries, the party could again be seen to be taking the initiative on its key themes of federalism and law and order/immigration. As in the preceding section, we will now briefly discuss what the LN did in government concerning these themes, and on Europe-related matters, starting once again with the EU. The EU and the euro As had been the case in 2001, after coming into government the LN did not moderate its tone on the euro, EU institutions and other Europe-wide organisations. For instance, in June 2008 Interior Minister Maroni was involved in a spat with the Council of Europe, the European Commission and the European Parliament over the government’s proposal to fingerprint members of the Romany community, including children. The row focused on whether this measure was consistent with European rules, with Maroni rejecting accusations that the government was discriminating against certain people due to their ethnicity (Corriere della Sera, 2008b). Tensions between the LN and European institutions reached a new peak three years later, following a European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling issued on 28 April 2011. This stated that illegal immigration could not be punished by a prison sentence (Il Sole 24 Ore, 2011), thus taking issue with a flagship norm contained in new LNsponsored legislation that had been introduced two years earlier (see discussion later). Finally, in May 2011 Maroni accused the EU of having forgotten the commitments it had made to help Italy deal with the arrivals of very large flows of migrants following the “Arab spring” (Corriere della Sera, 2011). Leaving the rhetoric and the headline-grabbing public spats to one side, however, the key development of those years was in fact a unanimous vote expressed by Italy’s Chamber of Deputies on 31 July 2008 which ratified the Lisbon Treaty (an international agreement amending the treaties which formed the constitutional basis of the EU, following the impossibility of approving a European Constitution). The LN leader in the Chamber of Deputies, Roberto Cota, and the LN Minister Roberto Calderoli had attacked

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the treaty, with the former calling its ratification by Parliament “the lowest point reached by the Europe of bureaucrats” (La Repubblica, 2008), and the latter saying the treaty was “dead” (Lega Nord, undated). And yet the LN ended up voting in favour, apparently just because Bossi had so decided. As Bossi put it bluntly in a newspaper interview given in that period, “if I say they [LN MPs] must vote ‘yes’, they will all vote ‘yes’” (Corriere della Sera, 2008a). In fact, this important vote clearly revealed Bossi’s strategy on European matters: the party was to continue to engage in symbolic politics and criticise European institutions and the common currency, but without rocking the boat. In doing so, it was saving its political capital for the issues it really cared about: greater northern autonomy and law and order/immigration. It is to the first of these themes that we now turn, to discuss the progress that the party made on the matter during this period. Greater northern autonomy Having been defeated on the “devolution” Bill only a few years earlier, the LN’s main objective was now to demonstrate to activists and sympathisers that the transfer of some powers from the central state to the regions could in fact still be achieved. Given its ability to blackmail the PdL, due to its increased strength in Parliament, the League in the end succeeded in pushing legislation on fiscal federalism through Parliament within a year of taking power, which was certainly a good outcome, given the complexity of the reform. The 42/2009 framework law introducing fiscal federalism was thus duly approved by Parliament on 30 April 2009. However, it was a far cry from the new dawn in the relationship between national and subnational levels of government that LN supporters would have wished to see (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2015: 106–108). For a start, the reform fell short of the LN’s stated aim to allow the Italian regions to keep a large share of the tax revenue raised within their borders (see Parlamento del Nord, 2008). The autonomy of taxation granted to subnational administrations on this occasion was in fact quite modest, but at least it allowed the latter to raise some of their own taxes, which could be presented to LN supporters as a step forward. The new legislation also contained the stipulation that predefined “standard” costs and “standard” requirements were to be used from then on in place of spesa storica (historic expenditure) as the criteria for deciding funding levels for essential services. This was meant to incentivise local administrations to achieve efficiencies, since transfers for the provision of specific services would no longer be made according to how much these had cost in region X in the past (as the principle of “historic expenditure” stipulated), but with reference to set criteria. However, the LN’s attempts to present this reform as something fundamentally altering power relations between the state and the regions lacked credibility. The main reason for

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this was that the reform was supported by the PdL only because of the stipulation that an “equalising fund” would be set up to guarantee a minimum level of services across the nation in the key areas of health, education and local transport. Expense in these three areas makes up no less than 80% of overall regional expenditure, giving the lie to the idea that, thanks to the reform, northern regions would be able to keep most of “their own money” for themselves. Indeed, the introduction of such a fund meant that big differences in the provision of services across the country would not be tolerated (as the Italian Constitution, after all, required). Hence, in the end, while the fiscal federalism reform was certainly a step forward for the LN (insofar as it pointed to a future in which more complete federalism could be introduced), it was most certainly not a revolution. Law and Order and immigration Concerning law and order and immigration, the LN again resorted to its well-rehearsed tactic of raising its voice and radicalising its tone further after entering government, only to mask what ended up being modest achievements in terms of legislation. Besides running very controversial campaigns, such as the “White Christmas” initiative against illegal immigrants in the town of Coccaglio in 2009 (De Riccardis, 2009), the party also made headline-grabbing proposals on immigration that had no chance of being implemented, but helped it to be seen as taking the initiative on this theme. Examples of such proposals were a halt to all immigration for two years, restricted access for illegal immigrants to social services and the introduction of special classes in schools for immigrant children (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2010: 1326). As for the repressive measures on immigration and Roma communities that the LN’s Minister of the Interior Maroni attempted to introduce, several were either censored or thrown out by European organisations and/or courts and could not be implemented. This was true for the government’s policy of sending back boatloads of mainly African migrants trying to reach Italy by crossing the Mediterranean (the so-called respingimenti), found to be in violation of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights by the ECJ on 23 February 2012 (Polchi, 2012); and for the already-mentioned census and fingerprinting of members of the Romany community (including children) that started shortly after the 2008 election. The latter was criticised by several European institutions – such as the General Secretary of the Council of Europe (in June 2008), the Commissioner of the same institution the following month, and the European Parliament, again in July 2008. As for the actual legislation introduced in this period, what the party advocated was fully consistent with the repressive approach to the matter that had always characterised it; however, the League’s achievements were

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again modest. In particular, the introduction of a “security package” in July 2009 (Law 94/2009) should be mentioned, as it was presented by the LN as its flagship legislation, alongside fiscal federalism. For all the talk of the government being “tough” on crime, however, Law 94/2009 looked like a very heterogeneous piece of legislation lacking any clear aims. Of the measures introduced by the new law, two were directly inspired by proposals made by the LN before the election (Parlamento del Nord, 2008): the introduction of heavier punishments for a series of offences (ranging from graffiti to organised crime), and the legalisation of the ronde, that is, the possibility for citizen associations to organise patrols in cities and towns to improve safety. However, in the end the latter measure had hardly any impact: first, the relevant comma of the law introducing the ronde (i.e., comma 40) was declared “partially illegitimate” by the Constitutional Court in June 2010, due to its being in conflict with the Constitution (Il Giornale, 2010); and second, very few ronde ever came into existence (Polchi, 2010). Of the measures contained in the “security package”, the one that attracted most attention had not in fact been listed in the LN’s most recent electoral manifesto (although the party had tried to introduce it some years earlier). It was the “crime of illegal immigration”, whereby those without valid residence permits would be given prison sentences. This measure was also thrown out by the ECJ (on 28 April 2011), because it was deemed to be in conflict with the European directive on the repatriation of illegal immigrants. In short, several high-profile articles of the “security package” did not survive the scrutiny of the courts, while others (e.g., the one allowing the creation of the ronde) were ignored by the population, hence having no effect. In addition to this, the “security package” was immediately followed by yet another amnesty which legalised the presence of a further 300,000 people who were working illegally in the country, in addition to the 650,000 legalised by a previous right-wing government in 2002. In the same period the overall number of foreigners living in Italy kept increasing, too (Caritas/ Migrantes, 2009; 2011; Istat, 2011). Therefore, although the LN did not betray the repressive approach to law and order and immigration which it had always advocated, its actual achievements in government (seen from the LN’s own perspective, and considering what it had promised in its 2008 manifesto) were again modest. In the end, one can say that the LN did sometimes manage to force its allies to pass legislation on matters that mattered to its electorate and supporters; however, the real changes introduced in the country as a consequence of such legislative action were limited (or non-existent, as far as the relationship between Italy and the EU was concerned). The next section focuses on the subnational level of government and considers to what extent



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the party could at least be said to have been effective in pursuing its objectives in the councils and in regional administrations.

The subnational dimension of politics was obviously especially important to Bossi’s party and also deserves attention. In this section we will see that there are some differences between how the League governed at national and subnational levels. Indeed, at subnational level the party often acted as a relatively competent, pragmatic and moderate force, distancing itself from the more radical rhetoric of the federal leadership and showing that it could exercise some impact on local communities. The League’s first experiences in government had been precisely at the local level. In 1993, the first year in which mayors were directly elected, the party won electoral contests in many important cities. In Lombardy, in particular, the LN managed to elect mayors in five main cities, including the regional capital, Milan. Important successes were also achieved in Piedmont and Friuli Venezia Giulia. However, as shown in Figure 4.3, the number of capoluoghi (major towns within a province) led by a LN mayor declined in the mid- and late 1990s, when Berlusconi’s FI replaced Bossi’s party as the main political force of the centre-right at the local level. Additionally, this decline reflects the increasing “peripheralisation” of electoral support

12

Number of cities

10 8 6 4 2

LN: Lombardy

LN: Veneto

12

11

20

10

20

09

20

08

20

07

20

06

20

05

20

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LN: Piedmont

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19

96

19

95

19

94

19

19

93

0 19

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The LN in local and regional government

LN: FVG

Figure 4.3  Number of LN mayors in Italian provincial capitals (capoluoghi), 1993– 2012

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for the party that was highlighted in Chapter 3, meaning that the League became less and less politically relevant in large cities. Of course, this does not mean that the League ceased to play an important role in the municipalities of the North (particularly in small and medium-sized ones). After all, the party was often included in governing coalitions led by FI mayors. Some of the LN mayors also played a prominent role within their party. In the 1990s Marco Formentini, mayor of Milan, was one of the most important members of the party after Bossi and Maroni, representing the League’s most moderate, responsible and pro-business “face” (Albertazzi, 2016) vis-à-vis its most radical representatives.9 Towards the end of the Bossi era, Flavio Tosi was elected mayor of Verona (the second-largest city of the Veneto region). Tosi became a prominent political personality during a period in which the League started radicalising its nativist rhetoric and paid increasing attention to immigration and law-and-order issues (see Chapter 2). Therefore, it is not surprising that he also campaigned locally to reduce petty crimes and prostitution and to dismantle Roma camps. Yet, he tried to frame his right-wing populist approach in more “pragmatic” terms, avoiding inflammatory language. For instance, he gradually distanced himself from Giancarlo Gentilini, mayor of another Venetian city, Treviso, who was nicknamed the “sheriff mayor” due to his anti-immigration positions and his controversial campaigns against petty crimes. Moreover, Tosi firmly rejected openly xenophobic and homophobic discourses, which, instead, Gentilini proudly and unashamedly used to present his initiatives (Lorenzetto, 2012). Even when implementing policies aimed at shutting Roma camps, Tosi avoided talking merely of demolitions (as Salvini started to do, particularly after becoming leader of the party in 2013). Instead, as declared in an interview, Tosi made sure that Roma families were involved in a long process of reallocation and inclusion. He also sought support from, and worked with, the Catholic Church and Catholic charities to build consensus and avoid culture wars with minorities (Lorenzetto, 2012). While stressing his opposition to right-wing radicalism, the bishop of Verona even affirmed that with Tosi it was easier to collaborate because he represented a “diluted and common-sense version of leghismo”.10 Hence the mayor of Verona was soon nicknamed the “heretical leghista” (Lorenzetto, 2012), became one of Bossi’s major critics towards the end of his leadership and, when party financing scandals broke out, played a crucial role in the process that led to Bossi’s downfall. Tosi’s activism helped him to gain popularity across the country and eventually contributed to his election as leader of the Venetian branch of the party in 2012 (after Bossi’s resignation). Yet his positions became increasingly incompatible with those of the new federal leader, Matteo Salvini, who moved the party further to the right. Eventually, he was expelled from the League altogether in 2015.

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Generally speaking, Formentini and Tosi are good examples of the more moderate “governing” faction of the party, focused on addressing daily administrative issues rather than promoting a radical political discourse. In this respect, the League is not so different from the PCI of the 1970s and 1980s, which acted as a moderate (even pro-business) ruling force in its strongholds of the so-called Red Belt regions (Tuscany, Emilia Romagna and Umbria). Yet the fact that both Formentini and Tosi eventually abandoned the party also shows how difficult it was to reconcile pragmatism and radicalism – and express dissent – within a structure that was tightly controlled by the federal leadership (see Chapter 6). Additionally, the fact that the League became an increasingly peripheral party, more successful in small and medium-sized municipalities, is consistent with the gradual exclusion of moderate and pragmatic representatives, who are able to appeal to a more urban electorate. Of course, there are (apparent) exceptions, as the case of Luca Zaia, presented at the end of this section, clearly shows. Regional administrations should also be “natural” political arenas for a party that placed so much emphasis on federalism and regional autonomy. Yet, surprisingly, the League did not seem to have played a significantly greater role in regional government than in national or local government. Things started to change towards the end of Bossi’s era, when the party finally gained the governorship of the wealthy Piedmont and Veneto region, with Lombardy (a great prize for the LN) being eventually added to the list in 2013. As shown in Figure 4.4, the percentage of LN regional councillors in central and northern regions passed the 10% mark only in 2010, two years before Bossi’s resignation.

16

13.99

14

% of regional councillors

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12

9.58

10

7.3

8 6

6.75

4.17

4 2 0

1990

1995

2000

2005

2010

Figure 4.4  Percentage of LN regional councillors in central-northern Italian regions, 1990–2010

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Arguably, the crucial way through which the party managed to exert some influence on regional policy making was by participating in centre-right coalitions alongside Berlusconi’s FI. More specifically, in Lombardy and Veneto the LN played an active role in the development of region-specific social and healthcare policies.11 For instance, in Lombardy the centre-right ruling coalition promoted a market-based model of healthcare which diverged considerably from that of other Italian regions, with crucial support from the LN. Indeed, the powerful position of the assessore alla sanità (the regional health “ministry”) was held by the League between 2005 and 2012 (first by Alessandro Cè and then by Luciano Bresciani) (Vampa, 2014; 2016: 70–77). The “modello Lombardia” (Lombard model), presented as an example of successful governance and efficient allocation of public funding, was also used by the League as a political weapon to criticise the failures experienced by southern regions and also to advance its fiscal federalism reform.12 The League’s enthusiastic support for the Lombard model emerged even more clearly when the party won the presidency of the region after Bossi’s resignation. The 2013 LN regional election programme highlighted the importance of further developing the “open” healthcare system of the region based on the “freedom of choice between public and private sectors”. The same document also emphasised the fundamental role of earlier health reforms, to which the League had contributed as a junior partner of the centre-right coalition. It was thanks to those reforms that a project of “new” welfare building could advance in Lombardy (Lega Nord, 2013: 18). In the Veneto region, Luca Zaia emerged as a leading figure, first as President of the Province of Treviso, then as Agriculture Minister at the regional and then national levels. Particularly in the latter role, he tried from the beginning to develop the profile of a politician adopting a filosofia amministrativa del fare (pragmatic administrative philosophy) (Martirano, 2008: 8). At the end of his period of office as Regional Tourism and Agriculture Minister, Zaia stated that he was particularly proud of his antibureaucracy laws aimed at reducing red tape and unleashing the dynamism of the tourism sector, which, just before he left that office, had grown by 4.2% in Veneto, as compared to a negative national figure (Castellani, 2008). When he was elected Regional President in 2010 he continued to build on his administrative experience, but at the same time started to pay more attention to social and cultural issues, which the regional branch of the League had already pushed to the top of the agenda before Zaia’s election. Of particular interest is a series of regional laws, approved in 1999, which were aimed at protecting and promoting the Venetian language and identity.13 The process culminated in the ratification of a regional law defining the “Venetian people” as a “national minority people” in 2016 (regional



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law no. 28/2016). Although the law was rejected by the Italian Constitutional Court in 2018, on this occasion Zaia demonstrated that he meant business when talking of protecting the Venetian identity. By mixing a reputation of competent administrator and support for more “symbolic”, identity-oriented policies, Zaia has been one of the few regional and subnational representatives whose political career has outlived Bossi’s. After ten years at the top of the Venetian administration, he remains one of the most popular figures in his region and in his party, even today.14

Conclusion This chapter has shown that “Bossi’s Lega”, despite never becoming a very large party due to being rooted only in certain regions of the North, was nevertheless an important actor in national and subnational institutions. It continuously won political representation in the national Parliament from 1992 onwards and, when in government, it controlled ministerial roles of varying importance, but often related to its core issues, such as immigration, law and order and institutional reforms. The party was an important pillar of the centre-right coalition which, both in government and opposition, shaped Italian politics for twenty years. At the same time, however, there was certainly a gap between the party’s policy statements and actual policies implemented during the various Berlusconi governments of the 2000s. Due to a number of political and institutional constraints – from coalition partners to the Constitutional Court, from constitutional referendums to European institutions – the party ended up having only a limited impact on government initiatives. In particular, the increasing Eurosceptic rhetoric of the party did not translate into concrete actions aimed at disrupting the process of European integration, while arguably some progress was made on immigration/law and order and federal reforms. The LN also played an important role in local and regional administrations, as shown in the last section of this chapter. In some contexts, it even acted as the dominant political force. Mayors and, at a later stage, regional presidents, were also able to exert some influence within the party, often coming to represent its more pragmatic and moderate wing. However, we have also noted that, in the long term, few local and regional leaders managed to find the right balance between pragmatic administration and radical discourse, the latter being favoured by the central leadership. Currently, the President of the Veneto Region, Luca Zaia, who rose to power during the Bossi era and continued to thrive after two leadership changes, stands as one of the most significant exceptions.

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Postscript: back to government after Bossi After almost seven years in opposition, the League (no longer “Northern League”), led by Matteo Salvini, returned to power in June 2018. Yet it did so within a completely different political context. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the party achieved an unprecedented success in the 2018 general election, becoming the largest party of the centre-right (and the third-largest national party). Yet the absence of a clear parliamentary majority forced Salvini to engage in political negotiations with the other winner of the 2018 election: the M5S, led by Luigi Di Maio. The process leading to the formation of this government was complicated by three important factors. First, the two parties had never shared governmental responsibility before, at any level of government (in fact, the M5S had never held any positions in any national governments during its short history). Second, leaders of both parties aspired to become the next prime minister: Di Maio as the leader of the most voted-for party at the election, Salvini as the leader of the most voted-for coalition (i.e., the right-wing one), of which the major components were the League, FI (after Berlusconi shelved the PdL and revived his party’s old name) and Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy). Third, Salvini was still formally allied with Berlusconi; however, the M5S immediately ruled out any formal coalition with the former prime minister, whom they very much saw as a symbol of the old discredited political elite. Eventually, after much negotiation, Salvini and Di Maio signed a governmental agreement (the so-called Contratto di governo – Contract for Government). As Giuseppe Conte, a non-political, “independent” figure close to the M5S, was chosen as Prime Minister, the two leaders became Deputy Prime Ministers, de facto forming a diarchy controlling all government decisions. This was, after all, in line with Italian political traditions, whereby post-war governments were always forced to follow the strict instructions of the party leaders providing them with a majority. The League’s new experience of government as a member of this executive was characterised by elements of continuity and change. For a start, Salvini chose to personally lead the Ministry of the Interior, thus confirming the importance of this government department to the party. It was here, after all, that Roberto Maroni had managed to build his reputation as a promoter of law-and-order initiatives and strict immigration rules between 2008 and 2011. The party also obtained the Ministry of Agriculture, which it had already held in the last Berlusconi government and which had allowed the former minister Luca Zaia to strengthen his ties with important constituencies in the rural areas of the north-east. This had prepared the ground for his successful bid to become the new President of the Veneto region. Interestingly, this time the new government did not feel a need to again

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create a Ministry of Institutional Reforms. The League was, however, given the Ministry of Regional Affairs and Autonomy. Yet, while this choice reflected whatever was left of the (once central) regionalist profile of the party that had very much been set aside by Salvini (Albertazzi, Giovannini and Seddone, 2018), this time there was no plan to promote a comprehensive restructuring of institutional relations between centre and periphery “from the centre”. Rather than leading the reform process, the role of the new LN minister, Erika Stefani, was that of coordinating and responding to the demands for more autonomy coming from various regional governments after the autonomy referendums of 2017 (see Chapter 3). For the first time, the party was able to control the ministries of Education and Public Administration and the “resurrected” Ministry of Family Affairs. The latter – created to appease supporters of the second Prodi government who were inspired by Christian Democratic values – had existed for only two years, between 2006 and 2008. After Prodi’s second government fell, no ministry of that name was again created until twelve years later, helping Salvini’s League to give visibility to its shift towards socially conservative positions (see Chapter 2). Generally speaking, by controlling five of the eighteen ministries of the first Conte government (the largest share of government positions the party had ever achieved), and with Salvini playing the role of Deputy Prime Minister, the League was in a better position than ever before to exert significant influence on the policy-making process. Certainly Salvini proved more able than the leader of the M5S to attract media attention and build a strong reputation as an effective decision maker by resorting to symbolic actions mixed with relevant pieces of legislation. A decreto immigrazione e sicurezza (Decree-Law on Immigration and Safety), including anti-immigration and tougher law-and-order norms, was therefore approved at the end of November 2018 (just as similar decrees had been approved within a year of the League entering government in 2001 and 2008). Additionally, Salvini’s hard line towards migrant boats coming from the Libyan coast, which resulted in the blocking of Italian ports to boats carrying people saved at sea while trying to cross into Europe, helped him to achieve unprecedented levels of popularity, which have also had a positive effect on the party’s polling. Thanks, in part, to these initiatives, Salvini triumphed in the 2019 European election (see Chapter 3). Although it had started as the junior partner in the new government, it became clear after less than a year that the League had in fact become the dominant party within it, fully owning its signature themes of immigration and law and order. In the summer of 2019 this appears to have convinced Salvini that the time had come to leave the “awkward” coalition with the M5S: therefore, he withdrew his party’s support for the Conte government, hoping that an early election would give him direct control over a purely

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right-wing executive. This caused a government crisis, which, however, was not resolved as Salvini had hoped but led to the formation of a new alliance between former enemies: the centre-left PD and the M5S. This can certainly be regarded as the biggest miscalculation made by Salvini as the League’s leader so far. Nonetheless, an assessment of the League’s experience as part of this brief LN–M5S government of 2018–19 leads to the conclusion that, policy-wise, the League dominated the executive on matters related to its signature themes.

