The Historical Roots of Italian Right Wing Populism
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Macalester College DigitalCommons@Macalester College Political Science Honors Projects Political Science Department 4-26-2016 Popular Discontents: The iH storical Roots of Italian Right Wing Populism Anthony Marshall Simone Macalester College Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors Part of the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Simone, Anthony Marshall, "Popular Discontents: The iH storical Roots of Italian Right Wing Populism" (2016). Political Science Honors Projects. 71. http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/71 This Honors Project is brought to you for free and open access by the Political Science Department at DigitalCommons@Macalester College. It has been accepted for inclusion in Political Science Honors Projects by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Macalester College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Popular Discontents The Historical Roots of Italian Right Wing Populism Anthony Marshall Simone Paul Dosh Political Science 4/26/16 Many people are beyond deserving of my thanks for helping me along the way, and for and undertaking such as this, I could not have done it without them. First, like any good Italian, no matter how diluted by multiple generations of Americanization, la mia famiglia. I want to give a special thank you to my mother and father for the unrivaled gifts of both an exceptional education and unconditional love. Next, I must thank the other scholars, experts, and reviewers for their generous gifts of their precious time. For many, this involved branching out of their comfort zones to explore the labyrinth of Italian politics. I must give special thanks to Paul Dosh, my advisor for this project, for his tireless efforts and endless good cheer. Without so sturdy a foundation, this project would not be where it is today. I must also thank David Blaney for his guidance and enthusiasm as an advisor and reviewer. His keen eye sharpened my insights here and in general. And then there is Frank Adler. Scholar, mentor, friend, to me, he is all. This project, as well as my academic career in general, would look very different without his influence. For all these people, their incalculable contributions shaped my thinking around the complex and multifaceted issues tackled in this exploration. Their contributions were solely positive; any errors that remain are mine alone. I must also thank my dear friends, Jeff “Big Jobs” Witter, Ricardo “Dick Rogers” Rodriguez, Gabriel Duarte, and Fabian “Fabio” Arrizon for helping me stay sane throughout this process. I would amiss if I were not to thank my Italian friends abroad and in the bel paese. Thank you for sharing your history and culture with me as well as making me feel incluso insieme. A ogni uccello il suo nido è bello, ma grazie a voi, anche se quel nido è un altro. Abstract Emerging from the ashes of the old electoral system of the First Republic, an ideological populism built on regional identity, most significantly espoused by the Lega Nord political party, became a dominant force in Italian politics. This populism initially attacked a corrupt state, but evolved to confront perceived threats to its homeland region, such as globalization and immigration. Despite these developments, this populism continues to create a discourse which pits a virtuous, homogenous people against a set of self-serving poteri forti (powers that be). What self-serving powers gave rise to this populism? This anti-state, xenophobic populism exists as a response to a “negative aggregation” of political, social, and economic conjunctures systemic to Italian politics since its formation as a republic in 1861. It is clear that specific elements of contemporary Italian state formation and political economy gave rise to this populism and sustained its particular ideological construction. Thus this investigation traces these forces that have allowed Lega and the populism it embodies to emerge politically at the end of Italy’s First Republic. Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Il Risorgimento and the Central State 11 The Context of the Risorgimento 13 The Risorgimento and the Idea of Unification 22 Liberal Italy and the Crisis of Legitimacy 32 Chapter 2: The State Reasserts Itself 53 From the Resistance to Governance 54 The Birth of Democrazia Cristiana and their Quest for Hegemony 69 Bureaucratic Power 85 Chapter 3: The State Expands 90 The State and the Public Sector: The Case of the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno 91 Power and Growth: The Political Consequences of the Boom Economico 96 The South Moves North 106 Chapter 4: The State in Crisis 112 Opening the DC to the Left 113 From Collective Action to Violence 127 Change the Leader, Maintain the System 136 Corruption and Clean Hands: The Fall of the First Republic 140 Chapter 5: Populism Emerges and Responds 150 The Ideologies of Lega Nord 151 Populism Exploits the Political System 167 Towards a Conclusion on a