sign in sign up
<<
Home , Arcangelo Ghisleri, Belgian Socialist Party, Carraresi, Carroccio, De Agostini, Flemish Parliament

KONINKLIJKE VLAAMSE ACADEMIE VAN BELGIE VOOR WETENSCHAPPEN EN KUNSTEN

CONTEMPORARY CENTRIFUGAL : COMPARING AND NORTHERN

19-20 JUNE 2009

Michel Huysseune

CONTACTFORUM

KONINKLIJKE VLAAMSE ACADEMIE VAN BELGIE VOOR WETENSCHAPPEN EN KUNSTEN

CONTEMPORARY CENTRIFUGAL REGIONALISM: COMPARING FLANDERS AND

19-20 June 2009

Michel Huysseune

CONTACTFORUM

Handelingen van het contactforum "Contemporary Centrifugal Regionalism: Comparing Flanders and Northern Italy" (19-20 juni 2009, hoofdaanvrager: Michel Huysseune, Vesalius College, Vrije Universiteit Brussel) gesteund door de Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie van België voor Wetenschappen en Kunsten.

Afgezien van het afstemmen van het lettertype en de alinea’s op de richtlijnen voor de publicatie van de handelingen heeft de Academie geen andere wijzigingen in de tekst aangebracht. De inhoud, de volgorde en de opbouw van de teksten zijn de verantwoordelijkheid van de hoofdaanvrager (of editors) van het contactforum.

KONINKLIJKE VLAAMSE ACADEMIE VAN BELGIE VOOR WETENSCHAPPEN EN KUNSTEN

Paleis der Academiën Hertogsstraat 1 1000 Brussel

Niets uit deze uitgave mag worden verveelvoudigd en/of openbaar gemaakt door middel van druk, fotokopie, microfilm of op welke andere wijze ook zonder voorafgaande schriftelijke toestemming van de uitgever.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by  Copyright 2011 KVAB print, photo print, microfilm or any other means without written permission from the publisher. D/2011/0455/09 ISSN 978 90 6569 084 5 Printed by Universa Press, 9230 ,

KONINKLIJKE VLAAMSE ACADEMIE VAN BELGIE VOOR WETENSCHAPPEN EN KUNSTEN

Contactforum CONTEMPORARY CENTRIFUGAL REGIONALISM: COMPARING FLANDERS AND NORTHERN ITALY

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contemporary Centrifugal Regionalism: Comparing Flanders and Northern Italy ………1 Michel Huysseune

Tragically Modern. Centrifugal Sub- in Belgium, 1830-2009 …………... 17 Marnix Beyen

The Territorial-Identitary Side of a : National Belonging and the Regional Issue in Contemporary Italy ..……………………………………………. 29 Gaspare Nevola

The Belgian Federal System: an Unstoppable Centrifugal Dynamic? ……………….… 53 Patrick Stouthuysen and Theo Jans

Is the Federal Process in Italy Going to Construct a System, a Polity or Nothing? ….....63 Giuseppe Gangemi

The Political Economy of State Restructuring and the Regional Uneven Transition to After-Fordism in Belgium ..……………………………………………… 83 Stijn Oosterlynck

Forced to Respond to Globalization. The Disembeddednes of Italian Industrial Districts and its Discontents .…………………………………………………95 Anna Cento Bull

Comparing and Contextualizing Interpretations of Regional Difference: Italy vs. Belgium ……………………………………………………………………….109 Michel Huysseune

How to Understand the Peculiar Public Discourse on Immigration and Integration in Flanders? ...………………………………………………………… 127 Patrick Loobuyck and Dirk Jacobs

Xenophobia or Democratic Differentiation? A New Path of Separation and Discipline for Migrant Workers in Italy .………………………………………………141 Devi Sacchetto

Value Patterns and Local Identity in Flanders: In Search of a Regional Identity ……...157 Marc Hooghe

Culture, Values and the Social Basis of Northern Italian Centrifugal Regionalism. A Contextual Political Analysis of the ..…………………….171 Roberto Biorcio and Tommaso Vitale

The Embedding of Radical Right Parties in Local Networks: an Ethnographic Study at the Neighbourhood Level in (Flanders) …………………………….201 Lien Warmenbol

The Northern League (Italy). A Party of Activists in the Midst of a Partisan Militancy Crisis ………………………………………………………………………...219 Martina Avanza

Centrifugal Regionalism and Political Mobilization in Belgium ……………………...235 Jeroen Van Laer

Beyond the Territory: Local Mobilizations in Northern Italy Against the HSRL in Val di Susa and the US Base in ..………………………………...…253 Gianni Piazza

Centrifugal Regionalism in Flanders and Northern Italy? Elements for a Comparison ……………………………………………………………………… 269 Michel Huysseune

De Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie van België voor Wetenschappen en Kunsten coördineert jaarlijks tot 25 wetenschappelijke bijeenkomsten, ook contactfora genoemd, in de domeinen van de natuurwetenschappen (inclusief de biomedische wetenschappen), menswetenschappen en kunsten. De contactfora hebben tot doel Vlaamse wetenschappers of kunstenaars te verenigen rond specifieke thema’s.

De handelingen van deze contactfora vormen een aparte publicatiereeks van de Academie.

Contactforum “Contemporary Centrifugal Regionalism: Comparing Flanders and Northern Italy” (19-20 juni 2009, hoofdaanvr.: M. Huysseune, Vesalius College, VUB)

The recent political crisis in Belgium has drawn attention to the centrifugal dynamics of its federal system. This crisis characteristically involves both interest and identity, economic arguments reflecting the unwillingness within the richer community (Flanders) for continuing support of the poorer one, and non-economic arguments related to the travailed relations between the country’s communities. Such centrifugal forms of regionalism also appear in, e.g., , Catalonia and the Basque Country, and northern Italy. The comparison between Belgium and Italy has a particular interest since both countries share many similarities like the North-South tension and a low degree of satisfaction with the political system. Taking into account that the identity-building process in northern Italy is a recent phenomenon and hence does not reflect a “historical” mobilization of an ethnic minority, both cases concern the questioning within the richer region of economic mechanisms of national solidarity. This contact forum proposes to reach, by means of systematic and multidisciplinary comparison between Flanders/Belgium and Northern Italy/Italy, a better understanding of the dynamics that characterize these two particular cases, and in particular which factors stimulate or constrain this centrifugal regionalism: the construction of identity, the issue of institutional reform, the development models of successful regions and its possible relation with ethnocentrism and support for radical right parties.

CONTEMPORARY CENTRIFUGAL REGIONALISM: COMPARING FLANDERS AND NORTHERN ITALY

Michel Huysseune

Vesalius College, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

1. INTRODUCTION

The continuous political crisis with which Belgium is confronted has drawn attention to the political fragility of the realm and to the centrifugal dynamics of its federal system. The crisis characteristically involves both interest and identity, economic arguments reflecting the unwillingness within the richer community (Flanders) to continue supporting the poorer one, and non-economic arguments related to the travailed relations between the country’s communities. Such a centrifugal form of regionalism is far from unique in Western Europe. Similar cases, where the affirmation of regionalism is related to a potential secession of the economically privileged, concern Scotland, Catalonia and the Basque Country, northern Italy, with Slovenia offering a successful model. The comparison between Belgium and Italy has an additional interest since, as De Winter, della Porta and Deschouwer have pointed out, both countries share many similarities: besides the North-South tension, particularly relevant for our purpose are a low degree of satisfaction with the political system and high levels of support for neo- populist and radical right parties (De Winter et al., 1996:216).1 Both the strong emphasis on economic arguments and the embedded presence of radical right parties that (have) defend(ed) secession moreover distinguish Flanders and northern Italy from other European cases of centrifugal regionalism . Because of these similarities, studying a particular phenomenon in one country thus indeed contributes to interpret the other one, since “knowledge on Italy can help us to understand Belgium and vice versa” (idem:215). Taking into account one important difference, the fact that the identity-building process in northern Italy is a recent phenomenon (promoted since about twenty years by the Lega Nord, colloquially known as the Lega) and hence does not reflect a “historical”

1 This text resulted itself from the workshop “Partitocracies Between Crises and Reform: The Cases of Italy and Belgium”, presenting a systematic interdisciplinary comparison of the two cases on a number of salient issues. The proceedings were published in Deschouwer, 1996. 1

mobilization of an ethnic minority, 2 both cases concern the questioning within the richer region of economic mechanisms of national solidarity, in a context where moreover the groups concerned ( and Francophones, northern and southern ) are, contrary to the other cases, of a relatively comparable size. Within member states of the , the existence of centrifugal forms of regionalism certainly problematizes dominant narratives of European integration. Regionalism and the affirmation of regional identities in the European Union are perceived in an ambivalent and at times schizophrenic way. Literature (e.g. Hooghe and Marks, 2001) has frequently pointed out the advantages the EU multi-level framework of governance offers for pacifying ethno-political and secessionist conflicts. Within the EU, sovereignty and hence competencies in policy areas are shared between the different levels of governance, creating a cooperative environment for the development and affirmation of institutions at the third, sub-state level. This process is presumed to lead to the articulation of multi-layered rather than exclusive identities, resulting in a post- national Europe characterized by unity in diversity, in which citizenship of the EU offers an additional layer of identification. Processes of regionalization or devolution have in several cases indeed led to the creation of an institutionalized context that enables the political empowering of ethnic minorities, and regionalist parties have in fact undergone a gradual process of Europeanization (Gómez-Reino Cachafeiro, 2006). In this context, it has been hypothesized that regional identities are presently being deployed as tools for regional mobilization for development, rather than for the affirmation of an exclusive self. This interest parallels the recent attention paid to regional economies. The regional development paradigm is interested in the territorial roots of development and the possibilities of new development models embedded in local society. 3 Both Flanders and northern Italy are in fact considered examples of successful regional economies. The affirmation in the 1970s and 1980s in much of northern Italy of locally rooted industrial districts that emerged seemingly independently from the action of the Italian states triggered off the theorization of a new, post-fordist economic model based on flexible specialization that promotes the empowerment of local society (Piore and Sabel, 1984). The Flemish model is likewise in a large measure based on small and middle enterprises with regional authorities playing an important role in supporting growth strategies. In both cases, these economies are understood as endogenous,

2 We make abstraction here of the mobilization of ethnic minorities in specific . Especially the relation between the German-speaking majority in Alto Adige (South ) and the Italian state would also offer an interesting case for comparison with Flanders, although the parameters for such a comparison would clearly be very different from the one between Flanders and northern Italy. While the dynamics of language politics have many similarities in Flanders and Alto Adige, the two cases do differ in two fundamental dimensions. Historically, the German-speaking community in South Tyrol has a long tradition of active opposition to the Italian state, only moderated by its acquisition of extended autonomy, while in Flanders active opposition to the Belgian state only emerged in the exceptional circumstances of the First World War and has always remained minoritarian. The issue of financial transfers moreover follows an opposite dynamic, since the province of Alto-Adige is the beneficiary of extended transfers to guarantee its loyalty to the Italian state. 3 For the debate around this paradigm, see Keating et al., 2003. 2

embedded in society and rooted in local culture, and hence inherently related to regional identities. Centrifugal forms of regionalism question this pacified image of essentially development-oriented regions. The desire for more power, and ultimately statehood, may reflect the little effective power the third level of governance really possesses within the EU framework. Such regionalism also reveals how the European Union, a space for institutional cooperation between member states in which regional authorities also participate, is at the same time an institution that sponsors a competitive worldview that may undermine solidarity and cooperation. The present economic crisis in Europe has indeed given visibility to the problematic nature of cooperation between member states and the difficulties of legitimizing towards national constituencies decisions that imply solidarity with other member states. Within member states, even when no ethnic issues are involved and no claims for secession are made like in Germany, richer regions equally have started questioning financial solidarity with less rich regions. The problematic legitimacy of European solidarity repeats on a larger scale what some contemporary articulations of regionalism already express, the necessity to abandon costly forms of solidarity in a context of competition on the global market and fiscal competition between territorial entities. Although the issue of fiscal autonomy and transfers plays a role in many cases of centrifugal regionalism (but also in the political debate between German regions where no such centrifugal tendencies as yet exist), Belgium and Italy distinguish themselves by the importance given to this issue. This specificity certainly has an ideological component: more than in other cases the intellectual debate in Flanders and northern Italy is characterized by an outspoken hegemony of neo-liberal . 4 In Italy, the concept of “fiscal ”, defined in its more radical form as the right for regions to preserve their fiscal income entirely for themselves, has linked the Lega’s demands to mainstream opinion .5 In Flanders, the debate concentrates on social security transfers between regions: the interpersonal principle of the Belgian social system hence is reinterpreted from a regionalist perspective , and the legitimacy and necessity of interregional transfers is questioned. In both countries, critiques of transfers are (often more implicitly than explicitly) legitimized by the combination of two ideas: firstly that poorer regions are in need of cultural adjustment and that this can only be reached through a drastic cure of austerity

4 In many other cases of centrifugal regionalism, its ideological tendencies are much more pluralist, and frequently independence is also a political option defended by leftist political movements which are more critical towards or explicitly reject neo-liberalism (e.g. ERC in Catalonia, the leftist Basque nationalist parties, the Scottish ). Whether rhetoric adherence to neo-liberalism really corresponds with espousing neo- liberal policies, can of course be questioned (see Mudde, 2007 for populist radical right parties, Huysseune, 2006 for the Lega Nord). 5 In its practical applications, the concept is of course suitably flexible, including almost any reform of the fiscal system. However, its principle is indeed the idea that regions would have a natural right to preserve their income entirely to themselves. In the Italian context, the concept has thus a radically different meaning from that given by scholars (including Belgian ones, see e.g. Cantillon and De Maesschalck, 2007) who use the same term to refer to the necessity to locate social security and redistributive mechanisms in general at the highest possible level of governance. 3

and liberalization (the equivalent of the IMF’s structural adjustment), secondly that richer regions need their fiscal means to better guarantee the efficiency of their economy and the of their population. In neither case, opponents of regional transfers are prepared to envisage the possible perverse effects of the increased regional inequality that would probably result from such policies (cf. Cantillon and De Maesschalck, 2007), or they rather believe that diminished means will magically contribute to resurrect the poorer region; only the Italian political scientist and fellow-traveller of the Lega Nord Gianfranco Miglio has dared to state that such policies would necessitate a drastic limitation of the access of southern Italians to northern Italy and its (Anonymous, 1995:14). In both the cases studied here, however, justifications of anti- redistributionist policies do not limit themselves to neoliberal ideological utterances. They argue for self-government by linking regional excellence to social and cultural specificity, and justifications of anti-redistributionist policies moreover need to be contextualized in the longer time-frame of debates on regional development in both countries, since Belgian independence (1830) and (1860-1861). Contemporary justifications of centrifugal regionalism emphasize the rootedness of economic virtues in regional culture and traditions. In the case of economically more successful regions this easily leads to the formulation of a discourse that suggests their cultural superiority. In Italy, Maurizio Franzini and Salvatore Lupo have observed how such visions of cultural superiority are in fact well embedded in the social sciences, for example in David Landes’ The Wealth and Poverty of Nations .6 Such scholarship refers to Max Weber’s famous The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Weber, 1976). In its unproblematized reading of entrepreneurial culture and its association of culture with national, regional and/or ethnic identity, this approach rather resembles 19 th century literature that sought for an explanation of economic success and political freedom in (generally ill-conceptualized and stereotyped) readings of national character (cf. Romani, 2002). This approach seems to be oblivious of the fact that the emergence of the social sciences in the late 19 th century was in fact characterized by a questioning of such simplistic readings of national character (ibid., especially chapters 5 to 7). The two cases of this volume certainly exemplify the dangers of a routinized and unproblematic reading of presumed national or regional characteristics. The regions studied here, Flanders and northern Italy, distinguish themselves for example by the strong presence of xenophobic political parties, (formerly ) and the Lega Nord. 7 Both parties moreover combine xenophobic viewpoints against immigrants with a negative vision of the ’s Other (Wallonians and southern Italians) and by this means justify the region’s claim to independence, hence raising questions about the possibly deleterious dynamics of discourses of regional economic success. It is these ambivalent dimensions of regionalism, the articulation of regional identity combined with the development of centrifugal tendencies whereby richer regions question national solidarity and redistributive policies, interacting with the affirmation of xenophobic parties, that this volume proposes to research, by means of a systematic and

6 Franzini and Lupo, 2003:10-11. The reference is to Landes, 1998. Landes himself always discusses culture at the national level, and in fact presents a reified view of national cultures. Obviously, regional cultures can equally be reified. 7 The similarities between the two parties have regularly drawn the attention of scholars. See e.g. Gómez-Reino Cachafeiro, 2001. 4

multidisciplinary comparison between Belgium and Italy, and more in particular Flanders/Belgium and Northern Italy/Italy. Because we limit ourselves to these two cases, the goal of our comparison cannot be a generic understanding of the potential centrifugal dynamics of regionalism in Europe. We rather propose to reach a better understanding of the dynamics that characterize the two particular cases we study, and especially which factors stimulate or constrain this centrifugal regionalism. By presenting the main characteristics of the two cases, this introduction intends to outline the context for their comparison. As we will argue underneath, both cases display a significant number of similarities but also of relevant differences for confronting them. In both countries, the processes described above have of course attracted much scholarly attention from political scientists, sociologists, historians, economists and anthropologists. The framework of interpreting them has, however, been very much case specific: interpretative frameworks and research questions derive very much from national traditions of scholarship. A confrontation of how in both countries this centrifugal regionalism is interpreted and contextualized should hence contribute to deprovincialize the respective understanding of each of the cases, but also offer new approaches for studying them.

2. FLANDERS IN BELGIUM

The case of Flanders in Belgium is in the first place the outcome of the longstanding political mobilization of a “historical” ethnic group, characterized by its language, Dutch. This process with the emancipation of the as its goal, known as the , originated in the 19 th century. It questioned the political, economic and cultural dominance of the Francophone elite in Belgium after independence (1830). This mobilization firstly led to the acceptance of the use of Dutch in the public space (administration, courts, education) and the recognition of Dutch as an official national language (1898).8 In the 1930s Dutch obtained an equal legal status with French, and in the 1960s a language border delimiting Flanders, and the bilingual region of was established. In a following stage, the unitary state itself was questioned, leading to a seemingly never-ending process of institutional reforms, but also to the division of all (previously national) political parties along language lines. Since 1993, Belgium is officially a federal state. The centrifugal dynamics of this process lead (in particular from the Flemish side) to continuously renewed demands for transfers of competencies towards the regional level, raising the question of the future of the Belgian state. These institutional dynamics towards reform coincide with a more general distrust towards political institutions, characteristic of public opinion in the whole of Belgium. Debates on reform of the Belgian state are hence also concerned with creating institutions that can generate more trust from citizens. The Flemish movement has from early on also been concerned with economic issues. In the 19 th and early 20 th century, Flanders was economically underdeveloped

8 From its origins, the Flemish movement has insisted on the linguistic unity between Flanders and the , and has therefore striven for the acceptance of Dutch as its official language. The term “Flemish” is often used to describe the spoken language in Flanders (itself strongly differentiated by dialects), but is not officially recognized. 5

compared to Wallonia, and the Flemish Movement has therefore always been interested in the economic development of the region and the creation of a Flemish entrepreneurial class. Flanders became economically predominant after the Second World War, when the decline of the coal mines in Wallonia (in the 1950s) and later of its steel industry (1970s and 1980s) coincided with an economic boom in Flanders. The Flemish economic success story is on the one hand based on the and its hinterland which have attracted international investors, on the other hand on grassroots development of small and medium enterprises. The construction of a Flemish identity has also undergone important evolutions. Until the First World War, the Belgian state was never questioned and Flemish and Belgian identities were considered compatible. Radicalized by the First World War, part of the Flemish Movement adopted after 1918 a strongly nationalist profile, and rejected the Belgian state. The Flemish nationalist party (originally the - Front Party, later the – Flemish National Union), originally ideologically pluralist, was in the 1930s increasingly dominated by extreme right tendencies, and would be compromised by collaboration with during Occupation. The post-war Flemish Nationalist party, the Volksunie (People’s Union), therefore highlighted its democratic profile, although extremist fringes were active within the party. Reaching autonomy has largely coincided with a reformulation of identity according to new terms, those of socio-economic modernity. The dominant discourse in Flanders, including the one produced by the , now emphasizes the region’s modernity and normality, its virtuous insertion in the global economy, and proposes the region as a model of development. The importance of traditional grievances and of the Flemish nationalist mythology has gradually declined, or has taken the shape of the specific extreme right ideology of the Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest, formerly Vlaams Blok , Flemish Block), inspired by the pre-War Vlaams Nationaal Verbond (several of its founders were linked to collaboration with Germany during the Second World War). The Vlaams Belang for sure symbolizes the dark side of Flemish and problematizes the apparent “normalization” of Flemish identity. In a context of declining support for democratic Flemish nationalism, from the 1980s on, the party experienced a process of seemingly unstoppable electoral growth, culminating in its 19,2% of the Flemish vote in the 2007 national elections (, Flemish college). Its programme combined the demand for Flemish independence with a more or less explicit racism, and the redefinition of Flemish identity along explicitly ethnic lines, in terms that excluded non-Western immigrants. Recent national elections (2010) have witnessed the decline of the Vlaams Belang (12,3%, senate, Flemish college) but not of parties sympathetic towards Flemish independence. The 2009 regional elections witnessed the relative success of the Lijst De Decker (5,5% in Flanders), a party that professes a right-wing neo-liberal populism and is also sympathetic towards the independence of Flanders. More important even was the result of the resurrected democratic Flemish nationalist party N-VA (Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie, ). After its important gains in 2009, it scored an even more spectacular victory in the 2010 national elections, becoming the most important party in Flanders, polling 31,7% (senate, Flemish college). Its political discourse follows the democratic tradition of Flemish nationalism (albeit with a conservative bent). Contrary to the Vlaams Belang it proclaims its faith in democracy and rejects racist 6

interpretations of Flemish identity. In line with mainstream views of Flemish identity, its discourse emphasizes the region’s economic modernity. Ambivalent on the issue of the independence of Flanders, its justifications for the increase of regional autonomy or independence highlight institutional efficiency rather than ethnic arguments. While mainstream Flemish parties tend to avoid overtly negative stereotypes of other regions, the formulation of a Flemish regional identity as an instrument for development is nevertheless related to the negative image that is predominantly attributed to the francophone and Wallonian Other. The self-identity of Flemings is indeed focused on a number of characteristics which are presumed to differentiate them from Wallonians, first of which is their work ethic. As Kris Deschouwer points out, Flemings like to understand themselves as “workers, not thinkers. This is not the Protestant spirit but the Catholic one, in which suffering hard and being able to suffer is crucial” (Deschouwer, in Keating et al., 2003:84). Flemish also perceive themselves as dynamic and pragmatic (vs. ideologic) (ibid). This self-image reflects the dominant political tradition of the region, Christian democracy (vs. a socialist and hence “ideological” Wallonia). Flanders is at the same time also represented as an example of good governance, to be contrasted to the weakness of governance, clientelism and corruption in Wallonia. Differences in political culture and ideology between the two parts of the country do play a role in their respective articulation of identity. Although the history of the Flemish movement is complex, its dominant tendencies have leaned ideologically rather towards the centre- right than the left, and most of its activists and politicians clearly identified themselves with Catholicism (in a country where for a long time Catholicism – anticlericalism was a major cleavage, which corresponded with the regional cleavage since the former stance was dominant in Flanders, the latter in Wallonia and Brussels). The dynamics of the Belgian party system, where parties are divided along community lines, has in the meantime normalized the affirmation of a Flemish identity, and proposals for institutional reforms and more autonomy are supported by almost all parties in Flanders. Articulations of regional identity paradoxically occur in a context where the traditional drive for establishing identity has weakened (Vos, 2002:200-201). Rather schizophrenically, a more relaxed attitude towards regional identity in Flanders coincides with affirmations of the region’s cultural superiority in comparison to Wallonia. At the same time, Wallonia itself is involved in a process of identity- affirmation (belated compared to Flanders, because of its weaker identitarian tradition). In their emphasis on normality and regional potential for insertion in the global economy, new Wallonian identity affirmations in fact resemble the Flemish example. To counter Flemish discourses on economic superiority, they describe a pluralist and tolerant Wallonia, to be contrasted with an allegedly narrow-minded nationalist and xenophobic Flanders. The discursive practices in the two communities are for the moment largely self- centred, with little dialogue between the communities but also with little tradition of theoretical reflection on the causes of regional difference and inequality in Belgium. This self-centredness reflects the dynamics of the political system, whereby the political parties organized among community lines only have to cater for their own community constituency. Media and intellectual life follow the same dynamic: since education, the university system and the media are also organized at the community level, there has been little space to reflect on togetherness and on Belgian identity, and in the respective media representations of the other community stereotypes abound. In this context, 7

mainstream public discourse in Flanders, even when anti-secessionist, is definitely characterized by a demand for more autonomy and hence a reinforcement of the . At the same time, proposals regarding language issues - homogenizing Flanders itself and limiting or abolishing the rights of the French-speakers in Flanders - are frequently raised. Demands for more autonomy clearly also follow an economic logic besides an institutional one, since generally they imply a reduction of redistributive mechanisms and of the interregional transfers of the national welfare system. The political success of Vlaams Belang raises the delicate question of the relation between the affirmation of identity and xenophobia, a question that is rarely addressed in Flanders. Both discourses presumably reflect a different constituency. The affirmation of Flemish identity is in particularly favoured by its emerging class of entrepreneurs, less linked to the Belgian establishment than their predecessors. It also finds ample echoes in the Flemish media and can count on a solid (but certainly not unanimous) support within the Flemish intelligentsia. The early electoral constituency of the Vlaams Belang, on the contrary, was strongly working class (often former socialist voters), attracted by its xenophobia rather than by its Flemish nationalism (Billiet and De Witte, 1995). The vote for the Vlaams Belang/Vlaams Blok also reflects a distrust of political institutions, rather widespread in Belgium as a whole, but that has found more electoral expression in Flanders than in Wallonia. In a context where both the institutional and non-institutional context enhances community identification and produces centrifugal tendencies, counter-tendencies are nevertheless equally present albeit less visible. The separation of media and public spheres may lead to the underestimation of sentiments of attachment to Belgium. Albeit Belgicist mobilizations as a rule tend to be much stronger among Francophones, collective nation-wide mobilizations on other issues do occur (e.g. the White March of 1996 9) and hence suggest the continued existence of a Belgian public space. As a result of the prominent regional and community focus in the public space and the media, the reasons for attachment to Belgium and the social and ideological roots for such attachment are underexposed. Concerning the intellectual debate, Belgicism is undoubtedly in the first place present on the Francophone side, although recently some intellectual in Flanders have also expressed their interest in a new understanding of the meaning of Belgium (not necessarily in the shape of traditional Belgicism) and in a better mutual understanding between its communities. Centrifugal regionalism in Flanders thus incorporates many partly overlapping, partly contradictory tendencies. It is the heir of a tradition of political mobilization for national emancipation. Ideologically, its questioning of the principles of solidarity and redistributive justice certainly has affinities with neo-liberalism. In its radical right expressions, it clearly incorporates the idea of welfare chauvinism, i.e. the idea that social security and welfare allowances should be allocated according to ethnic criteria. 10

9 The dismissal of the examining magistrate responsible for the investigation of the crimes committed by the paedophile murderer Marc Dutroux led in the fall of 1996 to a nation-wide protest movement culminating in a demonstration in Brussels on October 20 th – the White March - with the participation of several hundred thousand persons. 10 For the concept of welfare chauvinism, see Kitschelt and McGann, 1996. Although welfare chauvinism is by no means the monopoly of the far right, contemporary radical right parties are often characterized by their strong emphasis on this issue. 8

Because of the hegemonic position the Flemish identity discourse has acquired, the exclusionary logic that this articulation of identity may imply tends to be overlooked, reflecting a more general tendency to ignore the problematic features of the Flemish development model.