Notes 1 Under the electoral law used for this election, 75% of seats were allocated by first-past-the-post and 25% by proportional representation. The League gained an inflated number of MPs, thanks to an advantageous agreement with Berlusconi’s FI, according to which League representatives were chosen as candidates of the whole centre-right alliance in a very large number of constituencies of the North. 2 Systematic data for the Chamber of Deputies are not available. 3 In 2012, due to her alleged involvement in the party funding scandals, which also led to Bossi’s resignation, Mauro left the LN group altogether. 4 Bossi had a stroke in March 2004 and never fully recovered from it. Yet this did not prevent him from returning to active politics and maintaining his dominant position within the party until his resignation in 2012. 5 Maroni is the only LN member who has served as a minister in all centre-right governments from 1994 to 2011. He is also a quite independently minded party member who spent years at the margins of the organisation after disagreeing with Bossi’s decision to break with Berlusconi in 1994. Maroni was again sidelined post 2013, as Salvini decided to “go national” and did not want to associate himself with those who embodied the party’s exclusive focus on the regions of the North, such as Maroni. 6 It would probably have been impossible for the League – a much smaller party than FI – to “capture” the important Ministry of the Economy and Ministry of Finance – particularly given the importance acquired by the promise of delivering a “new economic miracle” in Berlusconi’s rhetoric. This was also an advantage for Bossi’s party, however, as it was never closely associated with the objectively poor stewardship of the economy that characterised centre-right governments throughout the years (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2015: ch. 6). 7 The strategy of keeping “one foot in and one foot out” of government was motivated by the party’s unwillingness to be seen “to have become part of ‘Rome’, whether in terms of the linguistic register adopted by Lega ministers in interviews, their perceived attachment to the perks of office, overly friendly relations with non-Lega government colleagues and so on” (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2005: 959). In other words, the party wanted to preserve its populist “outsider” identity at all costs.

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8 The Constitution was later dropped following its rejection by the French and the Dutch electorates in referendums held in May and June 2005. 9 However, Formentini left the party and joined the centre-left coalition in 2004. 10 Televised interview www.veronasera.it/speciale/interviste/vescovo-zenti-tosileghista-temperato-e-di-buon-senso.html. Accessed 20 May 2020. 11 Healthcare is a core policy responsibility of Italian regions (around 80% of their spending is in this sector). 12 By the mid-2000s most southern Italian regions had to undergo significant spending and governance restructuring (piani di rientro), due to serious financial imbalances in their public health sectors. 13 The first step was the approval of a regional council resolution in 1999 (no. 262), followed by Art. 22 of regional law no. 3/2003. A specific regional law focusing on the Venetian language was passed in 2007 (law no. 37/2007). 14 In 2020 Zaia also gained national popularity due to his government’s effective response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Veneto. According to a Demos poll (www.demos.it/a01719.php; accessed 3 June 2020), he became the second-most popular political personality in the whole country (after the Prime Minister).

5

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The Northern League as a mass party

Introduction So far, our book has offered an analysis of the LN’s ideology (Chapter 2), electoral performance (Chapter 3) and experiences in government at national and subnational levels (Chapter 4). This chapter describes and explains Bossi’s chosen organisational model, which we will argue is that of the traditional “mass party” (Duverger, 1964). As David Art (2011) has said, party organisation has long been an under-studied aspect of what he calls “radical right” parties, possibly due to the emphasis that there has been on the importance of charismatic leadership within them, as if powerful leaders were in themselves sufficient to make these parties “tick”. Equally understudied have been the views of the members of these parties, and the reasons why they remain active within them – topics that are hardly ever considered in the literature, due to alleged problems in accessing them in the first place. “With a few notable exceptions”, Art argues, “scholars have treated the individuals who work on behalf of radical right parties as either homogenous fanatics or the docile followers of a powerful, and often charismatic, leader” (Art, 2011: 6). We agree with this criticism and offer a contribution to address this shortcoming. Hence, while this chapter looks at the structure and internal workings of the League, Chapter 7 will focus on what its activists thought of their party and what made them stay in it. The present chapter will be structured as follows. First, we offer a general discussion of the key features of mass parties. Then follows a section in which we focus on Bossi’s LN and look in some detail at its organisation and membership. Finally, we argue that the party offers a perfect example of an organisation able to maintain high levels of mobilisation and “gain” much from its members, despite its lack of internal democracy and the strong centralisation of power in the hands of its leader. As far as methodology is concerned, this chapter relies on the rich series of interviews with party members and representatives listed in Chapter 1. In addition to this, it also draws on an analysis of the LN’s statutes (2002 and 2012), rules and



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regulations, and other publications produced by the party for internal use (such as party manuals). Hence, by the time we move on to Chapter 6 and consider the key features of Bossi’s leadership and communication strategy, we will have acquired a better understanding of the structure of, and relations of power within, the organisation that he created and led for three decades.

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What are mass parties? On the basis of the available literature, we identify the following two features as essential to the existence of a “mass party”: (a) showing a drive to recruit a large activist membership as a way to reach out to the public through externally facing activities (such as demonstrations, canvassing, campaigning etc.) (Duverger, 1964); (b) promoting social integration among party members and shaping “collective identities through ideology” (Panebianco, 1988: 268). In other words, to be such, the mass party must display an intent to use its presence on the ground and its sophisticated structure, through which it grows its membership, to actively shape people’s views by creating “more or less closed political communities” (Mair, 2013: 78) of members who identify with its message. Two issues are worth underlining here. First, it is the party’s willingness to recruit a large number of members, and the fact that it sets up a complex organisation on the ground to achieve this, that makes it a “mass party” – not its actual size at a certain point in time (Duverger, 1964: 63).1 Second, internal democracy may be a common feature of mass parties, but it is not an essential one (Panebianco, 1988: 264). In other words, socialising members to politics may translate into a process of empowerment of such members, whereby they are able to affect what their party does, and possibly be in a position to select their representatives and leaders; however, the former does not necessarily require the latter. What allows us to distinguish mass parties from other kinds of organisations is that they have “managed to cement the loyalties of their voters by building strong organisational networks on the basis of shared social experiences” (Mair, 2013: 80). There is widespread agreement in the literature that this organisational model is now obsolete. This is said to be due to various sociological, technological and political changes, such as: (a) the erosion of traditional social milieux, and thus class identification, which makes it harder for parties to focus on specific, clearly identified constituencies of voters; (b) the shift from local canvassing to mass media campaigning, which provides an incentive to adopt a much lighter structure, which would also be cheaper to run; (c) the fact that party members are no longer a crucial source of funding for their parties, which are able to rely more and more on the resources provided by the state, rather than their members (Katz and Mair,

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1995); and (d) the unwillingness of political leaders – in the light of everything that has just been said – to see their freedom of manoeuvre restricted by potentially “unruly” activists, who inevitably wish to affect party strategy, the formulation of policy and/or candidate selection (Young, 2013). These developments have not been without consequences. In his posthumous book, Ruling the Void, Peter Mair warns that parties have become “so disconnected from the wider society, and pursue a form of competition that is so lacking in meaning, that they no longer seem capable of sustaining democracy in its present form” (Mair, 2013: 1) as the citizenry and the political class withdraw and disengage from one another (Mair, 2013: 18; see also Mair, 1998). Although there is widespread agreement that the pillars of traditional parties and popular participation as we have known them since the Second World War are in crisis (Crouch, 2004; Dalton and Wattenberg eds., 2000; Pharr and Putnam eds., 2000), and that party membership, the lifeblood of the “mass party” model, has been declining across the board in recent decades (Mair, 1994; Mair and van Biezen, 2001; van Biezen, Mair and Poguntke, 2012; Whiteley, 2011), this trend has not manifested itself in an entirely uniform way. On the contrary, “the rates of decline are much higher in some countries than in others” (van Biezen and Poguntke, 2014: 2), and we should, rather, speak of a great deal of variation of party membership decline, both chronologically and geographically. For all these reasons, we see the claims both that the mass party completely dominated in some “unspecified golden age” (Scarrow, 2014: 2), and that it has now been made entirely redundant, as exaggerations. Rather, and despite acknowledging the many societal, political and technological changes that make the preservation of mass party organisations less likely in some contexts, it is more accurate to recognise that different models of party organisation have coexisted and also overlapped to an extent. In short, we question that there has been some sort of uniform, one-way, “one-size-fits-all” teleological movement away from the “mass party” and believe it is more accurate to think of this whole process in terms of differentiated party development. Moreover, and even in the current circumstances, there remain powerful incentives for parties to still hold on to members, if not even try to increase their number, for instance as a valued “mark of popular legitimacy” (Mair, 1998: 165). In recent years, it is precisely populist parties, such as the LN, that have expressed harsh criticism of practices of collusion by claiming that the voters’ growing disengagement from the political process is bad for democracy and needs to be opposed (Katz, 2005: 118). Contrary to the assumption that most populist parties adopt a “light party” model by relying entirely on a “charismatic” leader to function, recent research has provided ample evidence that the opposite is in fact often the case. Hence, well-developed and rooted organisations have been identified as crucial “ingredients” of

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these parties’ success and durability (Art, 2011), while Reinhard Heinisch and Oscar Mazzoleni’s (2016) edited book Understanding Populist Party Organisation has shown that many populist parties have in fact preserved the mass party model and appear to value the advantages this model can provide. The remainder of this chapter will show that Bossi’s League was indeed among such parties, and that, in preserving the mass party model, its leadership enjoyed the full support of its members and representatives. In other words, the mass party model was fully embraced by those inside the LN at all levels and – as is discussed in Chapter 7 – treated as a very special badge of honour by them. By making full use of the armory of the mass party, Bossi was ultimately successful in creating a new subculture in certain areas of the North which drew on a clear ideology that immediately appealed to a large minority of voters (see Chapters 2 and 3). Scholars who picked up early on the elements of novelty that could be identified within the League (e.g. Biorcio, 1997; Diamanti, 1993; 1996) commented extensively on the importance of this new subculture – dubbed by the press as leghismo – for the party’s success (see Chapters 1 and 2). Together with Bossi’s leadership, this was ultimately the glue that kept the League together. The bulk of this chapter will show Bossi’s League to have been a rooted, extensive and centralised mass organisation.

Organisation and division of power As we have seen in Chapter 1, the LN was officially set up as a “federation” of pre-existing “leagues”, which were based in various northern regions (Gómez-Reino Cachafeiro, 2002: 96–98). As far as power relations between the party’s components were concerned, however, Bossi’s LL clearly enjoyed special status from the start, something that was justified by the fact that it was the strongest organisation of all those merging into the new party (in terms both of membership and of electoral performance). Three factors (or sets of events) in particular are revealing of how dominant the LL was within the new party: 1 the composition of the Federal Secretariat throughout the years – with the Lombard branch of the party always holding about half of the seats on its own (McDonnell and Vampa, 2016: 116); 2 the distribution of the government’s spoils within the party – as one single ministerial portfolio was ever given to a non-Lombard, that is, Luca Zaia from the Veneto region, despite the party serving in government four times (see Chapter 3). In the meantime, Lombards took high-profile ministries, including those of the Interior and Federal Reforms; 3 the events that followed Bossi’s departure, as both his successors, Roberto Maroni and Matteo Salvini, were, like him, also from Lombardy.

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In other words, not only has the LN always been led by Lombards (whether we look at where the leaders came from or the composition of its Federal Secretariat) but it has also always been represented by Lombards in national government (with one exception). Rather than buying the League’s narrative about various parties merging into the LN to create “a federation”, therefore, it would be more accurate to talk about the LL having co-opted other regionalist parties that operated in various northern regions, by effectively turning them into regional branches of the new party. Not only this, but the LN was also set up as a particularly centralised party right from the start. Following Kenneth Janda’s (1980: 108) definition, this is understood as a party in which there is “concentration of effective decision-making authority in the national party organs, with a premium placed on a smaller number of individuals participating in the decision”. As we show below, this definition fits the LN well – a conclusion that is also well supported by previous studies (e.g. Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2015; Biorcio, 1997: 211 and 218–19; Bolleyer et al., 2012: 187; Gómez-Reino Cachafeiro, 2002; Tambini, 2001). Anna Cento Bull and Mark Gilbert (2001: 123) have gone as far as saying that Bossi’s League followed the “classic sectarian model”, since it was based on a charismatic leader able to inspire committed party members, while also dominating “the functioning of a complex institutional structure” (Cento Bull and Gilbert, 2001: 123). Bossi’s justification for keeping such a tight grip on the party that he had created relied on the alleged threat posed by the mighty powers “of Rome” to its very survival. Hence, traditional parties were said to be plotting against the LN, constantly thinking of ways of infiltrating it so as to ruin it (Bossi and Vimercati, 1992: 76). Ultimately, as was apparent to all (including party members and representatives), Bossi never hesitated to get rid of internal dissenters, particularly those from the only region that could challenge the dominance of Lombardy: the Veneto region. Hence, for instance, the prominent regional leaders from the Veneto region, Franco Rocchetta and Fabrizio Comencini – both critical, among other things, precisely of the extent to which Bossi had concentrated power in his hands – were expelled in 1998. The same happened in 1999 to the Piedmontese leader Domenico Comino, who had argued that the party should rejoin the centre-right alliance led by Silvio Berlusconi (which Bossi in fact did, but a year later). While the list of those who were branded as “traitors” and forced out would be very long (see Chapter 6), the matter does not need to detain us for long, since it is not exactly a matter of controversy. Bossi never denied that he thought it necessary to take drastic action against dissenters, and talked openly of the need to “smash” any resistance to his plans as leader (Bossi and Vimercati, 1992: 76).

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Given that Bossi’s power was not much codified in rules and procedures (as shown by the analysis of the statute(s) below) but, rather, grounded on the extent to which he was able to ignore these rules at will (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2015: 41), the LN can be said to offer a textbook case of how important actual organisational practice is, quite apart from formal organisational models (Katz and Mair et al., 1992: 6–7; Panebianco, 1988: 35). However, of course, formal rules also need to be carefully considered. Not only it was the party statute that sometimes empowered Bossi, as “federal secretary”, to act the way he did, but even when this was not the case it is important to remember that Bossi was, in fact, the only one who could afford to flout the rules. Hence, the latter mattered, if nothing else, for everybody else. The remainder of this section will therefore consider, albeit briefly, the LN’s structure and internal power relations as described in its statute and rules and regulations. Concerning its territorial structure, the LN’s organisation was split as per the administrative entities that existed at state level, hence setting up regional, provincial, district, and municipal branches (Lega Nord, 2012a: Art. 2).2 To allow the party to function, its most important “federal” (i.e., central) organs were set up as follows:3 a. the Congresso Federale (Federal Congress) was attended by grassroots members in representation of the party’s regional branches. In theory, Congress could set the party’s strategy, approve the manifesto before elections and elect the Federal Secretary. However, the extent of Bossi’s power was such that, despite the clear requirement in Article 9 of the same statute that the Federal Congress should be held every three years, the LN held no Congress whatsoever between 2002 and 2012, and hence also no leadership election (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2015: 41); b. the Segretario Federale (Federal Secretary) – that is, always Bossi between 1991 and 2012 – was the one tasked with “coordinating” (Lega Nord 2012a: Art. 15) the party’s activities, and also executing the decisions taken by Congress, by leading the party’s executive office. As already mentioned, however, Bossi’s role was most certainly not that of a coordinator, nor indeed a mere executor. On the contrary, he singlehandedly set party strategy and decided how to communicate it to members and the electorate at large, while remaining in control of the party’s candidatures, too (Biorcio, 1997: 211; Bolleyer et al., 2012: 187). This is hardly a controversial claim, as it was openly and repeatedly stated by party representatives and members in the past (see Chapter 6; Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2015: ch. 3). In addition to this, any decisions taken by the party’s local, provincial or regional branches could immediately be revoked and declared null and void at a higher level, whenever these were deemed to be “inconsistent with the Statute,

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Rules and Regulations and the party’s strategy” (Lega Nord, 2012b: Art. 9 and 21, our emphasis). This was a rule that Bossi always defined as “necessary” (Bossi and Vimercati, 1992: 76); c. the Segreteria Federale (Federal Secretariat) acted as the party’s executive office. This was attended by the Federal President (a marginal role devoid of real power that Bossi was eventually forced to accept, as some sort of “consolation prize”, when he stepped down as leader in 2012); three Deputy Secretaries; the Organisation Secretary; the person responsible for the federal legislative office; the Presidents of the parliamentary groups (including the European Parliament); and any LN representatives who were presidents of regions or led the party’s regional delegations. Back when it was still called Segreteria Politica (Political Secretariat), this body was tasked with drafting legislation to be tabled in regional assemblies and the national Parliament (Lega Nord, 2002: Art. 16). However, there was no statement on the specific responsibilities of this body in the subsequent version of the statute that concern us (see Lega Nord, 2012a: Art. 17); d. the Consiglio Federale (Federal Council) was attended by leaders and representatives from each regional Council, and by the party’s President and Secretary (i.e., leader), as well as the Federal Administrator, the Organisation Secretary, the person responsible for the federal legislative office and other members elected by Congress (Lega Nord, 2012a: Art. 13). Had the LN been a genuine “federal” organisation, one might have expected this organ to carry real weight, in light of its formal powers. These included the approval of candidatures for regional, general and European elections and the appointment of federal commissioners to run the regional branches, whenever these were thought to be operating “openly in contrast with the political, moral or administrative line” (Lega Nord, 2012a: Art. 13) of the party.4 The vagueness of this norm gave the party leader ample opportunity to intervene whenever subnational branches were seen to deviate from the line set by the centre. It was also clearly stated in the Statute that it was for the party leader to propose that a subnational branch should be taken over and run by a commissioner. The picture that has just been painted of a highly centralised party that afforded disproportionate influence to its leader is also confirmed as one moves away from a discussion of the LN’s main organs to consider how internal democracy worked at grassroots level. Indeed, although the LN valued the extensiveness of its presence on the ground in the North and the size of its membership, it certainly did not wish to empower its members at the local level. In fact, it was very unclear whether members actually had any power at all – beyond informally influencing the party’s behaviour, for instance via their frequent contacts with party representatives serving in subnational institutions (see later). Firstly, as we have seen, members were

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not necessarily given the opportunity to choose their party’s leader, nor indeed to vote on the party’s manifesto, since party congresses were not always held, and never unless Bossi said so. Secondly, as noted by Duncan McDonnell and Davide Vampa (2016: 115), the party’s statute was very vague about the role played by members in selecting candidates for election. Indeed, there was no mention in the rules and procedures that members needed even to be consulted before candidatures were decided and manifestoes finalised (Lega Nord, 2012b). All in all, it is fair to say that the LN offered members hardly any opportunities to influence party strategy, manifestoes and candidatures, although what it did provide to them was the chance to meet up and discuss political developments at local, regional and national levels. This happened on a regular – often weekly – basis (see Chapter 7), and often in the presence of party representatives, including, sometimes, high-profile ones. We have found no evidence that this centralisation of power may have caused widespread concern within the party (although it was certainly criticised by some of the individuals who were eventually thrown out, as mentioned earlier). On the contrary, both the party’s rootedness on the ground and its strictly hierarchical structure were often commented upon by party members and representatives in positive terms. The narrative put forward by respondents on this topic was that Bossi had basically been inspired by the Left, and specifically by the PCI, when setting up the party’s organisation, and that this made much sense. A subnational party representative serving in the Veneto region, for instance, said that: “the party organisation is typically Communist […] characterised by a strong leadership at national level, well rooted on the ground, so our branches are very lively places”. Similarly, when interviewed, Member 13 from the same region argued that: “If we take the League as a party, as a movement, we can compare it to a party of the Left with a particular type of structure,” while for the Piedmontese Member 5, the LN had a structure “which no other party has anymore”. The party’s focus on expanding its membership is therefore amply demonstrated, and was always talked about in enthusiastic terms by both representatives and members. It could not have been driven mainly by financial considerations, given that members’ membership dues were not actually essential to the party’s survival. As Duncan McDonnell and Davide Vampa show (2016: 118, Table 4.6), public funding was actually the most important source of income for the LN, and by a large margin, as it accounted for about 60% of the party’s income in 2010/11, while a further 27% came from private donations. The latter included party representatives diverting to the party some of the money they were receiving for serving in national and local institutions. Moreover, about 8% of the LN’s income came from “other sources” (including the organisation of social events – as discussed

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in the next section), with less than 4% being generated by membership fees. Hence, the LN may have relied in part on its representatives as a source of funding, among others (particularly to help cover the expenses of running local and regional branches, as we were told by Subnational Representative 14 from Piedmont). However, the party did not need members to fund its activities – but, rather, so that they could act as campaigners and canvassers throughout the North. Besides setting up a centralised party, the LN also established a parallel network of ancillary organisations, which either oversaw a rich variety of political, social and cultural activities or simply provided services to people. This was, once again, consistent with the principles of a mass organisation that did not wish to leave any activities “outside the control of the party” (Duverger, 1964: 118), despite the considerable investment of resources that running such network of parallel organisations required (Scarrow, 2014: 162). Ultimately, this was, again, about shaping people’s identities and interpretations of political events, “a good way of attracting members or of keeping them”, as Maurice Duverger (1964: 118) explained with reference to all “mass parties”. As Member 4 from Piedmont said in his interview: So, here in Piedmont, I was among the founders of “Alpe”, which is the association of Padanian mountaineers, hikers […] [We organised] days out, obviously in the mountains. […] Days out organised to fulfil a political aim, obviously. I mean, the objective was not to lead bored people up a mountain on a Sunday … no, it was to combine business with pleasure. (Our emphasis)

Hence, Bossi set up organisations representing different age groups (e.g., the youth, pensioners), women, as well as various professions, all linked to the party. In addition to this, there was a “Padanian” Union for employees, not to mention voluntary organisations providing recreational activities (e.g., sport or culture). At one point, the party listed as many as twenty-one such organisations (Lega Nord, 2003: 48–50), and assigned the task of coordinating their activities to full-time employees. From its very large headquarters in Milan, the Northern League also run a large number of party media, including a newspaper, a radio station, several printed publications and even a satellite television channel. The LN’s ability to exploit community-building devices, such as ancillary organisations and the party’s media, has been viewed by several scholars as one of the strengths of Bossi’s leadership (Biorcio, 1997: ch. 9; Tambini, 2001: ch. 7), an assessment with which we can only concur. Having considered how the party was structured and the functions and powers of its organs, we can now focus our attention on LN members themselves. While a discussion of what they did within the party and what



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they thought of it is reserved to Chapter 7, the next section provides some quantitative data on the membership during Bossi’s time, and discusses the different “levels of membership” available to those who wished to join.

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The membership There is no doubt that the LN was created and took root in a context of membership decline for most parties. In Italy, the total number of all party members contracted by 35% between 1980 and 2009 (van Biezen, Mair and Poguntke, 2012, Table 4: 34), in line with what was happening in the large majority of European democracies. However, according to the party’s own figures, Bossi was able to challenge this “tide of disengagement” by steadily increasing his party’s membership. By 2011, the last full year in which Bossi was in charge of the LN, the party said it had over 173,044 members – a 40% increase on the membership total ten years previously, although admittedly lower than the previous year. Table 5.1 provides membership data covering the period under discussion in this book.5 Unfortunately, there is no way of checking whether these figures are correct – a common problem in countries where there are no official records of party membership figures. Indeed, data provided to us by the LN on a different date concerning the regional distribution of members (but which, unfortunately, covers only about half of relevant regions) makes us wonder whether the figures reported in Table 5.1 had in fact been inflated.

Table 5.1  Membership of the LN, 1992–2011 Year

Members

Year

Members

1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001

112,400 147,297 167,650 123,031 112,970 136,503 121,777 123,352 120,897 124,310

2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

119,753 131,423 122,576 148,321 147,982 148,383 155,478 155,969 182,502 173,044

Source: Segreteria Organizzativa Federale della Lega Nord.

