How Lega Nord Became Part of the Italian Political System: A Little Reminder of an Almost Forgotten Piece of History
This article mainly aims to point out the political and social role played by the Northern League during the transition that affected the Italian political system between Prima Repubblica – the journalistic expression indicating the period between 1948 and 1992 – and Seconda Repubblica. It is important to clarify that it was a political transition, not an institutional one - in contrast to the situation of the French case - since the constitutional settlement remained unaltered.
The first part of the dissertation focuses on the latent tensions, internal to the system that flared up in the early ‘90s, in combination with groundbreaking international developments, which were deeply linked to the representation crisis of traditional parties, in order to reveal the relationship breakdown between people and politics, which is at the basis of Northern League’s success.
I will start by analyzing the physiognomy and the warning signs of the three most representative parties: “Democrazia Cristiana” (DC), “Partito Comunista Italiano” (PCI) and “Partito Socialista Italiano” (PSI). The Roman Catholic party had founded its legitimacy on an anti-communism attitude from its implant in the country, in the aftermath of the Second World War, along the lines of the international bipolarism of the Cold War.
In the ‘80s, a mixture of spontaneous social transformations, domestic and international events weakened and overturned the role played up to that time by the DC.
There are some points to stress: the progression of the European integration process imposed a rationalization of the public spending, which had been rashly used for decades as a sort of leverage of consent, causing a high public debt. The opening of the markets that anticipated the EU’s integration represented a great opportunity for the emerging social groups formed by self-employed workers and small entrepreneurs of Northern Italy, as a result these sections of society felt economically limited by the central government.
The fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, which anticipated USSR’s collapse in 1991, marks the peak of the ‘crisis’ of great ideologies, due to a secularization process in the conception of politics: anti-communism, la raison d'être of Democrazia Cristiana, had formally ceased to exist. The image of anti-communism bulwark was also the binding element for the party; in fact, during those years, the DC faced significant scissions, showing its internal divisions. One of the most significant split-ups was the protest pursued by Mario Segni, who promoted a strong referendum campaign against parties. The referendum for the abolition of the multiple preference in political elections was held in 1991, and two years later, the electoral referendum enshrined the reform of the electoral system into a partial majority system.
For the DC, this majority logic represented another black mark, since it weakened the center of the political axis that the Roman Catholic party had traditionally occupied.
In addition, the major of Palermo, Leoluca Orlando, pursued a strong protest against his own party, denouncing collusions between local representatives of the DC and the Mafia, and it did not take long before he formed a new party under the name “La Rete”.
Several corruption probes exploded in 1992 under the name of “Tangentopoli”, gravely damaging the legitimacy of parties, and especially of those who had covered power and governmental positions for years, such as “Democrazia Cristiana”, but also “Partito Socialista Italiano”, which were covered by shame. Corruption inquires also brought a perverse relationship between politics and economy to surface, which had provoked distorted effects on the functioning of economy and on budgetary problems: a huge national debt and a consequent heavy taxation.
All these factors had profound impacts on civil society dissent towards the political class. The PSI, led by Bettino Craxi from 1983, tried to give itself a new image – also breaking definitively with the Marxist background - in order to attract the support of the new productive categories, but the following judicial inquiries against its representatives destroyed the party’s credibility.
The PCI proved its unwillingness and inability to realize and to accept the ongoing social changes: new professional profiles and emerging social classes marked the end of the centrality of the working class, prefiguring the advent of post-industrial values, which disclaimed the Marxist world-view based on the class struggle. The communist party appeared inadequate to interpret the emerging issues and could not reform itself in order to find a successful political strategy against political disaffection. The end of the Warsaw Pact was the final blow for the party, obliging it to rethink deeply its identity and its ideological background.
Upon these preconditions, the Northern League built its consensus. It is important to specify that it was not originally a unitary political entity: it was molded on several independent movements which already existed in the Northern regions. Thus, the second part analyzes the peculiar and favorable conditions existing in some areas of the North; then comes to focus on the unification process, which led to the emergence of the Northern League; the last one outlines the constitutive characteristics of the new political force.
1. In the ‘80s, in the foothill areas of the Northeast of Italy, an economic framework constituted by small manufacturing enterprises gained importance in terms of productivity and prosperity. This emerging production model was in contrast with the large company models symbolized in Fiat in Turin and with the “new economy” identified with the city of Milan. The DC governed those peripheral areas of the North, but the Roman Catholic subculture crisis gave a stronger anti-political connotation to the pre-existing autonomy demands. The new middle class, composed by entrepreneurs and self-employed workers, was increasingly dissatisfied with the central government, perceived as corrupted and spendthrift, and demanded efficiency and bureaucratic streamlining. These social sectors were perceived as politically marginal by reference to their ascendant economic role.
The different leagues, which drew from this growing dissent, had the element of territorial cohesion in common, in opposition to the commercialism and the inefficiency of the central State; they made their territory a symbol of anti-politics.
2. The two main movements, which brought Northern League into life, were “Liga Veneta” and “Lega Lombarda”. After some initial electoral successes, severe internal division marked the first one; therefore, Lega Lombarda was able to take on the leading role in unifying all the independent regional movements into a unitary political project.
At the general election in 1987, the Lega Lombarda obtained two parliamentary seats; some months after the following electoral success at the European election in 1989, the first national conference of the new political subject was set up.
The Northern League was officially formed in 1991; it incorporated the different independent leagues in order to constitute a unified Northern Italian party with a relevant position at national level. At the 1992 elections, the new party gained its first great success, obtaining the 8.6% of the votes cast, even if the polling data did not fully reflect the disintegration of the party system: the DC still reached 29.7% and the Partito Democratico della Sinistra (PDS, the new name of the former PCI) 13.9%. It is only during the following administrative rounding vote that the dramatic dissolution of all the traditional parties became evident.