3. NORTHERN ITALY VS. ITALY

The case of northern Italy has a different historical background, since it is not marked by a tradition of ethnic mobilization, although the economic North-South differentiation has been important throughout the country’s post-Unification (1861) history. Italy’s internally differentiated identity undoubtedly has strong historical roots. The process of Italy’s unification once realized, its elites became confronted both with the cultural and linguistic diversity within the country (only a small minority of the population spoke standard Italian) and the economic and social cleavage between the North and the South, and in particular the territories of the former Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Neglecting the impact of the process of forceful incorporation of these territories, part of public opinion tended to interpret this divide in cultural, ethnic or even racial terms. Although racially inspired interpretative frameworks have since then been marginalized, public discourse in Italy has been characterized by an uneasy equilibrium between affirmations of the nation’s unity (including in cultural terms) and assumptions on the presence of a strong internal economic and socio-cultural divide. This divide has frequently been formulated around dichotomies such as modern/backward, Europe/Africa, entrepreneurial/non- entrepreneurial. From the 1990s on, with the emergence of the Lega Nord purporting to defend the interests of the North, the significance of this divide has been politicized rendering it more similar to the Belgian case. Until the rise of the Lega Nord, notwithstanding the presence of prejudices against southerners, conceptualizations of this divide exercised little political impact although they played an important role in intellectual interpretations of the country’s problems (on prejudices see Sniderman et al., 2000; on intellectual interpretations see Huysseune, 2006). Interpretations arguing for northern superiority, however, have from their origins met with fierce critique from southern intellectuals.11 The serious problems of the South had in fact given birth soon after Unification to a school of thought on the Questione Meridionale , the “Southern Question”, a tradition that has played an important role in Italy’s intellectual and cultural history. The present cycle of renewed interest in the North-South divide has its origins in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. It largely corresponds with the rise of the Lega Nord that has given centrality in the public debate to the so-called “Northern Question” (and a relative neglect of the Southern Question). This shift reflects the questioning of mechanisms of redistribution between the richer North and the less affluent southern regions. Although ideologically sustained by neo-liberalism, the prominence given to the Northern Question certainly also reflected exasperation over practices of bad governance (corruption, connivance with organized crime) in the South, and of the political system in general. In the early 1990s it coincided, as a consequence of the tangentopoli scandal,

11 For an overview of the important debate on this issue at the turn of the 19 th and 20 th centuries, see Teti, 1993. 9

with a general crisis of the Italian political system, and debates on the Northern Question interacted with those on reforms (of Italian institutions and in particular the ), and gave visibility to demands for a federalist reform. Even when the Lega declined in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the issue of institutional reforms reorganizing the relations between centre and periphery has remained an intrinsic element of the never- ending Italian debate on such reforms. The Lega’s articulation of the North-South opposition also expressed a more general juxtaposition of insiders and outsiders that from the outset was also oriented against immigrants. The racist dimension of the party’s ideology, present from its origins, has become even more prominent in recent years (including a reinforced anti-Islam stance reflecting the post 9/11 global context). This racism certainly intends to give a political expression to popular prejudices against immigrants. Its relation with mainstream discourses is more complex, since these discourses frequently combine a principled anti-racism with interpretative frameworks that often reflect prejudices and stereotypes (Dal Lago, 2004). Particular to the Italian context is also the role played by the Catholic , and the affirmations of the Christian and more specifically Catholic identity of the country (incidentally strongly sponsored by the Lega in recent years) that can easily create a discriminatory dynamic towards non-Catholics (although the Church itself in recent years has been among the more outspoken opponents of discrimination of immigrants). The emergence of the Northern Question in the early 1990s has certainly promoted a reading of the North-South divide as a cultural and civilization one, and it is by offering such a reading that the Lega Nord managed to enter into dialogue with the political mainstream. In fact, while mainstream opinion has met with scepticism the Lega’s articulation of regional or a presumed “Padanian” ethnic identity, the party’s focus on the North-South divide has received a much more sympathetic response (although not up to the level of really endangering the country’s unity). By reading the North as the productive people (highlighting the entrepreneurial culture in the region) and emphasizing the economic and socio-cultural modernity of the region (contrary to the South) and its insertion in the ideal realm of modernity, Europe, the Lega frames its discourse in fact within the traditional modern-backward dichotomy. The emergence of the Lega has thus led to a re-evaluation of Italy’s identity, but the results of this re-evaluation appear to be very contradictory. Italian media are generally very careful in the way they represent the various regions of the country. At the level of the intellectual debate in Italy, the unity of the nation continues to be affirmed (and such affirmations have even become stronger, as a reaction against the Lega’s secessionism), but there is at the same time a new focus on regional diversity and on the Northern Question (Huysseune, 2006). Although mainstream opinion rejects the Lega’s secessionism, in northern Italy there is rarely if ever, as Gianfranco Viesti (2003:70) has pointed out, a definite and explicit opposition against the arguments that the Lega proposes. A deleterious consequence of this frozen debate is moreover the disinterest in the problems of the South (idem:ix). Although Italy, contrary to Belgium, clearly has a national communicative space and intellectual debates on Italian identity and institutional reform are clearly national, reflections on specific regions and in particular the South seem to reach a more restrained regional audience. The lively debate that the South itself has experienced in recent years thus has only exercised a limited impact on outsiders’

10

interpretations of the region. 12 Moreover, the disinterest in the region has certainly not helped to solve its problems, which may easily result in a revival of anti-southern attitudes when these problems come to the fore again. It is remarkable that throughout this debate no real consensus has ever been reached on how to define these entities “North” and “South”; the Lega itself has as a matter of fact proposed a variety of territorial delimitations of the northern entity. The Italian debate therefore reflects a paradoxical situation where the presumed characteristics of groups are relatively well defined while the exact delimitations of these groups are unclear. However fluid categories in Italy may be, their use as interpretative tools is nevertheless relevant since prejudices against southern Italians appear to be important in the whole of northern and (Sniderman et al., 2000). The widespread presence of anti-southern prejudices in northern Italy stands in contrast with the political articulation of a northern identity. Contrasting with the Flemish case where regional identity has been normalized, in northern Italy the Lega is the only political expression of this territorial identification. The party obviously only represents a minority within the North. Electoral support for the Lega support has traditionally been strongly embedded in specific regions, , , Venezia Giulia and (and in a somewhat lesser measure in the autonomous province of ). All studies on the electorate of the Lega concur in observing that the Lega has been able to implant itself in (sub)regions where formerly the Christian democrat party took a dominant position, but has encountered much more difficulty to make headway in the northern (sub)regions with a strong leftist tradition (see e.g. Diamanti, 1995; Biorcio, 1997). The Lega is also a party of the industrialized periphery of the North rather than the centre: except for a short period in the early 1990s it has generally been much less successful in larger cities of the North, even in its territorial heartland. The political expression of prejudice and/or rejection of national solidarity therefore remains also within northern Italy a territorially well-delimited phenomenon. In its discourse, the Lega combines the economic rationale behind secession with a cultural understanding of the North-South divide, but also with a more general inside vs. outsiders logic. Characteristic of the Lega is a combination of rhetoric affirmations of liberalism with welfare chauvinism and a protectionist discourse, defending the unilateral right to protectionism for northern Italy; a protectionism that also implies the territory’s defense against outsiders. The institutional reforms the Lega proposes have the same goal, protecting the population of against outside interference, and from this perspective it can present secessionism as a logical choice. The Lega has admittedly not consistently defended secessionism, but all the reforms proposed by the Lega are nevertheless characterized by their anti-redistributionism and their strong rhetoric emphasis on self-government for the North. The configuration of the relation between the Lega and the Northern Question is hence a complex one. Many features of the Lega’s discourse are indeed radicalized reformulations of normal features of northern self-perception, including in its intellectual elaborations, and in the early years of the Lega the party was frequently considered to

12 Because of the common language, separation between the two parts is not necessarily very strict, and some intellectuals with a northern background do participate to the debate on the South. The overall impression nevertheless remains one of a regional compartmentalization of the debate. 11

express (albeit in a radical way) northern opinion. Especially in recent years, however, commentators have attempted to establish a clear distinction between the Lega and the dynamic elements of northern society, in particular its innovative entrepreneurial class. They have pointed out that this class is modern and liberal, and has in fact favoured the presence of immigrants in the North as a necessary element for the region’s development (because of the scarcity of labour in this region). The racist discourse of the Lega is presumed to reflect the interests of the Lega’s working-class constituency (rather its privileged layers, well-paid and masculine). Whether such a clear ideological distinction between the Lega and northern entrepreneurs really exists remains open for discussion. A crucial consequence of the secessionist claim of the Lega and more in general the emergence of the Northern Question has been the introduction of the theme of federalism in the Italian public debate, although the exact meaning it should be given remains remarkably vague. Controversies around the issue have concerned the questioning of redistributive mechanisms between regions (the debate on fiscal federalism) and the institutional organization of the state. These debates coincide with polemics on institutional reforms: since the tangentopoli crisis of the early 1990s a never- ending debate on institutional reforms (referred to as the transition from the First to the Second Republic) is taking place. These debates reflect in fact the little trust Italian citizens put in their institutions, and give expression to the belief that such reforms may offer a solution for the limited legitimacy of these institutions. Both the public debate on northern Italy and recent scholarly literature on the North, following the Northern Question-paradigm, have tended to focus on those societal tendencies that expressed this paradigm. The paradigm itself can, however, be critiqued for juxtaposing the virtuous northern society to the Italian state. It thus ignores how both have in practice constantly interacted and also pays limited attention to the deleterious consequences of the northern economic model. They equally tend to ignore groups and social processes outside this economic logic – voluntary organizations, leftist parties, social movements, political mobilizations – remain underresearched (Huysseune, 2006:140-143). Recent contributions clearly propose a more critical perspective on northern Italy and its economic model (Berta, 2008; Perulli and Pichierri, 2010), but only partially correct the essentially economic and apologetic perspective from previous writings. The link between the political dynamics of centrifugal regionalism and the social disorder that this economic model has engendered (cf. Magatti, 1998) therefore remains underresearched.

4. ELEMENTS FOR A COMPARISON AND CONFRONTATION

The comparison and confrontation between the two cases this volume proposes takes at its starting point the obvious issue of identity. The first two contributions of Marnix Beyen and Gaspare Nevola propose a contextualization of the present articulation of regional identities in the political history of respectively Belgium and Italy, and contrast and confront it with the alternative articulation of a national, state-bound Belgian and Italian identity. Institutions of course play a crucial role in the articulation of centrifugal regionalism. Patrick Stouthuysen and Theo Jans focus their contribution on the centrifugal dynamics of the Belgian federal system, while Giuseppe Gangemi is both concerned with analyzing the meaning of federalism in the Italian context and the 12

problematic relation between the Lega’s nation-building claim and present and historical territoiral delimitations within Italy. The contributions of Stijn Oosterlynck and Anna Cento Bull reflect the eminent place of the economic component in contemporary articulations of regional identity, albeit they view these identities from a different perspective. Oosterlynck analyses how the newly created Flemish government created in the early 1980s the region’s economic identity. Cento Bull focuses on the contrary on the tensions that the northern Italian economic identity is presently undergoing, especially in its industrial districts that both provide the region with a socio-economic identity and are a crucial political constituency of the Lega Nord. The economic component of regional identities is clearly related to the intellectual articulation of these identities, the topic Michel Huysseune confronts (exceptionally from a comparative perspective including both cases). His contribution locates debates on regional economic excellence in an evaluation of scholarly interpretations of regional difference, and also contextualizes these interpretations both within international debates on the explanation of differentiated development and in the case-specific national traditions of self-understanding. In the two regions, the articulation of centrifugal regionalism undoubtedly has an ethnocentric component. The following chapters in this volume studies study racism and xenophobia, an issue tackled by Patrick Loobuyck and Danny Jacobs for Flanders and Belgium, and by Devi Sacchetto for Italy. Loobuyck and Jacobs focus on the institutional level, and propose an analysis of the policies of the Flemish region towards allochtones, and how these policies are related to the region’s articulation of identity. Sacchetto’s contribution is more focused on the role of racism in the economic model of northern Italy, but it also draws attention to the relation between the grass-root level presence of ethnocentrism and official policies towards non-European immigrants. If we accept the theoretical perspective that identities are constructed, the following chapters propose an empirical verification of the claims of the political and cultural actors producing identity claims. On the basis of a number of surveys Marc Hooghe verifies the empirical salience of claims of cultural difference between Flemings and Francophones, and additionally pays attention to patterns of territorial identification in the different Belgian regions. Biorcio and Vitale are equally interested in investigating cultural differences between northern and , but focus more on verifying whether empirical data corroborate the Lega’s claim to represent northern Italy and the values northern Italians adhere to. The presence of strong radical right parties that equally defend independence raises the question of their social embedding. The contributions of Lien Warmenbol and Martina Avanza focus on explaining the success of the party at the grass-roots level, and the relationship between party activists and society. Warmenbol’s contribution analyses how the Vlaams Belang has been able to construct strong electoral support in some neighbourhoods of Antwerp, but also why it was less successful in other ones with a similar socio-economic profile. Avanza also outlines the context in which the Lega constructs grass-roots support. She focuses in particular on those militants involved in the party’s nation-building project, the “Padanists”, and the social and cultural dynamics that sustain their activism. The importance of centrifugal tendencies in Flanders and to the Northern Question in Italy may lead to the underestimation of countervailing tendencies. Although representations of northern Italy and Flanders tend to outline a homogenous success 13

model, these regions can equally be interpreted as divided societies. With this issue in mind, the contributions of Jeroen Van Laer and Gianni Piazza discuss political mobilizations in two very different contexts. Jeroen van Laer analyses demonstrations in Belgium, and proposes to investigate whether they express national or regional patterns of mobilization. Piazza investigates two protest movements on local issues in northern Italy, the No Tav movement in Val di Susa and the No Dal Molin movement in Vicenza, and outlines why these mobilizations propose an interpretation of local identity that is by all means very different from that articulated by the Lega Nord. Reflecting the nature of this volume as a research-in-progress, Michel Huysseune’s conclusion firstly proposes a summary of the findings of the various contributions. It also intends, however, to already draw some conclusions from this comparison, and to offer a set of elements for an interpretation of centrifugal regionalism. As such, it proposes a starting-point for a further more in-depth analysis of the phenomenon of centrifugal regionalism at a broader, European level.

REFERENCES

Anonymous (1995), “I rischi del federalismo debole. Intervista con Gianfranco Miglio”, Federalismo & Società , 2 (1):13-26. Berta, G. (ed.) (2008), Questione settentrionale, Economia e società in trasformazione , Milano, Feltrinelli. Billiet, J. and H. De Witte (1995), “Attitudinal Dispositions to Vote for a ‘New’ Extreme Right-Wing Party: The Case of ‘Vlaams Blok’”, European Journal of Political Research , 27:181-202. Biorcio, R. (1997), La Padania promessa. La storia, le idee e la logica d’azione della Lega Nord , Milano, Il Saggiatore. Cantillon, B. and V. De Maesschalck (2007), Sociale zekerheid, transferten en federalisme in België , Antwerpen, Centrum voor Sociaal Beleid Herman Deleeck. Cento Bull, A. (1996), “Ethnicity, Racism and the Northern League”, in C. Levy (ed.), Italian Regionalism. History, Identity and Politics, Oxford/Washington DC, Berg:171-187. Cento Bull, A. (2000), Social Identities and Political Cultures in Italy. Catholic, Communist and ‘Leghist’ Communities between Civicness and Localism , New York/Oxford, Berghahn Books. Dal Lago, A. (2004), Non-persone. L’esclusione dei migranti in una società globale , Milano, Feltrinelli (first edition 1999). Deschouwer, K., L. Dewinter and D. Della Porta (eds) (1996), Partitocracies Between Crises and Reform: The Cases of Italy and Belgium, Res Publica 38 (2). De Winter, L., D. della Porta and K. Deschouwer (1996), “Comparing Similar Countries: Belgium and Italy”, Res Publica , 38 (2) (Partitocracies Between Crises and Reform: The Cases of Italy and Belgium):215-235. Diamanti, I. (1995), La Lega. Geografia, storia e sociologia di un soggetto politico , Roma, Donzelli (first edition 1993). Franzini, M. and S. Lupo (2003), “Europa: l’identità difficile”, Meridiana , 46:7-16. Gómez-Reino Cachafeiro, M. (2001), “Identity Politics and Party Elites Strategic Dilemmas: Comparing Varieties of Extremism: the Vlaams Blok and Lega Nord”, 14

ECPR Workshop: Democracy and The New Extremist Challenge in Europe (Directors R. Eatwell and C. Mudde), 6-11 April 2001, Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Grenoble, France. Gómez-Reino Cachafeiro, M. (2006), “Conclusion: The Future Study of Autonomist and Regionalist Parties”, in L. De Winter, M. Gómez-Reino and P. Lynch (eds), Autonomist Parties in Europe: Identity Politics and the Revival of the Territorial Cleavage , Barcelona, Institut de Ciències Politiques i Socials, Vol. II:247-269. Hooghe, L. and G. Marks (2001), Multi-level Governance and European Integration , Lanham (Md), Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Huysseune, M. (2006), Modernity and Secession. The Social Sciences and the Political Discourse of the Lega Nord in Italy , Oxford, Berghahn. Keating, M., J. Laughlin and K. Deschouwer (2003), Culture, Institutions and Economic Development. A Study of Eight European Regions , Cheltenham (UK)/Northampton (MA/USA), Edward Elgar. Kitschelt, H. and A. J. McGann (1996), The Radical Right in Western Europe. A Comparative Analysis , Ann Arbor, The University of Michigan Press. Landes, D. S. (1998), The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some are So Rich and Some So Poor , , Little, Brown & Co. Magatti, M. (1998), Tra disordine e scisma. Le basi sociali della protesta del Nord , Roma, Carocci. Mudde, C. (2007), Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Perulli, P. and A. Pichierri (eds) (2010), La crisi italiana nel mondo globale. Economia e società del Nord , Torino, Einaudi. Piore, M.J. and C. F. Sabel (1984), The Second Industrial Divide: Possibilities for Prosperity , New York, Basic Books. Romani, R. (2002), National Character and Public Spirit in Britain and France, 1750- 1914 , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Sniderman, P. M., P. Peri, R. J. P. Jr. de Figueiredo and T. Piazza (2000), The Outsider. Prejudice and Politics in Italy , Princeton (NJ), Princeton University Press. Teti, V. (ed.) (1993), La razza maledetta. Origini del pregiudizio antimeridionale , Roma, Manifestolibri. Viesti, G. (2003), Abolire il Mezzogiorno , Roma/Bari, Laterza. Vos, L. (2002), “Reconstructions of the Past in Flanders and Belgium”, in B. Coppieters and M. Huysseune (eds), Secession, History and the Social Sciences , Brussels, VUB Brussels University Press:179-206. Weber, M. (1976), The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism , London, Allen & Unwin (first published 1904-5).

15

TRAGICALLY MODERN CENTRIFUGAL SUB-NATIONALISMS IN BELGIUM, 1830-2009

Marnix Beyen

University of Antwerp, Department of History

1. INTRODUCTION

”Belgium is two countries”. The conclusion drawn by the Flemish journalist Peter Vandermeersch (2009) from the regional elections of June 2009 was echoed in many similar comments in the Flemish newspapers. The sheer numerical results of the elections did seem to buttress such a conclusion. In the Walloon regional 43 out of 73 seats were allotted to the two left-wing parties, the Socialists and the Greens. The corresponding parties obtained only 26 out of 124 seats in the Flemish regional parliament. The difference becomes even more striking when one looks at the right-hand side of the political spectre. In Wallonia, an outspoken Right-wing party does not even enter into parliament. The Christian Democrat party is dominated by left-wing tendencies, and even the Liberal Mouvement Réformateur can only be called Centre Right. A very similar distribution of the seats can be found in the Francophone Parliament, which includes also the Francophone representatives of Brussels. By contrast, 45 seats in the are occupied by parties positioning themselves firmly to the right of the Liberal and Christian Democrat Parties. However generalizing it may be, the difference between a right-wing Flanders and a left-wing Francophone Belgium is indeed very striking. In the current-day comments, the novelty of this situation is often stressed or at least suggested. However, when comparing the election results of the 2009 regional elections with those of the 1894 national elections, one can only be struck by the continuity. Admittedly, the comparison is somehow false, since the suffrage system was entirely different then (there was a system of Plural General Male Suffrage, and of a The- Winner-Takes-It-All-principle in relatively small constituencies) and the regional elections did not yet exist. Nonetheless, the general picture was very clear-cut: all 66 seats within the four Flemish provinces were attributed to Catholics, whereas in the four Walloon provinces, the same party obtained only 13 out of 58 seats. The remaining 45 seats in Wallonia went to either Socialists (28), or to Liberals (17). The bilingual province of Brabant, ultimately, was exclusively represented by Catholics, except for the 3 Liberal MPs elected in Nivelles (see De Smaele, 2009:74; Gerard e.a., 2003:453).

17

The gap between a right-wing Flanders and left-wing Wallonia is, therefore, a persistent one, even if the meaning of the words “right-wing” and “left-wing” did considerably change in the meantime. New, however, is the extent to which these differences are pronounced and given shape in (sub)nationalist terms by the political parties, who since the 1970s operate on a regional instead of a national level. Two of the three right-wing parties in Flanders (Vlaams Belang and Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie) explicitly call themselves “Flemish Nationalist”, and the third one (Lijst Dedecker) does equally use a very autonomist discourse. Moreover, the autonomist tendencies are very strong also within both the Christian Democratic and the Liberal parties. The left-wing parties are more reticent when it comes to using sub-nationalist rhetoric, but only the Greens do express active loyalty to the Belgian state. At the Francophone side of the country, this disengagement with the Belgian state is more rare and, in any case, less, explicit. But the regional identification of these parties – especially of the left-wing parties – is very real nonetheless. In the course of the twentieth century, thus it can be concluded from these examples, a process has taken place in which the divergence between the political orientations of both parts of Belgium has been transformed into a nearly insurmountable antagonism between two sub-nationalisms, threatening Belgium in its very existence. In this respect, the Belgian case is very different from that of most other European nation- states of the nineteenth century, in which a fragmented electoral geography did not lead to the dismantling of the nation. The question why these regional differences did have such a centrifugal effect, was and still is heavily debated one among historians. After having presented the main lines of interpretation in this debate, I will try to offer an answer to this question which takes into account the institutional as well as the cultural and the social history of the country.

2. TWO OPPOSING VIEWS

Broadly speaking, two different storylines are recurred upon in order to explain Belgium’s divided character – each one of them appearing in multiple varieties. The first one of those can be called essentialist, the second one constructivist, even if those terms are rarely used by the authors themselves. The essentialist view is predominant among the adherents of the sub-nationalist movements. In Flanders, its influence is so pervasive that it seems to determine popular thinking about national history. Constructivist views are held in the first place by academic historians, but popular versions of it are very central to historical consciousness in Francophone Belgium, and to the (rather marginal) Belgian patriotic circles. In the essentialist view, Flanders and Wallonia appear as separate ethno-cultural entities (whether or not as parts of the Greater Dutch or the Greater French nation), which have been accidentally thrown together in an artificial Belgian state. The disintegration of that state, therefore, was unavoidable from the start, in spite of all the fierce, but superficial patriotism of the Belgian elites. That process was, according to these authors, driven from below, since the “ethnic” loyalty of the people to Flanders or Wallonia was much stronger than the civic loyalty to Belgium. The Belgian state and its adherents figure in this narrative as an oppressor of the legitimate claims of the Flemish – and to a lesser degree the Walloon – claims at self-determination (e.g. Elias, 1970-1971; 18

Lamberty e.a., 1972-1979; Genicot, 1973; Platel, 2004). Constructivists, on the contrary, see the process of nation-building in Belgium as elite-driven. They discern, however, an important difference between the slow and profound process of state-building which culminated (at the latest during the last decades of the 18 th century) in the Belgian nation, and the originally narrow-based nationalist commitment which succeeded during the 20 th century in creating the Flemish and Walloon nations. The Flemish and the Walloon movements emerge within this storyline as groups of petty bourgeois intellectuals who felt excluded from the levers of power within the Belgian state, and/or who were inspired by Romantic ideals about language as the main marker of national identity. Even when these elite-groups had given birth to nationalist mass-movements, they remained – within the constructivist perspective – the prime movers of Flemish and Walloon nation-building (e.g. Reynebeau, 1995 and 2003; Stengers, 2000-2002; Wils, 2005). A striking example of the discussion between “essentialists” and “constructivists” was offered in the 1970s by the debate on the origins of an anti-Belgian current within the Flemish movement. In a very influential book, the historian Lode Wils situated these origins in the First World War, when the German occupier had successfully lured a small group of mainly young Flemish Nationalists – the “Activists” - into active collaboration by offering the perspective of independence (Wils, 1974). As such, Wils presents the anti-Belgian elements in the Flemish Movement as a foreign import product, whose success was due to the fact that it served the ambitions for power of a very small group of young intellectuals. By doing so, he reacted categorically against the most influential “essentialist” historian of the movement, H.J. Elias. For Elias, Activism had been the logical outcome of the existing anti-Belgian tendency within Flanders. According to Elias, the “natural” opposition between Flanders and Belgium unavoidably had to lead to the breakdown of the latter. The same antagonism between an essentialist bottom-up and a constructivist top- down perspective appears in the attempts to explain the rapidity of the process of federalization (i.e. the process in which the political autonomy of the sub-national entities was institutionally anchored) since the 1970s. The dynamics behind this process, so the constructivist line of reasoning runs, was created by the newly born political classes in Flanders and Wallonia, who were trying to enhance their powerbase by extending the regional competences. In a more essentialist reading, this process simply confirmed the existing differences between the Flemish and Francophone parts of the country. Recently, some important books have seen the daylight which potentially shake the constructivist consensus among academic historians in a fairly fundamental way. These books were published by academic historians who are far removed from any form of Flemish Nationalist militancy, but show each separately the importance of Flemish identity feelings within broad layers of the population during the last decades of the nineteenth century. Henk de Smaele (2009) convincingly showed how the thirty years’ absolute majority of the between 1884 and 1914 was based on its ability to associate itself with an emergent Flemish self-image, built upon traditional and rural values. Maarten Van Ginderachter (2005), in turn, asserted on the basis of a huge mass of evidence that the Socialist workers of , for all of their resistance against the organized Flemish Movement and their loyalty to the , identified with “Flanders” much more than with Belgium. Finally, Herman Van Goethem (2008) concluded that the point of no return for the disintegration of Belgium has to be situated in 1893, when the Male and Plural General Suffrage was introduced. As such, he suggests 19 that the splitting up of Belgium was caused by a process of democratization rather than by the disruptive nationalism of Flemish elites. Even if these authors do not draw this conclusion for themselves, their books could easily be instrumentalized for a return to the essentialist thesis. They do seem to indicate that the ethnic identification with Flanders largely prevailed over the rather superficial and largely elitist loyalty to the Belgian state. Potentially, this strengthens the claim that Belgium was an accident of history, and an obstacle to the development of the two ethnicities in its bosom. This conclusion, however, would be headlong, since it is not warranted by any evidence of Flemish or Walloon ethnic identification before 1830. In my opinion, the disintegration of Belgium was indeed to a certain degree inbuilt in the architecture of the Belgian state, but not because of its ethnic duality or its oppressive nature. I rather believe that the weakness of the Belgian state sprang directly from the will of its founding fathers to create an outstandingly modern state. The modernity they aimed at contained both centralism and liberalism, two largely contradictory ambitions. The paradoxical character of this ambition became all the more lethal because of the specific demographical composition of the Belgian population and of the cultural context in which the Belgian state came about. All this elements together provide for a kind of Greek tragedy, in which the protagonist becomes the victim of his own good intentions and actions. It is this “tragic” version of Belgian history that I want to present in this paper.

3. BELGIUM AS A TRAGIC HERO

If the antiquity of the Belgian nation can be subject to doubt, the ancient character of the Belgian state cannot. In many ways, the Belgian state of 1830 can be seen as the legitimate heir to the Burgundian empire which was created in the 15 th century. The central institutions which were then created for representative politics (the General Estates) as well as for justice and government politics (the Great Council), would survive until the end of the Ancient Régime. Much more than the Netherlands, therefore, nineteenth-century Belgium could rely on a tradition of state centralism (Wils, 2005:77). Loyalty to this central state and its rulers formed the basis of the proto-national feelings which developed since halfway the 18 th century at the latest (Verschaffel, 1996; Koll, 2003; Dubois, 2005). Nonetheless, the final thrust towards the construction of a modern Belgian was formed by half a century of protest against what was seen as an exaggerated form of state centralism. The highly centralizing reigns of consecutively the Austrian emperor Joseph II, the French revolutionaries and the Dutch Enlightened Despot William I were considered as a break with a “national” tradition, in which the monarchs had always respected the liberties of the Belgian cities and provinces. As a consequence of this, not only the nation’s past was re-interpreted as one long struggle against “foreign dominations” (Stengers, 1981), but in a more fundamental way the nation’s elites were filled with a thorough suspicion against the state as such. Ever since the protest movement against Joseph II, this suspicion was fed both by conservative and by liberal sentiments. During the reign of William the first, these two currents converged into the so called “Monster Alliance”, which paved the way for the Belgian Revolution (Witte, 2005).