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Nonetheless, the evidence available suggests that the party was well rooted in Italy’s North (and, in part, in the centre). According to Gianluca Passarelli and Dario Tuorto (2012b: 168), for instance, by the year 2011 the LN was running 1,451 branches, spread across northern and central Italy as well as Sardinia. Of these, 628 were in Lombardy alone, 367 in the Veneto region, and the rest (i.e., 456) spread throughout the thirteen remaining regions. As for the social characteristics of the LN membership in the same period, they still showed many similarities with those of the LL electorate when the LL had merged into the LN to create a new party twenty years earlier (see Chapter 3). Hence in 2011, LN members were predominantly male, relatively young (39% being below the age of 40 vs 29% within the northern Italian electorate as a whole), while the over-55s were underrepresented (25% vs 44%) (Passarelli and Tuorto, 2012b: 172, Table 3.15). In line with Bossi’s emphasis on the virtues of SMEs, the middle class was overrepresented within the party’s membership, particularly the self-employed (the latter constituting 37% of party members, but only 13.1% of the northern electorate). Importantly, not all members enjoyed the same status within the League. Indeed, the LN granted full membership only to those who were willing to commit to achieving ideologically defined aims.6 Bossi always argued that this was the only way an anti-establishment party such as the LN could function: by vetting members, by excluding potential infiltrators and by demanding that new recruits immediately proved themselves to be trustworthy (Bossi and Vimercati, 1992: 74). Indeed, it was not even sufficient to express agreement with the party’s ideology in order to earn the status of full member – one needed to be seen to be working to advance the party’s cause, too. Therefore, as reiterated in successive party statutes (Lega Nord, 2002; 2012a; 2014), members fell into two clearly defined categories, depending on the extent to which they were ready to pull their weight to help their organisation. Hence, a new recruit would become a Socio Sostenitore (supporter member) who had “no voting rights whatsoever” (Lega Nord, 2012a: Art. 33), but was not forced to take part in party activities either. However, if a supporter member wished to acquire voting rights (which could anyway be exercised only when the leader said so, as we have already seen) and be able to be elected to party roles, they needed to regularly contribute to the life of the party and be seen to do so. It was then for provincial branches to approve the “promotion” of new members to the status of Soci Ordinari-Militanti (ordinary members-activists, i.e., full members) (Lega Nord, 2002: Art 30; Lega Nord, 2012a: Art. 33; Lega Nord, 2012b: Art. 2–3 and 5; Lega Nord, 2014: Art. 33). Therefore if, for most parties, one can talk of a “participation continuum” (Panebianco, 1988: 26) between supporters and

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full members, stressing that the distinction between the two can often be “fuzzy” (Young, 2013: 2), this was never the case as far as the LN was concerned. Bossi’s party always made a clear distinction between what it saw as fundamentally different categories of people: the electorate at large, party supporters (who could keep one foot in the party by helping out if they wanted to, but were nonetheless unable to elect delegates to Congress and could not fulfil party roles) and, finally, full members. Only the latter enjoyed both passive and active voting rights, hence making up an “advance guard” (Duverger, 1964: 70) of particularly committed and loyal people – in line with what Duverger defined as “the Leninist conception” (Duverger, 1964: 70) of party membership. The evidence that we have collected shows that both representatives and members fully supported the need to differentiate between members in ways that were consistent with their leader’s own narrative on the issue. Here is how the system worked, according to a respondent from the Veneto region: One cannot become an ordinary member-activist after a month, after two, but there is a certain approach. If it is apparent that one is serious, if one helps at the tables [volunteering as a waiter at one of the party’s events], everything that is involved in being an activist, afterwards, and anyway no sooner than six months, he [sic] becomes an activist and … anyway it is not necessarily the case that six months will suffice, sometimes one needs longer. What I mean is, sometimes it becomes clear that one has been granted that status but he does not deserve it, hence he is demoted, I mean, the process is very selective in that sense. What I mean is, we are open to all, however it is only right that one has to follow and make an effort first, as appropriate. If we see that one does not fit the bill, we … prefer to say no, to be honest. (Interview with Subnational Representative 4)

As Representative 12 – a LN regional councillor in the Friuli Venezia-Giulia region – put it in his interview, everyone had to “serve their time” before becoming a full member. Several other respondents stressed this point in interviews, arguing that the LN was the wrong party to approach if people were hoping to be handed a position of responsibility straight away. As a party member from Piedmont put it: I have had people asking me to join, and then: “I want this, I want that!” I haven’t even considered them. I haven’t even raised the matter within the party, because I have said: “join the queue first! Don’t think for a moment that you can come in to give orders!” Even more so if this person is not inside the institutions already [i.e., has not already been elected in some other party’s list]. First you need to show me your worth, that you are sure that the choice you have made is the right one for you. (Interview with Member 1)

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Showing full agreement with this policy, other ordinary members made very similar points in their interviews. For instance, one said: so you want to work for the Lega? There is plenty of room here! But you need to work as part of a team, not do it for yourself, you need to work for the party, and then it is the party that may eventually say to you: “OK, let’s walk side by side”, no? It isn’t acceptable that you turn up and say: “my name is Mario Rossi”, no? “and I want to be the next party candidate for the majorship”. This is just an example… you need to prove yourself if you want to be put forward for this role! […] in my view, politicians are people who have served … their time. (Interview with Member 2)

Hence, as we have seen in this chapter, the key features of the LN’s organisation were its rootedness and extension throughout the North, its reliance on members to proselytise and bring the party’s message to the electorate and the efforts it made to avoid being “infiltrated” by careerists, opponents and half-hearted supporters in order to maintain its ideological purity. Bossi relied on this model very consistently to foster the creation of an alternative subculture in the North (leghismo) that supported the aims of the party and the communication of clear ideas and policies to the public at large. We shall see in the next chapter how, via his leadership style, rhetoric and strategy, Bossi managed to make the most of the opportunities offered to him by such a powerful and disciplined campaigning machine.

Conclusion In recent decades the scholarly literature has shown how those models of party organisation which emerged from the 1960s onwards – whether “catch-all” (Kirchheimer 1966), “cartel” (Katz and Mair, 1995) or “professional” (Panebianco, 1988) – have all been characterised by suspicion of grassroots activism and a reluctance to try to shape party members’ identities. After all, the adoption of these organisational models signals that party leaders consider strong and distinctive ideologies as impediments to attracting the median voter, rather than advantages (Panebianco, 1988: 263). On the contrary, the mass parties’ reliance on a distinctive ideology, with its set of easily identifiable values and beliefs, provided the very foundation for their community-building efforts at local level. As a party aiming to advance the interests of what it saw as “the community of the north” versus “Rome” (see Chapter 3), and as a party allegedly opposing the “cartelisation” of Italian political life (usually defined as partitocrazia, i.e., partyocracy, in the country), the LN found that the mass party organisational model was in fact perfectly suited to its political aims, and easy to justify with

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reference to its populist ideology. The decision to adopt such a model also translated into some practical advantages in terms of campaigning and achieving visibility among the electorate (see Chapter 7). The fact that powers were very centralised within the party and members had few opportunities to affect its strategy did not make it any less of a mass party – as internal democracy is not an essential ingredient of this organisational model (Panebianco 1988: 264). Bossi’s LN thus provides the perfect example of a party that was pyramidal and run from the centre, and yet was able to foster participation and create communities of like-minded members that people very much valued (as we will discuss at length in Chapter 7). Under Bossi, LN members did get the chance to: (a) discuss and interrogate political events as they unfolded, and even criticise the reaction of their own party to them in regular meetings with local and national representatives; (b) provide the link between the party and the electorate at large, by canvassing and campaigning; (c) find meaning and a strong sense of community within the party (see Chapter 7). What they could not do to any large extent, was to set the party’s strategy, select candidates and, between 2002 and 2012, even play any part in the election of their leader via their Congress delegates (since no congresses were held in this period). In other words, what Bossi’s League offered its members was participation without power. As Reinhard Heinisch and Oscar Mazzoleni (2016: 241–242) say with reference to the LN: “Even in cases where centralisation restricts the input of ordinary party members and where decisions taken by party organs such as party congresses are largely more formal than substantive, we have seen evidence that the grassroots matter.” In Bossi’s party it mattered a lot, first and foremost, as the backbone of the party’s many activities, to establish a relationship with voters at large that went beyond time-restricted political campaigns. The next chapter will dig deeper into the features of Bossi’s leadership, which was at once reliant on a complex party machine, as we have just seen, and charismatic. Finally, Chapter 7 will explore what it meant to be an LN member to the people who joined and stayed in the organisation, after which the book will conclude by reflecting on the advantages of the mass party model for the LN, and what this specific case study tells us about party organisation and political participation more generally.

Postscript: party organisation after Bossi In 2017, after leading the LN for some years, Matteo Salvini was behind the publication in Italy’s Official Gazette of the statute of a new, state-wide, political party called Lega per Salvini Premier (LSP). This will eventually enable the completion of a process that was sketched out by the 2019

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Federal Congress of the Lega Nord, namely a division of labour between two distinct entities with different goals: on the one hand, a “good company”, the LSP, which has become the only political and electoral actor that advances the party’s ideas; on the other, a “bad company”, that is, the old LN. This will continue to exist with a minimal organisation in order to repay the €49 million fine that was handed to the party by magistrates at the end of the judicial procedures concerning electoral reimbursement fraud that brought Bossi down (Zulianello, forthcoming). This money will apparently be repaid in yearly instalments of €600,000 over a period of seventy-five years. The implication is that the LSP will now be able to conduct its political and electoral activities freed from the judicial and economic burden which the LN will have to carry, because it is – in legal terms – effectively a new party. However, since at the time of writing in April 2020 all LN representatives and members are progressively moving over to the new party, it is appropriate to treat the LSP as a mere continuation of the former party. In terms of party organisation, since Salvini’s election as the new LN leader in 2013, the LN first, and the LSP today, appear to have developed a Janus-faced character. The party maintains its traditional structure as a party rooted in the North; however, this is now mirrored by a much lighter organisation which fields candidates across Italy, including the South. Here, a much weaker territorial presence has so far been offset by heavy reliance on the leader’s own ability to communicate, with a view that his popularity would deliver some degree of electoral success (see Vercesi, 2015). Thus, personalisation is being used to sustain and enliven mobilisation (Karvonen, 2010) and to widen the party’s geographical spectrum. However, it is still unclear at the time of writing whether this will be fostered at the expense of traditional forms of participation, especially in those areas in northern Italy and parts of the centre where “mass party” structures continue to operate under the new LSP label. Another development brought about by Salvini concerns the party’s communication. While the new leader has not shelved all forms of traditional communication with the voting public (for instance, he has been travelling extensively through the country to speak to people in city piazzas), his communication strategy certainly relies to a great extent on the new opportunities for permanent campaigning provided by social media (SM). These are obviously not something Bossi could have used. Hence, via his SM presence (and with help from a professional team of communication specialists), Salvini has been able to completely dominate the party’s communication, to an even greater extent than Bossi did before him. With 4.1 million likes on Facebook and 1.2 million followers on Twitter (as of April 2020), Salvini’s personal accounts can withstand comparison with those of the major political leaders in the country and very much dwarf those of his

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own party.7 This helps him to affect national debates on issues concerning identity, immigration and law and order, as the controversial remarks made via his SM accounts are immediately picked up by the press and television news. Online activity facilitates the personalisation of politics, offering party leaders new arenas in which they can nurture direct connections with supporters, while bypassing the party’s organisation (Lachapelle and Maarek, 2015). “Going social”, therefore, has represented a strategic choice for the League’s leader, allowing him to reach areas beyond the North and take almost exclusive control of the party’s message. What impact this may be having on the rooted party machine in the North of the country is something that still needs exploring. For now, there are still no organised factions within the new League, and the leader keeps an iron grip on the party. However, the potential is certainly there for the relationship between grassroots and leaders that Bossi had built and that he thought was fundamental to “his” model of the mass party to be altered in fundamental ways.

Notes 1 We accept that some people need to be mobilised for the branches of a party to function, of course. However, the point being made here is that the “mass” vocation of a party should not be assessed with reference to quantitative data. The same argument also applies in reverse. Hence Berlusconi’s PdL may have had over a million members – if we are to believe the figures provided by the party itself (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2015: 21); however, it quite simply did not know what to do with them. The party did not attempt to systematically shape these people’s views, nor to set up a complex organisation rooted on the ground to exploit their contribution. Hence, according to our definition, it would be wrong to conceive of it as a “mass party”, despite its (alleged) size. 2 Overall, the party had fifteen regional branches (with “Emilia” and “Romagna” having their own separate branches, despite making up one region in the eyes of the state). These were called “national branches” in the League’s parlance, to stress their uniqueness and the fact that sovereignty – theoretically – resided with them. In fact, the LN was quite an anomalous “federation” insofar as its constituent entities had no right of “secession” from the centre. 3 The roles and powers of the different organs of the party described later were exactly the same, whether one looks at the Statute approved in 2002 or that of 2012 – with the exception of the “Federal Secretariat” (as explained in the text). 4 In the 2012 version of the Statute, the responsibilities of this body included “the ratification of candidatures for the job of regional Governor put forward by the regional branches”. 5 The LN’s central office stopped releasing official membership figures to us (and, to our knowledge, to anyone else) in 2011, arguing that new legislation on data

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protection no longer allows the provision of such data. This is not a credible explanation, however, as membership data can be provided in aggregate, and was indeed always provided to us in such a form in the past. 6 “Ideological parties” such as the Communist and Socialist were obviously fond of this system (Duverger, 1964: 72), including in Italy (Bardi and Morlino, 1992: 486, Table VIII.B.2.b). 7 As of April 2020, the LSP was “liked” by 678,000 on Facebook and had 124,000 followers on Twitter.

6

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Umberto Bossi’s leadership

Introduction When Umberto Bossi resigned from the party leadership on 5 April 2012, he was in his twenty-eighth consecutive year at the top of an organisation he founded in 1984 as Lega Lombarda and then rebranded as Lega Nord a few years later, after a merger with other regionalist movements (see Chapter 1). The traumatic departure of the old “capo” (chief), as he was known within the party, marked the end of an era. No other Italian leader had managed to stay in a similar position in any other party for such an extended period.1 The story of Umberto Bossi is an emblematic example of political longevity, matched by a handful of leaders in the democracies of western Europe. Acting as a bridge between two distinctive periods in Italian political history, the LN leader achieved his first resounding successes by challenging the political system created after the Second World War, the so-called Prima Repubblica (First Republic) – a system that had been dominated by mass parties and the competition between Christian Democrats and Communists. He then played the role of “kingmaker” in the transition to the Seconda Repubblica (Second Republic), which emerged between 1992 and 1994, after the old establishment collapsed under the weight of multiple corruption scandals (dubbed as the Tangentopoli/Bribes Ville scandals by the press). It is true that in this new phase Bossi’s personality would soon be overshadowed by the rise of Silvio Berlusconi and his political and media empire; yet the League leader remained a key player in this phase too, and provided vital support to the right-wing coalition that would shape Italian politics for almost two decades. Analysing Bossi’s leadership is therefore crucial for various reasons. First, he can be regarded as a skilful “political entrepreneur”, an individual who was able to “change the direction and flow of politics” (Schneider and Teske, 1992: 737) at a “critical juncture” (Capoccia and Kelemen, 2007) in Italian history. As discussed extensively in Chapter 2, through his political

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movement Bossi was able to place the “northern question” at the core of the Italian political debate, after decades in which the “southern question” had consistently received more attention from the political elite. Second, Bossi combined internal and external leadership, exerting strong control on the party organisation while relying on his personal charisma to appeal directly to voters. Third, for a long time Bossi not only led his party but exercised very tight control over it. The line of demarcation between his political role and his private sphere remained quite blurred throughout the period he was in charge. In fact, the “privatisation” of the party became even more marked towards the end of his leadership, and this eventually proved to be politically damaging for him. Despite its strong organisation and mass membership (see Chapter 5), during the last years of Bossi’s tenure as leader the League was increasingly run as a family firm, with relatives and close friends occupying key positions. To be sure, Berlusconi remains the archetypal leader of the “personal party”, which consists “in the full control by an individual leader of the party he has himself created” (Calise, 2015: 303). Yet some elements of this model, if diluted, can also be found in the way Bossi controlled the League. Like in the case of Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (FI), Bossi considered the League as his political creature and linked his personal destiny to that of the party. However, while the claim that FI simply could not exist without its leader is supported by plenty of evidence (and is accepted by those within the party, too) (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2015: 17–34), the League has in fact flourished even since Bossi was forced to step aside (see Chapter 3). Today, Bossi is still respected by activists as the father-founder of the party; however, his key message – heavily focused on the need for federal reform – has been cast aside by the new party leader (see Chapter 2). This chapter starts by placing Bossi within the “universe” of main Italian and European leaders. Particularly by considering “longevity” as an indicator of political strength, it is shown why Bossi’s case is rather unique and can help us to empirically explore key dimensions of political leadership. Following a framework of analysis based on the established literature, we then consider Bossi’s position within the League, his relationship with senior figures within the party and with party members and activists. The chapter then moves on to provide an assessment of Bossi as an external leader, by looking at how he appealed to, and was perceived by, the broader electorate, and how he interacted with the leader of the centre-right coalition (and his main competitor/ally): Silvio Berlusconi. Finally, the conclusion stresses the fact that successful leaders are able to combine solid control of the party organisation and members’ loyalty with effective use of external communication and strategic interactions with key figures from competing parties. In the postscript we then link Bossi’s experience to that of the



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current leader of the League, Matteo Salvini. We show that, whereas some elements of continuity can be detected, Salvini has invested much more in the construction of an “external” leadership, while paying less attention to organisational control.

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An emblematic case of political longevity As mentioned earlier, Bossi holds the record as the longest-serving Italian party leader since the Second World War. This can be regarded as an important indicator of leadership strength and resilience, suggesting that Bossi’s position in the party remained unchallenged for a considerable period of time. Table 6.1 shows that even though he quit in 2012, he still occupies a place at the top of the Italian “top ten”, which includes a rather heterogeneous group of (male) politicians. Of course, Silvio Berlusconi is a close second and is likely to move to the first place within a couple of years. Yet Berlusconi’s story is one of protracted decline (starting in 2013) and slow agony, and today the leader of FI is just a shadow of his former self. In contrast, Bossi’s downfall was rather abrupt. Moreover, it occurred when he was still in full control of the party and polls were quite positive, as shown in Figure 6.1. Until the start of the party financing scandal that hit the party leadership, the LN was still enjoying levels of support above its 2008 performance (i.e., 8.3%), according to most polls (as these fluctuated between 8.5% and 10%). It was only after Bossi’s resignation as leader that support for the party started to decline dramatically. Looking at the other long-serving Italian party leaders it is interesting to see that three out of ten belong to the post-fascist MSI, which then became AN in 1994. There is also an example on the Left, as Palmiro Togliatti dominated the PCI for two decades. Strong leaders can be found in more moderate parties, too. For instance, Pietro Nenni and Bettino Craxi each played a key role in different phases of the history of the PSI, while even the minor PLI and the PRI were led by very resilient figures for some time. On the other hand, the DC, which dominated politics for more than forty years after the Second World War, was characterised by high levels of factionalism which prevented any leaders from retaining control of the party organisation for an extended period of time (Golden and Chang, 2001). Interestingly, most of the leaders included in the list belong to the First Republic, which, as mentioned earlier, spanned from 1946 to the early 1990s. This era of Italian politics was characterised by proportionalism, the centrality of political parties (the so-called partitocrazia/partyocracy), lack of alternation in power, relatively stable voting patterns (despite governments

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Years as leader

Period(s) of leadership

Party

28 26 20 20 19 18 17 15 14 14

1984–2012 1994– 1948–50/1969–87 1987–90/1991–2008 1945–64** 1954–72 1976–93 1954–69 1949–63*** 1949–63

LL/LN FI MSI MSI/AN PCI PLI PSI MSI PSI PRI

Umberto Bossi Silvio Berlusconi Giorgio Almirante Gianfranco Fini Palmiro Togliatti Giovanni Malagodi Bettino Craxi Arturo Michelini Pietro Nenni Oronzo Reale

* Obtaining at least 4% of the vote in one general election since 1945. ** Togliatti was leader of the PCI also from 1943 to 1945, before the transition to democracy. *** Pietro Nenni was leader of the PSI also at the time of the Fascist regime (from 1933 to 1936), and during the Second World War (from 1943 to 1945).

11

Start of party  financing scandal

10

Bossi's resignation

9 8 7 6 5

Figure 6.1  The LN one month before and after Bossi’s resignation, voting intentions (%)

06‐May‐12

04‐May‐12

30‐Apr‐12

02‐May‐12

28‐Apr‐12

26‐Apr‐12

24‐Apr‐12

22‐Apr‐12

20‐Apr‐12

18‐Apr‐12

16‐Apr‐12

14‐Apr‐12

12‐Apr‐12

10‐Apr‐12

08‐Apr‐12

06‐Apr‐12

04‐Apr‐12

02‐Apr‐12

31‐Mar‐12

29‐Mar‐12

27‐Mar‐12

25‐Mar‐12

23‐Mar‐12

21‐Mar‐12

19‐Mar‐12

17‐Mar‐12

15‐Mar‐12

13‐Mar‐12

11‐Mar‐12

09‐Mar‐12

07‐Mar‐12

05‐Mar‐12

4 03‐Mar‐12

Voing intentions (%)

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Table 6.1  The ten longest-serving leaders of the main Italian parties,* 1945–2012 (the year of Bossi’s resignation)

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themselves being unstable) and a relatively consensual law-making process (consociationalism, “consociativismo”) (Bogaards, 2005). On the other hand, the Second Republic that was ushered in by the general election of 1994 has been defined by a much more fluid political landscape, with the emergence of new parties and the merger or disappearance of old ones. This constant political restructuring has been particularly noticeable on the centre-left and had a negative impact on the longevity of its more recent leaders (Campus and Pasquino, 2006). Therefore, it is not surprising that the only political figures of the Second Republic appearing in Table 6.1 are Umberto Bossi, Silvio Berlusconi and Gianfranco Fini – that is, the leaders of the three parties forming the centre-right coalition from 1994 onwards. Like Bossi, Fini started his political career in the First Republic and then consolidated his role as leader of AN in the Second. Yet, unlike Bossi, Fini led a party that had existed for many years before he rose to the top of its organisation. On the other hand, Berlusconi, whose political ascendancy corresponded with the beginning of the Second Republic, shared with Bossi the characteristic of being at the same time founder and leader of his party. In short, they were both political entrepreneurs who had created their political vehicle. In light of this, Bossi can be regarded as a link, a synthesis, between the two other centre-right leaders. He emerged when the political system was still dominated by traditional parties and leaders but, at the same time, he incarnated important political developments, such as personalisation and presidentialisation, which, since the early 1990s, have had a deep impact on Italian politics, first on the centre-right and, more recently, even on the centre-left. Yet Bossi’s leadership is important also beyond Italy. In Table 6.2 we provide a list of right-wing populist leaders in western Europe. We selected the longest-serving ones for each country where a populist radical right party has achieved significant success (i.e., more than 4% of the vote in at least one general election over the last four decades). Bossi occupies a prominent position also in this group, coming only after Jean Marie Le Pen, who led France’s Front National (National Front) for almost forty years (possibly a record across all European party families). Interestingly, here we find many populist radical right leaders from northern Europe, specifically from Norway, Finland, Denmark and Sweden. Among the top five we also find the leader of a regionalist populist radical right party: Karel Dillen of the Vlaams Blok (Flemish Block). Yet it is not only political longevity that makes Bossi such a relevant figure among populist radical right leaders. Indeed, he is one of the few leaders in this group who managed to simultaneously occupy key positions in “the party central office” and also in “public office” (Katz and Mair, 1993). The last column of Table 6.2 shows that only the Finnish leader Timo Soini had government experience

Years as leader

Period

Jean Marie Le Pen Umberto Bossi Carl I. Hagen Timo Soini Karel Dillen Pia Kjærsgaard Jimmie Åkesson Geert Wilders Jörg Haider

39 28 28 20 18 17 15 14 14

1972–2011 1984–2012 1978–2006 1997–2017 1978–96 1995–2012 2005–present 2006–present 1986–2000

Ueli Maurer Nigel Farage

12 9

1996–2008 2006–9/ 2010–16

Source: Authors’ own elaboration.