3. The political strategy of the Northern League combined the antagonism against the central state with a territorial aspect: local communities were emphasized as a world full of values and interests, which were more important than what the State represented. The iniquity of the redistributive system was one of the points most stressed, highlighting the contrast between the productiveness of the North and the parasitism of the South.
The party was structured around the centralized leadership of Umberto Bossi, who made a conspicuous use of a specific and innovative communication modality to strengthen feelings of ‘belonging’ among the electorates. He refused the common political language opting for a simple and more popular type of speech instead. He did not lack in rude rant, but the real goal was to differentiate the Northern League from all the other political forces and to impact on the irrational side of the voters. In this way, the leader was not perceived as a member of the political establishment, but as an interlocutor at the same level of his activists/ militants. Therefore, if for the original lega the use of the local dialect was a form of regional claim, for the Northern League it became a means of political antagonism against the central institutions. Moreover, the style of the speech, aimed at developing an identity based on territorial and ethno-cultural elements, which were progressively adapted in their substance to the political ends. After the conception of the region as a body of common traditions, typical of the original local leagues, Lega Lombarda molded a territorial interpretative scheme based on a view of the region as a community of material interests. During the first congress of the Northern League, the federalist project, by the ideologue Gianfranco Miglio, was submitted to the social basis. Federalism represented the main theoretical reference and it enlarged the spatial reference from localism to the entire North of Italy, enabling the Northern League to expand its legitimacy at national level.
Federalism was invoked until the negotiations for the formation of the new government after the 1994 elections. In Bossi’s speech, federalism was tabled as the crucial element for choosing alliances, but, in fact, it was instrumental in obtaining the acceptance of the voters for the alliance with Berlusconi... It is not by chance that the relationship breakdown between Bossi and professor Miglio occurred approximately in that period.
The involvement of the Northern League in the new government constitutes the main topic of the third section, which analyzes the role of the incoming force, “Forza Italia”, in the new context and its influence on the Northern League’s identity and strategy.
In fact, during the governmental cohabitation in the “Polo delle Libertà”, the territorial issue substantially lost centrality in the political debate, and the Northern League watched its strong characterization fade. To regain political identity and visibility, Bossi built up a hardline polemic against the indirect ally (Alleanza Nazionale, AN of Gianfranco Fini, part of a parallel coalition with Forza Italia under the name of “Good government Pole”) and especially towards Berlusconi, branded as a successor of the old regime. The previous targets of Northern League’s invective, such as the roman chambers of power, the commercialism of the parties and the malfunctioning of the state apparatus, were subsequently associated with the non-transparent business of the Lombard entrepreneur Bossi.
This strategy, based on antagonism, was successful: the polls of the voting intentions showed an increase of the approval rating for the Northern League compared to the descending consensus marked by the announcement of its participation to the governmental coalition. In fact, during the 1994 elections, the Northern League had lost about 0.3% of the votes compared to the 1992 elections. Moreover, data showed a regression in the areas of the latest Northern League’s successes, such as the North-West and the urban poles, in the face of additional growth in the areas where the party had originally taken root.
This can be explained considering that Forza Italia was a natural adversary for the Northern party: they both were not part of the old political class, and they both broke the conventional canons typical of language politics using an innovative communication approach. And, finally, they both criticized the pervasiveness of the state presence – especially in the economy – supporting the demands from civil society which had been bereft of representation for years.
Although sharing these common aspects, Berlusconi’s rhetoric was very effective also on the moderate electorate, who considered economic recovery, orderliness and normalization of the political framework much more important than the territorial issues. Moreover, Forza Italia did not have a territorial dimension (thus no spatial representation limits); it could rely on a massive use of the media, and the anti-communism rhetoric, used by its leader, proved to be still incisive on Italian society. These elements caused the shift of the more moderate components of the Northern League voters to Berlusconi’s political force.
The tensions internal to the coalition led, finally, to the withdrawal of the Northern League, with the consequent resignation of the government. At the administrative elections in 1995, the Northern party made alliances with the opposition forces, but during the election campaign for the following general election in 1996, the League newly presented itself alone against all. The insistence on the differentiation from all the other parties and the perpetuation of antagonistic polemic proved once again to be successful, since the Northern League obtained 10% of the votes on a national scale.
Nevertheless, the party could not play a leading role in the following legislation because the majority system had brought to the aggregation among parties on a bipolar logic, and the Northern League, devoid of coalitional power, could not be determinant in the Parliament.
This point reveals the perpetuation of some typical elements of the Italian political system, which proves the incompleteness of the “transition”. Indeed, the ’94 elections – usually identified with the transition of the political framework – showed how the variation of the electoral system did not alter the systemic high rate of fragmentation and the high temperature of the political conflict.
In conclusion, the phenomenon of the regional leagues represented one of the most important newness of the post-war political system, since they refused to collocate along the traditional left-right axis, reclaiming instead some deep cleavages of the Italian society, such as the “center-periphery” and the “North-South” relations. The emergence of Northern League can be read as a reflection of the systemic crisis and, at the same time, as one of its determinants, since the political force gave a precise direction to the anti-politics humors and to the latent fears of the society. Indeed, the Northern League did not merely go along with the emerging issues, but it introduced debate modalities and themes, which were destabilizing for the other parties.
Furthermore, the Northern party anticipated some relevant aspects concerning the politics of our time, such as the personalization of leadership and a populist rhetoric, but, at the same time, the political role of the Northern League was narrowed down by the sticky elements of the system’s physiognomy.
Edited by Hiba Arrame