20

Once this revolution had rather unexpectedly resulted in an independent Belgium, its leaders evidently chose to shape it into a modern nation-state. They could easily re- connect with the Belgian state traditions, which had continued to exist during William’s reign, but implemented it with the modern ideal of national sovereignty. Due to the national feelings which had developed during the preceding fifty years of (latent or open) revolt, there remained little doubt among the élites about the fact that such a homogeneous Belgian nation did exist. On the other hand, however, the anti-state feelings aroused during that same period of revolt, did not disappear with Belgian independence. On the contrary even, they found their way into the Belgian constitution, which was extremely Liberal in the existing historical context. The central tenet guiding its architects was that “Liberty in all and for all” (liberté en tout et pour tous) should be guaranteed. It implied that it was considered necessary “to make disappear for once and for always the obstacles through which the power has hitherto chained [free] thought, in its expression, in its march , in its developments.” (Preamble of the on Liberty of Association by the Temporary Regime, 16 October 1830. Quoted in Velaers, 1991:92). By choosing this central adage, the Belgian State bereft itself in a considerable way of the possibility to become a strong state. It did not only do so for the sake of individual freedom, though, but also for that of the Belgian towns and cities, whose autonomy formed a crucial element in the Belgian historical self-representation and in the actual development of the Belgian Revolution. The Law on the Communes of 1836 anchored the liberty and autonomy of these cities firmly into the Belgian constitutional system, thus fundamentally de-centring power in Belgium (Strikwerda, 1997:29). Through this weak self-positioning, the Belgian State favoured the emergence of all kinds of sub-state identities in its bosom. Nonetheless, the Belgian authorities never (until the 1970s at least) abandoned the ambition to form a centralized state – unlike for example, Switzerland, which opted for a confederal system from the start. In a paradoxical way, this seems to have further weakened the Belgian State. Given the strong sub-state identities and a strong anti-state tradition, the central seat of power became by definition a locus of contestation. Notwithstanding the claim of national sovereignty, indeed, a seat of power is always occupied by specific (groups of) persons, at the exclusion of others. Since the Belgian state had bereft itself to a high degree from the use of repressive means, it offered an exceptional space for a struggle for power between social groups at a sub-state level. If Belgium has been labelled a “consociational democracy”, it is so in a very different manner as, for example, the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, a country with a much less liberal tradition than Belgium, the segregation between religious or ideological groups at the level of society did not preclude the search for consensus at a political level. In the Belgian context, these groups were nearly permanently contesting each other, with exceptionally strong political parties as spearheads, in order to monopolize state power. Since such a monopoly was an illusion, state power was divided among the different groups. The state kept on financing the system, but lost vital functions (education, health care, …) to the intermediate level of society, organized in so-called “pillars”. This combination between centralizing ambitions and a deliberately weak state power also formed the context in which regional identities could develop into powerful sub-nationalisms. This situation was further stimulated by the specific demographic, linguistic and cultural context of the country. Through a trick (or rather, a series of tricks) of history, the Belgian nation was linguistically divided into two nearly equal parts, 21 belonging to two different language groups. In the highly decentralized context of the Ancien régime, this was not seen as a problem, but it did necessarily become a source of conflict within a centralized nation state. Unity of language is indeed one of the central instruments of central state power. In the specific case of Belgium, this instrument itself was fundamentally contested from the very start. From the Burgundian times until the period of French domination, French had been the language of the central state in the Southern Netherlands. Especially since the latter half of the 18 th century, the attraction of French as political and cultural language had engendered a Frenchification of the élites in the Belgian towns – precisely those elites that occupied the seat of power within the independent Belgian state. The further Frenchification of Belgian culture and administration seemed unavoidable. Things, however, were not as simple as that – as they would never be in the Belgian context. Several obstacles made the generalization of French as language of culture and administration problematic. First of all, the historical continuity of the Francophone centralization had been abruptly disrupted in the period between 1815 and 1830, when William I had tried to promote Dutch as language of the state. This language policy was never successful, and was even one of the central causes of the revolt against his rule (Von Busekist, 1989:41-49). But it nonetheless confronted a group of intellectuals within the Flemish provinces with the prospect of Dutch being potentially an official language. They would form the first core of Flamingants, who did not reject the Belgian state, but tried to strengthen the Belgian nation by situating its specificity in the Germanic character of its northern half (e.g. Draye, 2009). In doing so, they invented Flanders in the modern sense of the word, i.e. as the Dutch speaking, northern half of Belgium. A conflict with the advocates of French as the language of culture in the whole of Belgium was unavoidable. This conflict became all the more strident because the central seat of Belgian state power was situated in Brussels, which had served as capital ever since the Burgundian unification of the 15 th century. Brussels was geographically situated in Flanders, at some twenty kilometers of the linguistic border, but its Frenchification had reached much deeper than in other Flemish towns. The anger about this “alienation” of the capital, and the fear that Brussels would serve as a powerful epicentre for the entire Frenchification of Flanders, contributed very much to the radicalization of these Flamingant circles. The second obstacle to the systematic Frenchification of Belgium was the deliberate weakness of the Belgian state, as described earlier in this paper. In their attempt to Frenchify Flanders, the Belgian élites were never backed by an official state policy. Obsessed as it was with liberty, the Belgian constitution proclaimed that the use of language was free. As a matter of fact, the use of French has never been enforced by law. Repressive language policy certainly was a reality, but it was carried out at an intermediate level (school boards, enterprises, ….) rather than at state level. Nearly all the linguistic laws which have been voted in the Belgian parliament (since the 1870s) were aimed at protecting the use of “Flemish” in Flanders. It is false, therefore, to present the Belgian state as an oppressor of the , as Flemish Nationalists tend to do. Rather, the “tragedy” of Belgian political history was playing at this level once more: Frenchification as a social process was strong enough to foster frustration among Flemish speakers – both among the ordinary people who experienced the linguistic difference as a social barrier (Boeva, 1994) and among the intellectuals speaking in their name - but not

22 strong enough really to create a unilingually French state, based on a homogeneous nation. The modern character of the Belgian state-construction state was not only situated in its extremely liberal character, but also in its comparative openness toward democracy. Admittedly, real power in Belgium during the first fifty years of its existence was probably situated in the hands of a small capitalist elite. Nonetheless, this power was challenged by a system of political representation which rapidly grew more democratic. As such, the sub-state identities which developed within the Belgian nation-state could relatively quickly be translated into political power. From this perspective, Herman Van Goethem’s thesis on the relationship between democratization and the disintegration of Belgium seems reasonable. Maybe more than any other European country, Belgium revealed what the Indian political scientist Sunil Khilnani (1993:190) has called “the self- devouring capacities of modern democratic politics”. By democratizing without thoroughly investing in the process of nation-building, the Belgian state undermined its own basis. Since the Belgian political and social élites could not recur to an official state policy, their only chance for a successful nation-building consisted of the creation and cultivation of a national culture. During the first two decades of Belgium’s independence, which coincided with the heydays of , the arts and literature in Belgium were indeed largely consecrated at legitimizing and praising the nation’s past, present and future (e.g. Tollebeek, 1998). Once more, however, this attempt was mortgaged by a tragic form of irony. One of the main features of Romanticism undoubtedly was the intimate link it suggested between language, ethnicity and nation. But precisely this paradigm was lethal to a nation-state as Belgium, which was not only bilingual, but consisted of two equal parts belonging to different language groups. The dividing line between Germanic and Romanic cultures was, within the context of Romanticism, a very fundamental one, implying not only linguistic, but also “characterological” and moral differences. If conciliation between them was an ideal of many romantic authors, their merger into one national culture was considered to be nearly impossible. Hence, the attempts – during the last decades of the nineteenth century – to proclaim such a thing as a “Belgian soul” were never very successful. Even its most ardent advocates recognized that this Belgian soul was somehow bi-ethnic in nature. More convincing was the metaphor of Belgium as a European crossroads of cultures – a metaphor which was used throughout the nineteenth century, but was above all brilliantly elaborated by the iconic Belgian historian Henri Pirenne during the first decades of the twentieth century. In terms of cultural policy, Belgian authorities translated this idea into the decision to support both French and – even more substantially – Flemish literature (Verschaffel, 2001:149-160). However attractive, though, this image of a cultural crossroads implied at the same time a recognition of the difficulty to provide Belgium positively with a national identity of its own. It was a conglomerate of cultures, whose history was very hard to tell in the form of a straightforward narrative. The strategy that was used by many architects of Belgian historical culture, consisted of the use of metonymy. Within this strategy, the rich history of the County of Flanders and, to a lesser degree, the Duchy of Brabant, served as a pars pro toto for the entire Belgian history. The key moments and the main heroes of the history of Belgium were either Flemish or brabançon. Specifically Walloon local memories, such as the Liege myth of the 600

23

Franchimontois, found their way into the Belgian national heritage only at a later stage and would never play an equally prominent role (Rottiers, 1995). This strategy would turn out, once more, to be a tragic one. The pantheon of Flemish heroes that was construed for the sake of the Belgian nation, could easily – and without fundamental metamorphoses - be taken over by those intellectuals who tried to prove the antiquity of the emerging Flemish nation. The Battle of the Golden Spurs and its heroes Jan Breydel and , the 14 th century Ghent popular tribune Jacques of Artevelde, the legendary hero Thyl Uylenspiegel, the carillon – they all moved from the Belgian to the Flemish heritage (Morelli, 1995; Beyen, 1998; Beyen, Rombouts and Vos, 2009). This symbolic arsenal facilitated the interpretation of contemporary social and economical phenomena into sub-national terms. The great Flemish past served as the background against which its current-day poverty was weighed, but also as a beacon for those who wanted to strengthen the Flemish “ethnic force” through demographic expansion and the construction of a Dutch speaking educational system. The Flemish recuperation of the “Belgian” past in turn fomented frustrations among the Francophone intellectuals, who since the last decades of the19th century developed the Walloon Movement as a reaction against what they saw as Flemish expansionism. If this movement found its origin among the Francophone élites in Brussels and Flanders, it soon spread to Wallonia itself (Destatte, 1997). Notoriously, the influential Wallingant writer and politician Jules Destrée wrote in 1911 an open letter to the King, in which he asserted that the Flamingants had undermined Belgium by “stealing” the entire Belgian heritage, both in material and in symbolic terms. For Destrée, who would later become the Belgian Minister of Arts, the only legitimate reaction was the development of a fully fledged Walloon nation within the context of a federal Belgian state. Not surprisingly, the Walloon self-image which was carefully construed ever since, was in many ways the opposite of its Flemish counterpart. Although it partly recurred to a 19 th century folkloric and dialectological tradition, it mainly focused on the contemporary reality of industrial labour in the central axe between Liege and . Whereas the iconic figures in the Flemish identification were either the medieval burgher or the contemporary peasant, in the Walloon self-image this role was played by the factory worker (Courtois and Pirotte, 1999). Probably more than genuine social, economic or religious differences, these diverging self-images paved the way for the distinction between a left-wing Wallonia and a right-wing Flanders. Not the recognition of this difference itself, but the reciprocal frustrations on which the relationship between the language groups was built, undermined the Belgian nation. In Flanders, these frustrations were built on the sense of linguistic and social marginalization within the Belgian state and national culture. When the economic fate of the two regions turned upside down in the course of the 20 th century, this sense of marginalization would gradually be replaced by an opposite frustration: that of Flemish economic surpluses being used in order to pay for the Walloon deficits (Boehme, 2008). In Francophone Belgium, ill-feelings towards Flanders relied rather on the fear that the old dream of a homogeneous, Francophone Belgian nation-state, would be radically mortgaged by the Flamingant actions. Significantly, the binding element between the Walloons and the Francophone elites in Brussels and Flanders was not a common self- image, but a common anti-Flamingantism (Kesteloot, 2004). In this complex cluster of frustrations, the central state was an important object, but it lacked the legitimacy to serve as an arbiter. This again, was a perfect ingredient for tragedy. 24

A striking illustration of the tragic character of Belgium’s history can be found in the fact that the heydays of Belgian patriotism always served as a catalyst for sub- national radicalization. Probably, the Belgian flag has never been waved more proudly as during the First World War, when the country gained international acclaim as an innocent but brave martyr of international aggression. Shortly after that war, however, it became clear that the loyalty of many Flemings to the Belgian state had been far from unconditional. When it turned out that the Belgian authorities were not prepared to reward the sacrifice of many Flemish soldiers with the creation of a Dutch speaking University, a considerable minority of the Flemish Movement started categorically to mobilize against Belgium. With an amazing ease, they were prepared to forge an alliance with the former Activists, who with the help of the German occupier had proclaimed Flemish independence in 1917. The centenary of Belgian independence, in 1930, witnessed a new upsurge of anti-Belgian mobilization at Flemish side, even if the long awaited Dutchification of took place precisely that year. This radicalized section of the Flemish movement considered the Nazi occupation as a perfect occasion for a new bid for power, even if the bulk of the were strengthened by these events in their Belgian patriotism. The second Flemish Nationalist collaboration within a quarter of a century further widened the gap with the Walloon movement, which managed to represent itself as the heart of Belgian resistance. A fierce anti-Flamingantism even caused a majority of members of the Walloon National Congress (a sort of non-official parliament) in 1945 to vote impulsively in favour of an integration of Wallonia into France. Even if this vote was later overruled by a second vote in favour of a federal Belgium, it was symptomatic for the profound suspicion on which the Walloon movement, as well as its Flemish counterpart, was based. This entire prehistory of reciprocal frustrations has deeply determined the history of the federalization in Belgium, as it has taken place since 1970. This process was not based on the recognition of regional differences, but on the fear that the other constituent part would become too powerful in the central state, or would be able to profit more from it. As a result, the process of federalization has been one long series of appropriations of power and of preventive measures against “the other”, in which very little care has been paid to the function and the workings of the central state. In the process, the latter has not only been robbed of many of its competences, but also of its democratic legitimacy. Since all parties have been regionalized and no national constituency exists, ministers in the Federal Government are only backed by the votes of their own language group, even if they decide on nationwide matters. The democratic character of the Belgian state has ended by rendering it fundamentally undemocratic – which recently has become one of the main Flemish Nationalist arguments against it.

4. EPILOGUE: THE MIRACULOUS TENACITY OF THE BELGIAN STATE

For the many commonalities between the history of modern Belgium and the ancient Greek tragedies, there remains one big difference. Unlike the heroes of Greek tragedies, Belgium has not, so far, heroically died, but it continues to exist in a very unheroic way. In the light of the analysis which I have presented, this might even be the most surprising part of its history. In these last paragraphs of my contribution, I will try to explain why

25 the forceful centrifugal identities within the Belgian state have succeeded in largely dismantling the Belgian state, but not in simply replacing it. A first line of explanation resides in the asymmetrical nature of the mutual frustrations between the sub-national entities. Whereas many Flemings distrust the Francophones as representatives of an anti-Flemish Belgian state, the deep-rooted anti- Flamingantism in Francophone Belgium is on the contrary based on the idea that the Flamingants have been the gravediggers of Belgium. In other words, their ill-feelings to one another were based on very different attitudes towards the Belgian state: among the Flemish middle-class these attitudes cover the entire range between hate and indifference, but only rarely amount to sympathy or enthusiasm. Among Francophones, on the contrary – especially among those of Brussels – Belgium is still seen as a primary locus of identification, and of nostalgia. For most of them, abandoning Belgium is no option. This asymmetrical relationship precludes a separation by mutual consent. In a democratic context, however, consent is a necessary precondition for profound constitutional or territorial changes. Another asymmetry which fundamentally complicates every scenario for the splitting up of Belgium, is the position of Brussels. Geographically situated in Flanders, but profoundly Frenchified, the Belgian capital is at once an apple of discord – as I have indicated earlier - and a chain between the two language groups. Both for the Flemings and for the Francophones, the material and symbolic value of Brussels is too high simply to let it go. In the process of federalization, the developing Flemish sub-state chose Brussels as its capital, although many Flemings experience Brussels as a “foreign” city. The Walloon region, for its part, preferred to install its political basis in , but the political connection between Wallonia and Brussels is guaranteed by the so-called Communauté Wallonie-Bruxelles. The competence of this Communauté stretches out to Francophone culture, education, and a whole range of social policy fields. The bi- or multicultural Brussels identification which surfaces during the last few years might contribute to loosen the links between Brussels and the regions. At the Flemish side, indeed, a growing number of people are prepared to abandon Brussels and to choose for another Flemish capital. In Francophone Belgium, on the contrary, the resistance against the recent Flemish Nationalist radicalization tends to tighten the Francophone bonds. The often depicted scenario with Brussels as an international city- state between two independent states (Flanders and Wallonia) will certainly not be realized at short term. A last reason for the tenacity of the Belgian state can be found in its international position. Even if the extension of the European Union has removed Belgium from the geographical centre of Europe, it continues to house its political headquarters. Those very elements which have fundamentally weakened the internal coherence of the country, turn out to be important assets at a European level. As a small bi-cultural country, it has been and still is presented as pre-figuration of multi-cultural Europe. As such, the Belgian patriotic “European crossroads”-rhetoric, which has long lost its functionality within Belgium, seems to have been recycled by the international community. It lends to the country an international prestige and recognition which sub-states such as Flanders and Wallonia are still lacking. This international prestige might help to prevent a straightforward implosion of the Belgian state, but at the same it possibly announces its ultimate dissolution into a higher, European entity. Such an ending would perfectly epitomize the tragic characterize of Belgian history. The constitutional and cultural 26 architecture of the country simply seem to have been too modern for the nation-state format it adopted in 1830. Because of that, it became extremely vulnerable to centrifugal tendencies from within and from without.

REFERENCES

Beyen, M. (1998), Held voor alle werk. De vele gedaanten van Tijl Uilenspiegel , Antwerpen, Houtekiet. Beyen, M., J. Rombouts and S. Vos (eds) (2009), De beiaard. Een politieke geschiedenis , Leuven, Universitaire Pers. Boehme, O. (2008), “Economic Nationalism in Flanders Before the Second World War”, Nations and Nationalism , 14 (3):542-561. Boeva, L. (1994), ‘Pour les Flamands la même chose’. Hoe de taalgrens ook een sociale grens was , Gent, Provinciebestuur Oost-Vlaanderen, at http://212.113.75.60/Page.aspx?pId=394&mida=185&midb=189&midc=279&mi dd=0&pubId=4&pTitle=PUBLICATIES Courtois, L. and L. Pirotte (eds) (1999), Entre toponymie et utopie: les lieux de la mémoire wallonne , Louvain-la-Neuve, Fondation Wallonne P.M. et J.F. Humblet. De Smaele, H. (2009), Rechts Vlaanderen. Religie en partij-identificatie in België, 1884- 1914 , Leuven, Universitaire Pers. Destatte, P. (1997), L’identité wallonne. Essai sur l’affirmation politique de la Wallonie aux 19e et 20e siècles , Charleroi, Institut Jules Destrée. Draye, G. (2009), Laboratoria van de natie. Nederlandstalige literaire genootschappen in Vlaanderen over politiek, literatuur en identiteit 1830-1914 , Nijmegen: SUN. Dubois, S. (2005), L’invention de la Belgique: genèse d’un état-nation, 1648-1830 , Bruxelles, Racine. Elias, H.J. (1970-1971), Geschiedenis van de Vlaamse gedachte , 4 vol., Antwerpen, De Nederlandsche Boekhandel (2nd ed.). Genicot, L. (1973), Histoire de la Wallonie , Toulouse, Privat. Gerard, E., E. Witte, E. Gubin and J.-P. Nandrin (eds) (2003), Geschiedenis van de Belgische Kamer van Volksvertegenwoordigers: 1830-2002 , Brussel, Kamer van Volksvertegenwoordigers. Kesteloot, C. (2004), Au nom de la Wallonie et de Bruxelles français : les origines du FDF , Bruxelles: Complexe. Khilnani, S. (1991), “India’s Democratic Career”, in J. Dunn (ed.), Democracy. An Unfinished Journey, 508 BC to AD 1993 , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press:189-205. Koll, J. (2003), ‘Die Belgische Nation’ . Patriotismus und Nationalbewusstsein in den Südlichen Niederlanden im späten 18. Jahrhundert , Münster, Waxmann. Lamberty, M. (ed.) (1972-1979), Twintig eeuwen Vlaanderen , 15 vols., , Heideland-Orbis. Morelli, A. (ed.) (1995), Histoire des grands mythes de la Belgique, de Flandre et de Wallonie , Bruxelles, Editions Vie Ouvrière. Platel, M. (2004), Communautaire geschiedenis van België. Van 1830 tot vandaag , Leuven, Davidsfonds.

27

Reynebeau, M. (1995), Het klauwen van de leeuw. Vlaamse identiteit van de twaalfde tot de eenentwintigste eeuw , Leuven, Van Halewyck. Reynebeau, M. (2003), Een geschiedenis van België , , Lannoo. Rottiers, S. (1995), “L’honneur des 600 Franchimontois”, in A. Morelli (ed.), Les grands mythes de la Belgique, de Flandre et de Wallonie , Bruxelles: Editions Vie Ouvrière:74-81. Stengers, J. (1981), “Le mythe des dominations étrangères dans l’historiographie belge”, Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire , 59:382-401. Stengers, J. (1996), Avant Pirenne : les preuves de l’ancienneté de la nation belge , Bulletin de la Classe des Lettres et des Sciences Morales et Politiques de l’Académie Royale de Belgique, 6 th Series, 7:551-572. Stengers, J. (2000-2002), Histoire du sentiment national en Belgique des origines à 1918 , Bruxelles, Racine. Strikwerda, C. (1997), A House Divided: Catholics, Socialists, and Flemish Nationalists in Nineteenth-Century Belgium , Lanham (Md.), Rowman & Littlefield. Tollebeek, J. (1998), “Historical Representation and the Nation-State in Belgium”, Journal of the History of Ideas , 59 (2):329-353. Vandermeersch, P. (2009), “België is twee landen”, De Standaard , 8 June. Van Ginderachter, M. (2005), Het rode vaderland. De vergeten geschiedenis van de communautaire spanningen in het Belgische socialisme voor WOI , Tielt, Lannoo, and Gent, AMSAB. Van Goethem, H. (2008), De monarchie en het ‘einde van België’. Een communautaire geschiedenis van Leopold I tot Albert II, Tielt, Lannoo. Velaers, J. (1991), De beperking van de vrijheid van meningsuiting , Antwerpen/Apeldoorn, MAKLU. Verschaffel, T. (1996), De hoed en de hond. Geschiedschrijving in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden, 1715-1794 , Hilversum, Historische Uitgeverij. Verschaffel, T. (2001), “Les autorités belges et la littérature flamande (1830-1865)”, in G. Kurgan-Van Hentenryk and V. Montens (eds), L’argent des arts. La politique artistique des pouvoirs publics en Belgique de 1830 à 1940 , Bruxelles, Editions de l’ULB:149-160. Von Busekist, A. (1998), La Belgique. Politique des langues et construction de l’Etat , Louvain-la-Neuve, Duculot. Wils, L. (1974), en Aktivisme , Leuven, Davidsfonds. Wils, L. (2005), Van Clovis tot Di Rupo. De lange weg van de naties in de Lage Landen , Antwerpen/Apeldoorn, Garant. Witte, E. (2005), La construction de la Belgique, 1828-1847 , Bruxelles, Racine.

28

THE TERRITORIAL-IDENTITARY SIDE OF A DEMOCRACY: NATIONAL BELONGING AND THE REGIONAL ISSUE IN CONTEMPORARY ITALY

Gaspare Nevola

Università di Trento, Facoltà di Sociologia

1. INTRODUCTION

The period since the end of the Cold War seems to have been marked by the resurgence of “identity politics” (Huntington, 1993; Castells, 1997; Maalouf, 1998; Benhabib, 2002; Hall, 2008; Todorov, 2008; Various Authors, 2009; Moisi, 2009). The rise of an identitary dimension in politics has rendered the “post-1989 new world” somewhat obsolete. The vision of a pacified, harmonious and “neutralized” world has collided with the attacks of 11 September 2001, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, destructive international financial crises, the protests raised by “new global movements” (anti or new-global), the tensions due to migratory flows, ethno-national or religious antagonisms, claims for national independence or the defence of national identity, and demands for collective belonging or “community”. In short, now that the supposed primacy of the functional (technical- economic-legal) dimension has dwindled, politics and its identitarian rootedness have returned to the fore. In this scenario, the protagonism of the Nation-State resurfaces in the economic, financial, military fields, and that of public security. Once again, despite the frequent obituaries written for it, the nation-state has not passed away. It has proved to be a robust political construct, still flexible, and rich with resources not readily available to other types of political organization (supranational or subnational, or of some other kind) which challenge its political primacy and sometimes seek to erode its sovereignty (Nevola, 2001; 2007b). In order to understand the factors responsible for this political persistence of the nation-state, one must consider the political nature of this form of organization of collective life and go beyond its conception as solely an administrative, legal and economic apparatus. It is within this framework that one must locate issues of national and regional identity, both in general and in the Italian case. The “end of territories” was another idea spread in the aftermath of 1989 (Badie, 1995). Globalization, with its technical-communicative infrastructures, seemed to be generating a deterritorialized world (in economics, politics, culture and lifestyles). But this vision was at odds with “real life”: it was too “top-down” and rather abstract. It confused trends, though significant largely restricted to particular social groups, with a generalized situation. Deterritorialization was, and still is, anything but a generalized phenomenon rooted in the reality of collective life in nearly every corner of the world. Once again, politics has given visibility to a social reality misunderstood

29

by post-modern liberal thought. 1 I refer to the entry on the political scene of movements tied in various ways to the territory, and to their increasing political and/or electoral success. This re- politicization of the territory is embodied especially in certain nationalist, micro-nationalist or “regionalist” movements (De Winter and Tuersan, 1998; Haupt et al., 1998; Caciagli, 2006). But are we witnessing a “resumption” of the “nationalism of subnational territories”, of “regional micronationalisms”? Or has this phenomenon substantially persisted, apart from brief periods of its apparent disappearance when it was probably only in a state of latency? I say this because, without going too far back in time, already in the 1960s and 1970s some analysts emphasized the reawakening of subnational or regional-national nationalisms, or the “ethnic revival” and ethno-nationalism (Glazer and Moynihan, 1975; Connor, 1994; Smith, 1981). It is true that the “regional phenomenon” of the past twenty years has burgeoned in a context different from that of the recent past: the advance of European integration, the geopolitical earthquake in Eastern Europe, globalization and migratory flows have woven the “regional question” together with that of the crisis of the nation-state, and with that of a “democratic malaise” expressed by the spread of neo-populist or anti-party attitudes (Nevola, 2007c). However, this is not enough to explain why the regional political-identitary phenomenon is as unexpected today as in the recent past. But is it truly such a surprising phenomenon? The theory of political-territorial collective identity suggests that it is not; and so does analysis of the processes of formation of the nation-state and of the nature of the “fait regional ”.

2. THE REGIONAL IDENTITARY QUESTION

The proper understanding of a national society also requires consideration of the territory’s articulation and the various ways in which it is structured (varieties of the economic forms of capitalism with its social formations, pluralism of the linguistic-literary heritage and of historical traditions, differences of political culture and in the civic-associative system, varieties of electoral behaviours and trends, differences of political-institutional and administrative models, etc.). On the other hand, studies of political culture often consider “regional territories” to be places of “local counter-cultures” – variously organized communities of “resistance” against the centralizing or “colonizing” action of the Nation-State (Rokkan and Urwin, 1982; 1983; Caciagli, 1988; Kellas, 1991; Hechter, 1975). As some contemporary trends demonstrate, these resistances are not always simple reactions or legacies from the past. Behind the conflicting political significance attributed to “regional territories” lays the complex and ambiguous nature of the fait regional and of the relations between regional and national identity. The fait regional exhibits three main and frequently interweaving features: region, regionalization, and regionalism. 1) Region. Like many concepts charged with political significance, that of “region” is difficult to define unequivocally. A certain vagueness notwithstanding, it is usually related to collective life spaces not on the scale of Nation-States which constitute an intermediary dimension between “small-scale” (local or “micro-regional”) and “large-scale” spaces (“world regions”). The region, in short, is one of the criteria with which modern Western thought defines subnational spaces. The concept relates to contexts of collective life characterized by more or less marked homogeneity (political, economic, cultural, religious, linguistic, and climatic); contexts of life framed within a higher-order unit – the Nation-State – on which they depend in important respects. These are contexts which often have some sort of political-administrative expression (or claim one). This political-administrative expression is sometimes rather weak (in unitary-centralist Nation-

1 A similar view of contemporary society is taken by Elliott and Lemert (2006). 30

States like France); in other instances it is significantly strong (in federal Nation-States like the United States or Germany); but the majority of cases (for example, Italy, , Spain) lies between these two extremes. The intensity of the political-administrative expression may change over time as a result of processes which are of various kinds but are ultimately political in nature. Thus understood, the concept of “region” has a rather broad denotation: it comprises the “historical region” (usually associated with “ethnic bonds”), but it is not restricted to this alone. In other words, “region” may have a political-administrative denotation or a socio-cultural one (the two sometimes coincide or reciprocally relate to each other). In the former case, the region is the “largest political-administrative unit” within the Nation-State; in the latter, the term indicates “territories where collectivities with their own identities are settled” (Caciagli, 2006:17). Contemporary regions are not “realities given by nature”: for like Nation-States they are “constructed” (historically, socially, politically and culturally). Consequently, they are collective human “inventions”, regardless of whether “existing regions” are based on more or less “authentic” historical traditions, or are of ancient origin, or produced by a simple act of administrative delimitation. Also in the case of regions it is important to refocus their status as “inventions”. In short, the point is that over time “invented regions” have tended to “objectify” and “institutionalize” themselves. 2 It thus happens that even the most “artificial” of them (like some of the current Italian regions devoid of historical-identitary depth) gradually are consolidated and institutionalized in the collective imagination, political culture, political-administrative practice, and sometimes even in the everyday practices of citizens. In their transmission from one generation to the next, even some of the most artificial regions have become “realities”, social “realities”, settings of politico-territorial life: features in the landscape of the collective memory, distinct containers of “regional” histories and personalities, usages and customs, rituals, myths, stereotypes or character. In short, regions project their own identities, even though some of them are denser with historical and political meaning than others. Moreover, they also vary in their degrees of internal integration, and their degrees of external recognition or “weight”. All this explains why, still today, it is difficult to reassemble “regional remnants” (at both the transnational and subnational level). 2) Regionalization. At least in the political-administrative sense, “regionalization” denotes a process of promoting regions and regional identities. Usually top-down, 3 this process works through reforms undertaken by the Nation-State to devolve certain functions and competences to the regions. It is a process which applies a territorial criterion in the organization of economic systems, of the interests of social groups, and of public policies. During the past twenty years, regionalization processes have increased in Europe owing to a variety of factors (pressures by local elites, claims advanced by regionalist movements, demands for the reform of State governance, incentives from the European Union). 3) Regionalism. “Regionalism” may assume a variety of meanings. Here we may define it as a political-cultural process driven by a collectivity endowed with an awareness or sense of territorial belonging, or by elites or political movements able to mobilize and organize the cultural, political or economic interests of a territory. For centuries often associated with a regressive ideology of nostalgic laudatores temporis acti opposed to modernization, regionalism regained political-cultural dynamism in the 1960s and 1970s, and then again more recently in the past twenty years. Initially, regionalism appeared to be the ideological manifesto of marginalized and backward regions exploited by the centre; today, it is sometimes also the mission of the richest and most developed

2 In the sense explained by the theoretical sociological tradition. See Berger and Luckmann, 1966. 3 If we observe phenomena at the socio-cultural or economic level, the process is also bottom-up. See e.g. Ohmae, 1995; Sassen, 2006. 31

regions (as in the cases of Catalonia, Lombardy and Veneto, and Flanders). 4 The most visible embodiments of regionalism are political or ideas-driven movements, but at times outright political parties as well, which draw on territorial identities and interests to advance claims of a varyingly historical-cultural, political and economic nature. In some cases, such movements may even openly challenge the authority of the Nation-State and membership thereof, demanding not only cultural and administrative recognition, but also greater political autonomy, federalism or indeed secession, and resorting to sometimes pacific, but sometimes also violent, means to this end. Although it may happen that, in some of the most radical cases, regional identitary phenomena challenge national identities, there is no necessary contrast between the one and the other. This is so for numerous reasons. One of them is political realism 5: when in its most extreme forms regionalism raises the issue of the self-determination and self-government of the “regional” community, and therefore claims recognition as a Nation-State in itself, distinct from the one disavowed and challenged, the political actors propounding such regionalism are rarely able to pass the test of “political unification”. Even less are they able to pass the test of democratic legitimation afforded by electoral procedures: the idea of separation from the Nation-State is unlikely to achieve consensus among the majority of the “regional population” (however difficult it is to measure phenomena of this kind). 6 For this reason, secession is largely a threat used to obtain recognition and political-administrative, cultural and economic privileges.