Party

National Front Northern League Progress Party Finns Party Flemish Block Danish People’s Party Swedish Democrats Party for Freedom Freedom Party of Austria Swiss People’s Party UK Independence Party

Country

Years in national government while leading party

France Italy Norway Finland Belgium Denmark Sweden Netherlands Austria

0 6 0 4 0 0 0 0 0

Switzerland United Kingdom

0 0

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112

Table 6.2  Bossi and other populist radical right leaders in Europe

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comparable to Bossi’s (Niemi, 2013), as none of the others, including the most influential ones, occupied similarly pre-eminent positions at the national level while leading their parties. Of course, the Austrian Jörg Haider did provide an interesting example of a populist in government (Heinisch, 2003); however, he led a regional government (that of Carinthia). Moreover, Ueli Maurer also took up a position in the Swiss executive (the Federal Council), as Bossi did in Italy, but only after he had stopped serving as the Schweizerische Volkspartei’s (SVP – Swiss People’s Party) leader (Bernhard, 2017). Additionally, in Switzerland, cantonal leaders can exert more influence than national ones. The case of Christoph Blocher, powerful chairman of the SVP’s Zurich branch, who managed to radicalise the nativist-populist profile of the party at national level, clearly shows this (Stockemer, 2012). In sum, from a comparative, Europe-wide perspective, the figure of Umberto Bossi appears unique, insofar as he is the only one able to combine a number of important characteristics, which cannot be simultaneously found in any other populist leader in western Europe. These are: longevity, national relevance and control of both party and government positions. The next section presents a set of dimensions that will allow a systematic study of this rather unique experience of political leadership.

The multidimensional character of political leadership: a framework Over the last decades, scholars have highlighted the increasing centrality of leaders in democratic processes, something which is linked to important macro-level socio-economic and political transformations. This phenomenon, defined as “presidentialisation of politics” (Poguntke and Webb, 2007), is not exclusively associated with governing parties – i.e., those controlling executive positions – but seems to have affected all parties competing in mature democracies. Thus Thomas Poguntke and Paul Webb (2007: 9) have talked of a “shift in intra-party power to the benefit of the leader” and have observed a general tendency towards “personalised leadership”. Electoral studies have highlighted the “declining ability of social identities (class and religious) to predict individual feelings of partisan attachment, as well as the growing influence of voters’ attitudes towards party leaders” (Garzia, 2013: 67). Electoral campaigns are increasingly dominated by leaders and personal struggles, and this is also reflected in media coverage (Poguntke and Webb, 2007: 10). Italy has not been immune to these developments, as mediatisation and personalisation can be singled out as two of the key differences between the First and the Second Republics (Campus, 2010). Indeed, it was particularly in this second period of Italy’s republican history

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that strong leadership started to be regarded as an important political asset. Bossi – together with the leaders of the other major centre-right parties, Berlusconi and Fini (see Table 6.1) – well embodied the new paradigm of leader-dominated politics. From a more comparative perspective, Mudde (2007: 260–264) has emphasised the importance of leadership, together with ideology and organisation, as an “internal supply side” factor, which might determine the success of populist radical right parties. How does this increased importance of political leadership manifest itself, and what are the dimensions that define it? As with many concepts in political science, there is no unanimous interpretation of what the key attributes of leadership are or should be (Helms, 2012); however, there is a general understanding among scholars that it has something to do with power and influence, which can be exerted in different ways (Nye, 2010: 307). A more debated question is whether the main source of political power for a party leader lies within or outside the party organisation. A distinction that has often been made is the one between external and internal leadership (De Lange and Art, 2011): while the former is often linked to electoral success and the ability of a party frontrunner to attract significant personal support within the broader electorate, the latter has to do with the role of the leader within the party structure. “Charisma” is generally presented as an “external” attribute of leadership, which mainly refers to the “emotional”, direct ties existing between the leader and the voters (Mudde, 2007: 260). The literature has often stressed the important role played by charismatic leaders in determining the electoral success of populist parties (Immerfall, 1998; Probst, 2003). Yet some scholars have pointed to the lack of systematic definitions (and operationalisations) of charisma and have questioned the existence of a significant direct impact of leadership on populist parties’ electoral fortunes. Rather than directly mobilising voters, a charismatic leader may have a more indirect impact on electoral dynamics, by effectively framing and popularising specific issues which may have previously been at the margins of the political debate (van der Brug and Anthony Mughan, 2007). Hence, “issues”, rather than mere personality, remain crucial determinants of political success for new/challenger parties. There is also a general tendency to regard successful leaders as automatically “charismatic”, thus conflating cause (charisma) and effect (electoral success). If all successful leaders are charismatic, then, analytically, what distinguishes charisma and electoral success? Additionally, some scholars have highlighted that even if charismatic leaders may play a crucial role in attracting voters, they may be less able to lead parties in the long term. Electoral persistence cannot be easily secured by relying only on external appeals to the voters. Therefore, Sarah de Lange and David Art (2011)



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have stressed the importance of “internal” leadership because it facilitates processes of party institutionalisation. The two authors argue that to develop the organisational structure of a party and contribute to its “systemness”, leaders need to complement external charisma with “coterie charisma” (Eatwell, 2004). This means that leaders need to have an authoritarian leadership style and organisational talent, as well as practical leadership skills. These include the ability to operate an organisation that has not yet developed coherence, the ability to communicate with activists and administrative and political personnel, and the knowledge and people skills to select suitable candidates and staff. (de Lange and Art, 2011: 1233)

Duncan McDonnell (2016) also suggests that we need to look inside parties and analyse how members and elected representatives perceive the role of the leader. The presence of coterie charisma can be detected by considering whether followers recognise the leader as having a mission and accept his/ her unconditional authority. Additionally, McDonnell (2016: 728) stresses the importance of emotional attachment as an additional, although nonessential, indicator of coterie charisma. In the rest of this chapter we show that Bossi was able to strike a fine balance between internal and external leadership. While he dominated the internal life of his party and created a strong connection with activists and elected representatives (see Chapter 5), he also placed his personality at the centre of his broader electoral strategy.

Bossi as party leader The LN was, theoretically, a “federal” party, meaning an association of regional leagues (Lega Nord, 2012a: Art. 2) – although in practice it remained a very centralised one, as shown in Chapter 5. The party, however, called these regions “nations”. This reflects the idea of “sub-state nationalism” (Tierney, 2005), which, until recently (even after Bossi’s resignation), inspired the party’s mission. Indeed the aim of the LN was to achieve the independence of what the party referred to as “Padania” (Lega Nord, 2012a: Art. 1), that is, northern Italy, allegedly setting northern Italian “peoples” – here conceived as a plurality of national communities – free. Umberto Bossi acted as the “federal secretary” of this party until 2012. One would expect that, within a “decentralised” party organisation, the role of the leader would be relatively weak. In the international comparison presented above, we have mentioned the example of another “federal” party: Switzerland’s SVP. We pointed out that in that context the federal

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leader plays a relatively marginal role and is often overshadowed by local leaders. The case of Christoph Blocher, who was able to exert significant influence on the whole party by leading the Zurich branch, is emblematic of the relationships between the “centre” and the periphery (here the cantons). Yet this is not what happened in the League during Bossi’s leadership. Despite being a strenuous advocate of the devolution of power from central government to local and regional communities, the Senatùr – a nickname he was given after his first election to the Senate in 1987 – ran his party as a highly centralised political machine (see Chapter 5). To be sure, Bossi’s dominance within the party was not universally accepted from the beginning. Hence, particularly in the 1990s, a tension between centralisation and decentralisation affected intra-party dynamics and led to infighting and a number of splits. The story of Franco Rocchetta – the leader of the second-largest organisation merging into the LN, the Liga Veneta – clearly shows that Bossi’s rise within the party was not unchallenged and did not follow a completely linear path. Rocchetta advocated a model of party that was highly decentralised. He was a proud supporter of Venetian autonomy (and eventual independence) and regarded the powerful Lombard branch of the League with suspicion. The construction of the new federal party in the early 1990s reflected the dualism existing between the Lombard and Venetian leagues and their different approaches to how power should be distributed within the organisation. Eventually, Rocchetta was elected President of the Lega Nord during the first conference of the party in 1991, in which Bossi had to face internal criticism for his centralising tendencies and his role as both LL and LN secretary (Passalacqua, 1991). While Bossi maintained this double role, Rocchetta’s election to the presidency, a position that was more honorary than executive, was seen as an attempt to resist the considerable concentration of power in the hands of the party leader. Eventually, however, these two conflicting views of how the party should be run led to a showdown between the two. Hence, in 1994 Rocchetta, who had also become foreign affairs undersecretary in the first Berlusconi government, intensified his criticism of Bossi’s leadership, until the two openly clashed during the 1994 Congress of the LV. Rocchetta and Bossi had different views about the first government led by Berlusconi, which would collapse shortly after; however, they mainly disagreed on how their party should be run. When Bossi accused Rocchetta of being “ungrateful and disloyal” (quoted in Francica, 1994), the President of the party accused Bossi of behaving “like a despot”, adding that the organisation of the Lega Nord is the most hierarchical since the times of Togliatti [the PCI’s secretary after the Second World War] and this is Bossi’s



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fault … Bossi’s federalism is just apparent and rewards only those who are subservient to him. (Quoted in La Repubblica, 1994)

Rocchetta, however, was not backed by LV members in his criticism of the LN leader, as only 25% of the conference delegates sided with him – a significant blow for the founder of what had become the Venetian branch of the LN, but was once an independent party (La Repubblica, 1994). After failing to create an internal opposition front, Rocchetta was eventually expelled in September 1994. Bossi therefore succeeded in removing one of his most powerful opponents by convincing LV members to abandon their former leader. In the words of a Venetian representative, Rocchetta [was] unable to understand that the movement needed to grow and evolve … he is still very attached to the old Venetian traditions … They are certainly important … Yet today we live in a different era and we need different [political] methods. (interview with Subnational Representative 9)2

Many other similar episodes occurred in the 1990s (Bossi and Vimercati, 1992), a decade of growth and stabilisation for the LN, as Bossi regularly clashed with those who questioned or opposed his decisions. Interestingly, each crisis and fracture contributed to strengthening the position of the Federal Secretary within the party, while having only a minimal negative impact on the LN’s electoral base. Thus, for instance, the months from August 1994 to the beginning of 1995 can be regarded as a period of crisis for the LN. Besides Rocchetta, the party lost a large group of senior figures who did not agree with Bossi’s decision to bring down the Berlusconi-led executive and criticised his increasing support for more radical positions (i.e., advocating independence, rather than more autonomy, for northern Italy). This group even included Gianfranco Miglio, who was widely acknowledged as the intellectual who had inspired the federalist claims put forward by the League since its creation (Passalacqua, 1995). And yet this turmoil did not prevent Bossi’s party from achieving an unprecedented electoral success in the 1996 general election, by increasing its support to 10.1% of the vote from 8.4% in 1994. Bossi faced the last serious challenge to his leadership towards the end of the 1990s. After triumphing in the 1996 general election, the League’s new pro-independence strategy (Diamanti and Donaldson, 1997) resulted in its increasing isolation from the rest of the Italian party system. This soon led to a reversal of the party’s electoral fortunes, with the League experiencing new defections and splits. In September 1996, Irene Pivetti, an LN representative who had played a crucial role between 1994 and early 1996 as President of the Chamber of Deputies, was expelled due to differences between her and Bossi on secessionism (La Repubblica, 1996). Following

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this episode, internal conflicts again escalated after a disappointing result in the 1999 European election – when the LN gained only 4.5% of the vote. Hence, Vito Gnutti, an influential member of the party and former Minister of Industry in the first Berlusconi government, was forced to leave the LN after criticising Bossi’s isolationist strategy (Passalacqua, 1999b). At that stage, tensions had emerged even between Bossi and the second most powerful senior figure in the party: Roberto Maroni. The two had forged a strong political alliance since the early 1990s, when Maroni was leader of the powerful party branch of Bossi’s home town of Varese. However, the first cracks in their relationship had already become visible in 1994, when Maroni was Deputy Prime Minister in the Berlusconi government and Bossi started adopting an increasingly critical stance towards the executive, before eventually bringing it down (Marroni, 1994). Although Maroni had then been persuaded to embrace Bossi’s secessionist turn, following the poor electoral performance of 1999 he started voicing his support for a more “pragmatic” strategy which would allow the LN to reach agreements with other parties (Passalacqua, 1999a). This time, however, Bossi did not respond with the usual dismissive tone and avoided open confrontation with this internal “rival”, who was too strong at a time when the party, and its leadership, were under a lot of pressure. Instead, he gradually shifted to a more moderate position and eventually re-established an alliance with the centre-right in 2000 (although Maroni himself had initially suggested moving leftwards). After that, and until 2012, the League did not experience any other significant internal struggles. Thus the 1990s were a rather turbulent decade for the League and its leader. Yet it would be a mistake to think that Bossi engaged only in infighting and purges. While demolishing the internal opposition, the Federal Secretary also presided over the strengthening of the party organisation, as shown in Chapter 5. In fact, the leader was increasingly identified by members as the most important pillar of the party structure, with some of them even starting to see leader and party as the same thing. During a group interview with members in a local branch of a small Venetian town, this “cult of the leader” – underpinning the idea of “coterie charisma” also explored by McDonnell (2016) – clearly emerged. This is even more surprising, considering the fact that in 2004 Bossi suffered a serious stroke from which he never fully recovered. Hence, one member from this town clearly stated that “Bossi is the Lega” (Group Interview 1), while another developed this concept by saying that [Bossi] is our strategist … our charisma [sic]. If we remove Bossi … for sure there might be other personalities that could take the movement forward … however, Bossi’s charisma is irreplaceable today, even though he had some [health] issues and he has declined a lot physically. (Group Interview 1)



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The fact that Bossi was the Lega was recognised also by senior figures within the party, even more so after Bossi removed his main internal challengers at the top of the organisation. A representative of the party hence admitted that “Bossi’s figure is fundamental. He is the Lega. And he is behind all our actions” (interview with National Representative 2). According to this respondent, not only did he directly supervise the fiscal federalism reform process in Rome after yet another government led by Berlusconi was installed in 2008, but he was also active on the ground … in Veneto, in Piedmont, in Lombardy. This shows that his attachment to the territory is impressive. This also allows him to gain a good understanding of what citizens need. (Interview with National Representative 2)

Other representatives also stressed Bossi’s ability to lead, but at the same time praised his ability to preside over the construction of a solid party organisation and a network of (faithful) senior members. The importance of this was quite evident during those months when health issues prevented Bossi from directly participating in key party activities. Another member of the party elite stated that for us, [Bossi’s illness] was a big drama. However, I have to admit that in that period the Lega demonstrated its ability to remain united … Senior party members … were able to come together and discuss … They were able to develop unitary positions. This is the proof that Bossi had contributed to creating a leading class within the party and we could move forward. (Interview with National Representative 1)

Therefore, Bossi developed a multi-level strategy to consolidate his position. He invested much in the creation of a professional leading class at the federal and regional levels – a cohesive group of people who would be directly accountable to him – while also forging a very strong direct bond with grassroots members. Going back to the latter, one statement exemplifies very well what Bossi meant for the party base: Lega activists take what Bossi says very seriously. I mean, sometimes we can disagree and be a bit grumpy. But in the end real leghisti [Lega members] accept whatever is decided by people at the top. I am not saying we are just soldiers, because we have a brain and we are able to think for ourselves. But history has demonstrated that our capo, as we call Umberto [Bossi], has more foresight than all the other people. (Interview with Party Member 1 from Piedmont)

Previous analyses of LN members’ statements concerning their leader show these views to have been widely shared (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2015: ch. 3; McDonnell, 2016). Hence, Bossi’s “coterie charisma” has been well

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demonstrated, as the LN leader enjoyed unconditional support from party members, officials and electoral representatives. Yet evidence presented above shows that this was the result of a relatively long process in which Bossi had to face internal competition and challenges to his leadership. Far from being an innate attribute of the leader, coterie charisma was carefully built and preserved. Yet it also produced side-effects, as familistic tendencies in Bossi’s running of the party became evident throughout the 2000s, after his position as leader had been consolidated. So, for instance, one of his children, Renzo Bossi, was parachuted into the safe constituency of Brescia during the 2010 regional election in Lombardy. This decision was not easily accepted by local activists, with some accusing Bossi of nepotism (Ceccarelli, 2010). Eventually, Bossi’s son was elected, yet this episode revealed the existence of an inner circle of faithful party officials and family members, also known as Cerchio Magico (the Magic Circle), which gradually insulated the leader from other factions within the party – particularly the faction led by the above-mentioned Roberto Maroni (Cento Bull, 2013). It is noticeable that the origins of this group went back to March 2004, when Bossi suffered a stroke. At that time, his wife, Manuela Marrone, emerged as a key figure within the party and ensured that Bossi would be surrounded only by trusted people, above all family members and close friends (Cento Bull, 2013: 96). However, the growing overlap between party and family was accompanied by increasing misappropriation of party resources, including those derived from public financing. In the end, the scandal that led to Bossi’s resignation exploded within this group of close allies, involving illegitimate payments from party funds to Bossi’s children and other members of the Magic Circle. Investigations even uncovered dealings with the Calabrian Mafia (Cento Bull, 2013: 98). In sum, Bossi’s case also shows how a firm grip on the party, combined with increasing personalisation and insulation from challengers and members’ scrutiny, might lead to a process of organisational “decay” or even “degeneration”. Thus, while remaining a highly institutionalised party, in the final years of Bossi’s leadership the LN started resembling what Hopkin and Paolucci (1999: 311) define as a “business firm model of party organisation”, in which “the public goods produced are incidental to the real objectives of those leading it”.

Bossi and his electorate A good leader is also a good external communicator. To some extent, internal leadership is even more secure when it is accompanied by an effective

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strategy aimed at conveying the party message to the broader electorate. When members and senior party figures see that their leader is able to attract significant support outside the party, they may well be more likely to follow him/her, even during periods of turbulence. However, the case of the League shows that this is far from a rule written in stone. Interestingly, the gradual “institutionalisation” and entrenchment of Bossi’s leadership that has been described in the previous section, after the challenges he had to face in the 1990s, coincided with a decline, not a surge, in his external appeal. To be sure, Bossi established a strong connection with certain sectors of the electorate, which remained faithful to the League until his resignation. Yet Bossi’s popularity after 2000 was only a shadow of what it had been in the early 1990s. In 1993 a survey commissioned by one of the most widely distributed Italian magazines, TV Sorrisi e Canzoni, included Bossi among the twenty most popular personalities of the year, a group which comprised not only politicians but also football players, actors and TV presenters (La Repubblica, 1993a). According to that poll, he was slightly less popular than Antonio di Pietro, a judge leading the Bribes Ville corruption investigation who had become a star thanks to much media exposure. The leader of the League was even better known to interviewees than the then President of the Republic, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro. Bossi and Di Pietro, together with Mario Segni – a Christian Democratic politician who led a campaign in support of the reform of the proportional voting system and the general modernisation of representative institutions (La Repubblica, 1993b) – were widely regarded as the key figures of the 1992–94 period, which fundamentally changed Italian politics. With old leaders facing a serious crisis of legitimacy, these personalities could play the role of innovators and the reformers of a corrupted political system. Yet their period of fame did not last long and ended abruptly with the rise of Silvio Berlusconi, who, also thanks to his media empire, ended up dominating Italian politics for the following two decades (Albertazzi and Rothenberg, 2009). We can contrast the 1993 picture with that of 2001, when Bossi became Minister for Institutional Reforms and Devolution in the second executive led by Berlusconi, following a rapprochement between the LN and Berlusconi’s FI. In a survey conducted for the magazine L’Espresso,3 the leader of the LN appeared as the least popular among all members of the Berlusconi government, including the most junior ones.4 To be sure, Bossi remained a polarising politician throughout his career, with his anti-southern rhetoric making him rather unpopular in at least half of the country. The complicated years from 1994 to 1999 gradually pushed him to the margins of the political system (while allowing him to consolidate his position within the party). When he decided to reopen a dialogue with the establishment by becoming

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part of it (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2005), he was therefore in a very different position from that he had occupied in the early 1990s. While in the biennium 1992–94 he could still present himself as a “disruptor” of the old party system and a clear anti-establishment figure, by 2001 this had become more difficult, as he had forged a comprehensive alliance with FI, by then the main pillar of a new “bipolar” system, acting as its junior partner.5 The relationship with Berlusconi in fact reveals another important aspect of Bossi’s external leadership: his tendency to mix the personal with the political in his interactions with competitors and/or allies. In 1994 the lack of personal trust between Bossi and Berlusconi led to the early collapse of their first attempt to form a coalition. To rebuild a dialogue between their respective parties, the two leaders needed to go beyond the usual channels of official politics. As shown by Daniele Albertazzi and Duncan McDonnell (2010: 1333), Bossi was finally able to return to power by establishing “an excellent personal relationship with Berlusconi”, which allowed him to act as the “guarantor” of the alliance with the leader of FI (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2010: 1332) vis-à-vis his own party. The fact that it was widely known and reported in the media that the capo and Berlusconi spoke to each other on the phone at least a couple of times a day (as also mentioned by Party Member 1 from Piedmont) facilitated Bossi’s job in convincing the Lega’s grassroots and senior members that they could “trust” their powerful ally (see interviews with National Representatives 1 and 2). As stated by a party representative from Friuli Venetia Giulia: some members don’t really trust Berlusconi because they have the impression that he is too interested in his own businesses. However, they really trust Bossi, there is great trust in his intuition, his ability to lead and mediate. (Interview with Subnational Representative 13)

In the end, many LN members came to regard Berlusconi as useful to their movement, and were reassured by what they saw as Bossi’s close relationship with him. As stated by one activist from the Veneto region, without the tycoon-turned-politician, “we would have never got where we are” (interview with Party Member 8). The mediating skills of Bossi and his ability to exert influence on decisionmaking processes is clearly illustrated by the case of the “fiscal federalism” reform approved in 2009 (see Chapter 4). In our interviews with national representatives Bossi is described not only as a leader with a clear vision but also as a skilled negotiator and implementer. His close relationship with Berlusconi was regarded as the cornerstone of his negotiating strategy (interview with National Representative 1). He was also able to use his parliamentary and electoral strength to persuade reluctant allies to embrace his federalist agenda by resorting to the usual threat: “pulling the plug”



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(staccare la spina), that is, withdrawing support for the government (interview with National Representative 2). In a system based on coalitions like the Italian one, this was a serious threat, since a medium-sized party with 4% to 8% of the vote could hold the balance of power and determine who would sit in government.6 Bossi’s tactical use of his electoral strength and his determination and ability to rely on the political personnel of his party are summarised in the words of one of his closest allies within the LN: Umberto Bossi has shown many things and will show even more, because he has a clear plan, a clear goal he wants to achieve [federalism] and a political team backing him and helping him to implement his political project. (Interview with National Representative 2, our emphasis)

There is another key aspect of Bossi’s external leadership that is worth mentioning here. Although he eventually failed to attract a majoritarian sector of the Italian electorate, he was effective in communicating with a large section of the northern electorate, and his distinctive style allowed him to occupy a special place in the public imaginary of the country as a whole (Biorcio, 2003). Bossi’s major contribution to the emergence of a new style of communication that broke with the traditional style and rhetoric of more traditional politicians was the deployment of the “language of the streets” in his speeches and interviews, something that is of course not alien to populist leaders (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2008), but was still very uncommon in 1980s Italy. Despite being dressed up in the clothes of simplicity and “genuineness”, such language is of course an elaborate construction. As Roberto Biorcio (2003: 89) has argued, the breaking with the official national language (through the attempt to create a koiné out of various Lombard dialects) and also with the obscure and complicated expressions typical of the establishment (by legitimising name-calling, shouting and the deployment of vulgar words) were all essential to nurture Bossi’s image as “one of the people” (Albertazzi, 2007). Equally, pictures of Bossi on holiday in Sardinia – a top destination for smart, rich people – wearing a white tank top and a golden chain in 1994 became famous (Longo, 1994) precisely insofar as they embodied the end of an era that had been dominated by allegedly elitist politicians who could be accused of having remained “too distant” from the people. In some cases, going as far as insulting his opponents (and/or the highest authorities within the state) had serious legal consequences for the LN leader. Hence, in 2018 Bossi was sentenced to one year’s imprisonment (later suspended) because he had insulted the President of the Republic by calling him a “terun” (unsophisticated/naïve southerner) during a party rally several years earlier (Vecchio, 2018). Despite this and several other unpleasant encounters with the law throughout his political career, Bossi was very successful in helping to create

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a climate whereby traditional leaders were eventually forced to rethink their own strategies of communication so as not to be outsmarted, to abandon their propensity for using obscure words no one could understand and to stop using the media just to send messages to each other – as had been common during the First Republic. Silvio Berlusconi’s simple and down-toearth style of communication on television and in political rallies after he “took to the pitch” of politics in 1994 also broke with convention and owed to Bossi’s style, while never being as vulgar as Bossi’s was. Indeed, Berlusconi’s tendency to employ only down-to-earth expressions and concepts during his speeches, and to personalise and simplify issues (whereby complex problems were always reduced to a clash between different personalities) (Berlusconi, 2001) owed much to the style of the LN leader, without ever being a mere imitation of it. Bossi may have been the first to systematically seek to divide the electorate by using emotive language and by constantly framing choices as simple ones between “common sensical solutions” versus retaining the “privileges” of the political class; however, dramatisation and exaggeration very much became the rule for all those wishing to shape the agenda of an increasingly tabloidised media. In sum, while Bossi occupied the centre stage of Italian politics for only a brief period in the 1990s, to then become a member of Berlusconi’s coalition, his success in consolidating his position within his own party was arguably matched by important qualities relating to external leadership and his skills as a communicator. Although the LN leader never regained the levels of popularity he had reached in the early 1990s, he was able to rely on his informal and direct style to build a lasting relationship with another populist politician, the FI’s leader, after a first failed attempt in 1994. His ability to ‘mediate’ and intervene directly in delicate negotiations involving allies and competitors helped him to cement his political project and gain the trust of party members and senior figures. Arguably, it also allowed him to remain a highly recognisable politician, whose communication and style greatly influenced the media-dominated political competition of the Italian Second Republic.

