The Northern League

An effective mix of ethno-nationalism, populism and a new conservative ethos propelled the Lombard League and then the Northern League (LN) into national politics. Despite early successes in a very favourable situation, the LN has not been able to develop into a broader vehicle for conservative sentiments. Indeed, it has been the subject of a repeated co-optation of its agenda by other parties and re-definitions of it in terms that are more compatible with a broader electorate, while its localistic anchor has prevented it from similar successful re-orientations. Nevertheless, it has retained an administrative role in villages and small towns at the local level regardless of its periodic radicalisations. Its institutional activists1 have gradually learned to operate within the state institutions of a circumscribed area, forging links with middle-class professionals and other political forces in the day-to-day administration. Moreover, the electoral system since 1993, favouring broad coalitions, has allowed the LN to continue to exercise a disproportionate influence within the Italian party system at the national level, notably through its participation within the centre-right governing coalition of 2001-6. Because of its localised constituency, the LN could manufacture a dis-

tinctive brand of ethno-nationalism connected to the glorification of its constituency – appropriately named ‘the peoples of Padania’ – which indicates both a common destiny and a homeland, but also internal differentiation. Its populism is therefore a form of economically based nationalism in which images of victimhood and territorial belonging are prevalent. This chapter will demonstrate how this process of symbolic construction occurred and will show how the LN exploited existing regional cleavages, in terms of both their economic and cultural dimension, together with the political opportunities that emerged with the collapse of the Italian party system in the early 1990s. It will highlight in particular the shifting ideological positioning of the LN in accordance with changing political opportunities and how this is strongly linked to its employment of a strategy which harnesses core elements of populism such as an anti-political stance, a tribal approach to politics, a tendency towards charismatic leadership and a nativist, exclusionary discourse.