3. NATIONAL IDENTITY AND THE REGIONAL QUESTION IN ITALY: BETWEEN REMOVAL AND RESURGENCE

For some years in Italy there has been animated debate on the theme of the nation. 7 This is a novel development in the history of the Italian Republic. Until recently, the issue was in fact neglected and removed by scholars, public opinion, and all the more so by the political world. There were numerous reasons for this closure of Italian political culture towards the “national question”: the appropriation of the national theme by the ideology and regime so dramatically condemned by history; the tragedies provoked by twentieth-century nationalisms; the historical dominance of two ideological doctrines (Catholicism and ) with strongly universalist and internationalist vocations; and an “anti-national” attitude widespread among intellectuals, opinion- makers, and the educated class in general. It is perhaps also for these reasons that the Italian identitary issue has been addressed from so many standpoints in the recent debate: the causes of the weakness or non-existence of an Italian national identity; the weight of “particularism” and

4 For a map of regionalisms or regional-nationalisms and of regionalist movements in Europe see De Winter and Tuersan, 1998; Haupt et al., 1998; Luverà, 1999; Grilli di Cortona, 2003; Caciagli, 2006. 5 Other reasons relate to the political-institutional structure, centre-periphery relations, and the political culture of “reciprocal recognition” mentioned in the concluding section. 6 Exceptions to this general tendency, at least since the Second World War, have been the violent dissolution of the USSR and Yugoslavia and the peaceful one of Czechoslovakia. Instead, there are no cases relative to mass liberal-democratic regimes, despite the tensions in Canada (with Quebec), in Belgium (between Walloons and Flemings), in Spain (especially with the Basque Country), in France (with Corsica) or in Italy (first with , then with South Tyrol, finally with “Padania”). On the test of political unification see Nevola, 2007a; on the problem of the democratic legitimization of secessionist claims see Nevola, 1998. 7 For discussions of the problem and reconstructions of the scientific and public debate see Nevola, 1999; 2003c; 2003d; Cartocci, 2002; Peluffo, 2008. 32

“municipal localism” rooted in history; the scant civic sense characteristic of Italian identity; feelings of national belonging and pride based only on history (ancient or the Renaissance), culture and art, the beauty of the landscape, or sporting triumphs; the identitary disarray and shame provoked by defeat in the Second World War; the significance of the Resistance and anti- for Italian national identity; the role of socio-economic modernization during the 1960s; Italy’s international image (for an analysis and bibliographical references see Nevola, 1999; 2003a). The factors which explain the return to the centre stage of the Italian national question are both exogenous and endogenous: on the one hand the influence of the traumatic international changes due to the collapse of Soviet Communism and the end of the bipolar balance of power of the Cold War (Nevola, 2007a) with their repercussions on the Italian political, ideological and cultural system; on the other hand there are the specific travails of Italian democracy. Principal among the latter are the following: 1) the problem of the “distribution of costs” necessary to recast and preserve Italian citizenship and the : this problem is related to the question of “solidarity among citizens” belonging to the same national community and on which basis to distribute the benefits and costs, rights and duties of a shared citizenship; 2) the discussion ongoing for a number of years on the significance and legacy of the anti- Fascist Resistance, which also is a mode in which the Italian national question is expressed. Treating the Resistance as a constitutive component of the Republic and democracy, but also as a sort of “founding myth” for the Italian democratic nation poses the problem of the historical, political and ideal features of “a fatherland for the Italians”. Moreover, the national theme today intersects with the problem of the full political legitimization of the post-Fascist and post- Communist parties competing to govern the country; the problem, that is, of their mutual recognition and their rightful inclusion within a unitary framework of Italian democratic citizenship and shared national belonging, notwithstanding their pasts of “resistance civil war” and their “separate memories”; 3) the collapse during the 1990s of Christian Democracy, the long-standing government party in Italy, which led to the demise of the “political unity of Catholics” and to a new public and political protagonism of the Church. The consequent resumption of opposition between laics and Catholics had repercussions on the political-cultural features of national identity; 4) the “defreezing” of the party system which had “held together” and structured the Italian democracy that arose after the Second World War; 5) the political-electoral success since the 1980s of the Lega Nord (Northern League), due to its capacity for grass-roots mobilization centred on emancipation of the “territory” (Lombardy, Veneto, the North, the Po Valley – “Padania” in Italian), its regional identities, interests, history, and cultural traditions. The Lega Nord’s campaigns for a federal system and its secessionist challenge have directly and sometimes brutally threatened national unity and the sense of national belonging. Historical (and unresolved) territorial (economic and political) cleavages between the North and South have re-opened in concomitance with the Lega Nord’s offensive, together with the onset of an unprecedented “Northern Question”; 6) the theme of the nation has also merged with the Italian political-cultural debate on the need for institutional reforms: restructuring the State on a federal basis, and the government on a presidential one, in response to the problems of legitimation and efficient operation of democratic institutions, economic development, and of setting Italy’s public finances in order. In general, concern with Italian national identity centres on a set of cleavages: besides economic-financial (market-State) and ideological (right/left, anti-fascism/anti-communism, Catholic/secular) ones, territorial cleavages are also of interest here (centre/periphery, north/south, centralism-regionalism/federalism). That said, it should be emphasized that the salience recently acquired by the question of Italian identity and its regional pendant is not unprecedented in Italian 33

history. It may be helpful to review in broad outline first its precedents relative to national identity, and then those concerning the regional question.

4. THE ITALIAN NATIONAL QUESTION: HISTORICAL EXCURSUS I

Today, Italian political culture is going through what can be considered the fourth wave of the twentieth-century debate on the Italian nation. The 1900s, in fact, were marked by three main waves of such a debate (for a discussion see Nevola, 2003c). The first traversed monarchist, pre-Fascist Italy when liberal political culture in particular engaged in a reconstruction of Italian history intended to weave together a national history. However, this eventually gave way to the more radical nationalism that arose amid the political-cultural turmoil of First World War “interventionism”. The second wave occurred at the height of the Fascist regime: in keeping with the doctrine of the latter, it focused on the “national-nationalist” project to reconstitute the Italian fatherland and restore its former grandeur. It thus mixed “internal” purposes (modernization and cohesion imposed in an authoritarian manner) with “external” ones (primacy of the nation of Rome and the colonial empire). The third, post-Fascist, wave lasted for a brief period after the Second World War: it inherited the fascistization of the national theme and the monstrosities (wartime and otherwise) committed in the name of the patriotic ideal and the purity of the people. But it also inherited the need to reconstruct a “fatherland for Italians” after the disarray of 8 September 1943, as building a “democracy for Italians” began. The first two waves of the twentieth-century debate will not be considered here. 8 The discussion will instead be concerned with the essential features of the third wave: that of the post-Fascist years which centred on Italian republican history. To talk of a post-war Italian debate on the nation may seem at odds with the thesis of the decline of the national theme after Fascism, the Second World War, and the 8 th of September. In fact, however, this only alters the historical periodization. For in the dominant political culture, the national theme did not disappear immediately with the end of Fascism and the war; rather, it did so gradually during the post-war reconstruction. Indeed, for a brief period of time – roughly until the 1950s – particular attention to the Italian national question accompanied the constitution of the republic and the instauration of democracy and the party system. It was a debate which soon petered out, however. But although short-lived, it was not devoid of importance. In this context, liberal- democratic historiography sought to purge the idea of “nation” of its Fascist and nationalist legacy by emphasizing a civic-democratic dimension of the nation. For example, Federico Chabod resumed the opposition between the German and French traditions of the nation, defining the former in naturalistic-organicist terms and the latter in political-voluntarist ones. Chabod sought to locate the Italian nation within the French tradition: indeed, he spoke of a Franco-Italian tradition. In Europeanist-federalist political culture, the national motif was resumed in strongly critical terms, until Altiero Spinelli and Ernesto Rossi denied the possibility itself of reconsidering the idea of nation separately from the experience of nationalism: the distinction between a “good national idea” (the liberal-democratic one) and a “bad nationalism” (that of ) was dismissed as false and dangerously misleading. One can discern within the post-Fascist wave of the debate on the nation a second phase which partly overlapped with the one just mentioned but also partly followed it. The protagonists in

8 On these first two phases in the twentieth-century treatment of the Italian national question see Busino, 1980; Lanaro, 1988; Bobbio, 1993; Scoppola, 1993; Traniello, 1993; Veneruso, 1993; Lepre, 1994; Spadolini, 1994; Gentile, 1997; Bedeschi, 2002. For a historical reconstruction of debates and ideas on the Italian nation in pre-unification Italy and the nineteenth century, see Di Ciommo, 2005; and Patriarca, 2010, which covers republican Italy. 34

this case were the Catholic and Socialist-Communist political cultures. As is well known, from the period of the Constitutional Assembly onwards the mass parties gradually imposed themselves. In the long term, they expressed and conveyed political cultures little interested in the national theme or equipped to deal with it (Scoppola, 1991; Traniello, 1993; Various Authors, 1997; Rusconi, 1997): the sense of belonging and national identity were rarely considered resources for political action, owing to the robustness of the democratic institutions. Yet the mass parties also engaged with the Italian national question. They did so at the level of ideology, but also at that of political- organizational action; and they did so especially in the first years of the post-war period, when they were in search of “national legitimacy”. Because of the widening political-ideological divide between the two main parties (DC and PCI) and because of their international alignments, there were two contrasting “national” responses, rather than a single and shared one. On the one hand, Communist political culture looked to the model of the “popular nation” in opposition to the liberal notion, which it accused of confining the nation within a bourgeois, classist and elitist vision. Through the device of the “People” as the repository of national sovereignty, the “popular nation” was connected with the voluntarist-political conception of the nation typical of the tradition that stemmed from Rousseau and the French Revolution. This was the Communist route, so to speak, to the “nationalization of the masses”, of which a distinctive feature was its focus on the elite/people relationship, with a central role assigned to the (Communist) party, and the purpose of shifting the sense of nationhood from the inner circle of the ruling elite to the masses. It is evident this was a design that derived from the Gramscian concept of “hegemony”. On the other side, Catholic political culture entered the scene. The project in this case was that of the “Catholic nation” (for an overview see Formigoni, 1998; Impagliazzo, 2004). Catholic historiography of the post-war period thus engaged in a reinterpretation of national history which smacked of neo-Guelphism. 9 It emphasized the important role played in Italian history by cultural, social and political forces of Catholic inspiration; and it stressed the Catholic identity of the Italian nation. The project of creating the “Catholic nation” was intended to resolve difficulties in the relationship between the Italian state and the Vatican due to the “Roman (or Catholic) question” and the Church’s role at critical junctures in Italian history (unification; the Concordat; the Resistance; relation between Christian values, mass liberal-democracy and capitalist-bourgeois ideology). This was the Catholic route to fulfillment of the project of mass nationalization. A crucial aspect of this concern with the national issue was the creation of a linkage between ecclesiastical authorities and agencies of socialization (the Vatican, the parishes), on the one hand, and the politico-institutional organization of social values and interests on the other: a linkage whose management was entrusted to the party of the Catholics (Christian Democracy). There thus arose a “dual nation” (“popular” on one side and “Catholic” on the other): Italians returned “to democracy on the track of separate ‘belongings’ rather than on that of one shared national and democratic belonging” (Scoppola, 1993:32; see also Di Nucci and Galli della Loggia, 2003). Thereafter, with the enactment of the republican Constitution and the freezing of the

9 Neo-Guelphism was a nineteenth-century current of political thought distinctive of the Italian Risorgimento. It is associated in particular with the philosopher, politician, and Catholic priest, Vincenzo Gioberti, according to whom Italian unification had to be led by the Church and produce a federal system headed by the . Elements of neo-Guelphism are also present in the thought of Alessandro Manzoni, the greatest Italian novelist of the nineteenth century and author of I Promessi Sposi , for decades a compulsory text in Italian upper-secondary schools. The notion and the political-ideological programme of neo-Guelphism refer to Italy of the and the conflict between the “Guelph faction” (aligned with the Pope) and the “Ghibelline faction” (aligned with the emperor) – a conflict which lacerated political life especially in and was made famous by Dante Alighieri in his Divina Commedia . 35

international system around the American and Soviet geo-ideological blocs, the national theme in Italy progressively faded away. There now began a long season of “denationalization”, and almost half a century would pass before the theme of the nation re-awoke from its long dormancy.

5. THE REGIONAL QUESTION IN ITALY: HISTORICAL EXCURSUS II

The debate on the Italian nation and on the identitary challenge raised by the Northern League during the 1990s gave rise to the image of a “one and multiple” national identity (Galli della Loggia, 1998; Nevola, 2003e). This “multiplicity” was evidenced by territorial patterns of development and economic production, but above all (particularly in light of the focus of this volume) by subnational or regional political cultures usually based on ethno-linguistic or party- ideological features (the “red zone” versus the “white zone” of the country), communitarian localism, and the North/South divide (Putnam, 1993; Cartocci, 2007; Diamanti, 2009; Coppola, 1997; Baccetti and Messina, 2009; Caciagli, 2010; Fedele, 2010). Emphasis on the Italian nation’s identitarian multiplicity fuelled the regional question. In truth, the regionalist issue has been of great importance throughout the history of the Italian Nation-State, and it was so well before the Lega Nord became its successful political entrepreneur. Four main precedents can be distinguished. 1) Already in the early phase of Italian unification, when the typical contrast between centre and periphery emerged, a debate developed on the institutional solution of this problem, and therefore on how much recognition (also political) should be granted to peripheral areas (Ciuffoletti, 1994; Lepre, 1994). As is well known, national unification came about under the predominance of the centralist Franco-Napoleonic model adopted and imposed by Piedmont. It should be borne in mind, however, that Cavour (the architect of the Italian State) preferred an arrangement based on self-government by the various political-territorial realities that made up the Nation-State. This solution – its uncertain federalist nature notwithstanding – was obviously opposed to the centralist model borrowed from Napoleonic France; and it favoured the State’s organization on the model of Anglo-American autonomy. The centralist-unitary arrangement which instead prevailed was strenuously advocated by Mazzini, on the grounds that any kind of division would provoke civil war, fragmentation, and eventually Italy’s subjugation by foreign States. Mazzini’s argument (from time to time updated) has been used as the basis for criticism of every federalism-based proposal for the reorganization of the Italian Nation-State. 2) An important declination of Italy’s territorial diversification – one which has traversed the entire history of unified Italy – is the North/South divide. This has long been referred to as the “Southern Question”. According to an accredited strand of inquiry in historiography and the social sciences, the history of the Italian unitary State has always been a history of North/South “dualism” 10 : a dualism which already in the past could not be explained by either the allegedly predatory policies (concerning labour, markets, natural resources) of the North, or by an inconsistent idea of the Mezzogiorno as an irremediable hindrance to the country’s development (Cafagna, 1994; Trigilia, 1992). For the period from unification to the Second World War the multidimensional nature of the North/South territorial dualism has been highlighted, which can be schematized as follows: a dualism due to the “development gap”; a dualism due to “difference”; and a dualism due to “separateness” (Cafagna, 1994). The “dualism of the development gap” relates to the wide distance in economic-industrial development between the two areas of the country. This distance is apparent in a wide variety of sectors (industry, rural manufacture, agriculture, urban industrial centres, financial intermediation,

10 From this point of view, the Padanian regional question has important historical roots. See Huysseune, 2006. 36

human capital). The “difference dualism” concerns culture, also understood as customs, habits, mentalities, and forms of religiosity. These differences affect the pace of modernization in the two areas, and their receptiveness to changes in an industrial society. Related to such differences are a series of features typically attributed to the southern regions: for instance, the difficulty of eliminating the “feudal reality of extortion”, a phenomenon which has favoured the persistence of a system of “private taxation” alongside the public one; the tendency of the Mafia to operate as a “protection industry” in place of the public security system; the antagonism between “familistic morality” and “public morality”. Finally, “separateness dualism” concerns the paucity of economic relations, as well as social ones, between the two areas: “both the North and the South traded goods with the rest of the world to a substantial extent; but they did so not at all, or almost not at all, with each other”; for long, there were practically no migratory flows between the two areas (“internal migration” is a recent phenomenon); “occasions for contact between people in the two parts of the country were rare” (Cafagna, 1994:48). This also explains a certain “cultural extraneousness” between the two areas, at least at the mass level. It was only with the introduction of military service that a national mass linguistic system slowly developed, which was then consolidated by compulsory elementary school and television. But whilst it is true that these dualisms have gradually attenuated, to be borne in mind is the advent of a “sudden growth in the perception of anthropological differences between the two parts of the country” (Cafagna, 1994:65). 3) Another significant phase in the political and cultural concern with the territorial question and the “regional fact” occurred during the tumultuous period between the crisis of the Fascist regime and the birth of the Italian Republic. That conjuncture was characterized by a certain dynamism of what at that time were called “territorial autonomies” (Marchetti, 1993; Ruffilli, 1993; Romanelli, 1995; Bonora and Coppola, 1997; Woolf, 2000). The ideas and the experiences of this episode in political history were incorporated into the Italian Constitution, which introduced the “region” as an administrative institution of the Italian State. Despite everything, however, the impact of this constitutional principle of autonomy was very limited. At the time of the “party-based foundation” of the democratic Republic, in fact, the predominant attitude was that the true and principal instrument of autonomy and pluralism in civil society and politics consisted in the parties and the party system. Whilst in general the regional institution, although weak, was created in order to respond to the country’s marked socio-economic variety and to improve the territorial efficiency of the public administration, in some cases the regions were given greater weight and strongly enhanced by the Constitution. I refer to the creation (between 1945 and 1963) of the so-called “special statute regions”: Valle d’Aosta, -Venezia Giulia, Trentino-Alto Adige, Sicily, and . 11 This page in Italian regionalism’s history concerned historical-identitary “peripheries” with long political histories behind them. In some cases, they were regional areas which, throughout the history of the Italian Nation-State, had been characterized by strong resistance or resentment against State centralism, or what was termed the “exploiter continent”; in other cases, they expressed problems and tendencies towards , irredentism, and annexationism; in yet other cases they were still “contested territories” at the centre of international dynamics. But the status of special autonomy that the Italian Constitution defined for these regions also sprang directly from the historical conjuncture of the time. The political-institutional crisis that erupted with the collapse of the Fascist regime and the “armistice” (1943) overwhelmed the Italian State. Territorial unity itself de facto broke down, with evident repercussions on sovereignty, the

11 With the constitutional laws approving the regional statutes, all promulgated at the beginning of 1948, with the exception of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, which had to wait until 1963 and the resolution of bitter international disputes on territorial issues and boundaries. 37

sense of national belonging, and national cohesion.12 In that critical conjuncture, demands for territorial autonomy resumed, and some “special” regions were in the forefront. But why did the Italian State, with its new Constitution, grant “special” autonomy to certain regions? And why in particular to Valle d’Aosta, Trentino-Alto Adige, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Sicily and Sardinia (Nevola, 2003b)? The underlying reason for this constitutional recognition was the fact that “constitutions are not written on virgin parchment” (Clavero, 1993). The political-institutional structure of constitutional States reflects, in fact, a balance struck between the propensity of Nation-States to expropriate the “historical rights of territorial communities”, on the one hand, and resistance and demands for autonomy by “historical-identitary peripheries” on the other. The Italian “special” regions epitomize this balance. Behind the latter lay political dynamics between “centre” and “periphery” which had accumulated over time. Although dormant in some phases, they had never entirely subsided and, in the end, they were efficaciously “repoliticized” by political actors in a critical conjuncture favourable to them. In other words, the regions granted special autonomy were those which were able to affirm “at the right time” their histories and problems in regard to a Nation-State engaged in its own political, territorial, and institutional reconstitution. They forcefully asserted their multiethnic-linguistic character (Valle d’Aosta, Alto Adige); their peripheral location close to sensitive and contested international borders (Valle d’Aosta, Trentino-Alto Adige, Venezia Giulia); an insular tradition opposed to the “continent” (Sicily, Sardinia); long-standing separatist tendencies; unresolved issues in the sense of nationhood or recognition of the central State’s authority (Alto Adige, Sicily). The “special statutes” thus reflected regional contexts critical for the unity of the Italian Nation-State. Put otherwise, they were responses by the nascent Italian Republic to the problems raised for the new democratic order’s resilience and political-national cohesion by the country’s socio-economic variety, the pressures of more or less radical autonomist movements, and international obligations or agreements. However, they were responses to challenges of regional autonomy which were prompted not only by the critical political conjuncture of the time but also by difficulties in the historical structuring of the Italian Nation-State’s political space. In this sense, the five “special statute” regions represent cases of the “survival of peripheral identity”. Not by chance, Rokkan’s analysis – classificatory and historical-comparative – of the geopolitical-identitary map and the “centre-periphery” structure of Europe includes the five Italian “special statute regions”, and it traces their origin to the building of the Italian national State. 13 Hence, the birth of the “special statute” regions came about in a context which we may define of “political exceptionality”, or in a “state of exception” (in Carl Schmitt’s sense): a context, that is, in which the very survival and political-territorial integrity of a Nation-State is at stake. Such regions, in short, arose from an encounter between critical contingent political factors and more “structural” historical-political ones. 4) An ulterior phase of debate and political initiatives on the regional issue, which preceded the one now in progress, occurred during the 1970s. The constitutional provision on the (“ordinary”) regional administrations was implemented in those years; the Italian regions thus began to become, especially in administrative terms, the “realities” that we know today. There were

12 On this critical phase of interregnum or “suspended statehood” see Incisa di Camerana, 1996. See also Aga Rossi, 1998; Galli della Loggia, 1996. 13 In Rokkan’s terminology, the five special statute regions are “historico-identitary peripheries”: “interface peripheries”, i.e. territories exposed to crosswise international pressures (Valle d’Aosta, Alto Adige, ); “external (Mediterranean) peripheries”, i.e. geographically remote areas situated on the margins of Western Europe and exposed to the influence of a single political centre (Sicily, Sardinia); “peripheral enclaves”, i.e. areas with a culture different from that of the territories surrounding them (Friuli). See Rokkan, 1999. 38

two main factors that gave impetus to the implementation of the constitutional articles devoted to the regions. Firstly, a certain effervescence of regionalism, of movements to enhance local or regional traditions, usages and customs: the ethno-regional wind then blowing through most of Europe also affected Italy. Secondly, the success and consolidation of the PCI in some regions: in this case, “regionalization” as the administrative reform of the Italian Nation-State was due, on the one hand, to the PCI’s request for implementation of the constitutional provisions so that it could capitalize on its success in the administrative elections held in some regions through the government of institutions endowed with effective powers; and on the other, to the willingness of the parties in the majority coalition (above all the DC) to offer the largest opposition party, then undergoing political-electoral growth, compensation for its persistent exclusion from the national government. This, moreover, was during a period of great difficulty for Italian democracy (economic crisis, domestic terrorism, the “strategy of tension”), and it led to the (short-lived) experience of the “governments of national solidarity” against the consociative background of the “historic compromise” between the DC and the PCI. However, this “regionalization” process did not yield the results that some expected from the reforms of the 1970s. More significant changes did not occur until the 1990s: the years, according to some commentators, of the demise of the “Republic of the parties” and of the birth of a “democracy of the regions”, as well as a “democracy of citizens”. Thus we come to the question of the Italian national identity today, and to the challenge of “leghist regionalism”. However much the Italian regions have been “invented” or are the result of statistical- administrative engineering, and however much they are the products of artificial “operations” with little concern for historical-cultural criteria or the density of socio-economic relations, they by now “exist” and animate the Italian political scene.

6. ITALIAN DEMOCRACY AND THE CRISIS OF THE PARTY SYSTEM: THE IDENTITARY CHALLENGE OF “LEGHISMO PADANO” AND THE REDISCOVERY OF THE NATIONAL TIE

The political events of the past fifteen-twenty years have profoundly altered the balances, cleavages and overall physiognomy of Italian democracy. Whilst it is improper to talk of the advent of a “Second Republic”, it is certain that the “First Republic” has become almost unrecognizable. This is above all due to major changes in the party landscape and to the destructuring of the party-political system. At least in regard to its intensity, this is an Italian peculiarity with respect to the main European (if not another version of the Italian “anomaly”) (Nevola, 2003a; 2003d). To grasp this “particularity” it is useful to resume Lipset and Rokkan’s hypothesis (Lipset and Rokkan, 1967) that the European party systems born in the 1920s have shown an impressive continuity over time. They have done so because of a phenomenon of “freezing” which the authors observed until their time (the 1960s), and which thereafter continued at least until the end of the 1980s. With some rare but partial exceptions (Belgium, Ireland, Holland and the United Kingdom), the “freezing” of party systems has persisted until the present day. But not in Italy14 , which is instead a case of a democracy where there has been a “defreezing” of the party system, and in some respects also a change in socio-political cleavages.