Conclusion In this chapter we have focused on Bossi’s leadership. As we have discussed, not only has Bossi been the longest-serving leader of any major Italian party since the Second World War, but he also occupies an important position within the growing family of populist radical right leaders. Managing to act as a bridge between two periods in Italian recent history, the First and Second Republics, Bossi was also one of the few populist radical right

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leaders who managed to combine political longevity with control of government positions. In this volume we have linked his success to two important dimension of leadership: internal and external. Both in this chapter and elsewhere (see Chapter 5) we have provided extensive evidence in support of the claim that the LN leader was effective in building a strong internal leadership. As we have seen above, the 1990s were certainly a crucial decade in this respect, as in this period Bossi was able to expel competitors from the top of his party, while also strengthening his connection with the party’s grassroots (see Chapter 7). The consolidation of his position within the party coincided with a period of decline in his popularity within the wider electorate, after a short phase at the centre of the political stage during the collapse of the First Republic. Yet it would be a mistake to argue that Bossi was ultimately successful only as the head of his own organisation. In fact, he was also able to use his personality externally to occupy a privileged position in the new political establishment of the Second Republic. His close relationship with Silvio Berlusconi allowed him to exert significant influence on the policies supported and implemented by the centre-right governments that ruled Italy in the first decade of the new millennium. Indeed, each time the LN got into government following the failed brief experiment of 1994, it was able to immediately introduce new legislation on the issues that defined the party (immigration/law and order and federalism), despite the opposition of some of its own allies (see Chapter 4). Additionally, many traits of Bossi’s style have come to symbolise a particular moment of transition in the Italian republican era, one in which political success could no longer be exclusively built on the strength of effective organisational machines but also increasingly depended on the qualities of individual personalities. Recent developments, with the rise of Matteo Salvini to the top of the party, are only a continuation and “extremisation” of this trend, which during the new century very much affected the Left, too. In the end, the central position occupied by political leaders within parties and the presidentialisation of political competition became some of the most important features of Italian politics in the new millennium and beyond (Bordignon, 2013).

Postscript: the leadership of Matteo Salvini In many respects, Umberto Bossi can be regarded as a very influential figure in the political career of Matteo Salvini, the current leader of the League, although it may be fair to say that the student has now become the master. From the old capo Salvini has clearly learnt the importance of speaking the language of the common man and not refraining from using provocative

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and controversial expressions. He has also pushed to the extreme Bossi’s tendency to conflate party and personality. Towards the end of his leadership, the name “BOSSI” started appearing on the LN logo to symbolise the increasing “personalisation” of the party. To be sure, this was part of the general development towards the presidentialisation of Italian politics mentioned earlier. Today it is actually quite uncommon for ballot papers not to mention the name of party leaders alongside those of the parties themselves when elections take place in the country. In Chapter 2 we mentioned the process of programmatic “nationalisation” that invested the LN under Matteo Salvini. Here we can add that this transformation was not only driven by changing external circumstances but was also instrumental in the establishment of Salvini’s new leadership within a party that for more than twenty years had been dominated by the figure of Bossi, his family and close allies. When Bossi was pushed aside, most of Bossi’s (former) loyalists could still rely on personal support and power positions in the northern regions of Italy and would continue to act as an important constraint on the new leadership. Therefore, expanding the territorial base of the party by involving constituencies in regions outside the North can also be seen as a way of reducing the relative influence of the old guard (concentrated in the Veneto region and in Lombardy) and rebranding the League as Salvini’s party. It is not a coincidence that, from 2014 onwards, the gradual abandonment of the traditional federalist agenda by Salvini was accompanied by the creation of a parallel political list to be presented in the southern regions, called Noi con Salvini (Us with Salvini) (Vercesi, 2015: 400). The name and platform of the new “sister party” highlighted the centrality of the leader in the process of territorial expansion and ideological transformation, until a few years later, when Salvini’s name was even inserted in the name of the League itself (see postscript to Chapter 5). In northern Italy, Salvini still had to accommodate the demands of well-established regional leaders, such as the presidents of the Lombardy and Veneto regions; however, in the South he had the opportunity to create a movement that was fully dependent on his image, and purely reflective of his own views. This was also possible because in the southern regions the League had never had a governing role and did not have to act as a responsible and pragmatic political actor (Vampa, 2017: 36). Therefore leadership consolidation and programmatic shifts went hand in hand. This process also meant that Salvini started paying increasing attention to the external dimension of leadership. Hence, while Bossi relied on an eclectic combination of personalisation and strong organisation, Salvini has been more focused on the former, albeit without dismantling the structures of the “mass party” that Bossi had built throughout his career. This might be partly explained by the general weakening of party organisations in Italy, particularly after the abolition of public funding of political parties

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in 2013. The increasing importance of social media has also made leadercentric strategies and direct communication with the broader electorate more appealing and easier to implement than in the past, although party members and activists maintain an important role within the League, particularly during campaigns. The strength of Salvini’s “external” leadership is confirmed by opinion polls. As shown in Figure 6.2, he has enjoyed much more popularity within the Italian electorate than did Bossi and Roberto Maroni, who led the party for a brief period following Bossi’s resignation. In 2018–19 Salvini’s personal support reached peaks of 60%. While Bossi was able to speak to a core of faithful followers, Salvini has been a more “inclusive” leader, thanks to his new “national” narrative and his skilful use of social media. Of course, it may be difficult for him to maintain political momentum in the long term, and the decline in popularity observed in the second half of 2019 and early 2020 seems to confirm this. For Bossi it was much easier to retain the support of a relatively small, albeit politically pivotal, sector of the electorate by focusing on a consistent set of policies. On the other hand, Salvini may struggle to reconcile demands coming from a wider and more heterogeneous group of supporters. The rapidly ascending and descending trajectories followed by leaders of other parties and former prime ministers, such as Mario Monti and Matteo Renzi, are a clear example of the fact that Italian politicians act in an increasingly volatile political environment today.

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Figure 6.2  Popularity of LN leaders from Bossi to Salvini

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Notes 1 This list does not include Silvius Magnago, leader of the small South Tyrolean People’s Party from 1957 to 1991. His party dominated the political landscape of South Tyrol but never played a major role in national politics. For this reason, his name was not considered in this analysis. 2 Like elsewhere in this book (particularly Chapters 5 and 7), in this and the following sections we rely on the rich series of interviews with party members and representatives listed in Chapter 1. 3 Retrieved from the historical archive of the Department for Information and Publishing www.archivio.sondaggipoliticoelettorali.it/?st=VECCHIOSITO. Accessed 9 June 2020. 4 Of course, we should take the comparability of the 1993 and 2001 surveys with caution, but the substantive point is that, after reaching its peak in the early 1990s, Bossi’s popularity declined significantly towards the end of the decade and remained rather stable (at lower levels) in the 2000s. 5 Even though Bossi had formed a coalition with FI already in 1994, he could still portray himself as an outsider then, since at that time Berlusconi’s party had just been created and Berlusconi himself claimed to be a businessman temporarily “lent” to politics. Seven years later, these claims became harder to sell. 6 Interestingly, the centre-right coalition experienced its worst defeat in 1996, when the LN was not allied with Berlusconi.

7

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Participation without power

Introduction In setting up a mass party during the 1980s and 1990s – when the League’s competitors were embracing lighter and less expensive ways to organise political activities – Umberto Bossi demonstrated how much he valued the grassroots’ contribution to the life of the party. As we have previously mentioned, however, this does not mean that the party leader wanted members to be given actual opportunities to shape the League’s strategy. On the contrary, the League remained a very centralised party in which decisions were taken by Bossi with support from a small group of individuals loyal to him. In Chapter 5 we have defined this strategy as one that offered “participation without power”. The main focus of Chapter 5 was the League as an organisation; in the present chapter we aim to concentrate on its grassroots – the very people making the organisation tick. As we will see later, and importantly, activism contributed to shaping the way many party members made sense of their place within their local communities, bringing into focus the role that political activism can still play in people’s lives. In order to explore these themes, in this chapter we will draw on an extensive series of interviews with party representatives and ordinary members and tease out the reasons why people got involved with the League in the first place and spent so much of their time and energy supporting it throughout the years (see Chapter 1 for a more detailed explanation of our methodology). We argue that this discussion matters – not only to those who are interested in Italian politics but, more broadly, to scholars of populist parties and/or party organisations. The analysis will allow us to better understand: (a) the survival of “traditional” models of party organisation that rely on people’s active participation in the political process; and (b) whether, and how, parties can shape views and identities, and what they gain from doing so. This chapter will now proceed as follows. In the next section we offer a discussion of what party members did within and for the League, which

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includes representing the party in the institutions and getting involved in externally and internally facing activities. This will be followed by a discussion of the incentives behind people’s involvement in political parties generally, and in the LN more specifically. We will then interpret the narratives put forward by League members about the reasons for their participation in the life of the party, and will conclude by summarising our findings and suggesting possible avenues for further research. The main argument made in this chapter will be that activism was crucial to the efficient functioning of the LN as a political party, and also played an important role in the lives of its members.

What did people do in the LN? Party members arguably have an important role to play just by strengthening “the political legitimacy of party policy and personnel decisions” (Scarrow, 2014: 2). For a populist party such as the League, having a large membership allegedly provides proof that it is simply implementing “the people’s will”. Besides this, there are of course a variety of externally facing activities that members can get involved in to help their organisation, and these can be split into three broad categories: 1 representing the party in public office at all levels of government; 2 running the party offices, campaigning, canvassing etc.; 3 providing funding to the party. In order for such a variety of functions to be performed effectively, a party often makes sure that members also take part in internally facing activities, which provide training, canvass members’ opinions, create community and foster loyalty to the organisation. These different kinds of activities will all be considered here, with reference to the League. According to Susan Scarrow (2014: 125), party members remain the most important source of party volunteers in several countries and are more likely than non-members to act as opinion multipliers. As discussed in Chapter 5, Bossi’s LN expected its members to actively contribute to its activities on a regular basis. For instance, drawing on a survey of LN members carried out in 2011, Gianluca Passarelli and Dario Tuorto (2012c: 269–270) found that just over half of respondents “often” participated in campaign events (54.1%) and “often” attended meetings in the local party branch (51.4%). Furthermore, if we add those who were performing these activities “often” to those who were doing so “every so often”, we end up with the impressive overall figure of 94% (Passarelli and Tuorto, 2012c: 270). However, it is of course important to distinguish between different levels of involvement, as

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Soci Ordinari-Militanti (full members) had many more obligations towards their party than the mere Soci Sostenitori (supporters), as shown in Chapter 5. Hence, a study conducted shortly after Bossi’s departure (Porcellato and Rombi, 2014), but which asked respondents to focus on their experiences of activism during the preceding few years, found that full members were in fact more committed to running the organisation. Apart from being much more likely to fulfil roles within the party (50% vs a mere 5% of supporters), as well as serve in public administrations (33% vs 9%), full members were also more likely to take part in the activities of party branches (91% vs 48%), and to participate in demonstrations and street rallies (87% vs 50%) (Porcellato and Rombi, 2014: 10–12).1 To put flesh on the bones of this data, we draw from interviews with party members which, among other things, explored the nature of their involvement with the League. The first thing to say about such interviews is that they confirm how frequently full members made themselves available to the party and turned up for meetings. For instance, Members 16 and 18 (both living in a small village in the Veneto region, which hosted a small party branch) claimed to be meeting other activists at least once a week, and explained that these meetings often turned into social occasions. In order to make up for the relatively small size of their group, they said, it was common for people from nearby branches to turn up too, and “lend a hand” (Porcellato and Rombi, 2014: 10–12). Indeed, one of the key features of Bossi’s LN appears to have been turning most chores and duties assigned to members into opportunities to bond with like-minded people. It is our contention that this was one of the most important characteristics of the League, and a crucial ingredient of its success in recruiting activists. Closed meetings reserved to party members were often attended by elected regional and national representatives – and not just local officials – as mentioned by respondents from both large and small cities and villages (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2015: 39–40). As Member 3 from Piedmont explained in his interview, this was meant to give ordinary members plenty of opportunities to hear what was happening in Parliament and/or in government, and to learn the reasons for tactical and strategic changes made by the party. In his interview, Member 10 from a small town in the Veneto region praised this practice, saying that it helped avoid “misunderstandings”. In his words, by fielding questions from activists, representatives could “explain lots of things which otherwise could be interpreted badly” (Interview with Member 10). This practice, whereby party representatives, including at national level, needed to constantly report back to grassroots activists about their choices, can be criticised as window dressing, since it did not mean that members were then empowered to affect their representatives’ behaviour via formal mechanisms. And yet it was very much valued by

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people on the ground, who felt they were being kept informed, and also gave an opportunity to party leaders to make sure that official explanations for the party’s strategic choices would immediately be communicated at all levels of the organisation (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2015: ch. 3). Large-scale surveys of party members have confirmed that this practice was very widespread within the party. For instance, Passarelli and Tuorto (2012b: 176) found as many as 70% of party members reporting that they were “constantly” being kept informed about the actions of their representatives, with an equal number saying that they were being consulted by their representatives before votes were taken in local council assemblies. Alongside what are essentially internally facing activities, such as meetings and social events reserved to members, there were of course also many externally facing ones. These were aimed at influencing electoral outcomes, shaping political views among the electorate at large and recruiting new members. Among these activities, one that was much cited by members in interviews consisted in the setting up of street stalls (called “gazebo”) in order to canvass the electorate. Alongside this there was also the organisation of street demonstrations, open-air events during the summer months and other social events. Party members spoke highly of the fact that their party was able to maintain a rooted and widespread organisation that allowed it to reach out to the electorate all year round. For instance, by setting up stands in public places at which members could hand out leaflets and explain party policy to passers-by, the party was said to be uniquely placed to approach hardto-reach voters and engage them in face-to-face discussions. This, in turn, allowed those staffing the stands to feed the concerns of common people back to party representatives during their regular meetings, hence making sure that the LN could provide solutions to the electorate at local, regional or national levels. In their interviews, members and representatives stressed that this commitment to face-to-face interaction with the electorate further differentiated the LN from mainstream parties. The latter – said to be self-serving and disinterested in the problems of ordinary people – had allegedly lost touch with voters. For instance, Member 2 from Turin said it was a duty of LN party representatives to engage real people in order to “understand their problems without sneering at them”. For him this was something anyone wishing to start a career as a politician simply had to do. Representative 1, then the party leader in the Turin city council, made a similar point in his interview, stressing what he saw as a fundamental difference between the LN and its competitors. As he put it: How many parties make sure that an MP, or just a senior councillor, is available on a Saturday at the stand in the local market? No one does this anymore. We do it because we believe in it. (Interview with Subnational Representative 1)

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Singing from the same hymn sheet, Representative 13 (then the President of the Province of Udine in the Friuli Venezia-Giulia region) said that the LN was the only party left in Italy which had several branches and still engaged in leafleting and canvassing. Similarly, Representative 4 (then the party leader in the local council of Verona), also saw the LN as being “much more territorial” than the other parties. The added advantage brought about by the party’s rootedness and presence on the ground, according to members and representatives, was that it helped their party to conduct effective campaigns in the absence of the considerable financial means that others (for instance, Silvio Berlusconi) had at their disposal (on this topic, see Albertazzi and Rothenberg, 2009). Ultimately, it was alleged, this allowed the League to establish a qualitatively different relationship with the electorate. As a member from Turin explained in his interview, members had to bring the LN’s proposals to quarters of the city where people would normally lean towards the left: It is precisely in a place like this that you can spend time listening, and possibly be criticised and insulted, because … they do not stand there clapping! In Borgo San Paolo [one of Turin’s quarters] we are … perhaps “hated” is excessive, but we are not far from that! So they are confrontational towards us. That’s where you find the Communist diehards …(Interview with Member 3)

This “missionary” attitude, alleged to be typical of the leghisti activists, also fed their view of the party as fundamentally “other” than its competitors. As a member from the Veneto region explained in his interview: Once the other parties have been voted in, you never see them again. This is the difference! In our case, if they [i.e. members of the public] insult us, we accept it and are happy to engage in discussions with them. (Interview with Member 14)

Hence, in the members’ own words, activism required a considerable dose of self-sacrifice and dedication; it was most certainly not something one would do to gain personal advantage. However, it was also said to bring rewards of a different nature, having to do with accessing a community and meeting like-minded individuals. As we will see below, this social aspect was indeed very important to many members, and one of the reasons why they stayed within the organisation. Following in the footsteps of the mass parties of old, particularly the PCI and the PSI, the LN was also committed to the organisation of regular open-air events. Here people could be entertained, attend debates on current affairs and be exposed to cultural initiatives that were thought to encapsulate some of the party’s values and beliefs (such as, for instance, plays performed in the local dialect or the provision of traditional food). These events targeted both those within and outside the party: they helped the LN to connect to

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the wider world (not just the electorate, but also the local and national media), while at the same time fostering a community spirit among its members (Biorcio, 1997: 198–201). Given the importance of events of this kind to Bossi’s League, their organisation was meticulously planned and there was much discussion within the party concerning the objectives that such time-consuming activities were supposed to fulfil. We can better understand how these events were seen by the leadership by considering a party manual published in 2003 that discusses them in some detail: the Scuola Politica, Amministrativa ed Organizzativa (“Political, Administrative and Organisational School”) (Lega Nord, 2003: 41–43). According to this document, both large events organised at federal level and the smaller ones taking place at the local level provide a precious source of funding for local activities. In an interview given to us after Bossi’s era had come to an end, the then leader of the Lombard branch, Representative 14, confirmed that this was still the case at the time, and that holding open-air events throughout the summer was an important source of income for the local branches of his party. Alongside these pressing financial reasons, the party manual mentions others having to do with campaigning and proselytising. Hence, mixing with ordinary voters during open-air events is said to provide opportunities to engage them in an informal setting, thus encouraging them to get involved with the party, or at least look at it more favourably. This was a practice widely adopted by the PCI well before the League was even founded, via the organisation of its wellknown “Feste dell’Unità”. A third reason for organising social events which is mentioned in the manual (Lega Nord, 2013: 41) is giving activists a chance to practise working as a team, a skill that, it is argued, is in fact essential to running effective electoral campaigns. Fourth, social events are said to give the party a golden opportunity to test the loyalty of members and their willingness to work hard, thus making it possible to identify those who are “true to their word, those who do and achieve things” (Lega Nord, 2013: 41). Finally, these initiatives fulfil an important ideological function by allowing the party to demonstrate its respect and consideration for local traditions, for instance by sourcing food locally and by avoiding any “initiatives that make references to alien cultures” (Lega Nord, 2013: 43). The event that more than any other embodied Bossi’s willingness to bring members (and people at large) together and strengthen the bonds between attendees, while also testing the commitment of party activists, was the annual gathering held every July in the Lombard town of Pontida (see Chapter 5). This was usually attended by members and sympathisers from all over the North in their tens of thousands, and featured a variety of political and cultural activities.2 It was from Pontida’s stage that Bossi used

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to make important announcements about the future direction of the party, including the (short-lived) decision to turn to “all-out” separatism in the mid-1990s. Every year the media would descend on Pontida to hear Bossi’s speeches, expecting him to make the most outrageous statements against “Rome” and other political leaders, if not threaten to split the country altogether. Hence, this event provided plenty of opportunities to the increasingly tabloidised media to frame stories and political developments in dramatic terms, helping Bossi to set the political agenda. Importantly, Pontida also provided party members with a unique opportunity to mingle with others coming from nearby regions. A survey conducted in 2011 by the Istituto Catania on a random sample of LN members found that 76% of respondents had attended this event “at least once” during the preceding seven years (Passarelli and Tuorto, 2012c: 269), while the interviews cited in this book also confirm the key role played by this annual gathering. Member 1 (from Piedmont), for instance, could not have described his time there in more enthusiastic terms: It is an amazing experience, wonderful. I went there for the first time … I will never forget my first time. […] you really feel the spirit, the strength that comes from sticking together, the strength of this friendship that ties you to others, you feel the strength of the people. It is something … I cannot describe it, you need to experience it. (Interview with Member 1)

The words chosen by the same interviewee to describe his reaction to Umberto Bossi taking to the stage at Pontida in 2005, following his partial recovery from a very serious illness, are also revealing of the strong feelings that activism within the League could elicit: When he [Bossi] got on stage and made his first speech there were – and I am not exaggerating here – 100,000 people who were crying! It was a very touching moment … really engaging, touching, emotional and deeply felt […] in that moment you do not feel that you are part of a political party, but a big family, which is what the Lega still is today. (Interview with Member 1, our emphasis)

This is a powerful reminder of the LN’s ability to deploy symbols and rituals (such as the Pontida gathering) to shape identities. The League aimed to cement the loyalties of its members “by building strong organisational networks on the basis of shared social experiences” (Mair, 2013: 80). This is, of course, what all mass parties, whether religious or left wing, used to do once upon a time. However, as Susan Scarrow (2014: 162) says, “In today’s parliamentary democracies, only a handful of political parties make group identity their main appeal.” Clearly, Bossi’s League must be counted among them. It is now time to consider more closely how this model worked, in terms of providing incentives to people so that they would participate in the life

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of the party. Following a brief discussion of the incentives that explain political participation more generally, we will consider in some detail the reasons why the LN’s members joined the party and remained within it.

