ABSTRACT
The clientelism and corruption laid bare by the Tangentopoli investigations throw a spotlight on the role played by electoral change and the growth of the Northern League in bringing about the transformation of the Italian party system. This chapter explains the emergence and growth of the League. It begins by describing the principal factors conditioning Italian voting behaviour in the period after 1945 and then how these began to lose their strength from the mid-1970s onwards. This provided the essential precondition for the growth of the League – namely, a willingness of voters to stop voting for the established parties. The principal characteristics of the subcultures, besides a high concentration of support for one or other of the two major parties, were the presence of 'a specific local political system' offering 'a high capacity for the aggregation and mediation of local-level interests' as a result of the existence of 'a dense network of institutions co-ordinated by the dominant party'.