14 Mair (1998) maintains that a “freezing” of party systems has come about in the democracies since the 1990s. Mair’s arguments and examples may support the idea that the “freezing” of cleavages and party systems is not permanent. But this does not alter the fact that since the Second World War Italy has provided the only example of an almost complete “defreezing”. 39

To gain an idea of the range of the phenomenon it suffices to consider the “vote-gathering capacity” of the party system that arose after the Second World War (see Annex 1) (for a European comparison, see Kitschelt, 1997). This indicator of the “degree of structuring” of the Italian party system comprises the percentages of votes obtained in general elections by the principal parties belonging to the so-called “constitutional arch” which created the Republic, regardless of whether they belong to the government or to the opposition (including the formations resulting from splits in the original parties and their subsequent renaming or redefining). Since the elections of 1994, the vote-gathering capacity of the “traditional” party system has more than halved: whilst until the 1987 elections it oscillated between 85% and 93% of the total of votes cast, in 1992 it fell to 75%; and since 1994 has not even amounted to half of the total votes. More than half of votes have progressively shifted to political parties which did not exist in the previous half century of the “frozen” republican party system based on the “constitutional arch” or which were excluded from this latter. The political significance and repercussions of the destructuring of the party system have been of no little account for Italian democracy. The party system, in fact, played a major role in reconstructing and organizing collective Italian life which emerged disfigured from the Fascist period, from the war, and from its traumatic aftermath (Scoppola, 1991; Cotta, 1994; Calise, 1994; Mastropaolo, 1996; Lepre, 1999). As the constructors of public institutions and distributors of material and symbolic resources, the parties and the party system were also decisive in the establishment and consolidation of democracy in Italy. In particular, they acted as channels of socialization to democratic politics and as agencies of democratic pedagogy. Besides democratizing the country, the party system also undertook the task of “holding together” a profoundly divided and lacerated country diversified at all levels. From the post-war period onwards, particularly insidious was the country’s cleavage along political-ideological lines and its international position. Although Catholics, moderate and progressive laics, socialists and communists were united in learning and defending democratic values, they were interpreters and bearers of very different, often incompatible, world-views and conceptions of democracy (Scoppola, 1991; Lanaro, 1992; Lepre, 1999; Di Nucci, and Galli della Loggia, 2003). In the years of the Resistance and the Constituent process that gave rise to the Republic, these divisions were kept under control first by the common priority of liberation from Fascism, and then by an “identity pact” which consisted in shared anti-Fascism as the basis of the Republic – a pact expressed in the form of the so-called “constitutional arch”. This latter comprised the parties engaged in the definition and subscription of a republican and democratic constitution (Democrazia Cristiana, Partito Comunista Italiano, Partito Socialista Italiano, Partito d’Azione, Partito Repubblicano Italiano, Partito Liberale Italiano), and it established anti-Fascism as the criterion for republican inclusion. This party system continued, for better or for worse, until the early 1990s. And it conferred political concreteness and institutional form to the “identity pact” forged for the Italians by the political forces. Although the parties to the “identitary-constitutional pact” adhered to “partisan” positions and allegiances, the party system was able to create a “common space of mutual recognition” within which the political and ideological struggle among the contending parties could take place. On these bases the party system acted as a surrogate for a sense of common “national belonging” otherwise considered typically uncertain in Italian history. The party system, in other words, became an essential factor of national integration and unity. 15 Analysis of the function of the party system in Italian politics therefore brings to light, besides the democratic question, also the

15 It thus assumes the form of a “functional alternative” to that “agreement on the fundamentals” made possible by a successful process of State-building and Nation-building in both continental Europe and countries outside that context (Farneti, 1983:220). 40

national one. The interweaving between democracy and nation, often denied by political analysts 16 , thus regains (political and explanatory) importance in Italy as well. The destructuring of the party system in the 1990s therefore generated two major perils for Italian politics: one concerned the resilience of democracy, the other that of national unity and integration. In the former case, although the democratic order changed, it did not collapse: democracy did not fall victim to the end of the party system on which it (at least partly) depended. The latter case is somewhat more complicated. The essential precondition for the “democracy of the parties” was national integration. When the party system collapsed, on what new basis could a “democracy of citizens” – which was proposed in the early 1990s to take the place of the “republic of the parties” 17 – fulfill the precondition of every democratic system, namely national unity and integration (Nevola, 2003d)? The theme of the nation thus returned to the Italian cultural and political agenda, also on the wave of the threats of national disintegration raised by leghismo padano (“Padanian leaguism”). 18 Notwithstanding its serious implications, however, the Lega Nord’s challenge was more a symptom of the crisis, an intervening factor, than its cause. But the seriousness of the “national alarm” acquires full significance when viewed in light of the risk of a void in the sense of nation made acute by the destructuring of the party system; that is, by the break-up of the political mechanism which had hitherto contributed to national political unity. Disparate secessionist claims, “anti-political” attitudes, the ambiguous forms of “selfish solidarism” associated with leghismo padano, found fertile terrain within this vacuum. 19 In this framework, during the 1990s, alongside the issue of transition from a “republic of parties” to a “democracy of the citizens”, an unprecedented repoliticization of the “regional territory” occupied the central stage: from a “republic of the parties” to a “democracy of the regions”. The regional theme returned to the fore – in politics, among public opinion-makers, and in scientific inquiry. This happened according to interpretations of the territorial issue that have typically given most prominence to the new “Northern Question” or to the disruptive phenomenon of leghismo. There thus resurfaced scenarios of federalism or regional-local polycentrism generated by programmes to reform the State and, above all, by the political challenges raised by the Lega Nord. This is not the place for a detailed reconstruction of the phenomenon of leghismo padano in its various aspects: its origins in the Veneto region during the 1970s, the (Lombard) leadership of Bossi with his skilful maneuvering on both the regional and national political fronts, the ideology, organization and electoral results of the Lega Nord, its programmes and its language, etc. (Diamanti, 1993; Biorcio, 1997; 2010; Cento Bull and Gilbert, 2001; Gómez-Reino Cachafeiro, 2002; Loiero, 2003; Huysseune, 2006; Pasi and Pedrazzini, 2007; Jori, 2009). Instead, of principal interest here is the fact that the Lega Nord is characterized by a political culture somewhat extraneous or minoritarian with respect to the tradition of the Italian Republic (but apparent in the

16 Examples of this denial are Salvadori, 2001; Bobbio, 1995. In the past, and still to some extent today, political science studies on the Italian party system (and/or on the “agreement on fundamentals” based on the anti-Fascism of the constitutional arch) have largely neglected the importance of the theme of the nation for Italian democracy. 17 For a political-cultural formulation of the thesis of the “democracy of citizens” see Scoppola, 1991. For a criticism of this interpretation see Nevola, 2003d; see also Fedele, 1994. 18 In the early 1990s it was even feared that Italy might cease being a nation, given that nations are not indestructible. See Rusconi, 1993. 19 All this against the background of a general “democratic malaise” provoked by a democracy bereft of “enchantment”: a phenomenon which united Italy with large part of the contemporary democratic regimes. See Nevola, 2007c. 41

history of national unification and during the first half century of unified Italy). It is a political culture of which an essential (but not the only) ingredient is the “politicization” of the North/South territorial cleavage and of the “reasons” for what one may call “Lombardy-Veneto nordism”. 20 The “Northern Question” has thus arisen. It is in this setting that the Lega’s strong emphasis on the territory-based identitary question – albeit declined in different ways – can be explained. The Lega’s identitary focus has always been on the so-called “Padania” (the Po Valley with its historical, ethno-cultural features, and economic interests). Whence derives the offensive (though today relatively muted) against the primacy of the Italian national identity; but also against the South, against globalization or a centralist Europe based on the Nation-State, and against multiculturalism or the increasing presence of immigrant communities (especially if non-European or of non-Christian culture and religion). Compared with other types of Italian regionalism, that of the Lega Nord is distinguished by two further features: it does not concern a single region but extends (expansively and progressively) across several regions; 21 its political-territorial base does not consist solely of peripheral or marginal areas: the Lega is also successful in dynamic territories of the Italian socio-economic structure, ones rich with political and civic traditions (principally Veneto and Lombardy). As evidenced, for instance, by research at the Fondazione Agnelli of Turin, the origins of the Lega’s notion of Padania date back to 1989. 22 Although definition of its boundaries remains uncertain and ambiguous, Padania is a typical case of the “invention of tradition” and of a “homeland” (Heimat) (Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1983; Various Authors, 2007), with all the associated collective rituals, symbols, recreational, cultural and economic associations, and grass- roots social and political mobilization. Over the years, the goal of self-government, or at least some degree of autonomy for the North, has been pursued with a variety of means: pressure for institutional reforms which convert a centralistic Nation-State into a federal system; demands for the granting of a “special statute” or the devolution of greater powers to the Padania regions; protest against fiscal centralism and claims for fiscal federalism; the threat of secession. 23 In this way the Lega Nord has achieved good – sometimes outstanding – political and electoral results. For instance, already in the 1995 administrative elections it was the first party in northern Italy, with over 20% of the votes. It has been part of the government coalition in several (the centre-right governments headed by Berlusconi in 1994, 2001-06, 2008-today) or part of the centre-left parliamentary majority (the majority which supported the 1994-96

20 The historical and political-cultural father of this nordism was Carlo Cattaneo. See Morra, 1993; Ciuffoletti, 1994; Gangemi, 1994. Cattaneo, not by chance, has been cited by Gianfranco Miglio – a political scientist and the ideologue of an important phase of leghismo under Bossi. A scholar of federalism, of State doctrine, a theoretician of the “decisionism” propounded by Carl Schmitt, Miglio is an intellectual who has traversed most of the political history of the Italian Republic. He was one of the founders of political science in post-war Italy and on several occasions has been adviser to Italian political leaders in government: initially in the area of the DC; then, in 1980s, with Craxi (PSI). See Ferrari, 1993; Gangemi, 2003. 21 Of interest from this point of view are the Lega Nord’s recent electoral results (2009 elections for the , regional and local elections of 2010), especially in important regions of central or “red” Italy (above all Emilia-Romagna and ), historic strongholds of the parties on the left. See Jori, 2009. 22 See Various Authors, 1992; 1993; Pacini, 1994; See also Crainz, 1994. The Fondazione Agnelli is a private study and research centre (mainly economic-social and political), connected with the Agnelli, the leading family of Italian capitalism and owners of the Fiat industrial group. 23 For a framing of Northern League secessionism in the political theory on secession see Nevola, 1998. 42

“technocratic government” headed by Dini). Since 1994 the Lega has been one of the regionalist parties with the largest and most continuous representations in the European Parliament (Caciagli, 2006). Further demonstrating the Lega’s electoral success is its recent electoral performance: in the general election of 2008 it obtained more than 8% of votes nationwide; in the European elections of 2009 more than 10%, and in the regional ones of 2010 almost 13%. In all three cases it was the third largest party at national level behind the two “pole-parties” (Popolo della Libertà and Partito Democratico). This success is all the more marked considering the results achieved in the Padania constituencies, where the Lega is effectively present as a and acts as a political interpreter and entrepreneur at the same time, and where it is often the party which obtains the largest electoral consensus. 24 If a regional identity also consists in the particular party-electoral pattern assumed by a certain territory, we may say that the Lega Nord has been able to create a Padanian regional identity, at least to some extent. Aside from certain “special statute” regions, nowhere else in Italy are there expressions of political subculture equally able to politicize a territorial identity (not even the strong Communist and Christian Democrat subcultures of past decades). A party’s political- electoral success depends, as we know, on numerous and diverse factors, which cannot be itemized here. Nevertheless, the characteristics of Lega’s success suggest that it has also been due to the movement’s capacity (organizational, ideological, symbolic) to mobilize resources and political consensus around the identitary question of the Padanian territories. The Lega’s identitary politics find fertile ground in the persistence of certain marked “territorial differences” (of an economic, civic-political and administrative type) – although it is sometimes only by means of mental stereotypes that such differences are related to a simple North/South dualism. Nonetheless, the fact remains that the Lega has been able to give political- identitarian voice (ethnocultural, symbolic, economic) to important regions in northern Italy. In a certain sense, it has retranslated, to the advantage of these latter, the North/South opposition rooted in the history of united Italy, so that a “Northern Question” has arisen in contrast to the more traditional “Southern Question”. Padania may perhaps be only a “promised land”; yet it may be precisely because it is a “promised land” that it is able to arouse identification with, and a sense of collective belonging to, a territory – to the point of provoking demands for self-government.

7. CONCLUDING REMARKS

7.1 ON THE ITALIAN CASE

Notwithstanding a profoundly different political and cultural context, both in Italy and internationally, on observing the issues central to the recent debate on the Italian nation, one is struck by how closely they resemble those of the past (Nevola, 1999; 2003c): the fatherland as opposed to nationalism; the supranational or post-national superseding of the nation; the civic- political nation as opposed to the ethno-cultural nation; the historical-political continuity or discontinuity of the fatherland of the Italians; North/South dualism; the scant sense of national belonging that characterizes some territorial areas; and federalism. The same partly applies to other topics: the need to treat the national question on the two separate levels of elite culture and mass culture; the contrast between the “Catholic nation” and the “popular nation”; the relationship between national, regional and European identities. This persistence of themes from the past history

24 For instance, in those constituencies, the Lega Nord obtained more than 30% of the votes in the 2009 European elections. 43

of united Italy means that, still today, they concern unresolved, though updated, issues in Italian collective life. These themes from a “past which returns”, however, are flanked by newer ones which bear the imprints of the social, political, cultural and also generational changes that exploded with the transformation of Italian democracy in the 1990s. Some of them warrant especial mention. 1) The theme of the nexus between nation and democracy. After the Second World War this nexus was regarded as vital (though amid numerous qualifications); in subsequent decades, however, the virtuous relationship between democracy and nation was liquidated: the nation was reduced to an artificial construct wanted and exploited by certain elites; national identity and belonging were regarded as unnecessary and as harmful for democratic politics; the nation was equated with the aggressive, racist and bellicose nationalism (fascist, but not only) of the twentieth century. Today, instead, the idea that a national identity could be a positive condition for a “good democracy” is once again apparent in Italian political culture. 2) The theme closely connected with the previous one, that the fatherland for Italians can today assume the form (in a transitional phase between the “first” and “second” Republics) of a “constitutional patriotism” (Nevola, 2003a). 3) The theme of the identity of Padania and the unprecedented expression of the territorial cleavage in terms of the “Northern Question”. 4) The theme of the possibility of an Italian national identity in a period characterized by increasing intra- and extra-European immigration and therefore by the growing presence of other cultures in Italy as well: a circumstance which obliges to recast the national question in light of problems of socio-cultural, religious and political integration in contexts often denoted with the (ambiguous) term “multiculturalism”.

7.2 THE “STRENGTH” OF NATIONAL IDENTITY

Several studies have examined the impact of sub-national political culture on Nation-State cohesion: some have argued that sub-national political cultures with an ethno-linguistic basis “used to provoke and will probably provoke more and more centrifugal pressures” (Caciagli, 1988:454). Such sub-national cultures manifest certain types of political antagonism. However, history has shown that such antagonism has not always taken the form of radical and violent claims. That is due in part to repression, coercive integration and the political-cultural socialization skills of the Nation- State. But it is also due to the success of “recognition politics” between centre and peripheries. A collective identity is formed, in part, by “recognition, un-recognition or misrecognition” by others; from this derives the political importance of the “struggle for recognition” in the formation processes of collective identities (Taylor, 1991; Habermas, 1993). The presence of appropriate political institutions able to regulate a plurality of collective identities is essential for such a reciprocal recognition to come about. The regionalization of Nation-State structures, federal systems and consociational political systems in many cases satisfy the need for reciprocal recognition. Political arrangements of this kind are also able to respond to “centrifugal regionalisms” whose most radical claims for independence often conceal a strategic-political aim to achieve more moderate goals. It seems that this is the Italian case of the Lega Nord and its claims for “Padania”. Success in reciprocal recognition between Nation-State and regional areas also depends on the role of the political elites: their behaviours and attitudes strongly influence the quality of national integration and the recognition of national and sub-national territorial identities. However, political-institutional solutions and the attitudes of political elites must be sustained also by a political culture that operates at mass level as well; a political culture able to create a feeling of 44

“us”, of shared belonging to a national community. This political culture must in particular create a national identity able to contain the specific identities of the territories that form a Nation-State. Anyway, some cases of centrifugal regionalism still exist: regionalism characterized by strong historical-cultural rootedness (often centred on language or on religion) and by radical claims (for self-government, political independence, control of economic and fiscal resources, identitarian closing of the citizenship system). This is perhaps the case of Belgium. What prospects of success does this kind of regionalism have? In Europe, the past few years have seen the emergence of a thesis that views the “region” as a political-territorial and economic subject able to affirm its identitary centrality vis-à-vis the Nation-State. This has been due to the presumed surrender of the Nation-State and to the political malaise afflicting the national democracies. National politics have been discredited by corruption or by the failure to find satisfactory answers to citizens’ fears (economic crisis, , crime, immigration, cultural diversity). But this thesis of the identitary centrality of the region compared to the Nation-State is not convincing. It does not persuade at least when it implies that authoritative bonds (“political obligations”) should be shifted from the Nation-State to the regional space. In this case, in fact, the region should acquire the political characteristics of a Nation-State, but the chances of this happening are very small. This identitary-territorial change of authoritative bonds would require demanding conditions and political resources very difficult to find for the actors seeking to achieve this goal. The thesis of the region’s identitary centrality focuses on a perspective with a solid historical-political basis and, mostly, on the contingent and changing nature of forms of political unification. But the crux of this view is that, in the current historical-political setting (especially in democracies), the “region” (or similar “subnational” as well as transnational aggregations) seems unable to pass the “political unification test”. Exceptions are the centrifugal phenomena of Eastern Europe that arose from the communist system (examples are the former Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia); as regards Western democratic Europe, Belgium is the case to keep under particular observation. What a “region” lacks is not a common political culture or a cultural identity (which are sometimes even stronger than those of the Nation-State) but a political identity, the translation of the collective identity into binding loyalty (“political obligation”), mostly when multiple identities are exposed to “belonging conflicts” (Nevola, 2007a). Consequently, neither can the notions of a “Europe of regions” nor of “regionalization of the globalized space” challenge the Nation-State model. The centuries-long formation process of the Nation-State helps to understand that the Nation-State’s success lies in the strength and distinctiveness of its identitary system. This also explains why the Nation-State is able to respond to critical moments, when it proves its ability to draw on surprising resources in order to deal with identitary challenges (Nevola, 2007b). The Nation-State is still the political-territorial and symbolical space in which political premises and instruments are available to manage public problems authoritatively. It is probably for this reason that citizens seem particularly attached to the Nation-State in comparison with other political-territory spaces (Haller, 2003).

7.3 THE “VALUE” OF NATIONAL IDENTITY

The continuing centrality of the Nation-State and national identity also depend on the “good reasons” in their favour. These “good reasons” are linked to democracy viewed as a “political value” (or as a “meta public good”). Historically, the Nation-State has been the “container” of democracy, that is, the political space in which democratization has taken place. The Nation-State is obviously not the only historical container of democracy. I am not saying that the Nation-State is 45

the only environment favourable to democracy; I am saying that: 1) the Nation-State is the arrangement best able to receive and develop mass liberal democracy; 2) the establishment and consolidation of such a democracy take place in a political space that has already been “unified”. The type of unity may change over time, but unification remains the necessary condition for democracy (Rokkan, 1970; Dahl, 1989; Linz and Stepan, 1996; Nevola, 2007a). Democracy is, among other things, the acceptance of differences and divisions; it includes freedom, pluralism and competition. The individuals and groups that form a democracy may divide and enter into conflict with each other once they have defined “who they are”: in other words, after they have established themselves as the “we” that comprises the variety of ideas and interests sustained by those individuals and groups. This close and virtuous interdependence between the “unified political space” (Nation-State) and the “pluralist political space” (democracy) not only concerns the moment of “genesis” of a democratic system. The subsequent practice of democratic citizenship itself requires the precious resource of national identity so that it can be nourished and provide citizens with “benefits and rights”. This argument is related to the view of democracy as a “meta public good”; and like any other public good, democracy entails “costs and duties” in its production, allocation and distribution. 25 Maintaining and nourishing the “benefits” provided by a democratic citizenship system (the variety of rights and goods) requires that a political community has members willing to assume the relative “costs”. On this view, the citizenship benefits/costs balance refers to a “critical line”. The problem of the “critical line” formulated in terms of costs/benefits and their balance shows that democracy possesses a “utilitarian structure” for the production and allocation of public goods. “Democratic utilitarianism” may sometimes be inefficient or ineffective, or at any rate unable to achieve the objective pursued. “Democratic ” (Almond and Powell Jr., 1978) is an alternative to the democratic utilitarianism sometimes employed by democratic regimes. But there is a further resource that a democratic community can use before it resorts to solutions of “democratic authoritarianism”: it is precisely this resource that is denoted with the notion of “political identity”. By virtue of their “belonging resources”, groups and individuals assume costs and duties in the production of democratic citizenship which exceed their own benefits and rights: that is, they “pay” in terms of attitudes and conducts, time and money for others unable or unwilling to do so. An important role in such a situation is played by reciprocal recognition and loyalty, solidarity and trust. 26 The “sense of belonging”, as we know, may assume different features, some more “universalistic”, others more “particularistic”. But one of its typical forms is certainly the nation- based one. This form has historically predominated in the Western world, at least in the last two or three centuries. National identity is a case of political identity on a territorial basis, a successful historical case that has prevailed over its territory-identitary rivals. Although a national identity requires the existence of “shared” elements (of various kinds), 27 this does not entail that a national political community is necessarily “homogenous”, “totalitarian” or “exclusive”. Sharing and identification reflect the existence of a “connective texture” (socio-cultural, ethical-political,

25 I refer to such “benefits” as: freedom of expression; neutrality and certainty of the law; representation, political equality and pluralism; social benefits and services to ensure minimum levels of welfare and social security; and to such “costs” as: tolerance of difference; legal behaviour and compliance with norms; political participation and democratic vigilance; payment of and voluntary work. See Nevola, 1994. 26 The intimate connection between democracy, trust, collective identity and nation has been rightly emphasized by Eisenstadt, 1999. 27 One typically thinks of language and cultural traditions, religion and moral systems, usages and customs, ethnicity and territory, political, administrative, legal, economic ideas and institutions, ideals and sense of a common “destiny”. 46

institutional, symbolic) resulting from “strings” of different colours. The role of such a texture is to hold together even pluralist and conflictual societies like the contemporary ones. The doctrine of “democratic patriotism” responds to these conditions. 28 In other words, it is clear that not all Nation-States are democratic. Nor are they all fertile ground for democracy: in so far as they are successful political units, they are necessary but not sufficient conditions for the birth and growth of democratic systems. Moreover, not all types of national identity prove to be fruitful resources for democracy. National identity may in fact assume, and has done so in history, different features. In the past as well as the present we find national identities that are closed, exclusive, monist, mono-ethnic. These are national identities “dissonant” or “regressive” with respect to the principles of democratic pluralism. However, since the end of the eighteenth century (see the United States, France) an open and inclusive type of national identity has progressively imposed itself – also in regard to ethnic and cultural differences. This is the case of the so-called “civic-political” nation, the “nation of citizens” or “constitutional patriotism”. 29 Despite its problems and its limitations, the Nation-State, with its political-identitary profile, has proved its ability to respond positively to the requirements of democracy. In many cases the Nation-State has passed the democratization test. By contrast, the democratic test seems more problematic for the political project of radical independentist regionalism. Some regionalisms claim to give life to new political unities through the separation of a regional area from the Nation-State. Opposed to the multicultural, multi-ethnic or multi-national features of the Nation-State, they emphasize their own particular identities characterized by cultural or ethnic homogeneity. If successful, this kind of regional claim would create political regimes failing the democracy test. It would do so because along this route political regimes of the “ethnocratic” type would emerge characterized by a strong liberal-democratic deficit; or “ethnodemocratic” regimes characterized by a milder liberal-democratic deficit. A further case still remains: that of regionalisms which seek to create new political units open to the many faces of democratic pluralism. But in this case their claims for self-determination and self-government cannot be coherently founded on solely ethnic or historical-cultural homogeneous bases. These would be regionalisms put themselves forward as new democratic Nation-States on a smaller scale. This scenario poses the problem of the “dimensions” of the political democratic unit: a classic problem in both history and democracy doctrines (Althusius, Rousseau, Madison) (Dahl, 1989). Probably the best argument for the advocates of “small-scale democracy” is that in small units political processes are closer to citizens and it is possible to achieve a more immediate and solid collective solidarity. Even presuming that these positive aspects are welcome for the equality of a democratic system, they still entail other problematic aspects for collective life: fragmentation of the international system into numerous small units, which increases the likelihood of conflict; greater difficulties in the governance of international problems; the weakness of political units in their relationships with other units; low structural and functional differentiation of society; limits on the ability to produce public goods responding to the current standards of contemporary developed societies. Finally, the good principle of the proximity of citizens to the decision-making system can be realized within a federal arrangement as well. In the end, centrifugal regionalism exhibits a certain democratic ambiguity. The Italian case of the Lega Nord confirms the democratic ambiguities of centrifugal regionalism with its oscillation between neo-democratic populism and neo-communitarianism, between federalism and secessionism, ethnocracy, ethno-democracy and democracy. But the Lega Nord also exemplifies the

28 For a socio-political analysis of the bonds of patriotic identity and national belonging see the important and unjustly neglected Grodzins (1956) and its original distinction between democratic patriotism and totalitarian patriotism. See Nevola, 2007a. 29 On the concept of constitutional patriotism see Nevola, 2007a. 47

tactical ability of a political movement which seems able to obtain recognition as a territorial force of both “government and opposition” at the national level. “Padania” gives identitary energy to northern leghismo, but its transformation into a “promised land” has also become an effective instrument in the able hands of a political entrepreneur. “Padania” identitary claims introduce a “potential of uncertainty” into national politics, both for opponents and allies (Nevola, 1990): a “potential” that seems to be fruitful for the political fortune of the Lega Nord but not necessarily for the regional and national quality of Italian democracy. Considering that “Padania” does not have a unitary (political) history, nor a unitary culture, nor a proper common language, this idea has not failed to engender a mobilization of feelings and interests. But secession is another story.