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Why be an LN activist? Why do people volunteer for political parties, despite the demands these make on their time – and sometimes finances? More specifically, why do people continue to do so even when they have access to plenty of other (usually less formal and demanding) ways to influence the political process? Drawing on Otto Kirchheimer’s work, Angelo Panebianco (1988: 268) identifies three main functions fulfilled by political parties: (a) candidate selection; (b) the forging of public policy; and, (c) the “‘integrative’ or ‘expressive’ function […]” (Panebianco, 1988: 268). The most important aspect of this last function is “the creation and preservation of collective identities through ideology” (Panebianco, 1988: 268), which, as we have seen in Chapter 5, is crucial to mass parties (see also Janda, 1980: 126). As we will show in this section, League members acknowledged that their identities were being shaped by their activism and face-to-face interactions with fellow members, and very much valued being involved in this process. In order to identify the reasons why LN members remained active within the party, that is, what was in it for them, we start from Peter Clark and James Wilson’s (1961) hugely influential paper on how organisations work, in which the authors treat three kinds of incentives as especially important to the functioning of any organisation. They call them: material, solidary and purposive. National political cultures very much shape the nature of the material incentives that may turn out to be important to political activism. For instance, the level of party penetration within different economic systems varies from country to country, which means that party members sometimes have an opportunity to access jobs, or at least dedicated services, thanks to their political affiliation. Whatever form material incentives may take in different contexts, their defining feature is always their tangible nature, and the fact that people seeking them do so for personal gain. On the contrary, Clark and Wilson’s second category (solidary) refers to incentives that must – by definition – be “intangible” (Clark and Wilson, 1961: 134), have “no monetary value” (Clark and Wilson, 1961: 134) and cannot easily be translated into some that have. They “derive in the main from the act of associating and include such rewards as socializing, congeniality, the sense of group membership and identification, the status resulting from membership, fun and conviviality, the maintenance of social distinctions, and so on”.

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Importantly, we are told, “they tend to be independent of the precise ends of the association” (Clark and Wilson, 1961: 134–135). In other words, whether they work or not for certain individuals is not due to that organisation’s values (and message). The opposite is the case when it comes to purposive incentives, as these “derive in the main from the stated ends of the association rather than from the simple act of associating” (Clark and Wilson, 1961: 135, our emphasis). In the case of political parties, purposive incentives have to do with the ideology the party defends and how this actually translates into policies. Examples of purposive incentives would therefore be “the demand for the enactment of certain laws or the adoption of certain practices (which do not benefit the members in any direct or tangible way), such as elimination of corruption or inefficiency from public service” (Clark and Wilson, 1961: 135). Clark and Wilson’s categories have been widely deployed by scholars studying political parties, starting with Kenneth Janda’s (1980: 126–132) seminal Political Parties – A Cross-National Survey. The same categories have also inspired Paul Whiteley and Patrick Seyd’s “General Incentives Model” (Whiteley and Seyd, 2002), and were deployed in Susan Scarrow’s (2014) more recent work, too. In line with Scarrow’s research (2014: 158), we have also found that respondents are very reluctant to discuss material incentives when asked about what makes them “stay” in a party. In other words, activism is always said to be costly and to require considerable sacrifices (see later). Obviously, we recognise that respondents “might find [it] socially unacceptable to mention certain motives” (Scarrow, 2014: 159–160) and that material incentives must play a part at least in some cases (e.g., when a member ends up embarking on a political career). The fact remains, however, that when it comes to the League, no respondent ever frames the reasons behind his or her choice to be active with references to material benefits. Hence, there is simply nothing to say on the topic. As for the other two categories proposed by Clark and Wilson, we find the category of “purposive” incentives useful to our discussion; however, we distinguish two subcategories within the one they call “solidary incentives”. In line with previous work by one of the present authors (see Albertazzi, 2016), we call these subcategories: personal and communitarian incentives. The categories adopted in our analysis are defined as follows. a. Purposive incentives refer to the importance of party ideology to some activists and the role this plays in their lives (“ideology” being a term LN members widely use themselves, and which carries no negative connotation for them). b. Personal incentives have to do with people’s lives and sense of identity being shaped by activism, and with political participation providing

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“fulfilment”, “satisfaction”, if not even “a reason to live” to some people (see later citations). c. Communitarian incentives have to do with a party’s ability to create and foster communities of like-minded individuals – thus providing a new “family” to activists; they help to “give a home” to a person within a wider community, making them aware of the values and beliefs they share with like-minded fellow citizens. In short, this category captures people’s need to belong – a need that can well be fulfilled by communities of a non-political nature, too. As Richard Katz (2005: 103) says, “participation in campaigns may be an avenue to meeting congenial people, quite apart from their political significance”. In practice, the categories adopted here often overlap to an extent. Indeed, respondents are often susceptible to different incentives, and there is no reason why different motivations should not be at work at the same time. In the following section we draw extensively upon interviews with LN members that were carried out during 2009–10, towards the end of Bossi’s long tenure as League’s leader (see Chapter 1). Since respondents reject the idea that material incentives play any part in their activism, our discussion will start by covering the importance of purposive incentives to them.

Purposive incentives As we have seen earlier and in Chapter 5, having a well-defined ideology is a key feature of the mass party, alongside the willingness to shape members’ interpretations of political events through it. In interviews, League members showed that they valued what they saw as the well-defined and clearly communicated ideology and policy proposals of their party, often justifying their activism precisely in the light of such ideology. An emblematic example is provided by Member 4 from Piedmont, who clearly stated that his reasons for being active were “of an ideological nature”; equally, Member 14 from the Veneto region praised the LN for putting forward “the good ideas that are typical of ordinary people”. Making clear how important this was to him and his activism, he further added that “it is the idea that matters”. Similarly, for Member 6 from Piedmont and Representative 8 (a regional councillor from the Veneto region), the party was to be commended for its coherence and the consistency of its ideas, while a member from Piedmont also saw the LN as being characterised by: a strong ideology, but not in the negative sense of the term: few ideas, but understandable. In contrast with the PD and the PdL: no clear ideas whatsoever! (Interview with Member 5)

Similar claims were made by many other respondents, who argued that the League’s ideological clarity and consistency distinguished it from its



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competitors and constituted one of its key strengths. In the words of a subnational representative from the Veneto region, later turned Member of the European Parliament, for instance,

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We know that we are against illegal immigration, we have always been against it, we know that we are in favour of autonomy and federalism, we have always been in favour, and we know that this is the destination we want to get to. (Interview with Representative 5)

For Member 7 from the Veneto region, activists were “fighting the same battles”, hence the party was characterised by “internal cohesion, same ideas, sense of direction and objectives”, a view also forcefully reiterated by Member 14, also from Veneto. The clarity of the LN’s ideas and its strong sense of purpose were cited by our interviewees as distinctive features of the party vis-à-vis its competitors and as reasons for staying in it, as they allegedly allowed the LN to put forward effective solutions to the issues affecting northern communities. Hence Member 8 from the Veneto region argued that the LN was the only party able to “pursue the interests” of his land, while according to Member 12 from the same region the clarity of the party’s message and ideology was instrumental to doing “better for our future, for our children”. Indeed, the idea that the party could make a real difference to the lives of people in the North, thanks to the clarity of its proposals, is one that many respondents chose to reiterate. As Subnational Representative 5 put it, activism allowed him to express his “love” for his land and find “a reason to hope”, while Member 8 from the Veneto region saw activism as giving him a chance to “change society for the better”, “make a positive contribution” and ultimately, again, “do something for my land”. Some respondents spoke about their party ideology by resorting to expressions that one would normally associate with those of a religious sect. Hence Members 7 and 13 from the Veneto region, for instance, defined spreading the ideology of the party as a “mission” – indeed one that justified making “sacrifices”. Another member (also from the Veneto region) made a comparison between LN members and those joining other parties, claiming that the dedication of LN members to their party was unique: As a member of the Lega, you do something because you believe in it. You are ready to pay a price because you believe that it is possible to improve things. As for others [i.e., the members of other parties] all they are interested in is to hang on to whatever degree of power they have accumulated. This is the difference. […] if I dedicate less time to looking after my health, my work, my pastimes, in order to spend it working for the Lega, it is because I think it is time well spent. (Interview with Member 14)

When asked to provide specific examples of the “sacrifices” which they argued were necessary in order to spread the party’s ideas, activists often

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mentioned running the many social, campaigning and proselytising initiatives the LN constantly engaged in, claiming that these required a very considerable degree of commitment on their part. The following quotes provide two paradigmatic examples of this kind of narrative put forward by members. Some may think it is not a big deal, but to stick posters around you need to start at 9 pm in the evening and you may have to keep going until 3 am in the morning. The following day, you need to get up at 6 or 7 am and go to the office, and you have eight hours of work ahead of you. If you have to do this for x amount of hours every week, and you end up sleeping three hours every night, you are not going to enjoy it. You only do it if you believe in the cause. (Interview with Member 1 from Piedmont)3 When the party’s event was on in Turin, I even helped to sweep up leaves and whatnot in the toilets. This is also something I would never have imagined I would end up doing. (Interview with Member 3 from Piedmont)

As we saw in an earlier section of this chapter, Member 3 was also keen to stress that he and his fellow members would happily travel to working-class parts of their city dominated by the Left, and set up stall there to canvass the public. In fact, they saw this as one of their duties as activists, so that the party’s ideas could be spread beyond the areas where people already agreed with them. In other words, traditional activism and proselytising activities were the source of considerable satisfaction and pride for these members. As the next section will show, it was obvious to many members that their identities were being shaped by the party’s ideas and their experiences within it. Indeed, some people regarded this as another powerful incentive to stay on as activists.

Solidary incentives: personal and communitarian Well, believe me, and I have said this many times, had they offered me a lot of money to distribute party papers in local markets, I wouldn’t have done it. So, why do I do it, then? […] It is an ideal. For me the Lega, this movement, has become as important as an ideal, and it is almost a reason … one of my reasons for living is this, I mean … I believe in it and I get amazing gratification from it […] When somebody thanks you [i.e., while canvassing], wants to share something with you, stops, encourages you … this gives me enormous gratification, and it is invaluable! […] The Lega gives me great strength, inspires me to get involved, that’s what it is. […] So, this helps you to keep fighting and going, to keep getting involved and sacrificing yourself. (Interview with Member 3 from Piedmont, our emphasis)

This quote encapsulates many of the claims made by activists during their interviews, whether concerning the alleged strength of their beliefs, the sacrifices that were said to be necessary to advance the party’s cause or,



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also importantly for us here, the key role that activism was said to play in their lives. This link between the values and ideas that the party was allegedly keen to defend, and the considerable personal satisfaction accruing to those who subscribed to such ideas, were also insisted upon by other members. A respondent passionately argued, for instance, that: The Lega was not born as a centre of power […]. It gives me satisfaction … to look for something that is not simply my personal satisfaction … I mean … this is satisfaction originating from … implementing what I believe in. […] there cannot be any identity if there is no clear underlying idea.. (Interview with Member 5 from Piedmont, our emphasis)

Hence, identity definition was here seen as proceeding from the strength of a person’s beliefs and the awareness that the party remained the flag bearer of such beliefs – a “clear underlying idea” that, according to many respondents, shaped the activists’ very identities. Defending such ideas and being able to implement them generated “satisfaction”. Indeed, for a member from the Veneto region, one could gain a sense of pride precisely by implementing the ideas of the party. As she put it: Last year I became an activist precisely because I wished to do something … I want to get somewhere and change something, improve things […]. Because if we do not get in while we are young, if we delegate to someone else, we will end up like our parents, who have always been concerned for our well-being, have always worked, have built a house for their children and they find themselves at the age of sixty, they should be about to retire, but they can see their retirement fading into the distance. And they find themselves with their spirit broken because they say: “I made sacrifices all my life and what am I leaving to my children? They cannot find a job, […] they find it difficult to get married [due to financial difficulties]”; I do not want to experience the same disappointment when I get older. (Interview with Member 10, our emphasis)

Here, activism was seen as providing a way to find satisfaction at a personal level, and to help avoid a sense of failure. The opportunity to make a difference that activism was said to afford was often mentioned by activists as a source of fulfilment and great personal satisfaction. In addition to this, interviewees stressed that activism gave them access to a committed, closed community, allegedly striving to achieve common objectives together. This was identified time and again by respondents as one of the most important benefits of activism, as it made them feel that they truly belonged somewhere. It is what we have defined as the “communitarian” incentive – another subcategory of “solidary”. In one of the interviews in which the already-mentioned annual gathering of Pontida was talked about, Member 1 from Piedmont expressed complex

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emotions about this gathering, eventually bringing up the (now familiar) theme of the “sacrifices” activists needed to make for the benefit of their cause: To be a leghista [i.e., LN member] does not mean sticking a badge on your jacket; it means certain things, such as taking part in the event in Pontida, it means working when there are events to run, it means going to Venice, to the Monviso … certain demonstrations are irreplaceable for us, it is here that you really see the spirit that animates us. It is nice to be a leghista, because it is a big family, but you need to make sacrifices. (Interview with Member 1)

The feeling of camaraderie that leghisti said bound them to each other was mentioned time and again by interviewees as an important “gain” of their activism. Asked whether he canvassed and distributed party papers in the streets, for instance, another member provided an enthusiastic reply that well captures what the communitarian incentive meant to people like him: Yes, yes. I do it … happily in fact, meaning that it is not a burden, on the contrary! In truth, we have a good time. There is friendship among us, it is not just a matter of: “I will see you on Thursday evening and then never again” [laughs]. So, it is different. Maybe yes, it is a community… it is deeply felt, no doubts about it. (Interview with Member 5 from Piedmont)

In reply to the same question, another activist said that he valued the feeling of belonging which he believed to be getting from activism, and the fact that he could fully trust fellow activists: It is important to me [to be an activist], because I know that there are likeminded people, who share my ideals, and that love my land as much as I do, and with whom I share many, many things. With whom … I can take my wallet and can give it to Marco, or Giulio [not their real names] or … look [pointing at other people in the room], I have known him for many years, he has worked for me, as for him, I was the witness at his wedding, and he was the witness at mine […] there is friendship, but there is something more than friendship, since I have many more friends who are not members of this movement, however with them [i.e., the party members mentioned above] I share these things. (Interview with Member 12 from the Veneto region)

Interestingly, another activist stressed in his interview what he saw as the similarities between the strong feelings that he felt bound him to his own family and those that bound him to the League. As he put it: I wish my family to have some common interests, that everyone fights together for some common cause, to grow together, don’t you think? I have found the same thing in the Lega. In the past I have become a member of clubs, such as bowling and recreation clubs … where you could find this feeling of belonging to a certain environment. In the Lega I have found the same feeling of belonging, this time to a political organisation, and I like it. (Interview with Member 6 from Piedmont)

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It is also worth highlighting the extent to which activists felt they were being empowered by their participation in political activities. In other words, the idea of “participation without power” that we have seen characterising the LN due to the lack of internal democracy (see Chapter 5) does not mean that members felt unable to have an impact on their local communities. On the contrary, and going against the tide of disengagement from political parties that is said to characterise post-industrial societies, LN members spoke fondly of their activism as a powerful way to impact upon people around them and bring about change for the better. To bring the discussion of the incentives behind activism to an end, we will quote extensively from an interview with Member 14 (Veneto region), as this shows how incentives that can be listed separately for analytical reasons do in fact work together to bind an individual to a party, and also demonstrates the extent to which people may feel that their party can be a vehicle for change. For someone such as this respondent, the different incentives we have been covering in this chapter seem to all be at work at the same time. Hence his activism is justified as follows: I have chosen to be a member of the Lega because I am getting on a bit, I have raised a family by now. […] At this stage, given my age and where I am in terms of my profession, I have got time to spend for the benefit of my village. You will not believe it, but this has been my thinking, as I have explained to my friends several times. This is the environment in which I have raised my family, I have raised it and I am glad I did this here in this place and this culture, this way of life, this reality is what I want to pass on because I believe in this reality, so now I want to do something for this reality, too, for my village, for the community, like others have done before me, now I want to do something for others. Interviewer: It sounds like this is a matter of identity then … Precisely. This is why I talk about contributing to the life of the community. […] Because the Lega defends the values I believe in and which have provided the very foundation for my raising a family. (Interview with Member 14 from the Veneto region)

It is in the nature of catch-all parties (Kirchheimer, 1966) to no longer conceive of party membership as something that has to do, primarily, with shaping identities and instilling feelings of belonging to a community (Mair, 1998: 165). A key feature of the LN under Bossi was precisely that it continued to invest in doing this, by setting up a mass party right when others were dismantling theirs, and by using the means afforded by this kind of organisational model to shape the views and identities of its members, create strong emotional bonds between them and bind them together in close-knit communities. Insofar as this helped the party to make use of

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people’s time, enthusiasm and resources to support its activities, it appears to have worked well. There is also evidence that this model, which required activists to interact with people outside the party on a regular basis, was much valued by members insofar as it gave them an opportunity to contribute to the life of their local communities.

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Conclusion Reflecting on the golden age of what he called “denominational-mass” parties, Peter Mair said that they had an ability “to cement the loyalties of their voters by building strong organisational networks on the basis of shared social experiences” (Mair, 1998: 163); in other words, organisational effort plus social closure translated into “political identity and political endurance” (Mair, 2013: 80). To achieve this, Mair noted, mass parties needed to emphasise their differences (Mair, 1998: 163), hence creating distinctive (and closed) political communities. Each party “had, or hoped to develop, its own ‘natural’ constituency within the wider society” (Mair, 1998: 163) and put forward proposals tailored to addressing what they perceived to be the specific needs of such a constituency. As we have repeated many times throughout this book, this is the organisational model that Umberto Bossi regarded as suited to a party “of the people” that had to be built from the bottom up (Bossi and Vimercati, 1992). Under Bossi, the LN managed to establish a brand new subculture (Diamanti, 1993; 1996), soon dubbed by the press as ‘leghismo’, that could try to dislodge pre-existing subcultures based on Christian or Socialist/Communist values (Chapters 1 and 2). Leghismo posited the existence of an efficient and clean “North”, seeing it as a community of interests and values that were distinct from those of the rest of the country, if not even inherently in competition with them. It provided “a framework of interpretation in which a positively evaluated ‘us’ – honest, hard-working and simple-living northern Italians attached to their local traditions – was posited as prey to a series of overlapping ‘them’ – southerners, the state, big business and immigrants” (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2005: 961). It gave LN activists something they could identify with, in the shape of a very distinctive ideology, of which regionalism and right-wing populism were the most important ingredients. It told them that they – and their culture – were not to blame for the ills the country found itself in and that, on the contrary, only preserving this culture and its values would have provided salvation. As we have seen in this chapter, party members believed in the solutions offered by the party and – organised in a complex network of regional and local branches – were happy to help the League disseminate these ideas via

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canvassing and campaigning. Moreover, LN members were proud to belong to what was still a mass organisation, one that, as they knew, was in many ways reminiscent of those parties of the Left that, once upon a time, had also been rooted at the local level. While clearly not original as an organisational model, Bossi’s League was certainly very effective. In this context, populist identity politics appears to have been well suited to incentivising the creation of closed political communities based on post-material, identitarian values, due to populism’s insistence on the homogeneity, unity and common interests of the people versus the elites. However, this is of course not to say that only parties sharing such ideology can adopt and efficiently deploy the mass party model – just that the model appears to work well for them. The analysis offered in this chapter thus supports Susan Scarrow’s (2014: 216) claim that, far from being obsolete, “traditional” forms of party organisation and activism can still play an important role in the success of a party. By exploring why people joined the LN and decided to stay on, and by showing the “intensity of psychological identification with the party and the commitment to […] participating in party activities” (Janda, 1980: 126) that Bossi’s chosen organisational model was able to secure among activists, this book has taken us into territory that remains, to a large extent, unexplored. Participation does not necessarily translate into power and influence for members, as we have seen, and even the close relationship party representatives built with members within the LN was ultimately meant to give the party an opportunity to shape how events were being interpreted by the grassroots. The League’s history of harsh enforcement of party discipline and the many expulsions that took place throughout the years of those who dared to express views that diverged from Bossi’s provide all the confirmation that is needed about the very centralised nature of the party. Nonetheless, Bossi’s LN remained an organisation that was able to create communities of committed members, hence benefiting from their willingness to help their party and work for it. That Bossi was able to set up such a close-knit and efficient campaigning machine from scratch will be remembered as one the most remarkable achievements of his long tenure as party leader.4

Notes 1 According to the Statute, supporter-members could not have fulfilled any official roles within the party, but clearly there must have been some exceptions. 2 Pontida was chosen early on by Bossi as the symbol of his party’s struggle against “Roman centralism”. Legend has it that in 1167 representatives from several northern Italian cities converged on this small town to create the original “Lombard

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League” – a military alliance opposed to the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. Bossi’s party bought a big field near the town, where the yearly summer happenings described in this book are still held as we write. 3 Wall posters and political graffiti have always played an important role as part of the communicative strategy of this party. Confirming the principle that the medium is the message, their adoption by Bossi helped to shape the narrative of an organisation that wished to be perceived as genuine, close to the people, present on the ground and reliant on ordinary folks. 4 This chapter is not followed by the usual “postscript” on Salvini’s League, in the absence of academic analyses on how activism and participation may have changed within the League post 2013.