Continually Changing Phenomenon 176 References 183 1 Introduction The year is 1992 and the Italian Chamber of Deputies is trying to elect a new president of the Republic. Not normally civil, the halls of Palazzo Madama and Palazzo Montecitorio are filled with outbursts of ladri (thieves) and other insults. The more populist leaders are in rare form. Rallies denouncing the state are common; slogans decry Roma Ladrona (Thieving Rome). Everyone seems to hate Italian politics—save for their own faction. It is a tumultuous time; everyone seems restless. This is to be expected. They don't know it, but the Italian First Republic is about to come to an end. Why is everyone so angry? And how did it get this way? Answering these questions requires investigating the widespread populism that spread all across the country. These questions also reveal that analyzing the rise of Italian populism requires an analysis of the particularity of the case. These particularities arise from the case’s history. Many accounts of populism do not investigate these particularities beyond the immediate context surrounding rise of the populist phenomenon. Although the immediate conditions feeding populism are certainly important, the historical continuities of its rise, which cumulated in the immediate crisis, provide a deeper analytic story. A deeper analytic story is necessary because “populism” as a concept in political science is difficult to define. It is typically a descriptive category. Populism typically is understood as some sort of variation on a social or political mobilization or discourse that references a “people” as a homogenous entity with exclusive positive and permanent values. However, analytically, this formulation means that populism is an appeal to the people. Populism, then, is open to numerous formulizations because it is not limited by things 2 like state structure, political organization, or ideological program. Due to this openness, populism is often grounded in a theory of personality. Thus, analysis in this scheme focuses on populist actors. But since populism’s openness to numerous formulizations is preserved in this theory, “populist” can, and has been used to describe such a diverse group of actors from Peron to Perot, Castro and Chavez to Reagan and Thatcher. Even within Italy numerous manifestations that can be described as populist have occurred. The concept of populism must be limited if it is to be analytically useful. The study of populism has spawned a sprawling field of scholarship, often with many studies attempting to limit the concept. There are a few ways in which this limiting often occurs. One way is to look at the populist’s rhetoric. In other words, how is the populist constructing an idea of the people? Another tactic is to make it a historical phenomenon. Populism responds to a set of social and political conditions usually by advocating for a set of idealized relations. But even this limitation can vary significantly. Is the populist project forward or rearward looking? Emancipatory or reactionary? Then there is a structural approach. This structural approach is not a general theory of populism. Rather, it is an analysis of how the movement situates itself within the various political and social contexts to which it responds. The openness of the “people” is maintained while allowing for the intense variation to which populist movements respond. Both the referents, those exclusive positive and permanent values, and the “problems” they are pitted against are historical in nature. But the populist is responding to a specific moment in time often to show how far some “ideal” has gone astray. The people are under threat from outside forces. Structurally, populism takes the form of an us/them binary. But even this formulation seems lacking of analytical content. In order to 3 avoid the same problems of analysis presented above, the structural approach must treat populism as a conjunctural phenomenon. The historical focus necessary to make populism a conjunctural phenomenon grounds its more elusive conceptual elements, the us and the them, in the concrete historical tendencies of the case. In doing so, populism becomes a socio-political phenomenon of the environment within which it operates. Specifically, this focus helps explain why the populism that emerged in the early Italian Second Republic was both regionalist and anti-establishment. A way of illustrating populism as a conjunctural phenomenon is to look to one of its most powerful practitioners, the Lega Nord. The Lombard League, or Lega Autonomista Lombardia was formed on April 12, 1984. Intensely regionalist, the Lombard League espoused a passion for the Lombard dialect and culture. Although the league started with this cultural focus, by the early 1990s this cultural passion gave way to a critique of the political structures of the Italian state coupled with demands for federalism or outright autonomy. Lombardy was not the only region to see the formation of an “autonomous” league. Throughout northern Italy, cultural and quasi-political organizations took root.