REFERENCES

Aga Rossi, E. (1998), Una nazione allo sbando , , il Mulino. Almond, G. A. and G. B. Powell Jr. (1978), Comparative Politics , Boston, Little Brown & Co. Badie, B. (1995), La fin des territoires , Paris, Fayard . Bagnasco, A. (1977), Tre Italie . La problematica territoriale dello sviluppo italiano , Bologna, Il Mulino. Bedeschi, G. (2002), La fabbrica delle ideologie , Roma/Bari, Laterza. Benhabib, S. (2002), The Claims of the Cultures , Princeton, Princeton University Press. Berger, P. L. and Th. Luckmann (1966), The Social Construction of Reality , New York, Doubleday. Biorcio, R. (1997), La Padania promessa. La storia, le idee e la logica d’azione della Lega Nord , Milano, Il Saggiatore. Biorcio, R. (2010), La rivincita del Nord. La Lega dalla contestazione al governo , Roma/Bari, Laterza. Bobbio, N. (1993), Profilo ideologico del ‘900 , Milano, Garzanti. Bobbio, N. (1995), “Quale Italia?”, Reset , 13. Bonora, P. and P. Coppola (1997), L’Italia governata , in Coppola (1997):429-474. Busino, G. (1980), “La cultura italiana tra ‘800 e ‘900 e le origini del nazionalismo”, Rivista Storica Italiana , 92 (2):470-481. Caciagli, M. (1988), “Quante Italie? Persistenza e trasformazione delle culture politiche subnazionali”, Polis , 2 (3):429-457. Caciagli, M. (2006), Regioni d’Europa. Devoluzioni, regionalismi, integrazione europea , Bologna, Il Mulino (first published in 2003). Caciagli, M. (2010), Fra Arlecchino e Pulcinella. La cultura politica degli italiani nell’età di Berlusconi , Trapani, Di Girolamo. Cafagna, L. (1994), Nord e Sud. Non fare a pezzi l’unità d’Italia , Venezia, Marsilio. Calise, M. (1994), Dopo la partitocrazia , Torino, Einaudi. Cartocci, R. (2002), Diventare grandi in tempi di cinismo. Identità nazionale, memoria collettiva e fiducia nelle istituzioni tra i giovani italiani , Bologna, Il Mulino. Cartocci, R. (2007), Mappe del tesoro , Bologna, Il Mulino. Castells, M. (1997), The Power of Identity , Oxford, Blackwell. Cento Bull, A. and M. Gilbert (2001), The Lega Nord and the Northern Question in Italian Politics , Houndmills, Palgrave. Ciuffoletti, Z. (1994), Federalismo e regionalismo. Da Cattaneo alla Lega , Roma/Bari, Laterza. Clavero, B. (1993), “‘Territorios forales’: una pagina spagnola del palinsesto europeo”, in P. Schiera (ed), Le autonomie e l’Europa. Profili storici e comparati , Bologna, Il Mulino:15-45. Connor, W. (1994), Ethnonationalism. The Quest for Understanding , Princeton, Princeton University Press. 48

Coppola, P. (1997), Geografia politica delle regioni italiane , Torino, Einaudi. Cotta, M. (1994), “Il governo di partito in Italia”, in M. Caciagli, F. Cazzola, L. Morlino and S. Passigli (eds), L’Italia fra crisi e trasformazione , Roma/Bari, Laterza:119-139. Crainz, G. (1994), Padania. Il mondo dei braccianti dall’Ottocento alla fuga dalle campagne , Roma, Donzelli. Dahl, R. A. (1989), Democracy and its Critics , Yale University Press, New Haven. De Winter, L. and H. Tuersan (eds) (1998), Regional Politics in Western Europe , New York, Routledge. Diamanti, I. (1993), La Lega. Geografia, storia e sociologia di un soggetto politico , Roma, Donzelli. Diamanti, I. (2009), Mappe dell’Italia politica , Bologna, Il Mulino. Di Ciommo, E. (2005), I confini dell’identità. Teorie e modelli di nazione in Italia , Roma/Bari, Laterza. Di Nucci, L., Galli della Loggia E. (eds) (2003), Due nazioni , Bologna, Il Mulino. Eisenstadt, S. N. (1999), Paradoxes of Democracy , Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press. Elliott, A, and Ch. Lemert (2006), The New Individualism , London, Routledge. Farneti, P. (1983), Il sistema dei partiti in Italia , Bologna, Il Mulino. Fedele, M. (1994), Democrazia referendaria , Roma, Donzelli. Fedele, M. (2010), Né uniti né divisi , Roma, Donzelli. Ferrari, G. (1993), Gianfranco Miglio. Storia di un giacobino nordista , Milano, Liber Internazionale. Formigoni, G. (1998), L’Italia dei cattolici, Bologna, Il Mulino. Galli della Loggia, E. (1996), La morte della patria , Roma/Bari, Laterza. Galli della Loggia, E. (1998), L’identità italiana , Bologna, Il Mulino. Gangemi, G. (1994). La questione federalista. Zanardelli, Cattaneo e i cattolici bresciani , Torino, Liviana-Utet. Gangemi, G. (2003), Federalismo e secessionismo nel dibattito politico-culturale italiano, in Nevola (2003b):133-152. Gentile, E. (1997), La grande Italia , Milano, Mondadori. Glazer, N. and D. P. Moynihan (eds) (1975), Ethnicity: Theory and Experiences , Cambridge (Ms), Harvard University Press. Gómez-Reino Cachafeiro, M. (2002), Ethnicity and Nationalism in Italian Politics. Inventing the Padania , Burlington, Ashgate. Grilli di Cortona, P. (2003), Stati, nazioni e nazionalismi in Europa , Bologna, Il Mulino. Godzins, M. (1956), The Loyal and the Disloyal , Chicago, Chicago University Press. Habermas, J. (1993), “Struggles for Recognition in Constitutional States”, European Journal of Philosophy , 1 (2):128-155. Hall, S. (2008), Identités et cultures. Politiques des Cultural Studies , Paris, Éditions Amsterdam. Haller, M. (2003), Identità e orgoglio nazionale in Europa , in Nevola (2003a):51-79. Haupt, H.-G, M. G. Mueller and S. Woolf (eds) (1998), Regional and National Identities in Europe in the XIX th and XX th Centuries , The Hague, Kluwer Law International. Hechter, M. (1975), Internal Colonialism. The Celtic Fringe in British National Development, 1536-1966 , Berkeley, University of California Press. Hobsbawm, E. J. and T. Ranger (eds) (1983), The Invention of Tradition , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Huntington, S. P. (1993), “The Clash of Civilizations”, Foreign Affairs , 72 (3):22-49. Huysseune, M. (2006), Modernity and Secession , The Social Sciences and the Political Discourse of the Lega Nord in Italy , Oxford, Berghahn. Impagliazzo, M. (ed) (2004), La nazione cattolica , Milano, Guerini e Associati. 49

Incisa di Camerana, L. (1996), L’Italia della Luogotenenza , Milano, Corbaccio. Jori, F. (2009), Dalla Liga alla Lega. Storia, movimenti, protagonisti , Venezia, Marsilio. Kellas, J. G. (1991), The Politics of Nationalism and Ethnicity , London, Macmillan. Kitschelt, H. (1997), “European Party Systems. Continuity and Change”, in M. Rhodes, P. Heywood and V. Wright (eds), Developments in Western Europe Politics , London, Macmillan:131-150. Lanaro, S. (1988), L’Italia nuova. Identità e sviluppo, 1861-1988 , Torino, Einaudi. Lanaro, S. (1992), Storia dell’Italia repubblicana ,Venezia, Marsilio. Lepre, A. (1994), Italia addio?Unità e disunità dal 1860 a oggi , Milano, Mondadori. Lepre, A. (1999), Storia della prima Repubblica , Bologna, Il Mulino. Lipset, S. M. and S. Rokkan S. (eds) (1967), Party Systems and Voter Alignments , New York, Free Press. Linz, J.J. and A. Stepan (1996), Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation, Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press. Loiero, A. (2003), Il patto di ferro, Roma, Donzelli. Luverà, B. (1999), I confini dell’odio. Il nazionalismo etnico e la nuova destra europea , Roma, Editori Riuniti. Mair, P. (1998), “I conflitti politici in Europa. Persistenza e mutamento”, Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica , 28 (3): 425-450. Maalouf, A. (1998), Les identités meurtrieres , Paris, Grasset & Fasquelle. Marchetti, V. (1993), Dallo Statuto alla Costituzione , in P. Schiera (ed), Le autonomie e l’Europa. Profili storici e comparati , Bologna, Il Mulino:203-231. Mastropaolo, A. (1996), La Repubblica dei destini incrociati , Firenze, La Nuova Italia. Moisi, D. (2009), The Geopolitics of Emotions , New York, Doubleday. Morra, G. (1993), Breve storia del pensiero federalista , Milano, Mondadori. Nevola, G. (1990), “I movimenti sociali tra Scilla e Cariddi. Logica di azione collettiva e potenziale di incertezza”, Quaderni di Sociologia , 34 (13):63-91. Nevola, G. (1994), “Osservazioni sui costi dei diritti di cittadinanza”, in P. Donati and I. Colozzi (eds), La cultura della cittadinanza oltre lo Stato assistenziale , Roma, Edizioni Lavoro:179-207. Nevola, G. (1998), “La politica della secessione”, Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica , 28 (1):119- 156. Nevola, G. (1999), “Nazione-Italia”, Rassegna Italiana di Sociologia , 40 (3):435-460. Nevola, G. (2001), Education and Political Socialisation Between National Identity and European Citizenship , in M. Haller (ed), The Making of European Union , New York, Springer:331-359. Nevola, G. (ed.) (2003a), Una patria per gli italiani? La questione nazionale oggi tra storia, cultura e politica , Roma, Carocci. Nevola, G. (ed) (2003b), Altre Italie. Identità nazionale e Regioni a statuto speciale , Roma, Carocci. Nevola, G. (2003c), “La nazione italiana: un ritorno dopo il congedo”, in Nevola (2003a):19-49. Nevola, G. (2003d), “From the ‘Republic of Parties’ to a ‘Fatherland for Italians’”, Journal of Modern Italian Studies , 8 (2):249-265. Nevola, G. (2003e), “Introduzione. Perché le Regioni a statuto speciale: questioni di identità nazionale”, in Nevola (2003b):VII-XLV. Nevola, G. (2007a), Democrazia Costituzione Identità , /Torino, De Agostini-Utet. Nevola, G. (2007b), “Il modello identitario dello Stato-nazione. Genesi, natura e persistenza”, Quaderni di Sociologia , 51 (44). Nevola, G. (2007c), “Il malessere della democrazia e la sfida dell’’incantesimo democratico’”, Il Politico , 72 (1):165-200. Ohmae, K. (1995), The End of the Nation State , New York, Simon & Schuster. 50

Pacini, M. (1994), Scelta federale e unità nazionale. Estratti da un programma in itinere della Fondazione Giovanni Agnelli , Torino, Fondazione Agnelli. Pasi, P. and I. Pedrazzini (2007), “Regional Identity in North-East Italy”, in Various Authors, 2007:163-281. Patriarca, S. (2010), Italianità. La costruzione del carattere nazionale , Roma/Bari, Laterza. Peluffo, P. (2008), La riscoperta della Patria , Milano, Rizzoli. Putnam, R. D. (2003), Making Democracy Work. Civic Tradition in Modern Italy , Princeton, Princeton University Press. Rokkan, S. (1970), Citizens, Elections, Parties , Oslo, Universitetsforlaget. Rokkan, S. (1999), State Formation, Nation-Building, and Mass Politics in Europe , Oxford, Oxford University Press. Rokkan, S. and Urwin D. W. (1983), Economy, Territory, Identity. Politics of West European Peripheries , London, Sage. Rokkan, S. and D. W. Urwin (eds) (1982), The Politics of Territorial Identity , London, Sage. Romanelli, R. (1995), Centralismo e autonomie , in R. Romanelli (ed), Storia dello Stato italiano dall’unità a oggi , Roma, Donzelli:125-186. Ruffilli, R. (1993), “Le istanze autonomistiche dell’antifascismo e della resistenza”, in P. Schiera (ed.), Le autonomie e l’Europa. Profili storici e comparati , Bologna, Il Mulino:371-388 (originally published in 1976). Rusconi, G. E. (1993), Se cessiamo di essere una nazione. Tra etnodemocrazie regionali e cittadinanza europea , Bologna, Il Mulino. Rusconi, G. E. (1997), Patria e repubblica , Bologna, Il Mulino. Salvadori, M. L. (2001), Storia d’Italia e crisi di regime , Bologna, Il Mulino. Sassen, S. (2006), Territory, Authority, Rights , Princeton, Princeton University Press. Scoppola, P. (1991), La repubblica dei partiti , Bologna, Il Mulino. Scoppola, P. (1993), Nazione e storiografia , in G. E. Rusconi (ed), Nazione, Etnia, cittadinanza in Italia e in Europa , , La Scuola:19-36. Smith, A. D. (1981), The Ethnic Revival in the Modern World , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Spadolini, G. (ed) (1994), Nazione e nazionalità in Italia , Roma/Bari, Laterza. Taylor, Ch. (1991), The Malaise of Modernity , Cambridge (Ms), Harvard University Press. Todorov, T. (2008), La peur des barbares , Paris, Laffont. Traniello, F. (1993), La storiografia italiana del dopoguerra e il concetto di nazione , in G. E. Rusconi (ed), Nazione, Etnia, cittadinanza in Italia e in Europa , Brescia, La Scuola:37-48. Tremonti, G. and G. Vitaletti (1994), Il federalismo fiscale , Roma/Bari, Laterza. Trigilia, C. (1992), Sviluppo senza autonomia , Bologna, Il Mulino. Various Authors (1992), La Padania, una regione italiana in Europa , Torino, Edizioni Fondazione Agnelli. Various Authors (1993), Nuove regioni e riforma dello Stato , Torino, Edizioni Fondazione Agnelli. Various Authors (1997), Le idee costituzionali della resistenza , Roma, Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri, Dipartimento per l’Informazione e l’Editoria. Various Authors (2007), New Regional Identity and Strategic Essentialism , Berlin, LIT Verlag. Various Authors (2009), Les idéntités collectives à l’heure de la mondialisation , Paris, CNRS Editions. Veneruso, D. (1993), Dal mito della nazione alla perdita di rilevanza dell’unità nazionale, in G. E. Rusconi (ed), Nazione, Etnia, cittadinanza in Italia e in Europa , Brescia, La Scuola:65-89. Woolf, S. (2000), “The Political Discourse of Italian Regionalism : the example of the Valle d'Aosta”, in C. Dipper, L. Klinkhammer and A. Nuetzenadel (eds), Europaeische Sozialgeschichte , Berlin, Duncker & Humblot:403-412. 51

ANNEX 1. Vote-gathering capacity of the party of the “Constitutional Arch”. Political elections 1946-2008, Chamber of Deputies (1994-2001 only proportional quota). Percentages. 1946* 1948 1953 1958 1963 PCI 18.9 PCI + PSI 31.0 PCI 22.6 PCI 22.7 PCI 25.3 PSI 20.7 PSDI 7.1 PSI 12.7 PSI 14.2 PSI 13.8 DC 35.2 DC 48.5 PSDI 4.5 PSDI 4.6 PSDI 6.1 PLI 6.8 PLI 3.8 DC 40.1 DC 42.3 DC 38.3 PRI 4.4 PRI 2.5 PLI 3.0 PLI 3.5 PLI 7.0 PRI 1.6 PRI 1.4 PRI 1.4 Total 86.0 Total 92.9 Total 84.5 Total 88.7 Total 91.9 1968 1972 1976 1979 1983 PCI 26.9 PCI 27.1 PCI 34.4 PCI 30.4 PCI 29.9 PSI + PSDI 14.5 PSI 9.6 PSI 9.6 PSI 9.8 PSI 11.4 DC 39.1 PSDI 5.1 PSDI 3.4 PSDI 3.8 PSDI 4.1 PLI 5.8 DC 38.7 DC 38.7 DC 38.3 DC 32.2 PRI 2.0 PLI 3.9 PLI 1.3 PLI 1.9 PLI 2.9 PSIUP 4.4 PRI 2.9 PRI 3.1 PRI 3.0 PRI 5.1 PSIUP 1.9 Total 92.7 Total 89.2 Total 90.5 Total 87.2 Total 86.3 1987 1992 1994 1996 2001 PCI 26.6 PDS 16.1 PDS 20.4 DS 21.1 DS 16.6 PSI 14.3 RC 5.6 RC 6.0 RC 8.6 RC 5.0 PSDI 2.9 PSI 13.6 PSI 2.2 PSI 0.4 PSI 1.0 DC 34.3 PSDI 2.7 PPI – Patto Pop-Prodi 6.8 Margherita 14.5 PLI 2.1 DC 29.7 Segni 15.7 CCD/CDU 5.8 CCD/CDU 3.2 PRI 3.7 PLI 2.9 Rinnov. It. 4.3 PDCI 1.7 PRI 4.4 Dem.Europea 2.4 Total 83.9 Total 75.0 Total 44.3 Total 47.0 Total 44.4 2006 2008 Ulivo 31.3 PD 31.3 33.2 RC 5.4 UD C 5.6 La Rosa La Sinistra- nel Pugno 2.6 L’Arcobaleno 3.1 PDCI 2.3 Partito UDEUR- Socialista 1.0 Popolari 1.4 Sinistra Critica 0.5 I Socialisti 0.3 PLI 0.3 UDC 6.8 Partito Com. dei Dem. Crist. Lavoratori 0.6 - Nuovo PSI 0.8 PLI 0.3 Total 51.6 Total 44.3

52

THE BELGIAN FEDERAL SYSTEM: AN UNSTOPPABLE CENTRIFUGAL DYNAMIC?

Patrick Stouthuysen (*) and Theo Jans (°)

(*) Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Vakgroep Politieke Wetenschappen (°) Maastricht, European Institute of Public Administration

1. INTRODUCTION

Outsiders often are shrewd observers. In the international press the collapse of Belgium is announced at regular times (for example The Economist , 2007; 2008). The Flemish people usually do not get upset from such prophecies of doom; they take it for granted that this is not going to happen. Yet maybe they are too closely involved in order not to lose track of the situation. Those outsiders possibly notice a pattern they do not see: maybe Belgium’s future indeed is not so bright after all. It is understood that the outside world is not always well informed. When reading the story of the relationship between two politicians from opposed language communities – the Flemish Liberal Rik Daems and the Walloon Socialist Sophie Pécriaux – in the international press a few years ago, it seemed as if the outside world simply did not understand the intra- Belgian relations at all ( Le Point , 2006; 2007). When reading about the highly remarkable way the situation was framed – the budding happiness of Flemish leading man Rik and Walloon activist Sophie again reunited a split country, as a consequence of which many Belgians started looking for a partner on the other side of the language boundary – it could only be hoped that whatever is published about other countries, is more based on factual knowledge. Yet indirectly the way in which this fait divers is reported, reveals a lot about the intra-Belgian relations. The correspondents of the Brussels-based foreign newspapers do not speak Dutch and hence are reliant on the Francophone press. If they assess the Belgian situation more tragically than the Flemish are used to, this particularly reveals the mind of the French-speaking compatriots. Apparently they much more bear in mind the possible disintegration of the country, and therefore consistently observe everything that happens in Dutch-speaking Belgium from this perspective. The argument often used that this simply is a matter of wrong perception is actually a non-issue. It is exactly this misrepresentation that makes up a first reason for scepticism regarding the future of the Belgian federation.

53

2. THE ABSENCE OF A SHARED PUBLIC OPINION

Belgium does not have a shared public opinion. The Flemish and Walloon people do not read each other’s newspapers, nor do they watch each other’s television stations. Nowadays even Flemish people interested in politics hardly know about the major issues in the other part of the country, while the French-speaking people equally do not comprehend the issues that keep the Flemish region awake. Is this a problem? Not necessarily. It depends from what you expect the Belgian federation to do. Both French- speaking and Dutch-speaking people can perfectly live in harmony in two separate communities that hardly seem to be in contact with each other, provided their housekeeping and accounts are also kept separate. The moment one expects more from the federation, then indeed there is a problem. If two parties build a welfare state which implies continuous repartitions, as is the case today, then you need more mutual connection and alliance. Talking about a welfare state assumes there is a nation. The Swedish winner of the Noble Prize for economics Gunnar Myrdal predicted that national identities would become more relevant once the provided social services expanded (Myrdal, 1958). If people are asked to contribute to the public interest they will instinctively wonder who will benefit from it. It is easier to go to great lengths when this regards people with whom they can identify themselves and whom in turn they expect to show equal solidarity. The more people are alienated from each other, the less they will trust or know each other. Then it will be easier to suspect the other party from preferring self-interest to the public interest. The less people have in common, the smaller the solidarity basis will be. Repartition then also only works fine within national communities. Being a social democrat, Myrdal regretted this evolution, but as an economist he pointed to a vital requirement for welfare states to function. The relationship between nation and solidarity works both ways. National solidarity assumes that people can put themselves in each other’s situation, which is impossible in case there are substantial income differences. Hence it is remarkable to see that left-wing politicians, for whom solidarity and repartition is a crucial theme, feel so uncomfortable when national identity is at stake. Likewise it is remarkable to see neo- Belgian nationalists such as Marc Reynebeau or Geert van Istendael, defending national solidarity, while at the same time singing the praises of the “nation that is not a nation” (Reynebeau, 2003; Van Istendael, 2005). Solidarity and repartition will only work well when people are convinced they are part of a community. And that is exactly what Belgium today is not, because French-speaking and Dutch-speaking people hardly know each other, mainly because they do not speak each other’s language. The British 19 th -century political philosopher John Stuart Mill directly connected language and democracy (Mill, 1974). He predicted that in the long run survival of democratic institutions is impeded in a country existing of different communities: “Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of representative government, cannot exist. The influences which form opinions and decide political acts, are different in the different sections of the country. An altogether different set of leaders have the confidence of one part of the country and of another. The same books, 54 newspapers, pamphlets, speeches, do not reach them. One section does not know what opinions are circulating in another. The same incidents, the same acts, the same system of government, affect them in different ways.” Political communities only work well if members share the language (Miller, 1995). Otherwise said: if the communities’ members can grasp what the other party is interested in and if they can assume each other’s situation. Multilanguage-speaking nations need to appeal to a lingua franca (which, unless it is a neutral language, will always cause one party to be treated unfairly) or to translators. In both cases there is a high risk of misconceptions. Therefore, who wants the Belgian federation to work well should see to it that there is some kind of shared public opinion. This is only possible with the realization of an actual bilingualism. This however is impossible as a result of the current language legislation. And even if along the Francophone side today one occasionally hears that the language laws were a mistake, responsible for the growing apart of the different linguistic communities, it is unlikely that both parts of the country will reach agreement on the same language legislation reform (Witte and Van Velthoven, 2000).

3. THE POLITICS OF REFORMING THE STATE

Dutch-speaking and French-speaking people nowadays live in political communities that develop separately, at a different pace and presumably also in different directions (Deschouwer, 2009). It is remarkable to see how fast this transformation has taken place. After all, the federal idea and the federalised institutions based on it are both fairly new. The reform of the state started in the 1970s, while it got most of its current shape in the 1990s. Before that period, Belgium was a centralized state, and ideas about political and administrative decentralization did not necessarily allude to the language based demarcation lines. There was, for example, speculation about a federal reform based on the existing – at that time nine - provinces. The fact that eventually language would be such a decisive factor was neither planned, nor foreseen. The current federal order based on linguistic communities is the unexpected outcome of a political battle between parties each having quite diverging objectives. To understand Belgian political history, it is mandatory to take into consideration the fact that economic development did not coincide for both parts of the country (Witte, Craeybeckx and Meynen, 2000). At the beginning of the 19 th century, Belgium was the cradle of the industrial revolution. Yet this early industrial development mainly took place in Walloon Belgium, the French-speaking part. Many generations of Flemish people migrated to the coal mines or the steel mills in the Borinage or the Liège region. After the Second World War the economic importance of these industries, and as such of Walloon Belgium, declined. A key moment was the National Strike in 1960-61, at first addressed to the austerity measures of the then liberal and Christian-democratic government. After a while, the strike almost turned into a revolution in Walloon Belgium. Forced by radical militant union leaders, the Walloon socialists radicalized and demanded structural economic reforms: new investments in the Walloon industry, nationalisation of the key industries. The Walloon socialist union and socialist party concluded from the fact that the Flemish were less inclined to take over these demands, that from then on Wallonia would primarily have to look after its own interests. The francophone socialists 55 put the demand for the regionalization of the making of economic policy on the agenda (Van Dam, 1998). As a consequence, this inadvertently started the state reform process (Covell, 1993). The fact that the state reform also found support in Flanders was inherent to another factor from the Belgian history – the language issue. When the Belgian state was founded in 1830, French was the only official language, the language used in administration, education, science and culture. The primary objective of the Flemish movement that arose in the course of the 19 th century, was therefore to promote the use of the Dutch language (that actually was degraded to an ordinary language for everyday use) as a language of culture (Vos, 1998). It was only later on that this cultural movement also took on an explicit political dimension, with the demand for introducing Dutch in the government agencies. The Flemish movement has always focussed on halting the ’s advance in the Flemish part. Confronted with French, being a major language, with a more substantial social status and that made social promotion possible, many Flemish people traditionally chose to switch to the use of that language. Furthermore as Brussels grew, more and more French-speaking people settled in the Dutch-speaking municipalities around the capital. The Flemish movement campaigned for an explicit language boundary, which eventually indeed was realized in 1962-63. However, according to the Flemish movement more was needed in order to halt the frenchification : cultural and educational policy had to be regionalized. Hence also the Flemish movement campaigned for a reform of the state. The fact that the state reform actually could take place had to do with the rise of new parties in the 1960’s: the Volksunie (VU) in the Flemish part, the Front des Francophones (FDF) in Brussels and the Rassemblement Wallon (RW) in the Walloon part. Each of these parties was favourably disposed towards a state reform, but on different grounds. The VU wanted to protect the Flemish linguistic integrity, the FDF wanted to guarantee the French-speaking people’s rights in Brussels and the RW wanted Walloon Belgium to have the opportunity to dispose of the tools to realize its economic recovery. In elections the three parties together scored a quarter of the votes and as such broke the traditional (socialist, Christian-democratic and liberal) parties’ monopoly. These traditional parties tried to counterattack the new parties by assuming a more regional profile (Van Haute and Pilet, 2006). In the course of the 1970’s all national parties split up, based on regional and consequently linguistic boundaries. These newly formed regionalized parties also backed up the demand of a state reform, although it was based on opposed grounds. The traditional parties were convinced that a decentralization of some specific government competences was the best way to safeguard the survival of Belgium as a state (Stouthuysen and Coffé, 2006). Decentralisation was particularly supported by those parties –the Flemish Christian-democrats and the Walloon socialists- who hoped to become the dominant parties in their particular regions. It is the parties’ opposed motives for implementing a state reform that makes the final outcome to be extraordinary complex (Vande Lanotte, Bracke and Goedertier, 2003). Basically Belgium became a federation based on regions and communities. The communities are based on the linguistic groups. Belgium constitutionally consists of three (French-, Dutch- and German-speaking) language communities, each of which having the authority regarding cultural and “personal matters” of the citizens belonging to the community: this primarily concerns culture and education, but also parts of policy areas such as welfare and health service. The communities are furthermore qualified for the 56 foreign policies regarding these areas. The Belgian constitution stipulates at the same time the existence of three regions: the Flemish, Walloon and Brussels region, each of which has the authority on issues regarding the socioeconomic development of the region concerned: employment, economic policies, housing, transport, scientific research, agriculture, social environment, energy, local administration. Furthermore the regions are qualified for the foreign policies in those areas for which they have competencies on a regional level. An initial aspect of complexity is that regions and communities do not overlap. The German-speaking community actually is located on Walloon Region soil. The French-speaking community extends over the Brussels and Walloon regions. The Flemish and French communities both are competent for citizens belonging to their own community but living in the Brussels region. A second complex issue concerns the partition of competences. Apart from communities and regions, there is also the federal state that is qualified for justice and law, social security, monetary policies, preserving public order, defence and foreign affairs. The several competence levels – regions, communities and the federal state – hamper each other when real policy issues are concerned. In day to day life, policy issues belong entirely to one competence level only, are rare. This aspect of complexity gives the impression that the state reform process seems to go on continuously. Confronted with the mostly inhomogeneous nature of competences, the demand is to harmonize matters and to bring together those competences on one level. It is remarkable to see that every plea for new reforms implies a shift of competences from the federal state to the communities or regions; never in the other direction. This is the consequence of the specific way in which the central state was reformed.

4. CENTRIFUGAL FEDERALISM

The Belgian structures are set up in such a way that the communities are bound to grow apart. Through the subsequent state reforms Belgium has chosen to have a basically twofold federalism (Deschouwer, 2009). The French-speaking and Dutch-speaking communities were granted a radical form of political self-government. Both communities are autonomously qualified on many issues, apart from some issues decided at a federal level. As a consequence the national government still is a major political level. However it is remarkable that actually no national elections are held: regarding the federal policy level elections are held in separate constituencies based on the Flemish and Walloon communities. The outcome of these elections defines the constitution of the federal parliament and the federal government. This means that the federal balance of power is defined by the separate internal dynamics in both parts of the country. And these dynamics completely differ from each other. An obvious solution then seems to be an electoral system reform forcing politicians from both parts of the country to cooperate or at least to take into account what is going on in the other part. Spurred by political scientist Kris Deschouwer (VUB) and political philosopher Philippe van Parijs (UCL) a team of social scientists works hard at such a reform proposal (Deschouwer and van Parijs, 2005). The team proposes for example that part of the parliament members or senators should be elected based on a national constituency. Those politicians, who have to win votes in both parts of the 57 country, then have every reason not to use the communities against each other and to take into account the general public interest. It is understood that this is a logical proposition. The only question then is whether political support will be found for this. After all this reform can only be implemented when a consensus will be reached across the language boundaries. The different political dynamics in the two parts make this a nearly impossible issue. Hence the evolution to be expected will rather show a further splitting up of the remaining national matters (taxes, social security, police and justice, macroeconomic policies and employment, defence, foreign affairs, mobility, telecommunication, significant parts of research policy and public health). Belgium is heading towards being a consisting of two self-governing units, in a national context that becomes ever more elusive (Swenden and Jans, 2006). The current institutional complexity ensures that the institutions’ reform will remain to be high on the political agenda, even without new tensions between the communities. The subsequent state reforms caused competence overlaps in almost any policy area, constantly resulting in subsequent policy delays. The complexity of the institutional framework makes that policy issues often need to be dealt with on the basis of a concerted approach between different authorities. Health is for example a federal matter while preventive medical care is a community matter. The communities are responsible for the education and school transport is a community matter, whereas teachers’ as well as the recognition of the professional qualifications are a federal matter. Issues like these make that, even without tensions between the different parts of the country, institutional reform will continuously be on the political agenda. It is right to ask oneself whether this doctoring should necessarily lead to a further splitting up of the federal state. For example, Flanders claims that in order to realize a more efficient government, further competence transfers are needed regarding health and family policies, development cooperation, research and technology policies, the working of the railway infrastructure and matters. However, from a logical point of view a re- centralization of some policy matters, for example concerning foreign trade or setting noise nuisance standards, might be a worthy alternative if the objective is governmental efficiency. If competence areas indeed need to be made homogeneous, this could also be done on a federal level. Nonetheless it seems impossible to have such a renewed centralization or federalisation (Hooghe, 2004). By transferring complex matters to the regional states the complexity will at least be reduced in one way: consultation with the other community will no longer be required. Making issues a Belgian matter again will cause a renewed substantial risk of community difficulties. And although some policy issues can only be resolved by the communities’ actual mutual consultation, politicians will anyway try to avoid the risk of a confrontation. Today the line of least resistance is in transferring competences to the level of the regional states.