8

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Conclusion: populism in Europe – lessons from Umberto Bossi’s Northern League

Bossi’s League as a “prototypical” case of European populist party Since the early 1990s, long-established European democracies have provided an ideal environment for populism to grow. Increasingly, populist parties have shaped political and media agendas, entered government coalitions (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2015) and, in several cases, provided a model that their competitors felt they had to imitate (Albertazzi and Vampa eds, 2021). In part, this success can be interpreted as a consequence of the “cartelisation” of political parties (Katz and Mair, 1995) and their perceived inability (or unwillingness) to provide effective responses to the profound impact of globalisation, widening economic inequalities, large-scale immigration and European integration. While ordinary people are said to have lost out due to these developments, political, economic and cultural “elites” have been portrayed as lacking awareness of (or, worse, even interest in) their concerns in the face of unprecedented change. Hence, populist parties have sought the support of voters by promising to return the sceptre of popular sovereignty to the people (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2008), via executives that will finally deliver on what the people really want. The LN offers a prominent example of a new party that started putting down roots relatively early, compared to other European populist parties. Under the leadership of its founder and long-time leader, Umberto Bossi, the LN accumulated considerable experience as a governing party at both subnational and national levels, as well as shaping the debate about the need to devolve more powers to subnational administrations (Vampa, 2016). Indeed, Bossi’s LN has much to teach us (and other parties) about how populists can achieve rootedness and success. However, as we will see in this chapter, it also teaches us that populists need to remain “other” from their “cartelised” competitors, or else their very existence can come under threat. As we have discussed at length throughout our book, the three constant elements of the LN’s history under Bossi have been: (a) its pitting of the corrupted political class “of Rome” against northern Italians, presented as

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an inherently good and hard-working people that were being robbed of their wealth – and very identity; (b) its repeated calls for northern Italy to enjoy greater autonomy; (c) its unwavering commitment to the traditional “mass party” organisational model, which gave Bossi and other party representatives the opportunity to maintain a close relationship with the party’s activists, and ultimately to connect to the electorate at large in the absence of powerful backers and rich financial resources. In 2012, about thirty years after the creation of the LL, from which the LN was to originate, Bossi was ousted as LN leader, due to a corruption scandal which badly affected his authority within the party. This book has offered the first detailed and systematic analysis based on original research of the ideology, electoral performance, achievements in government, organisational model, type of leadership and member activism characterising the LN under Bossi (1991–2012). Given that in 2017 the new party leader, Matteo Salvini, created a brand new party (LSP), which proceeded to absorb the LN’s representatives and activists in 2019, the time has certainly come for such as assessment.1 A close look at Bossi’s creation over the decades has allowed us to assess what lessons can be drawn from its experience – not only on how populists can achieve durability, rootedness and success, but also, in more general terms, on how parties of all kinds can enhance political participation and benefit from a committed membership. We have also sought to identify the limits and contradictions of populist leadership and organisation. Despite his ability to consolidate his position within a highly institutionalised party structure, eventually Bossi was forced to quit as leader and give up his control of party organisational resources. Additionally, almost three decades of consistent support for regional autonomy and federalism did not prevent Bossi’s successor from dramatically altering the League’s political message by emphasising the importance of Italian national identity and unity (the opposite of what Bossi had campaigned for) (Albertazzi et al., 2018). Generally, in this concluding chapter we will proceed inductively and focus specifically on the general lessons to be drawn from the League’s experience about the factors that may facilitate the growth, stabilisation, crisis and adaptation/transformation of populist political projects. Especially important foci of our analysis have been the League’s consistent and coherent narrative infused with regionalism and populism (Chapter 2), the role of its grassroots organisation (Chapter 5) and the extent of the members’ commitment to the party (Chapter 7). As we have seen, one of the interesting features of the LN has been its willingness to buck the trend of many other European parties whose key policies and messages have become indistinguishable from those of their competitors, by putting forward a distinctive ideology and sets of policy proposals aimed at representing very specific constituencies

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Conclusion 149 of voters in the “deep North”. Bossi’s League knew both what it wanted (since it had a clear ideology and message) and whom it wanted to speak to (by targeting specific constituencies in the wealthy provinces of northern Italy, particularly in the sub-alpine area). We have also considered Bossi’s skills as leader (see Chapter 6): on the one hand, his charisma was able to inspire strong loyalty among members and the party ranks; on the other, his authoritarian instincts meant that he kept a firm grip on the organisation he had created, thus remaining firmly at the helm of the party for decades, and vigorously fighting off whatever opposition to his leadership might have emerged within it (Bossi and Vimercati, 1992). In sum, as we have seen, Bossi combined internal and external leadership skills. He consolidated his support within the party, created a loyal following among sectors of the electorate, and ultimately punched well above his “electoral weight” when it came to sharing the spoils of government. Similarly to other populist radical right parties across Europe, the LN grew especially in peripheral areas and small towns (albeit often heavily industrialised ones), while struggling to put down roots in large, more cosmopolitan cities (see Chapter 3). Ultimately, however, its constant focus on initiatives and policy proposals related to its key themes of decentralisation/federalism and its increasing emphasis on law and order, immigration and Europe allowed the party to drive the political agenda on the issues it really cared about, whether in government or in opposition. Although its impact on actual policy outcomes was somehow limited by coalition and institutional constraints (see Chapter 4), the party also managed to play an important role at the regional and local levels, which was, after all, equally important to a regionalist party such as it was. To sum up, we see Bossi’s League as an ideologically coherent, rooted and well-led mass party that was able to exert significant influence on political debates as a member of the right-wing coalition, to serve in government several times and to fulfil at least some of the promises it had made to its electorate. At the same time, this picture of stability and solidity did not completely exclude deep tensions and even fractures, which are key for understanding how the party evolved in more recent years. We can regard Bossi’s League not just as a “typical” case of a populist party but as a “prototypical” one (Cumming, 2017: 20; Hague et al., 2004: 81), that is, one that preceded many other similar parties in establishing a solid organisation and exploiting its members’ dedication and support to become electorally and politically relevant. It is among the oldest (still existing and relevant) populist parties and was the first one to enter government in western Europe.2 The challenges it experienced in the past, particularly when moving from protest to government, are the same that many other populist parties are experiencing today. Its “mainstreaming” had a profound impact on Italian

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political debates, and similar processes have occurred more recently in most European countries (Akkerman et al., 2015). Therefore, and given the overall significance of Bossi’s League, in what follows we will answer the question of what lessons can be drawn from the party’s experiences by looking at (1) the position of the League within the political system, assessed in terms of its programmatic stances, electoral strength and policy impact; (2) the role of the party organisation; and (3) the role of its leadership. Our main take-home message is that Bossi’s League was a generally successful case, thanks to a clear, distinctive political message, a rooted organisation and strong leadership. Yet, at the same time, we will highlight that even in a highly institutionalised “mass” party there are always risks of “organisational decay” associated with the excessive centralisation of power in the hands of one personality surrounded by a small circle of faithful allies, an argument which the case of the League illustrates very well. We will also point to the multidimensionality of party ideology and the tensions that may emerge in apparently consistent political platforms. Ultimately, through this comprehensive review, based on the evidence provided in the previous chapters, we aim to highlight the limits of the existing literature, which tends to conceive of the evolution of parties in a rather deterministic and teleological way. On the contrary, we show the complexity and plurality of models that coexist today within party systems and even within individual parties. In other words, we argue that the ideological and organisational repertoire from which today’s political entrepreneurs can draw is much wider than is commonly believed.

Bossi’s LN in the political space: programmatic stances, electoral strength and policy impact Chapters 2, 3 and 4 of this book mainly looked at the “external face” of the LN by considering its position in the political space, its electoral strength and its impact on the political agenda and policy outcomes. We saw that Bossi was able to politicise an issue, the North–South divide, which for decades had been largely ignored by the establishment. Even when considering territorial disparities and regional policies, traditional politicians had focused on what was known as the “southern” question, that is, the need to promote convergence between the poor South and the rich North (Fargion, 2005). Bossi completely overturned this widely shared paradigm by putting the needs of the North, as he saw them, at the top of the political agenda. From this new perspective, rather than promoting territorial convergence and redistribution of resources, the new federal state which the League was advocating would cherish differences and let successful regions thrive and

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Conclusion 151 stand as models for less successful ones. In this respect, Bossi’s League is a clear example of a “prophetic party” which tried to “articulate or even construct a new cleavage” (Lucardie, 2000: 181). The cleavage was a territorial one, and the success of the League in putting it at the centre of the country’s debate was as such that the “northern question” came to dominate political debates for most of the 1990s and 2000s. Ahead of many other leaders of new parties that would achieve political success in the following years, Bossi promoted his new project by resorting to a populist framework. He was the first one in Italy since the 1950s, and among the first in Europe after the Second World War, to systematically adopt an “us versus them” discourse, which effectively captured his idea of how the people “of the North” had to rise up against the corrupted political elites and their allies “in the South”. Southern Italians were generally portrayed as the representatives of a dysfunctional society which contrasted with the efficient North. Hence, by extension, southern Italians did not fully belong to the community of “Northerners”, as far as the League was concerned, even when they had spent their whole lives in the shadows of the Alps. An element of “exclusionary” populism (Mudde and Kaltwasser, 2013) was thus very evident in the party platform from the very beginning (see Chapter 2). It is therefore not surprising that, after initially defying easy categorisations on the left–right continuum, Bossi’s League eventually moved to the right and remained there. In fact, as we showed in Chapter 2, while consistently placing federalism at the core of its mission, the party remains an interesting case of gradual programmatic diversification and ideological radicalisation. The initial “unidimensional” character of its platform, focusing on territorial issues and the North–South divide, was soon enriched by a second dimension: a socially conservative one (which was focused on even more under Salvini later on). To be sure, the exclusionary discourse promoted by Bossi since the beginning facilitated this shift. In this respect, the LN is not so different from another much-discussed populist party: the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). Like the League, UKIP started as a “single issue” party. The dimension of conflict this time was one pitting a whole “national community” against the “centralising” pressures of the EU – a sort of “centre–periphery” cleavage at the supranational level. Like the League, UKIP soon accentuated its exclusionary character and it gradually shifted to the right, by insisting on elements of nativism and social conservatism that arguably were much more diluted in its discourse at the start, if they were there at all (Usherwood, 2015). In sum, the League moved from a unidimensional to a two-dimensional programmatic strategy (Elias et al., 2015: 840), while preserving the consistency and clarity of its political message. In the 2000s the League was still

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a pro-federalist party but, by then, it had also accentuated its anti-immigration, anti-EU and socially conservative message. We saw that these two dimensions, regionalism and socio-cultural conservatism, were not strictly dependent on each other or hierarchically related, but co-evolved side by side. Hence, the old Lega Nord was a rather peculiar case in the European context and stood between purely regionalist movements and state-wide populist radical right parties. We noted that, in the long term, this would create a “tension” in the definition of the “us versus them” dichotomy. Slowly, immigrants and the EU replaced Southerners as the main “enemies” of the party. Eventually, this redefinition of the “them” would force the party to rethink the identity of the “us”. Hence, under Matteo Salvini’s leadership, the party resolved this tension by sacrificing the federalist dimension and becoming a fully fledged state-wide populist radical right party (Albertazzi et al., 2018). Yet, despite these late developments, it is undeniable that, thanks to its “ownership” of the federalist issue and strong appeal to Northern Italian constituencies, Bossi’s League managed to occupy a politically relevant “niche” in the Italian party system. By winning a substantial share of the vote in the populous and wealthy regions of the North, the LN was able to play a significant role at the national level as a medium-sized political actor. Between 1992 and Bossi’s resignation, the party’s electoral strength ranged between 4% and 10% of the vote at the national level. This was sufficient to achieve political relevance in a relatively fragmented but bipolar party system, where major parties depended on the support of smaller ones for government formation. The case presented in this book therefore shows that by exploiting their position in the political space small or medium-sized parties, including populist ones, can quickly gain “coalition potential” (Sartori, 2005: 119) – particularly in a party system like the Italian one in the 1990s, which was undergoing a process of restructuring (Albertazzi, McDonnell and Newell, 2011). Yet the League also proves how “niche” parties can rely on their “blackmail potential” to affect competition (Sartori, 2005: 119). The case of the 1996 Italian general election is quite emblematic, since it shows that, by running an autonomous campaign, the League was decisive in allowing the centre-left coalition to defeat the centre-right one, which Bossi had left after a short-lived governmental experience in 1994. It therefore became apparent that Silvio Berlusconi’s FI, by far the largest party on the right, needed to establish another alliance with the LN in order to win elections. And this is what happened in the following general election of 2001 and in all subsequent elections. Bossi had thus proved to be politically indispensable and could “exact” concessions from Berlusconi due to this (first and foremost by getting him to throw his weight behind the approval of new legislation on law and order and federalism) (see Chapter 4).

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Conclusion 153 Yet Chapter 3 has shown that, while allowing Bossi’s League to rely on a relatively stable support base, the regional focus of the party also acted as a “constraint” on its electoral expansion beyond northern Italian regions. In fact we have shown that the LN’s success was mainly circumscribed to some areas of two regions: Lombardy and Veneto. To be sure, the party gained votes also in neighbouring regions – particularly towards the end of Bossi’s era – but in those contexts electoral support was much more volatile and more subject to political contingencies than in the Lombardo-Veneto. More importantly, we have proven that Bossi’s League was much more deeply rooted in provincial districts than in large metropolitan areas. Looking at the territorial distribution of the vote, we have shown that, over time, the LN became an increasingly “peripheral” party, gaining significantly more votes in the suburban and rural areas of the North than in large cities such as Milan, Genoa and Turin (see Chapter 3). This trend is not dissimilar from that observed in other countries which experienced the growth of right-wing populism. This was visible not only during the Brexit vote and general elections in the UK but also in the French and Austrian general and presidential elections (Becker et al., 2017; Ford and Jennings, 2020; Rachman, 2018). Even outside Europe, US politics has seen a deepening of the electoral polarisation between small towns in rural and peripheral regions and large, diverse cities (Cramer, 2016). Yet, in the case of Bossi’s League, this dichotomy seemed more based on socio-cultural than socio-economic factors, since the party thrived in wealthy suburban areas dominated by dynamic SMEs. So, despite the fact that the party also received substantial support from bluecollar workers (Chapter 3), it would be incorrect to describe it as a party of the “left behind”. How did the LN’s programmatic distinctiveness and electoral success translate into actual policy outcomes? This is what we addressed in Chapter 4. Again, the League offers several lessons which can be applied to the study of other similar cases. We have already mentioned that the party managed to add a territorial dimension to political competition in Italy. This was also reflected in the policy agenda of the 1990s and 2000s, where regionalism and decentralisation could gain increasing centrality. As in the case of many other populist parties, the League had both a direct and an indirect influence on policy making. By participating in national governments it had the opportunity to advance its federalist project and promote constitutional and fiscal reforms. Yet we also noted that there was a gap between the party’s policy statements and actual policies implemented. We showed that, ultimately, the impact of the party on final policy outcomes was moderated by a number of political and institutional constraints – from coalition partners to the Constitutional Court, from constitutional referendums to European institutions. At the same time, it is undeniable that the LN managed to

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exert considerable influence on the whole political spectrum. Even centre-left parties engaged with the federal issue, and, in fact, the main constitutional reform that transferred more powers to the regions in 2001 was approved by a centre-left coalition (Fabbrini and Brunazzo, 2003).3 More generally, similar to what would happen a few years later in other countries experiencing the growth of populist parties – particularly right-wing ones – a process of “contagion” contributed to a more general shift in policy paradigms (Albertazzi and Vampa eds, 2021). This occurred not only in the field of centre–periphery institutional relations – something rather specific to the Italian context – but also in policy areas such as immigration and integration, which, as we saw earlier, became increasingly central for the LN. Of course, shifting policy agendas and debates may not necessarily translate into substantial changes in policy outcomes. This was suggested by comparative studies on the policy impact of populist radical right parties in government. For instance, Tjitske Akkerman (2012: 521) showed that the LN, and also other populist radical right parties, were only weakly associated with more restrictive immigration and integration policies when they were included in ruling coalitions. This is in line with our own findings in Chapter 4. At the same time, Akkerman does not rule out the importance of “indirect effects”, that is, the influence that populist radical right parties exerted on more moderate centre-right parties, which in many contexts were primarily responsible for the change of course in immigration and integration policies (Akkerman, 2012: 523). Lastly, and partly related to its actual impact on policies, the LN was one of the first populist parties facing the challenge of striking a delicate balance between being a party of government, not always successful in satisfying demands coming from its constituencies, and a movement of opposition, something that under Bossi it managed to do well, at least until it entered its final phase of decline (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2005; 2015). In this sense, the LN can be regarded as a model and a “prototypical” case by the increasing number of populists that gravitate around power positions today. To be sure, the party could also rely on a solid organisation, which helped it to navigate the storms in government and opposition and to adapt to changing circumstances in the political environment. The next section focuses on this crucial aspect, without which it is impossible to understand the peculiarities (and strength) of Bossi’s League.

Party organisation: an important yet neglected dimension of success In this volume we have argued that populist identity politics is particularly suited to incentivising the creation of closed political communities based

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Conclusion 155 on post-material, identitarian values, due to populism’s insistence on the homogeneity, unity and common interests of the “good” people versus the elites. However, this is not to say that only parties sharing a populist ideology can seek to create such communities, something which, as we have seen, is made possible by the adoption and efficient deployment of the mass party organisational model. So the key question to be investigated now is the extent to which scholars may have been too quick in arguing that “the era of the mass party – if it ever truly existed – is clearly over” (Young, 2013: 2). This conclusion is premature, and accepting it uncritically may lead researchers to pay insufficient attention to the grassroots and internal workings of parties in general, beyond the case of populists such as the League. For instance, in the UK, the Labour Party significantly increased its membership from 388,000 in December 2015 to 564,443 in December 2017 (Audickas et al., 2019), as it promised to give its members new opportunities for interaction and participation. This growth occurred under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and was also driven by the populist idea that the party’s members were “the people” who needed to take power “back” from the more moderate (and incessantly scheming) party “elites” (i.e., Labour MPs) (Watts and Bale, 2019: 101). In other words, Labour’s case shows that membership decline and party “destructuring” are not irreversible phenomena and political agency plays an important role in promoting political engagement and activism by providing a wide range of selective or collective organisational incentives. The analysis offered in this book, particularly in Chapters 5 and 7, provides further ammunition to Susan Scarrow’s claim, based on a comparative study of nineteen established parliamentary democracies, that “traditional” party membership remains “far from obsolete” (Scarrow, 2014: 216), and that there can still be an important role to play for activism, in all its forms. Scarrow’s study also identifies a tendency among political parties: that of providing a “light membership” option to people, allowing parties to attract those who are not ready to commit very much and to exploit whatever help and support they may be willing to offer. This is in line with research that has identified a “blurring of the boundary between members and supporters” (Young, 2013: 69) across the board since the beginning of the twenty-first century. Bossi’s League went along with this to an extent, by dividing members into two separate categories: “full members” and “supporter members”. However, it also provided a strong narrative about the advantages (and increased status) that allegedly flowed from being able to move from one category to the other (hence becoming “active partisan participants”) (Scarrow, 2014: 209). It also kept building on the “intensity of psychological identification with the party and the commitment to […] participating in party activities” (Janda, 1980, 126) that the mass party organisational

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model was able to secure. In other words, the League always refused to buy into the idea that a “more individualistic model of party activity” (Scarrow, 2014: 207) was destined to replace “the group-based […] templates first popularized by parties in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries” (Scarrow, 2014: 207), and saw being a “supporter” of the party as a step to eventually committing to it fully. As they compete with their “cartelised” opponents, populist parties such as the League have thus been able to pose a challenge to them that is not just ideological, but also organisational (Heinisch and Mazzoleni, 2016) insofar as they reject any received wisdom about people’s unwillingness to get involved in political activities and commit time and resources to them. Parties such as Bossi’s have therefore remarked their distinctiveness not only via their message but also via their organisational choices. This is where our research can offer a substantial contribution to the theory of party organisation and development in western European democracies. The key question that follows our close observation of the League is whether parties can still fulfil an important role as intermediaries between the citizens and the political elites, and whether they have necessarily moved from being social actors to agents of the state (Katz and Mair, 2013) in all cases. Party development is complex, and the risk is clearly that of overstating the extent to which the “cartel party” has replaced older forms of party organisation, simplistically assuming that, as a new model is identified, this must make all others redundant by virtue of its mere existence. When it comes to the growing role and importance of leaders within parties, the League has again anticipated more general trends affecting political systems at large, and we will see this in the next section. However, on other important matters Bossi’s party appears to have swum against the tide. More specifically, as we have seen in this book, it challenged widespread trends having to do with the shelving of the mass party (Young, 2013). In other words, as parties were moving away from the idea that their success depended on traditional means of campaigning based on a large membership of committed activists, increasingly putting their faith into expensive and centralised means of communication, Bossi’s League was unremittingly investing in enlarging and strengthening its mass organisation regardless (see Chapter 5). While the new models of party organisation which had emerged from the 1960s onwards – whether “catch-all” (Kirchheimer, 1966), “cartel” (Katz and Mair, 1995) or “professional” (Panebianco, 1988) – had all been characterised by diminishing faith in grassroots activism, and the suspicion that strong and distinctive ideologies had in fact become impediments to attracting the median voter (Panebianco, 1988: 263), the League’s belief in nurturing a distinctive and recognisable ideology and sets of values which could provide the glue tying a community of activists together remained

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Conclusion 157 untouched. As a cleavage-based party aiming to advance the interests of the North versus “Rome”, and as a party allegedly opposing partitocrazia (“partytocracy”, the “cartelisation” of Italian political life), the LN found that the mass party organisational model, with its faith in activism and face-to-face interaction, was in fact perfectly suited to its political aims, provided several practical advantages to a party devoid of powerful backers and was ultimately also easy to justify with reference to its populist ideology. While this contradicted what was happening within other party families, it was perfectly in line with what many other populist parties were doing at the time (Heinisch and Mazzoleni, 2016), as strong organisations were providing the key linkage between activists and leaders in their cases, too. In this context, the fact that powers remained centralised within parties such as the League, and that members had few, if any, opportunities to affect their strategies, did not detract from their nature as “mass parties”, as internal democracy has never been an essential ingredient of this organisational model (Panebianco, 1988: 264). Ultimately, the grassroots continued to matter for these parties; being able to create a close-knit community of like-minded people guided by the party’s values also mattered, and this remained the case despite the lack of internal democracy. The LN’s ability to “provide meaning” to its members is arguably one of the crucial reasons behind the party’s ability to retain a hard core of supporters throughout its history. Bossi’s LN thus provides the perfect example of a party that was pyramidal and run from the centre, and yet able to foster participation and create communities that activists very much valued (see Chapter 7). Under Bossi, LN members were able to: (a) discuss and interrogate political events as they unfolded, and even criticise the choices made by their party in regular meetings with local and national representatives; (b) provide the link between the party and the electorate at large, by canvassing and campaigning; (c) find meaning and a strong sense of community within their party. What they could not do, having been offered participation without power, was decide where their organisation should head to, whether in alliance with other parties or on its own, nor who should represent it in the institutions. As we have seen in this book, these were ultimately all decisions advocated by the party’s leader.