5. IS CONFEDERALISM A SOLUTION?

Is Belgium then bound to be(come) a confederation? Is it impossible to stop the drift towards the continuous splitting up of competences and the ongoing stripping down of the federal state? The Swiss model proves that a confederal solution might work, but also 58 that a certain price needs to be paid. In a federal system the sovereign powers are shared between the central state and the regional states, while in a confederal system the regional states exercise sovereignty. In Switzerland the national level seems to be absent; the federal authorities are quite weak and the national government rules on the basis of consensus. The actual political centre of gravity can be found on the level of the regional states, the majority of which are monolingual (Gallagher, Laver and Mair, 2006). Confederal constitutions also have their constraints. They do not work when complicated choices need to be made where the regional states are convinced they would be better off when they do not cooperate. The central authorities do not have the powers or competences to bring the regional states into line. Consequently a deadlock is created where separation becomes a tangible option for the unwilling regional states. exist merely by the grace of the regional states (Elazar, 1994). The starting point for Belgium is more complicated because of its duality. When there are 26 regional states, as is the case in Switzerland, there is every chance that these states, when political conflicts arise, will sometimes win and sometimes lose. As such the losses will be compensated for by the wins. However Belgium will always have to function on the basis of the same two regional states. Consequently in time all conflicts will coincide. This situation has in theory the advantage that once in a while everything can be solved in one go, by combining in a package deal the demands of all parties concerned. This happened in fact in the so-called “Sint-Michiels agreement”, where the demands of the Francophone community regarding new means for their schools were matched by the Flemish demands regarding competence transfers with regards to agriculture. Unfortunately, it will much more be the case that one demand will block the other, that for example the demand for more Flemish competences is being blocked by the Francophone demand to reconsider Brussels’ boundaries. When such things happen regularly, it could well be that one of the regional states decides to opt for independence. Belgian politics nowadays already has traits of a confederal system. Because the federal level is ever more being undermined, there are few platforms left on which issues of mutual importance can be dealt with, by politicians having sufficient powers to work out the required solutions for complicated problems. In fact, apart from the Royal House, the federal government is the only national body that is left. However, if you have a different majority on the federal and on the regional level – as was the case when (before the 2010 elections) on the federal level the Flemish socialists (SP.A) and the Flemish nationalists (NV-A) were in the opposition, while they were in government on the Flemish level – then this factor cannot be retained as a conflict-reducing mechanism anymore. Parties governing on a regional state level, while being in opposition on the national level, will not necessarily assume a constructive attitude for the sake of the country’s interest. This consequently results in blocking institutional issues and leads to political deadlocks. Some issues are nearly unsolvable. The division of Brussel-Halle-Vilvoorde is one of them. According to the Flemish parties, the electoral district Brussel-Halle- Vilvoorde is in contradiction with the constitutional arrangement of the language areas; the current ability to vote for Walloon and French-speaking Brussels’ candidates is considered a breach of equity. The Francophone parties consider this to be a denial of the constitutional rights of the Francophones to vote for whoever they want. Another issue concerns the airport, which is physically located in Flanders, while airplanes fly over the Walloon and Brussels regions. Any attempt to evenly spread the noise 59 nuisance over the surrounding municipalities fails, as a result of the deviating noise reduction standards of the regions involved. Such issues reveal the pattern that can be expected in the future. Since it is becoming increasingly complicated to solve institutional issues on the federal level, other tracks are tried out. For example, more and more an appeal is being made to law courts or the Council of State: issues that once were settled on the political level, now are left in the care of judges. Yet because judges pass sentence on actual cases only, after some time the underlying issue will inevitably be put again on the political agenda. At the very most the judicial way can only temporarily put the pressure off. Besides more and more talks concertation takes place on an intergovernmental level, with all the regional and the federal government together. However, since decisions need to be taken unanimously on this level and there is no set hierarchy (the federal level is not superior to the regional level), blocking the meeting does not require an exceptional effort. In these concertations, everyone is looking at the federal government to come with solutions, but the government is powerless to impose them. One of the unintended results of the institutional reform is that it has become much more difficult to find solutions for conflicts between the different parts of the country, especially once several governments are involved (Jans and Tombeur, 2000).

6. CONCLUSION: THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT?

Today the Belgian institutions function in such a way that powerful politicians prefer to work on the regional level, simply because things are less complicated at that level and they can actually do something. On the national level, where every matter of policy inevitably is always a matter of contention between the major communities, politics is an uphill battle, and that is why the option to transfer back some competences to the federal level does not stand a chance. Politicians are not going to prefer to take the hard road, especially when they know this will not be rewarded by voters. We inevitably evolve in the direction of the dismantling of the federal level, although there is reason to believe that also this situation does not guarantee a stable solution. Once the federal level is almost powerless, it becomes impossible to control conflicts involving both communities. A confederal structure is not a viable alternative either: when always the same two regional states are opposed to each other, after a while they will inevitably go their own way. Perhaps outsiders are more apt to correctly assess the situation in this case: after consideration, Belgium’s future is not bright at all. Does it really matter? States do not have eternal life; states are political constructions that in practice have to prove they serve a useful purpose. If a particular state form is part of the problem rather than of the solution, then there is little reason to stick to it. The question is however whether this is also the case for the Belgian state form. Even a sensible cost-benefit analysis does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that the Flemish region would be better off without Belgium. For instance, because of the demographic structure, Flanders will probably be more hit by the ageing of the population than the Wallonia. And then the much decried transfers from north to south regarding health insurance and social security will decrease or else will change direction. It is true that the Belgian construction is extremely complicated and entails that for some problems there is barely a solution. Belgian politics is a continuous balancing 60 act in which one tries to find complex, yet workable compromises that take into account highly diverging interests and sensitivities. The question then is whether the situation will be that much simpler if Belgium were to disappear. Flanders, Brussels and Wallonia are so inextricably interwoven that also in this case constant talking and negotiating will be required. It is yet to be seen whether it would be that easier to enter into an agreement on noise nuisance or on the railway traffic when the opposing sides are independent political units. Discussions on the Belgian future often pass off unequally. Adversaries of the Belgian set-up have an easy time, because all they have to do is to point to the dysfunctions of the current situation. For advocates or – as is the case with us – moderate proponents of the Belgian model, it is a lot more complicated because a number of issues indeed are inappropriately conceived in the Belgian construction. But after all now it is up to the opponents. As long as they do come up with a satisfactory solution to what is for example supposed to happen with Brussels, we are not convinced by the alternatives. We know what is wrong with the existing state. We do not know the hidden dangers of the alternatives. Therefore, Belgium deserves the benefit of the doubt.

REFERENCES

Barry, B. (2001), Culture and Equality. An Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism , Oxford, Polity Press. Covell, M. (1993), “Political Conflict and Constitutional Engineering in Belgium”, The International Journal of Sociology of Language , 104 (1):65-86. Deschouwer, K. and P. van Parijs (2005), “Eén kieskring voor alle Belgen”, De Standaard , 4.02.2005. Deschouwer, K. (2009), The Politics of Belgium. Governing a Divided Society , London, Palgrave Macmillan. Elazar, D. (1994), Federal Systems of the World. A Handbook of Federal, Confederal and Autonomy Arrangements , Essex, Longman. The Economist (2007), “Keep it Together. Beer, Raw Beef, Chips: Is that Enough”, The Economist , 05.10.07. The Economist (2008), “Belgium’s Pitiful Politics. The Woeful State of Belgian Politics”, The Economist , 16.07.08. Gallagher, M., M. Laver and P. Mair (2006), Representative Government in Modern Europe. Institutions, Parties, and Governments , Boston, McGraw Hill. Hooghe, L. (2004), “Belgium: Hollowing the Center”, in U. Amoretti and N. Bermeo (eds), Federalism and Territorial Cleavages , Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press:55-92. Jans, M. T. and H. Tombeur (2000), “Living Apart Together. The Belgian Intergovernmental Cooperation in the Domains of Environment and Economy”, in D. Braun (ed.), Public Policy and Federalism , Alderston, Ashgate:142-176. Mill, J. S. (1974), “Considerations on Representative Government”, in idem, Three Essays , Oxford, Oxford University Press (originally published in 1861). Miller, D. (1994), On Nationality , Oxford, Oxford University Press. Myrdal, G. (1958), Beyond the Welfare State. Economic Planning and its International Implications , New Haven, Yale University Press.

61

Le Point (2006), “Wallons, Flamands: Une histoire d’amour Belge”, Le Point , 19.01.2006. Le Point (2007), “La tentation séparatiste”, Le Point , 17.01.2007. Reynebeau, M. (2003), Een Geschiedenis van België , Tielt, Lannoo. Stouthuysen, P. and H. Coffé (2006), “De Belgische politieke partijen”, in E. Witte and A. Meynen (eds), De Geschiedenis van België na 1945 , Antwerpen, Standaard Uitgeverij:233-262. Swenden, W. and M. T. Jans (2006), “Will it Stay or Will it Go? Federalism and the Sustainability of Belgium”, West European Politics , 29 (5):877-894. Van Dam, D. (1998), “Histoire du movement Wallon”, in M. Martiniello and M. Swyngedouw (eds), Où va la Belgique? Les soubresauts d’une petite démocratie européenne , Paris, l’Harmattan:73-84. Vande Lanotte, J., S. Bracke and G. Goedertier (2003), België voor beginners. Wegwijs in het Belgisch Labyrint , Brugge, Die Keure. Van Haute, E. and J.B. Pilet (2006), “Regionalist Parties in Belgium (VU, RW, FDF): Victims of their Own Success?”, Regional and Federal Studies , 16 (3):297-314. Van Istendael, G. (2005), Het Belgisch labyrint, of De schoonheid der wanstaltigheid , Amsterdam, De Arbeiderspers. Vos, L. (1998), “The Flemish National Question”, in K. Deprez and L. Vos (eds), Nationalism in Belgium. Shifting Identities, 1870-1995 , London, Palgrave Macmillan:83-95. Witte, E., J. Craeybeckx and A. Meynen (2000), Political History of Belgium from 1830 Onwards , Brussels, VUB University Press. Witte, E. and H. Van Velthoven (2000), Language and Politics. The Situation in Belgium in Historical Perspective , Brussels, VUB University Press.

62

IS THE FEDERAL PROCESS IN ITALY GOING TO CONSTRUCT A SYSTEM, A POLITY OR NOTHING?

Giuseppe Gangemi

Università di Padova, Dipartimento Studi Storici e Politici

1. A TERMINOLOGICAL PREMISE

What I am going to introduce is the meaning of the concept of federalism as historically used in Italy, where it has been used in many different theoretical and political ways. Let me start with a few examples of different theoretical uses: 1) Gianfranco Miglio, for instance, a political scientist who influenced the Lega Nord in the period 1990-1994, defined federalism as “a structure for deciding”; 2) Silvio Trentin, an antifascist in exile in France and a leader in the French and Italian resistance to and to Fascism, defined federalism as “a structure for participating”; 3) Carlo Cattaneo, the most well known Italian federalist scholar and a protagonist of the Italian Risorgimento during the 1848 movements, considered federalism as a realistic way of creating the United States of Europe with a second-order federalist level constituted by nations, States and Empires. In fact, within the United States of Europe, he augured the presence of the Austria-Hungarian Empire organized in a federalist structure and of the rest of the organized as the United States of Italy. In the at that time utopian European Federation, “Lombardy-Veneto”, being a federal State of the Austria- Hungarian Empire and the richest State of the Empire and of the Italian country, was to improve its relations with the other States of the Italian peninsula and act, informally, as an Italian State in the United States of Europe, while formally remaining a State of the Austria-Hungarian Empire. Cattaneo’s idea of federalism was connected to his intuition on the relevance of cross-border informal relations in a federation and on the fact that these relations could become stronger than the formal ones. This intuition may be easily verified, today, within the European Union, where relations among trans-border regions, in many cases, have become more intense than formal relations among regions in the State itself – see the case of the ADRIA trans-border region where Italian north-eastern regions are becoming more confident in Austrian regions than in southern Italian regions. Let us now describe a few uses of the term federalism, among the many different political ones made nowadays by Italian politicians:

63 1) “federalism” used as a synonym of decentralization; 2) “federalism” used as a term which is not to be used to indicate a reform in the Constitution giving new powers to the ordinary regions (since “federalism” has been considered, by the centre-left coalition which realized that reform, as a synonym of secessionism); 3) “federalism” used as a term with a stigmatic sense to indicate the centre-leftist constitutional reform defined “irresponsible federalism” (the Lega Nord maintains that no federalism is possible without fiscal federalism); 4) “federalism” used as a term with a stigmatic sense to indicate the secessionist positions of the more radical Lega Nord supporters. To explain these different uses of the term we must start from the beginning. Looking back to the formal organization of the Italian State, it was for a long time centralized with no concrete form of decentralization: even mayors had long been nominated by the national government; the prefect was the representative of the government in every Italian Province and the supervisor of the President of the Province and of the mayors. The town clerk, a government employee, was detached from the municipal council and appointed to control the municipal administration. Only with the Constitution of 1948, was real decentralization formally realized with the regions, new local entities with legislative power. But, until 1970, only five extraordinary regions received real financial power (Valle d’Aosta, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Sardinia and Sicily, and the autonomous provinces of Trento and ). For the other 15 regions, the legislative power given to the Italian regions (with the reform of the ordinary regions realized in 1970) has not changed the nature of the centralized State. Much more power has been given to the regions with the constitutional reform of the fifth writ of the Italian Constitution (realized in 2001). This reform, which has been realized by the centre-left majority, and has been opposed by the Lega Nord, has changed only a few things in the formal organization of the State but it has authorized the ordinary regions to spend autonomously even if they are without any financial autonomy. The consequence has been that southern regions have increased their expenditure while the government has been obliged to take on their deficits. Even so, this is not considered a real federalist reform: by the centre-left coalition because they never used the term federalism or any other derivative of the Latin term “foedus” in the constitutional reform (in fact the constitutional reform has mainly been a way of giving a constitutional covering to the so called “Bassanini reform”, realized with four ordinary laws, which gave much new power to mayors and removed much control over them); by the Lega Nord because it is insisting that the 2001 constitutional reform (but not the Bassanini laws which have been accepted by the left, the centre and the right) has realized a form of “irresponsible federalism”. To transform this irresponsible federalism into a responsible one, the centre-right majority has approved Law n. 42, published May 6 th , 2009, which has introduced “fiscal federalism”. It is, however, questionable, due to the complexity of the law, whether this law is a way of introducing responsibility in the decentralization of powers, realized with the 2001 constitutional reform, or a way of reducing the deficit of the national State.

64 2. THE FEDERALIST PROCESS AS A THEORETICAL AND GENERAL PROBLEM

The term federalism derives from the Latin word “foedus”. “Foedus” may be interpreted as a synonym of three different words: 1) covenant; 2) compact; 3) contract. Covenant means founded on a religious “foedus” between God and humans or among humans trusting to God. The term was adopted by Thomas Hobbes in The Leviathan (1651) and diffused by religious pilgrims, in the political dictionary of USA federalists and politicians. Compact means founded on a strong secular “foedus” based on the principles of a long term obligation. John Locke adopted the term in The Two Treatises of Government (1689), where it took on the same sense as covenant but with no connection to religion, since political and religious connections were considered, at the end of the 17 th century, the origin of intolerance and inequity. Contract means founded on the more modern assumption that a long term obligation is unfair and illiberal. This last term was frequently and explicitly used in Italy by Gianfranco Miglio and other authors as the real meaning of the term federalism. According to Miglio, from 1990 to 1994, and to the Lega Nord, from 1996 to 2001 (when the Lega Nord entered the second Berlusconi government), the power to secede must be granted to any ethnic community and the right to secede may be exercised, in that the federalist pact is analogous to a contract, with a local referendum and a simple majority of votes (fifty per cent plus one vote in the totality of people having the right to vote).These other authors employed this meaning of the term “foedus” in an implicit way. Miglio used it to justify the inalienability of the right to secede. Miglio taught how to intend federalism as a contract. But Miglio was not a real federalist. In the fifties and sixties, he was a regionalist; at the end of the eighties and at the beginning of the nineties, he became a secessionist, and subsequently a supporter of Forza Italia and Silvio Berlusconi (see the book Io, Bossi e la Lega , published in 1994) after the political separation from the Lega. The first consequence of Miglio’s lesson was, in Italy, the de-construction of the concept of federalism which is often used to indicate a form of decentralization or a way to govern by contract. In recent years, the term federalism has been used more and more to indicate any form of contract drawn up between a public administration and a private citizen or a juridical body. Thus, in Italy, federalism may even be considered a practical application of the “New Public Management” theories and principles. But the real problem, for a real federalism, is not whether a Foedus is a covenant, a compact or a contract. The real problem is whether the “foedus” is a political pact regarding the system (the political or institutional system) or a polity (a politically organized social body). The difference in the article used (“the” to indicate the system and “a” to indicate a polity), depends on the fact that we have a unique institutional or formal system, while we may think of a different politically organized society for any political issue. In fact, “foedus” may refer to the political “system” or to a “polity”. “System” is a formal and institutional (thus conventional) political organization (a system may be the result of a formal decision like a law or a constitution). “Polity” is the developing political organizational form obtained through regulation (a term which derives from the Latin “regulae” and may be interpreted as the English juridical term “precedents”). From another point of view, the difference between “polity” and “political system” is connected to the question of sovereignty. In the expression political system,

65 emphasis is given to the sovereignty delegated to the political elite. In the term polity, emphasis is given to the politically organized society as a whole - no emphasis to the dichotomy between ruled and rulers. The difference between system and polity may even be intended as hegemony: we have a system when we have the hegemony of elites (and their supporters) on public opinion and on society (this is usually the case); we have a polity when we have relatively weak elites and a strong public opinion and/or society (it sometimes occurs). Who are the supporters of the elites? Among the others: 1) Political militants (people living for politics); 2) political clients (people living on politics); 3) professional protesters (people “experiencing” – in the sense of “emotionally living” - the protest). These categories form “the system”; other categories, when politically organized, thus politically active, form “a polity”. The difference between the system and a polity may be intended as the two different dimensions of politics: the political system is composed of the elites and of their supporters competing on the horizontal dimension of politics (right or left?); a polity refers to the vertical dimension of politics (the ruler acting in agreement with the ruled or the ruled acting autonomously?). Thus, the system is the traditional State (representative or not), a polity is any federal unity or informal federation (in the terms used by Silvio Trentin, any autonomy or order and even any order of autonomy or order of orders). Silvio Trentin, born in 1885, was a jurist and a member of parliament. With the affirmation of fascism he abandoned Italy with his family and moved to France where he wrote a lot of political and juridical books trying to explain why the Italian liberal democracy succumbed to fascism early. From 1931 he theorized federalism as a way of strengthening democracy. He died in 1944 after being imprisoned, at the end of 1943, by Italian fascists. He proposed a new idea of federalism defining it as a structure for participation. He named this structure Order of Orders (or Autonomy of Autonomies). The concept of Order of Orders is more similar to what, many years later, in 1973, Daniel J. Elazar called polity. Elazar was born in Minneapolis (Minnesota) in 1935 and became a professor of political science at Bar Ilan University (Israel) and Temple University (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). He was the founder and president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and the founder of the review Publius (from 1971) which he directed until his death (in 1999). He considered federalism as a western political tradition starting from Moses and a way of strengthening democracy. Daniel J. Elazar explained that federalism always takes on a strong polity capable of putting itself on an equalitarian level vis-à-vis the elites and their supporters. He also explained that a polity may be the consequence of historical experiences which construct a local, regional or national psychology (a “mind” in the philosophical dictionary of Giambattista Vico). In fact, political scientists think of Italy as organized into four Italian subnational “minds”, which are the consequence of four different political and historical experiences: 1) the once called “Catholic area” where the idea of the centrality of the family had been affirmed in the history of the old territories of the Serenissima’s “Stato de Tera” (it is possible to interpret the method of “dedizioni” as evidence of the preference for the security of family members – first of all wives and sisters – rather than the municipality’s autonomy), and the provinces of Trento (governed for centuries by archbishops) and Trieste; 2) the still called “red belt subculture” where territories historically governed by the Church constantly affirmed the municipalities’ autonomy with militarily weak and tried to defend it against militarily strong Popes; where the Duchies of ,

66 and Modena were successful in defending their autonomy; and where municipalities like Pisa and other towns, even if eventually annexed to the Duchy of Tuscany, strongly fought to defend their autonomy from Florence; 3) the “southern mind” regarding the old Kingdom of Naples and Sicily and Sardinia (this last region governed by the Savoy dynasty) where the local ruling classes convinced their populations and themselves that the prosperity of their territories depended on the transferring of financial resources from the political centre; 4) the “north-western mind” regarding the continental territories of the old Kingdom of Sardinia (Piedmont, Valle d’Aosta and ) and the old Duchy of where investments on great public works have produced firms, Unions and parties structured as large scale organizations. The federalist idea was once present in southern Italy, while it is now present, mainly, in the north-eastern regions and, secondarily, in the north-western regions. Thus, a mind is the outcome of historical experiences. In this sense, in Italy, there have been several historical minds: 1) the north-eastern mind (in Veneto, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Trentino and eastern Lombardy); 2) the north-western mind (in western Lombardy, Piedmont, Liguria and Valle d’Aosta); 3) the red or leftist mind (in Emilia- Romagna, Tuscany, and the ); 4) and so on (in that, for instance, we may consider in the future, in case of a political victory by the Lega Nord, the possibility of a new mind, strictly related to the concept of “Padania”).

Figure 1 – The rivers in northern Italy

67 3. THE FEDERALIST PROCESS IN ITALY: PROBLEMS AND DIRECTIONS

First problem: in the Italian debate on federalism, words are used in a sense that does not derive from common practice. See, for instance, the term “Padania” (whose meaning, in this paper, I will try to de-construct). Technically, the term Padania indicates northern Italy and, exactly, the hydrographic basin of The Po River (see figures 1 and 2). When the term was used, for the first time, in the political debate (in the seventies) it was used to indicate eight regions: Valle d’Aosta, Piedmont, Liguria, Lombardy, Trentino, Friuli- Venezia Giulia, Veneto, Emilia-Romagna. From the 15th of September 1996, three more regions were added to the previous list: Tuscany, the Marches and Umbria (see figure 3). If we look at figure 1, we seemingly see northern Italy as a homogeneous area with a lot of rivers and water. Actually, northern Italy has two important and different systems of water (the basin of the Po-river - see figure 2 - and the rivers of the so called “Triveneto”, i.e. three regions Veneto, Trentino and Friuli-Venezia Giulia). As a consequence, the North of Italy had two different histories (the north-eastern and the north-western).

Figure 2 – The basin of the Po-river; Padania in a hydrographic sense

68

According to Gianfranco Miglio, Italy is divided, into three macro-regions and two regions: Padania, Tuscia, Mediterranea and the two islands of Sardinia and Sicily. Miglio’s division is a consequence of ethnic and climatic differences: 1) “Padania” is the macroregion where Celts once lived; 2) “Tuscania” is the macroregion where the Etruscans once lived; 3) “the Mediterranean” is the macroregion more influenced by the Mediterranean climate (the South and the Islands). Thus, Padania, according to Miglio, is made up of eight regions: Valle d’Aosta; Piedmont; Liguria; Lombardy; Trentino-Alto Adige; Veneto; Friuli-Venezia Giulia; Emilia-Romagna. Tuscia is made up of four regions: Tuscany; Umbria; the Marches; . Mediterranea is made up of six regions:

Figure 3 – The twenty Italian regions

69 ; ; ; ; ; . Two islands are considered two natural federal unities: Sicily and Sardinia.

4. PADANIA AS A HISTORICAL PROBLEM

After having shared, in the first half of the nineties, Miglio’s distinction of Padania, Tuscia, Mediterranea and Islands, on 15 th September 1996, during a demonstration on the Po river and , the leader of Lega Nord, Umberto Bossi, proposed a new distinction between Padania and the rest of Italy. In fact, he announced that Padania was made up of eleven regions (the well known eight northern regions and three more regions in the Centre: Tuscany, Umbria and the Marches). To better understand these divisions and the modification in terms of territories, see figure 3. Seeing the question from a hydrographic point of view, Padania is made up of three regions (Valle d’Aosta, Piedmont and Lombardy) and a half (Emilia-Romagna) and a small part of two other regions (Trentino and Liguria). Seeing the question from a historical point of view, Padania doesn’t exist in that, inside the North and the Centre of Italy, two different political histories have been experienced: 1) a militarist and centralized experience, the one of Lombardy, militarily active in the 14 th and 15 th centuries, and the one of Piedmont, militarily active during the 18 th , 19 th and 20 th centuries; 2) a pragmatic and decentralized experience, the one of the “Stato da Tera” of the Serenissima characterized by practices of negotiations and local autonomies and the one of the Papal State, which only formally exercised its authority and, because of this, recognized large autonomies to territories outside the Lazio region. The most aggressive dynasties in northern Italy were the Carraresi, the Visconti, the Scaligeri, etc. The one nearest to the realization of a great Italian State was the Visconti dynasty, and in particular who governed, in the second half of the 14 th century, the dukedom of Milan, a part of Tuscany, of Emilia-Romagna and of the Veneto; and his son Filippo Maria Visconti tried to recover the territories lost after his father’s death. The complete list of the territories in Gian Galeazzo’s possession was: Alba, Alessandria, Asti, , , Brescia, Como, Crema, , , Lodi, Milano, Novara, Parma, Pavia, Perugia, Pieve di Cadore, Piacenza, Pontremoli, Reggio Emilia, Tortona, Valenza, Vercelli, , Vicenza e Vigevano (see figure 4). If we look at figure 4, representing the political situation in 1402, we can see that Venice had only two territories on the mainland: 1) The towns of and Conegliano on the basin of the little but important, for the equilibrium of the lagoon, Sile-river (a river flowing into the lagoon, whose mouth was diverted out of the lagoon in 1683); 2) The territory between Ferrara and the Po-river to protect the lagoon from Ferrara’s citizens who had tried to divert the river-course of the Po with possible indirect consequences on the lagoon.

70

Figure 4 – Northern and Central Italy when Gian Galeazzo Visconti died, in the year 1402

In two years, from 1404 to 1406, Venice expanded its territories on the mainland annexing Vicenza, Verona and with a double strategy: 1) in the cities, like Verona with the Scaligeri and Padua with the Carraresi, ruled by local elites with ambitious military projects and a consequent history, the Serenissima Republic first conquered the cities and, if the leaders fell into their hands, the Republic sentenced them to exile or to death, together with their heirs (as Venice did to the Carraresi in Padua). Afterwards, the Serenissima Republic negotiated autonomy and safety from external enemies with the citizens without their traditional leaders, i.e. the political spontaneous organism we may call polity in the sense given to the term by Daniel J. Elazar; 2) in the city of Vicenza, the polity spontaneously negotiated with the republic the “dedizione” (devotement) of the town to the Serenissima Republic in order to receive autonomy and safety. In relatively few years, from 1404 to 1430, Venice acquired, with this double strategy (war and

71 negotiations or negotiations and devotement) a large territory in north-eastern Italy, the “Stato da Tera” (see figure 5)

Figure 5 – Venice in the year 1600: the “Stato da Tera” (Land)

To avoid the danger of being submitted to military force, after the death of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, many towns negotiated, with the object of maintaining a broad autonomy, their acceptance into the Serenissima Republic (see figure 4). Accepting the devotement (sometimes Venice refused, like in the case of Ancona in 1415), Venice managed to defend the equilibrium of its lagoon from the perils deriving from the diversions of the river-courses (as Gian Galeazzo Visconti was going to do to conquer Mantua and Padua easily). Thus, from 1404, Venice accepted all the territories in the Veneto system of rivers as well as the territories in eastern Lombardy. This way, the Serenissima implicitly defended the dukedom of Mantua while it was defending the course of the Po and the equilibrium around the lagoon. It stopped its acceptance of new “dedizioni” at the third important affluent of the Po River (the Adda River). In 25 years, from 1404 to 1429, the list of “dedizioni” (devotements) to the Serenissima Republic, in the Italian Peninsula, was impressive: Vicenza, Feltre and Belluno (1404), Verona (1405), the Carnia (1410), Cividale del Friuli (1419), San Vito al Tagliamento, Portogruaro, , Albona d’, Fianona, Gemona, Venzone, Tolmezzo, San Daniele del Friuli, Monfalcone, Merano, Cadore, (1420), Val Trompia, Val Sabbia and Val Camonica (1428) and Orzinuovi (1429). Outside the peninsula, the Serenissima received the devotement of Dulcigno in Albania and of Salonika (1423). In the same period, Padua and the Polesine (1405), Brescia (1423), Trau (1420), Bergamo and a part of the province of Verona (1428) were conquered by the Serenissima, while Zara, Pago, Novegradi (1409), Rovereto, Sacile (1419), Spalato and Budua (1420), Scutari (1423), Salò and the Communities of the Riviera del Garda (1426)

72 were acquired with pacific means. The “Stato da Tera” (the Land) of the Serenissima was organized by Venice in twelve provinces: Padovana, Vicentina, Veronese, Bresciana, Bergamasca, Cremasca, Bellunese, Feltrina, Trevigiana, Polesine, the Friuli and Istria.