Leadership and centralisation within the populist radical right We have seen that Bossi was able to exercise considerable impact on Italian politics at the beginning of the 1990s, which was a “critical juncture” (Capoccia and Kelemen, 2007) in the country’s history. Chapter 6 clearly highlights that Bossi’s success was based on a skilful combination of internal

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and external leadership. While he established strong links with party members, middle-level elites and elected representatives and significantly weakened internal dissent, he also acted as the face of the party by relying on his personal charisma and appealing directly to key constituencies in northern Italy. Bossi symbolised an important development in Italian and European politics, that is, the increasing personalisation of political competition. We have also associated Bossi with what has been defined as “presidentialisation of politics” (Poguntke and Webb, 2007), which consists in a “shift in intra-party power to the benefit of the leader” (Poguntke and Webb, 2007: 9). As we argued in the previous section, this did not contradict Bossi’s ambition to create a mass party, which does not necessarily need to be internally democratic – as effectively argued more than one hundred years ago by Michels (2001 [1911]: 224) in his classic formulation of the “iron law of oligarchy”. Recent comparative work looking specifically at western Europe’s populist radical right parties has confirmed this tendency (Heinisch and Mazzoleni eds, 2016) by pointing out that centralisation has taken place to a larger extent among this party family than among others (Heinisch and Mazzoleni eds, 2016: 221–246). Even the League’s reliance on gatekeeping, strictly controlling socialisation into the organisation to strengthen the leadership and avoid factionalism (or, more generally, deviations from the leaders’ message), has been shown in this study to be a far from original aspect of the party’s way of doing things in comparative terms. However, we also argued that, in the Italian case, while Berlusconi remains the archetypal leader of the “personal party” (Calise, 2015: 303), some elements of this model can also be found in the way Bossi controlled his own party. Like Berlusconi’s FI, Bossi considered the League as his political creature and linked his personal destiny to that of the party. It is not a coincidence that both Bossi and Berlusconi are the two longest-serving Italian party leaders since 1945. Additionally, we showed that Bossi is second only to Jean Marie Le Pen in the ranking of longevity including the leaders of European populist radical right parties. He was one of the few figures within this political family who was able to simultaneously control the party “central office” and occupy governmental positions. At the same time, our book discusses how, in the long term, excessive centralisation and lack of internal accountability and constraints on the leadership eventually led to a process of organisational “decay” or even “degeneration”. While remaining at the top of a highly institutionalised party, towards the end of his tenure as leader Bossi started blurring the line of demarcation between his political role and his private sphere (see Chapter 6). Hence, the party increasingly appeared to be led by a very small group of people (the Cerchio Magico – Magic Circle), who exploited their closeness to the leader in order to set the direction of the organisation and,

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Conclusion 159 apparently, also draw from the financial resources which it should have used to campaign. In this period the LN started resembling a “business firm” party (Hopkin and Paolucci, 1999) in some respects, i.e., one in which “the public goods produced are incidental to the real objectives of those leading it” (Hopkin and Paolucci, 1999: 311). In fact, it was a scandal revealing a misappropriation of party resources, including those derived from public financing, which eventually brought about the downfall of the party’s founding father. Paradoxically, and importantly, this is yet another sign of Bossi’s success during his golden years. Having created a party profoundly imbued by a subculture (leghismo) according to which total commitment to the cause and individual self-sacrifice were indispensable if “northern liberation” was ever to be achieved, Bossi ended up having to fall on his sword as it was revealed that he had in fact deployed public goods for personal use and exploited his position within the party for personal advantage. As we have seen in this book (see the interviews cited in Chapter 7), this was in fact exactly what he had told members and representatives time and again to regard as politics’ mortal sin: being in it for oneself. We saw that Bossi’s League used a populist discourse to mobilise against the former mass-turned-cartel “corrupt” parties of Italy’s old system, and forced them to come to terms with its revolutionary proposals about how power relations between the central state and Italy’s regions should be reconfigured. We also suggested that the LN recuperated the mass party model to highlight its distinctiveness vis-à-vis the establishment, aiming to be seen to be “close to the people” and entirely focused on cultivating a dialogue with its constituencies of the “deep North”. Yet, by allowing one individual to concentrate an unprecedented degree of power in his hands and start using it to his own advantage, the LN ended up being seen to have converged with the parties of the “old guard” to a much larger extent than its own activists would be able to bear. At that point, it was only a change of leadership and a radical reframing of the party’s identity that ultimately allowed it to survive, and then eventually even thrive, under a new leader from a younger generation. In other words, the party’s degeneration into a “cartelised” organisation led by one man and his self-serving clique plunged it into the deepest crisis in its history and eventually led to the removal of its founding father altogether. As Matteo Salvini proceeded to revolutionise the party’s ideology from 2013 by shelving Bossi’s regionalist claims (Albertazzi et al., 2018), and then eventually to formally retire the LN as we had known it and replace it with the LSP, it is fair to say that the moment when Bossi’s creature started to lose its uniqueness also marked the beginning of the end for it. We think that, ultimately, there is an important lesson here for other populist parties as members of this party family are increasingly given

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opportunities to enter government coalitions across Europe. We elaborate on this lesson below as we offer some concluding thoughts about what the case of Bossi’s LN can teach us in terms of the need for populist parties to avoid coming to be seen as full members of that political establishment which they were allegedly created to smash.

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Concluding thoughts In the twenty-first century, populist parties have reshaped political agendas in Europe by arguing that they provide the only alternative to political and economic elites bent on imposing globalisation and uncontrolled migration on their recalcitrant populations (Norris and Inglehart, 2019). As we have seen through the analysis offered in this book, as well as criticising the ideology and policies of other parties, Bossi’s League conceived the relationship between people and party elites differently from its competitors, or so it argued. The party invested heavily in an organisational model that relied entirely on the involvement of activists on the ground and the active shaping of their political identities for its success: the model of the “mass party” (Duverger, 1964). The model also required representatives to serve the needs of their organisation by “forfeiting” their weekends and evenings and constantly travelling throughout northern Italy to interact with activists, hence showing them that everyone within the party was required to pull their weight for the cause, from the top representatives to ordinary members (see Chapter 7). In the twenty-first century, several populist parties have seen an increase in their electoral weight, membership, opportunities for government participation and ability to affect the political agenda (Albertazzi and McDonnell 2015; van Kessel 2015). Yet a still under-researched feature of many of these parties has been precisely their willingness to buck the trend of disengagement from activism that ostensibly characterises their competitors (Dalton and Wattenberg, 2000; Mair, 2013), to maintain costly and complex mass organisations through which they create communities of loyal partisan activists and to challenge ideas of party development suggesting some sort of one-way, “one-size-fits-all” teleological movement towards the “cartel party” model described by Katz and Mair (1995). Bossi’s League did provide a model for others to imitate on how people’s participation could be fostered and encouraged in the face of these developments, believing in the advantages that such a model of participation would bring to a party initially devoid of influential friends in high places (Bossi and Vimercati, 1992). In time, the party was able to institutionalise and increasingly occupy positions of power, while still successfully walking the tightrope of keeping “one foot

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Conclusion 161 in and one foot out” (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2005: 953) of government. It did this, for instance, by taking to the streets to lament the excessive influence of “Islam”, or by decrying the decision taken by its own government to favour the start of EU accession talks with Turkey (see Chapter 4). Precisely for these reasons, and due to Bossi’s ability to be at once and the same time the leader closest to Prime Minister Berlusconi, but also still an agitator unwilling to renounce his party’s “purity”, the LN provided a model for how populists could institutionalise (and enter government coalitions) without being seen to have been tamed (Minkenberg, 2001) by the process. As group identities were shaped by the party and strong emotional bonds were created among members, these, in turn, were happy to become canvassers, campaigners and supporters that the organisation could rely on. LN activists had a clear and strong set of ideas they could identify with, an ideology that provided explanations of complex processes that were affecting the country, such as globalisation and large-scale immigration (see Chapter 2). Imbued by this new leghista subculture, and organised in a complex network of regional and local branches, party members were happy to spend time, energy and resources to advance their party’s cause. Not surprisingly, however, the values that had come to permeate these closed communities of like-minded people could not be easily swept aside when they got in the way of the leader’s own actions. In this case, at the very moment that the League’s top leaders suddenly looked just as corrupted and self-serving as the leaders of the parties that the LN had contributed to sink at the beginning of the 1990s (see Chapter 1), the League’s very existence came immediately under threat. Given their impact on political agendas across the continent and their participation in government coalitions, European populist parties have increasingly become full members of “the mainstream” today (Albertazzi and Vampa eds., 2021). An important lesson that the trajectory of the prototypical populist party that was “Bossi’s League” can teach them today is therefore to make sure that they do not end up being seen “like the others” by their electorate and their members in the process.

Notes 1 We regard the LSP as the continuation of the LN. However, as we saw in the postscript to Chapter 5, these are in fact two distinct legal entities. 2 As we saw in Chapter 4, Bossi’s party entered government (together with another populist party, Berlusconi’s FI) in 1994 for the first time. This was the first case of a populist party in national government in post-Second World War western Europe. The Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (Freedom Party of Austria) had formed

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a coalition with the Austrian Social Democrats in 1983, but at that time it was still a relatively moderate centrist liberal party. It became a populist radical right party later, under Jörg Haider’s leadership, and would re-enter government only in 1999, thus becoming the second case of populists in government. Switzerland shows a similar case of an old moderate party becoming populist at a later stage (i.e., throughout the 1990s). Given Switzerland’s political culture, and particularly the existence of the “magic formula” regulating the allocation of seats in government, there has never been any question that the largest party in the country (the now populist SVP) should be a member of the executive. 3 Yet this reform was deemed too moderate by the League, which voted against it.

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174 References Whiteley, P. and Seyd, P. (2002) High Intensity Participation: the Dynamics of Party Activism in Britain, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Young, L. (2013) “Party Members and Intra-Party Democracy”, in Cross, W.P. and Katz, R.S. (eds) The Challenges of Intra-Party Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zaslove, A. (2008) “Exclusion, Community, and a Populist Political Economy: The Radical Right as an Anti-Globalization Movement”, Comparative European Politics, 6 (2), 169–189. Zaslove, A. (2011) The Re–invention of the European Radical Right: Populism, Regionalism, and the Italian Lega Nord. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Zulianello, M. (forthcoming) “Follow the Populist Leader: The Organization of Salvini’s League”, Politics and Governance.

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Index

9/11 events 74 accountability 27, 158 activism 5, 13, 90–92, 100–102, 119, 129–133, 140–145, 148, 155–160 benefits of 141–142 disengagement from 160 Africans 21 Akkerman, Tjitske 154 Albanian state 21 Albertazzi, Daniele (co-author) 2, 21, 48, 122, 124 Alleanza Nazionale (AN) 9–10, 77, 109, 111 amnesties for immigrants 75 ancillary organisations linked to political parties 98 anti-elite discourse 1 anti-EU discourse 152 anti-immigration 23, 152 anti-Muslim rhetoric 31 Art, David 90, 114–115 authoritarianism 23, 31–34, 115 autonomy, regional 2–3, 11, 18–20, 24–25, 34, 148 ballot papers 126 Berlusconi, Silvio 4, 8–11, 14, 17, 48–60, 65, 67, 70–73, 94, 107–111, 114, 119–125, 152, 158, 161 Betz, Hans-Georg 31 Biorcio, Roberto 2, 123 “blackmail potential” 152 Blocher, Christoph 113, 116 bonding with like-minded people 131

bonus seats for coalitions gaining most votes 65 Bossi, Renzo 120 Bossi, Umberto 1–11, 23–24, 32–37, 40–43, 47–51, 55, 60, 63, 65, 70–78, 82, 90, 93–98, 102–105, 147–149 achievements of 17, 129, 135, 144–145, 159 alliance with the centre-right 118 charisma of 6 and the electorate 120–124 financial irregularities alleged against 11 forced resignation of 11, 17, 107, 148, 159 incapacitation after a stroke 118–120 leadership skills of 6, 13, 43, 149 legacy of 14 as a negotiator/implementer 122 as party leader 115–120 personality and general style 102, 111–118, 121–126 as a political entrepreneur 8 prison sentence 123 tight control over his party 6, 13, 15, 94, 105, 108, 120 “Bossi-Fini” law 74–75 Bresciani, Luciano 84 Brexit referendum 153 “business firm” model of party organisation 120 Calderoli, Roberto 54, 68, 77–78 campaigning activity 91, 98, 130, 133–134, 139–140, 144–145, 156, 161

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176 Index canvassing 4–5, 98, 132–3, 144– 145,157, 161 “cartelisation” of political life 102, 147, 157–160 Castelli, Roberto 71 Catholic subculture 37 Cè, Alessandro 84 Cento Bull, Anna 39, 84 centralisation in organisation of parties 129, 145, 150, 158 centre–periphery cleavage 36 Chamber of Deputies 66, 117 charismatic leaders 90–94, 114–115 see also coterie charisma Christian Democrats (DC) 23, 36–39, 43, 107, 109 Christianity and Christian values 30–31 Clark, Peter 136–137 “clash of civilizations” 74 clientelismo 38 “coalition potential” and “coalitionable” parties 65, 152 coalitions 36–37, 52–53, 56, 123 coefficient of variation (CV) 58–59 collective identity 3, 18–19 collusion 92 Comencini, Fabrizio 94 Comino, Domenico 94 communication, style of 123–124 Communist Party of Italy (PCI) 37–39, 48, 83, 97, 107, 109 communitarianism 4 Comparative Manifestos Project (CMP) 21–24, 28 competition between parties 36 “confino” practice 27 Congresso Federale 95 Consiglio Federale 96 Constitution, Italian 75, 80 “contagion” 154 Conte, Giuseppe 86–87 Conti, Nicolò 74 Contratto di governo 86 Corbyn, Jeremy 155 corruption 8, 39, 107, 120, 148, 159, 161 Cota, Roberto 65, 77–78 coterie charisma 118–120 Craxi, Bettino 109

“crisis of democracy” 4 cultural homogeneity 19 data sources 14 De Giorgi, Elisabetta 74 decentralisation 31, 149, 153 de Lange, Sarah 114–115 devolution 10, 53, 55, 76 Di Maio, Luigi 86 Diamanti, Ilvo 21, 49–50 Dillen, Karel 111 Di Pietro, Antonio 121 dissent, internal 158 dramatisation 124 Duverger, Maurice 5, 98 elites 4–8, 20–21, 26–28, 147, 151, 155 emotional attachment 115 emotive language 124 empowerment 28–29 “equalising fund” 79 Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip 30–31 L’Espresso (magazine) 121 Euroenthusiasm 22–23 “Europe of the regions” 23 European arrest warrant 73 European constitutional treaty 72–73 European Convention on Human Rights 79 European Court of Justice (ECJ) 77–80 European Monetary Union (EMU) 23, 71 European Parliament, elections to 10–11, 52, 63, 87, 117–118 European Union (EU) 21–24, 30–33 expansion of 72–74, 161 institutions of 77–78 Europragmatism 23 Eurorejectionism 33 Euroscepticism 22–23, 26, 30, 33, 70–71, 74 exaggeration 124 externally-facing activities in political parties 132 face-to-face interaction 132, 136, 157 Facebook 104 factionalism 109, 158

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Index 177 federalisation of Italy 75 federalism 9, 21–34, 123, 126, 148–152 see also fiscal federalism Fini, Gianfranco 74, 111, 124 first-past-the-post electoral system 51, 60, 65 fiscal federalism 78–80, 84, 119, 122 Five Star Movement (M5S) 34, 56, 59–60, 63, 86–87 foreigners 29–30 Formentini, Marco 65, 82–83 Forza Italia (FI) 4, 8–10, 38, 51–52, 60, 65–66, 73, 81, 108, 121– 122, 152 Bossi’s alliance with 122 framing of choices 124 fraud 104 Frederick Barbarossa, Emperor 2 full members of the LN 100–101, 130–131 funding of parties 4, 91, 97–98, 126–127 gender gap 50 Gentilini, Giancarlo 82 Gilbert, Mark 94 globalisation 21, 23, 29–30, 160–161 Gnutti, Vito 118 grassroots organisation 5, 13, 96, 102–105, 119, 122, 125, 129, 131, 145, 148, 155–157 Grillo, Beppe 59 Haider, Jörg 113 health services 27, 84 Heinisch, Reinhard 93, 103 homophobia 82 identity definition 19, 141 identity politics 145 ideological coherence and consistency 6 illegal immigrants, prison sentences for 77 image 123, 126 immigration 21–22, 28–29, 32, 74–75, 79, 87, 154, 161 incentives for involvement in political parties 130–131, 135–137, 145

purposive, personal and communitarian 137–140 influence on policy-making 53, 56–57, 122 direct and indirect 153–154 integration policies 23, 70–71, 154 internal democracy in political parties 3, 143, 157–158 internal power structures in political parties 91, 94–95, 103 internally facing activities in political parties 130 internationalism 23 interviews with party members and representatives 90 interviews, use of 14–15, 90, 129, 131 “iron law of oligarchy” 158 Italian central state 2–3, 20–21 Italy as a peripheral region 33 Janda, Kenneth 94, 137 Johnson, Carol 31 Katz, Richard 138, 160 Kirchheimer, Otto 136 Kitschelt, Herbert 48 Labour Party, UK 155 “law and order” issues 79, 87 leader-centric strategies 127 leader-dominated politics 114 leadership 114–115 institutionalisation of 121 internal and external 108–109, 114–115, 120–127, 149, 157–158 personalisation of 113 Lega Lombarda (LL) 2 Lega Nord (LN) achievements while in government 13–14, 66–80, 85–88, 125, 149, 153, 161 best and worst electoral results for 43–46 as Bossi’s political creature 119, 158–160 conferring a sense of community 6 constant elements in history of 147 distinctiveness of political message 17, 138–139, 148–149, 159

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178 Index Lega Nord (LN) cont. dynamic nature of 23 electoral support of 11–12, 36–37, 40–48, 51, 54–63, 65, 109, 152 familistic tendencies in 120 fees paid by members of 98–99 fining of 104 fundamental feature making for success of 6 history of 7–12 ideology of (with and without Bossi) 18–19, 26, 30–32 impact on public policy 70–81 indirect impact on regional autonomy 74–75 influence exercised by leadership 77, 85–88 influence of ordinary members on leadership of party, candidates and policy 96–97, 103 interaction with other parties 36, 50 internal structure of 13 internal struggles within 118 key documents of 19, 24–30 as a major force in politics 50–51, 56, 63 as a mass party 90–105 media controlled by 98 membership of 91, 96–100, 103, 129–132, 143–145, 148, 100 normalisation of 50 occupational profile of voters for 48–49 origins of 7 “outsider” identity of 10 party manual 134 party organisation after Bossi 103–105 in the political space 150–154 “privatisation” of 108 as a “prototypical” populist party 147–150 at regional and local levels 65–66, 81–85, 149 as a regionalist party 18–20 size of membership 99 strengths of 28 summary of conclusions about 149–151 unity maintained by 93, 119, 145 wide representation of 6

Lega per Salvini Premier (LSP) 33, 103–104 leghismo 4, 9, 37, 39, 82, 93, 114 Le Pen, Jean Marie 111, 158 lessons to be learned from LN’s experience 148, 150, 153, 161 Lisbon Treaty 77–78 “Lombard model” 84 Lombardy 1, 6–7, 19–20, 25–26, 42–43, 56, 67–68, 83, 71, 81, 93–94 longevity, political 109–115 Mafia, the 27–28, 120 “Magic Circle” around Bossi 120, 158 mainstreaming 149–150, 161 Mair, Peter 4, 91–92, 144, 160 Mannheimer, Renato 49–50 Maroni, Roberto 33, 55, 57, 68–79, 86, 93, 118, 120, 127 Marrone, Manuela 120 mass media 91, 143, 145, 148, 150, 155–160 mass parties 2–5, 13, 91–93, 98, 102–105 denominational 144 features of 91 Mauer, Ueli 113 Mauro, Rosi 67 mayors, directly elected 81–82 Mazzoleni, Oscar 18, 93, 103 membership of political parties in general 4–5 Miglio, Gianfranco 117 Milan 43, 47, 65, 81 ministries controlled by the LN 55, 68–71, 84–87, 121 mobilisation of voters 9, 13 Monti, Mario 127 mosques 30 Mudde, Cas 20, 22–23, 26, 33, 114 Müller, Sean 18 nation-wide parties 18, 24 national identity, Italian 148 nativism 33, 151 Nenni, Pietro 109 neoliberalism 23 niches, politically relevant 152 Northern League see Lega Nord

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Index 179 “northern question” 2, 7–8, 11, 17, 21, 32, 75, 107–108, 159 coming to dominate political debates 151 speaking on behalf of the whole region 40

presidentialism 111, 113, 126–127, 158 Prodi, Romano 23, 87 proportional representation 51, 54, 65, 76, 121 proselytising 140 public opinion 8

objectives of the LN in government 70 opinion multipliers 130 “organisational decay” of political parties 120, 150 organisational networks 144

qualified majority voting 72–73

Padania (region and people) 1–2, 9, 19, 23–24, 33, 52, 98, 115 La Padania (party newspaper) 15, 74 Panebianco, Angelo 3, 91, 136 “participation without power” 103, 129, 143, 157 partitocrazia 102, 109, 157 party leaders 17, 105, 110–120, 127, 132, 145, 156–158 attitudes towards 113 party organisation, models of 3–5, 90–95, 102–103, 129, 145, 148, 160 as an important yet neglected dimension of success 154–158 Passarelli, Gianluca 50, 100, 130, 132 pension system 26 peripheral parties and “peripheralisation” 11, 47–48, 57, 81–83 personal authority 6 personal destiny 158 personalisation of politics 104–105, 111, 113, 126, 158 Pivetti, Irene 66, 117 Poguntke, Thomas 5, 113 political entrepreneurs 111, 150 Pontida annual gathering 134–135 Il Popolo della Libertà (PdL) 65, 79 populism 1–4, 8–11, 14, 17–20, 23–26, 29–32, 39, 93, 124–125, 129–130, 144–145, 147–151, 154–155, 159–160 “chameleonic” nature 17–18, 32 definition of 20 “exclusionary” 151

racism 9, 28 radical politics 9, 28, 83, 124–125, 151, 158 Radiotelevisione italiana 4 referendums 33–34, 76, 78, 84, 153 regionalism and regionalist parties 2, 11, 18–27, 32–33, 39, 94, 144, 148–149, 152–153 regions of Italy outside the north 126 religion, definition of 30 Renzi, Matteo 60, 127 right-wing politics 20–23, 29–32, 151, 154, 158 Rocchetta, Franco 94, 116–117 Roma communities 79, 82 rootedness 102, 147 Rosato, Ettore 60 Ruggiero, Renato 74 Salvadori, Bruno 7 Salvini, Matteo 1–2, 11, 14, 18, 24, 32–34, 57–58, 63, 70, 82, 87–88, 96, 103–104, 108–109, 125–127, 148, 151, 159 Scalfaro, Oscar Luigi 121 Scarrow, Susan 3, 5, 130, 135, 137, 145, 156 secessionism 10, 52–53 “security package” (2009) 80 Segretario Federale 95–96 self-determination 19, 21, 26–27 self-government 32 senators and the Senate 66–67 Seyd, Patrick 137 single European currency (the euro) 29, 70, 72, 77–78 “sister league” movements 19 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) 8, 37–39, 48, 100, 153 small and medium-sized towns 42–43 social conservatism 151–152

180 Index

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social events 134 social media (SM) 104–105, 127 Soini, Timo 111–112 Speroni, Francesco 73 Stefani, Erika 87 strongholds, electoral 42 subcultures 93, 144 “supporter members” of the LN 100, 157, 161 Switzerland 115–116 taxation 38, 78 Togliatti, Palmiro 109 Tosi, Flavio 82 “traditional” political parties 145 transformation: ideological 126 trust 122 Tuorto, Dario 50, 100, 112, 130 Turkey 30, 73, 161 TV Sorrisi e Canzoni 121 Twitter 104

Unione di Centro (UDC) 75–77 United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) 151 “us and them” dichotomy 21, 24, 32–33, 36, 151–152 Vampa, Davide (co-author) 6, 97 van Biezen, Ingrid 5 “Venetisation” 43, 56 Webb, Paul 113 Whiteley, Paul 137 Wilson, James 136–137 women, role and status of 66–67 xenophobia 82 young people 49 Zaia, Luca 33, 43, 65, 68, 83–86 zingari 21