Figure 6 – Northern and Central Italy in the year 1700

The history of the Savoy dynasty is completely different: it was a history of wars with territories lost in France and conquered in Italy. During the process of construction of the modern French State, the Savoy lost a large part of their territories (15 th century) and they recovered them at the end of the war. The following century French armed men occupied their territories. During this century, to compensate for the territories and influence lost in France, the Savoy tried and succeeded in acquiring territories and influence in Italy. As we can see from the comparison of figures 4 and 6, during the 16 th and 17 th centuries the dynasty lost, because of unlucky wars, many territories in France, while they gained territories in Italy. In 1713, the Savoy acquired the title of king when they obtained Sicily, which they tried, unsuccessfully, to control with a military policy. After seven years, they renounced and exchanged Sicily with the more peaceful Sardinia, but they maintained the title of king (of the Kingdom of Sardinia). With the same method used in Sicily in the 18 th century, they governed Italian regions after the union of the Italian peninsula

73 obtained in 1859-60. This in spite of the fact that they received most of the Italian territories by devotement: the Duchy of Tuscany, the Duchy of Parma, the Duchy of Modena (see figure 6), part of the Marches and the Umbria region and the town of Bologna which rebelled against their legitimate sovereigns and offered their devotement to the Savoy. The following year, the king Vittorio Emanuele II received from the entire Regno delle due Sicilie (The reign of Naples and Sicily) conquered by voluntary troops, named “garibaldini” or “I Mille” (from the number, more or less a thousand, who landed in Sicily with the first wave). The north-western model of political and economic development was the result of the Savoy military expansion in north-western Italy. This expansion produced a centralized State with large towns, large firms, large-scale infrastructures, and a well- organized civil society, divided into large unions and not so many (if compared to north- eastern Italy) organizations of the third sector (association of volunteers, non profit, and so on). The Savoy dynasty governed the new Reign of Italy, as if it were a militarily conquered territory. Why, you may ask. In my opinion, because they were unable to think of government in a different way! As a conclusion of this section, we can say that a spontaneous, negotiated submission implies the prevalence of the polity on the political elites and the existence of a politically organized civil society that is stronger and more important than the elites and their supporters. Thus, it takes on a polity that maintains the right to draw up an associative “foedus”. From a political point of view, the method of “dedizioni” must be considered as an evolution of the method of the “Podestà”, that is, governors coming from another town and governing with their mercenaries. The main virtue requested of a “Podestà” was the capability of giving the impression of winning easily any conflict with internal elites and supporters, and of being neutral vis-à-vis the interests of conflicting citizens or groups. The method of “dedizioni” was amply used during the Italian Risorgimento. First of all, Daniele Manin, the President of the Venetian Republic, in the years 1848-49, offered the Savoy dynasty a unilateral “Abnegation Pact in favour of the Savoy dynasty”. The consequence of this Pact was that many Italian States, in 1859, and even Garibaldi, in the name of the new conquered Reign of Naples and Siciliy, conscious that his volunteers, the “garibaldini”, had been able to conquer a reign, but were unable to govern it, offered the devotement of the southern reign to the King of Sardinia: Vittorio Emanuele II (the second), who has been the first (sic!) King of Italy.

5. A FEW THEORETICAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE TWO DIFFERENT HISTORIES ON THE ITALIAN HISTORICAL DEBATE ON FEDERALISM

In 1844 ( Notizie naturali e civili sulla Lombardia ) and in 1858 ( La città ), Carlo Cattaneo elaborated the project of a Federalist society organized according to the idea that the federal unities should be the “Sonderbundi” (i.e. the Regional States obtained by the military expansion of towns like Milan, Florence, Naples, Mantua, etc.). The term Sonderbundi derived from Swiss history, where the term was introduced to indicate the league of seven cantons which united, in 1845, to defend themselves against a centralist project of constitutional reform. Cattaneo used this term from 1848 to 1860 while, after the Unity of Italy, when a centralized State was definitively realized, he renounced to his ideological positions: the construction of an Italian Federation modelled

74 on the Swiss federal system. In the summer of the year 1864, while a national law on municipalities and provinces was being discussed in the , he assumed a more pragmatic position and wrote three letters to the review “Diritto” to ask for more autonomy and power to the municipalities. “Municipalities”, he wrote, “exist before the Reign and before the nation”. He thought that the main element of a federalist State was the cities with their land (the Italian provincial, regional or macroregional States) as in the Swiss model, but he convinced himself that a central role would be played by the municipalities in the new centralized Italian State. This second position of Cattaneo’s influenced the “red belt subculture” through three other scholars: the republican and federalist Arcangelo Ghisleri and the socialists Leonida Bissolati and . In 1852, in direct controversy with Carlo Cattaneo, the young politician Giuseppe Zanardelli from Brescia (a town in Lombardy governed by the Serenissima for four centuries) proposed ( Storia dei feudi ) an alternative project of federalist reform more in accordance with the political history of the “Stato da Tera”. He proposed a federalist polity organized around Communes (see Gangemi, 1999). In 1858, without having accepted the Abnegation Pact proposed by Daniele Manin, Carlo Cattaneo re-proposed (La città ) a federative pact among the Italian States, which he considered to be (militarily) enlarged towns. The same year 1858, having accepted the Abnegation Pact proposed by Daniele Manin, Zanardelli proposed (and realized in the forthcoming years) an alternative project of local development through small firms, small savings banks, self help, etc. Angelo Messedaglia, a friend of Zanardelli, made a similar proposal in the Veneto. Both were pupils of a pupil (Andrea Zambelli) of Giandomenico Romagnosi (who had been Cattaneo’s master). While Zanardelli had no important political continuator, Messedaglia had important pupils: Felice Lampertico, Emilio Morpurgo, Luigi Luzzatti (Gangemi, 2001) and Giuseppe Toniolo. I suggested “Anthropological Federalism” as a name for the Messedaglia and Zanardelli strategy of strengthening civil society, and thus the polity (see Gangemi, 1994). Anthropological Federalism underwent an important evolution in north-eastern Italy: first of all, this subculture was politically affirmed, in the western Lombard region, by Zanardelli, a freemason and anti-clerical who was to become an important Prime Minister (1901-1903); secondly, the same political subculture was elaborated in Veneto by two Jewish intellectuals, among others: Emilio Morpurgo who had been Rector of the University of Padua and Luigi Luzzatti who was an important economist and was to become a Prime Minister (1911-1912). Even if Anthropological Federalism started as a liberal culture, after the defeat of Caporetto, in 1917, when the liberal political elite (starting from the mayors) abandoned non-belligerent populations and only parsons stayed by elderly men and their families, in a few years, populations changed their political allegeance completely. When a Catholic party (the Italian Popular Party, PPI) was founded by don Luigi Sturzo, the populations of those areas ravaged by gave a substantial vote to the PPI. After the Second World War, the new Catholic party (Christian Democracy) received, in those areas, more than fifty per cent of the votes. Now, in the same areas, where the family has become less important than before and Christian Democracy has betrayed the federalist positions it had at the beginning, the Lega Nord, which is a political supporter of a form of Territorial Federalism, is receiving the relative majority of votes. The Lega Nord’s most important political project is fiscal federalism (i.e. aiming to obtain that most of the taxes paid in each region is spent within the region).

75 Between the two world wars, Anthropological Federalism was definitively theorized in a complete form: the last and the most important theorist of Anthropological Federalism was a pupil of Luigi Luzzatti, Silvio Trentin, who wrote in 1935 the important work La crise du Droit et de l’Etat , where he proposed a way of organizing the polity that he named “Order of Orders” (or Autonomy of Autonomies). The Orders were not only institutional autonomies, but even social autonomies as “consorzi”, i.e. single issue cooperative societies, partnerships, multi-issue cooperative societies, and so on. Even if Trentin has been one of the most important opponents of fascism, after his death, in 1944, his theories did not receive any practical attention from the Constituent Assembly and from the politicians of the so-called “First Republic”. Recently, Trentin’s most important work ( La crisi del Diritto e dello Stato ) has been translated and published in Italy (2006). The book was given an award by the “Club dei Giuristi” as the best juridical book of 2006. From that year on, his federalist theory has been receiving new attention.

6. POLITICAL AND THEORETICAL TRADITIONS AND CONSEQUENT PROJECTS OF FEDERALISM

The military way to govern a new reign was described by Nicolò Macchiavelli in two important works: 1) Descrizione del modo tenuto dal Duca Valentino nello ammazzare Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo, il Signor Pagolo e il duca di Gravina Orsini ; 2) Il Principe . This way produced a centralized State governed, through laws and decrees, as a closed social relation (see Weber 1980, I:41). The way of governing a polity has been described as republicanism, while I prefer to describe it as Anthropological Federalism. Anyway, republicanism is meant to derive from Machiavelli’s political lesson. In fact, in the 16 th century, Macchiavelli derived a theory from the lessons of Titus Livius (see I Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio ) which has recently been named “republicanism” or “neoromanism”. Instead, Anthropological Federalism is meant to derive from Vico’s lesson. In fact, in the 18 th century, Giambattista Vico elaborated a new theory which many other authors continued and expanded, the most important one being Antonio Serbati Rosmini, in the 19 th century. Rosmini elaborated an implicit form of Anthropological Federalism deriving it from the history of the Church in the first centuries (see Le cinque piaghe della Chiesa ). In the 20 th century, Silvio Trentin elaborated an explicit form of Anthropological Federalism, in the work La crise du Droit et de l’Etat , which was neglected, in Italy, for seventy years. From 1975, John Pocock, Quentin Skinner and Philippe Petitt gave the name “republicanism” to theories and practices in Great Britain and the USA influenced by Machiavelli’s Discorsi . From 1973, Daniel J. Elazar named “polity” the ideal locus where the foedus is drawn up and explained that this ideal locus is, in a federalist theory, more important than government and institutions. The polity may be thought as the regulative order ( Regulierungsordnung ) operating as an open social relation (see Weber 1980, I: 41, 46, 50). There are many similarities between new republicanism and the Old Testamentary Federalism. Republicanism refers to the concept of polity in that it imagines the State as an institution which gives, according to the virtue of its elites, a quantity and a quality of services whose value is, more or less, the same as the resources it receives in the form of taxes or, on the contrary, as an instrument for introducing a form of “party despotism” (a

76 term used, together with other similar terms, in the USA in the 19 th century which corresponds to the Italian term “partitocrazia”). The State may be thought of as: 1) an institution which conquered, with force, the right to consider its own violence as the only legitimate use of force; 2) an institution which had to negotiate with each local polity the right to consider its own violence the only legitimate use of force. From a theoretical point of view, a polity is an ideal locus. From a practical point of view, it is the concrete locus where participation is offered and given and where the elite needs to explicitly negotiate with civil society, associations, firms and other collective actors (thus the polity is more sensitive to the vertical dimension of politics and less to the horizontal one). There is a strong connection between this idea of polity, the consequent idea of federalism and a particular form of antipolitics. This particular form of antipolitics is a method, i.e. a conception and a practice of power like an empty space (Lefort, 1988:17- 19). This empty space would materialize if the place of power were left vacant. This result is pursued hindering those who are willing to occupy the place of power. In fact, any governing elite is exercising a power and, consequently, preventing the place of power from actually being an empty place. In order to realize the empty space of power it is obvious, therefore, that the objective may only be reached by renouncing. In this sense, the method of “dedizioni” is a particular form of antipolitics where politics is to be intended as a state of crisis and antipolitics as the “unrealistic” solution (unrealistic, obviously, in a closed social relation). Vico and Rosmini may be retrieved and interpreted as followers of a strategy that is indifferent to the right-left horizontal dimension of politics and only attentive to the ruler-ruled vertical dimension of politics, similar to that elaborated by Machiavelli in I Discorsi and Dell’arte della Guerra , but more coherent and complete. In other words, the antipolitical strategy of Machiavelli, Vico, Rosmini and others, has been translated in a political strategy (named Anthropological Federalism by the exponent of the Sinistra Storica Giuseppe Zanardelli, by the exponent of the Destra Storica Angelo Messedaglia and his pupils Fedele Lampertico, Emilio Morpurgo, Luigi Luzzatti and by the freemason and revolutionary antifascist Silvio Trentin). To understand this evolution from antipolitics to a new politics, less attentive to the horizontal (right-left) dimension of politics and more attentive to the vertical (ruler-ruled) dimension, it is important to underline that antipolitics appears in various forms that evolve in time, acquire various facets in space and various characteristics. In Italy it has appeared regularly in the history of Italian politics. For the first time, it appeared when rich Italian urban elites demonstrated their incapacity and unwillingness to defend the lives and the goods of their citizens from the violence of the new international relations among European nation-States. In those times, Niccolò Machiavelli elaborated and presented, in his main works, a political strategy to face these new problems coming from abroad. As previously told, almost a century earlier, the Serenissima Republic had proposed to north-eastern cities the “dedizioni” as a political strategy to defend populations and families, in the “Stato da Tera” to be constituted, from the wars and related evils (destructions, violations, slavery) and just a few years before the publication of Machiavelli’s masterwork ( Il Principe ) it demonstrated its strategy was equal to the task of defending north-eastern territories. Machiavelli refused the Serenissima’s political strategy in that he thought that it was not equal to the task of constructing a “national Italian State”; this was the only strategy he considered as a real

77 solution, with regard to Italian cities and to the problem of international security (see the last chapter of Il Principe, where the ideal of an Italian national State was introduced for the first time in the cultural history of the peninsula). While Machiavelli’s strategy was exclusively political (centered on institutional actions), two centuries later, another Italian political philosopher, Giambattista Vico, proposed a reformist strategy moving in two different directions: a) the institutional actions and their consequences, whether or not they were desired, assumed as the factum ; b) academic speech and knowledge considered as limited and uncertain, but capable, if well organized, of becoming a form of verum . Vico’s philosophy was thought as a cultural and political challenge to the political and cultural limits of Italian elites. Because of the misunderstanding by political, religious and academic authorities, Vico’s philosophy gradually became a cultural and antipolitical challenge to the Italian political elites (this is the antipolitical way in which it was interpreted by Giandomenico Romagnosi; after that, theorized that the Jacobin Neapolitan Republic failed in 1799 because of the fact that Neapolitan revolutionaries had not applied Vico’s antipolitical theories). In Italy, as a reaction to the disappointments induced by the great French Revolution, there were two important (and minor) antipolitical projects which were elaborated with the aim of proposing two alternative processes to ideological practices and to the right-left dimension of politics: the by now almost forgotten pamphlet by Vittorio Alfieri, Misogallo (the pamphlet was strongly critical of the great French Revolution, of French culture and of France) and the political philosophy of Antonio Serbati Rosmini who strongly influenced a minority of intellectuals. Alfieri’s unpolitical analysis was culturally neutralized when considered as an oddity or a form of dislike of French people. Rosmini’s antipolitical analysis would have remained almost fruitless had it not been represented as a vision complementary to Vico’s analysis. In this sense, there was a revolutionary formulation of Vico’s philosophy when it was presented in the laic version of revolutionary movements during the Italian Risorgimento, and an antirevolutionary formulation of the same philosophy, when it was presented in the Catholic version. The antipolitical theories elaborated by Machiavelli, Vico, Rosmini, Romagnosi, and others, guided by the memory of the “dedizioni”, became a political strategy, that was named “Anthropological Federalism” after the unity of Italy, with the above- described political theories and the practices of Zanardelli, Messedaglia, Lampertico, Morpurgo, Luzzatti and Trentin. Anthropological Federalism implies the polity’s centrality and participation. Claude Lefort explains the practice of democracy as a practice where the locus of power is only temporarily occupied (antipolitics as the aspiration to leave the locus of power empty). Similarly, in the years immediately following 1989, a few leaders of western European movements thought it was important to organize post-communism democracy as actual emptiness, i.e. as a locus of power to be occupied by tables for negotiation and not by elected representatives.

7. CONCLUSIONS IN FORM OF QUESTIONS

First question: what is Padania and why is it as it is? As we have just explained, Padania may be, and has been in different periods, three different things: 1) Padania is the basin of

78 the Po, i.e. three regions (Valle d’Aosta, Piedmont, Lombardy) and part of other regions (Trentino, Liguria and Emilia-Romagna). In this form, Padania is, or may be, the expression of a regulative order ( Regulierungsordnung ) and the consequent federalism is, or may be, a real polity operating as an open social relation (see Weber, 1980, I:41, 46, 50); 2) Padania is northern Italy, i.e. eight regions (Valle d’Aosta, Piedmont, Lombardy, Trentino-Alto Adige, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Veneto, Liguria and Emilia-Romagna). In this form, Padania is, or may be, the expression of a closed social relation (ibid.:41) and the consequent Federalism is, or may be, a real system operating as a closed social relation (ibid.); 3) Padania is half of Italy, i.e. eleven regions (Valle d’Aosta, Piedmont, Lombardy, Trentino-Alto Adige, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Veneto, Liguria, Emilia- Romagna, Toscana, Umbria and the Marches). In this sense it is a “Great Padania”. “Great Padania” is an electoral strategy to transform an important local party (the Lega Nord) in a determining national party. In fact, the concept of Padania, when intended as Great Padania, was proposed in order to have a possibility to advance during the crisis of the Italian left. If it is intended as a federalist system (it is not possible to intend the Great Padania as a federalist polity), it will be a consequence of the little culture of federalist politicians, even if I believe that they are aware of the limits of these concepts. We may speak of a crisis of the Italian left in that, in the 2008 political elections, the Lega Nord received 8% of votes in Emilia-Romagna and, in the 2009 European elections it received 11% of votes in Emilia-Romagna and, more or less, 5% of votes in Tuscany, the Marches and Umbria. Are those successes proofs of the realistic possibility of a federal system based on a Great Padania? It is possible! In my opinion, electoral successes in the Red Italian Belt (Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany, Umbria and the Marches) are the consequences of two factors: 1) the crisis of and the lack of innovative ideas in the leftwing parties; 2) the crisis of the cooperative firms and of many industrial districts (see the well studied district of Prato where the Lega Nord received a lot of votes and where non-EU entrepreneurs are de-structuring traditional districts). Second question: what kind of federalist reform is going to be produced in Italy? It is not clear, at the moment, whether the Lega Nord and the rightist coalition are going to realize a form of federalism or a reform of the State according to the New Public Management principles. Even with the new law on Fiscal Federalism (Law n. 42 of May 5, 2009), which needs many administrative acts to become operative, we cannot be sure whether the objective is going to be Fiscal Federalism or whether it is a way to load the southern regions with the cost of a more balanced budget. Last but not least, it is not clear: 1) why electors voting Lega Nord, and implicitly demanding a form of federalism, are more numerous in Veneto than in Lombardy (where the Lega was born) and whether they want the same things?; 2) whether the new electoral consensus obtained in the Red Belt is a consequence of the search of a federalist reform or of the aspiration to defend traditional small firms vis-à-vis new forms of social capital “bonding”. Thus, it is not clear whether we are going to obtain a federal State or to obtain a way to downsize the Italian welfare state out of the southern regions’ pockets. At the moment, we have on the agenda three political issues on the theme of State reform: 1) the Lega Nord’s project of a federalist State (centred on the regions); 2) a bipartisan strategy of modernization of the State (according to principles of New Public Management); 3) the need to control (and to reduce) National Debt. One of the most important federalist reforms (the horizontal subsidiarity) is a strategic way of reforming the State shared with NPM strategies and with practices of patronage. Thus, we ignore

79 whether the result, for instance, of Law n. 142 dated 1990 (on the autonomy of local institutions) has been or will be more federalism, more efficiency or more patronage (but I suspect it is going to be the third hypothesis). On Fiscal Federalism, we may say that the recent law (May 5, 2009) on fiscal federalism may be interpreted as a way of obtaining a responsive autonomy or as a way of drawing out of the pockets of southern citizens the cost of control of the National Debt (and I suspect it will be the second hypothesis).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cattaneo, C. (1925), Notizie naturali e civili su la Lombardia e altri scritti su l’agricoltura nell’alta Italia , Milano, Ed. Risorgimento. Cattaneo, C. (1858), “La città considerata come principio ideale delle istorie Italiane”, Il Crepuscolo , IX (42), 17 October:657-659; IX (44), 31 October:689-693; IX (50), 12 December:785-790; IX (52), 26 December:817-821. Elazar, D. J. (1969), “The Rediscovered Polity: Selections from the Literature of Jewish Public Affairs, 1967-68”, in American Jewish Year Book , 70 (91): 172-237. Elazar, D. J. (ed.) (1973), “The Federal Polity”, Publius , 3 (2). Elazar, Daniel J. and John Kincaid (eds) (1980), “Covenant, Polity, and Constitutionalism”, Publius , 10 (4). Elazar, D. J. (5755-1995), Community and Polity. The Organizational Dynamics of American Jewry , Philadelphia/ Jerusalem, The Jewish Publication Society Gangemi, G. (1994), La questione federalista. Zanardelli, Cattaneo e cattolici bresciani , Torino, Liviana-UTET. Gangemi, G. (1999), Dal federalismo municipale al decentramento repubblicano , in C. Cattaneo, G. Zanardelli and A. Ghisleri (G. Gangemi ed.), La linea lombarda del federalismo , Roma, Gangemi Ed.:7-46. Gangemi, G. (2001), Il federalismo antropologico veneto , in F. Lampertico, L. Luzzatti, A. Messedaglia and E. Morpurgo (G. Gangemi ed.), La linea veneta del federalismo , Roma, Gangemi Ed.:7-36. Hobbes, Th. (1985), The Leviatan , Harmondsworth, Penguin (originally published in 1651). Locke, J. (1970), The Two Treatises of Government , Cambridge, Cambridge University ¨Press (originally published in 1689). Machiavelli, N. (2005), “Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio”, in idem, Opere , I, Biblioteca della Pléiade, Torino, Einaudi:193-525. Machiavelli, N. (2005), “Il Principe”, in idem, Opere , I, Biblioteca della Pléiade, Torino, Einaudi:115-192. Machiavelli, N. (2005), “Descrizione del modo tenuto dal Duca Valentino nello ammazzare Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo, il Signor Pagolo e il duca di Gravina Orsini”, in idem, Opere , I, Biblioteca della Pléiade, Torino, Einaudi:16- 22. Machiavelli, N. (2005), “Dell’arte della guerra”, in idem, Opere , I, Biblioteca della Pléiade, Torino, Einaudi:527-705. Miglio, G. (1994), Io, Bossi e la Lega. Diario segreto dei miei quattro anni sul Carroccio , Milano, Oscar Mondadori.

80 Rosmini, A. S. (1997), Delle cinque piaghe della Santa Chiesa , Roma, San Paolo Edizioni (originally published in 1848). Trentin, S. (1935), De la crise du Droit et de l’Etat , Paris/Bruxelles, L’Eglantine. Trentin, S. (2006), La crisi del Diritto e dello Stato (G. Gangemi ed.), Roma, Ed. Gangemi. Vico, G. (2008), Il metodo degli studi del nostro tempo (C. Fraschilli ed.), in C. Fraschilli, C. Greco and A. Murari (eds), Giambattista Vico. Metafisica e Metodo , Milano, Bompiani:57-179. Vico, G. (2008), “L’antichissima sapienza degli italici” (C. Greco ed.), in C. Fraschilli, C. Greco and A. Murari (eds), Giambattista Vico. Metafisica e Metodo , Milano, Bompiani:185-315. Weber, M. (1980), Economia e società , Milano, Edizioni di Comunità. Zanardelli, G. (1852), “Storia dei feudi”, Il Crepuscolo , III (45), 7 November:713-716; III (46), 14 November:728-731; III (47), 21 November:747-749; III (48), 28 November:765-768 Zorzi, A. (2005), La Repubblica del leone. Storia di Venezia , Milano, Bompiani.

81

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF STATE RESTRUCTURING AND THE REGIONAL UNEVEN TRANSITION TO AFTER-FORDISM IN BELGIUM

Stijn Oosterlynck

Lecturer in Urban Sociology, Dept. of Sociology, Department of Sociology,

1. INTRODUCTION: OLD AND NEW REGIONALISMS

Regionalism is a complex field of study but much recent literature revolves around either ethnic regions or successful growth regions (Keating, 1998; Syssner, 2006). The former is sometimes dubbed “old regionalism” because it is allegedly typical of the 1960s and 1970s and focuses on the political mobilization of ethno-nationalist movements, mostly located in some sort of periphery, against the central state due to uneven economic development and cultural differences with the centre. The current resurgence of interest in regionalism, which in the “new regionalism” literature is predominantly theorized as a techno-economic phenomenon, argues that (subnational) regions are the building blocks of the new global economy. However, despite the different foci of the “old” and the “new” regionalism studies, they are haunted by the same fundamental question, namely what exactly constitutes a region (Keating, 1998; MacLeod and Jones, 2001)? As the political-economic geographer Martin Jones argues, in the new regionalism literature regions have become a “slippery and somewhat meaningless concepts for discussing differently scaled and territorialized economic, social, cultural and political assemblages” (Jones, 2004:162). With “differently scaled”, Jones refers to a body of work in human geography where globalization is interpreted in terms of the “relativization of scale”. The relativization of scale refers to the observation that the national scale and the actors associated with it have lost their dominance in organizing economic flows, social life, cultural processes and political actions and the attempts that are made by actors active on a variety of other spatial scales to establish the dominance of the scale(s) on which they are active (Jessop, 2004). The contemporary resurgence of the (subnational) regional scale and regional actors is then seen as part of this ongoing struggle to establish a new dominant scale(s) from which socio-economic life can be regulated (Brenner, 2000; Jessop, 1999). This historicized perspective on the resurgence of regions, which treats spatial scales not as pre-given but as socially constructed over time (Swyngedouw, 1997), leads to the following three claims about the nature of regionalism. Firstly, regions are not pre-given but have a history, being actively made and remade through social struggle. Secondly, regionalism is neither primarily economic nor primarily political (hence neither “old” nor “new”), but essentially a political- economic phenomenon produced through historically specific articulations of regionalized political and economic processes. Thirdly, culture, understood as semiosis, plays a decisive

83 role in the making and re-making of regions. Social groups actively imagine particular spaces as regions and thus constitute themselves as regional subjects. In this paper, the above perspective will be applied to Flemish regionalism. More specifically, the central research question in this paper is as follows: how and why were a particular set of political and economic activities and processes imagined and institutionalized as the Flemish region? The roots of the imagination and institutionalization of the Flemish region go back a long time in history to the 19 th century (Zolberg, 1974). However, despite its long history, I will focus here on the more contemporary period of the early 1980s, which, as I will argue both on theoretical and empirical grounds, was a crucial moment of regional imagination and institutionalization. From a theoretical perspective, the early 1980s witnessed an important shift in theories about the sources and geography of socio-economic development. In the frantic search for a successor to national Fordist modes of economic growth and regulation, innovation and knowledge were identified as the key sources of growth in the after-Fordist era and these sources of growth were argued to be regionally embedded and regulated (Storper, 1999; Piore and Sabel, 1984). From an empirical perspective, this shift in thinking about the sources and geography of socio-economic development was reflected in Belgium as well, at around the same time that industrial policy competencies were decentralized and moved to the regional governments. The transition from Fordist to after-Fordist modes of economic governance in Belgium, and Flanders more particularly, hence makes a very good case to analyze how regions are imagined and institutionalized from a political economy perspective.

2. POLITICIZING THE GEOGRAPHY OF AFTER-FORDISM

The crisis of Fordist modes of economic growth and regulation in the second half of the 1970s intensified patterns of regional uneven economic development. While old industrial regions suffered massive job losses and unemployment due to deindustrialization, high tech regions and craft-based industrial districts started emerging. Economic geographers picked upon the latter regional success stories to claim that regions, variously termed industrial districts, learning regions, regional innovation systems, new industrial spaces, etc. have become key sites to acquire global competitive advantage and the privileged sites of strategic economic governance (Scott, 1998; Moulaert and Sekia, 2003; Lagendijk, 2001). “New Regionalists”, as these authors are commonly called, explained regional success by referring to the territorially embedded capacities for learning, innovation and entrepreneurialism as prime determinants for economic development (Moulaert and Sekia, 2003). These territorially embedded socio-economic assets for development and the partnerships, institutions and policies through which they are created and governed define the regions that, according to New Regionalists, drive after-Fordist socio-economic development (Storper, 1999; Benko and Pecqueur, 2001). What is lacking in the new regionalist account of the resurgence of regions, however, is a political economy perspective on how regions are imagined and institutionalized. Hardly any references are made to the literature on political regionalism, federalism and territorial politics (see e.g. Keating, 2004). New regionalists reduce regional resurgence to a quasi- automatic response to the techno-economic restructuring processes and reduce politics to the provision of the “institutional infrastructure” that is required to support the agglomerative forces of knowledge-intensive after-Fordist growth dynamics. Politics is only deemed relevant insofar it has a function in creating, sustaining and regulating economic growth. This instrumentalist and reductionist perspective on politics, as merely deriving from and instrumental for economic processes, also fails to consider the role of the state (MacLeod and

84

Goodwin, 1999). The resurgence of the region is not so much a quasi-automatic response of economic actors to the economic-institutional imperatives of knowledge-intensive after- Fordist forms of production, but part and parcel of the rescaling of state capacities in response to the competitive pressures of the globalizing economy. These political strategies aimed at rescaling state capacities are often heavily contested and the object of protracted political struggles. This implies that we cannot define the region one-sidedly on the basis of the economic-institutional imperatives of the after-Fordist model of development neither attribute sui generis causal powers to the region. The region should not be seen as a pre-given spatial entity that can be defined in the abstract. From a political economy point of view, the region is a concrete spatialization of social relations and involves political agency (Markusen, 1983). A region is only able to “act” if a collective capacity to act is created on the regional scale. This requires a set of public and private actors to forge alliances on a regional scale and pool the required resources to act on shared regional interests. These interests are never objectively pre-given, but are imagined and, when successful, institutionalized in particular organizations or organizational procedures. The creation of regional agency thus highlights the role of imaginaries. An imaginary discursively constitutes a particular set of activities, actors and interests as more significant than others and hence as an object of governance and intervention. Imaginaries mostly have either implicit or explicit spatial dimensions and tend to be rooted in the history and make-up of particular places. Precisely because they prioritize certain processes, actors and interests over others, imaginaries are often contested and result from political struggles between actors operating on various spatial scales. They mostly exhibit considerable recalcitrance against easy instrumentalization for economic purposes. This is an important qualification for the new regionalist preoccupation with institutional thickness (Amin and Thrift, 1994), learning cultures (Morgan, 1997), untraded interdependencies (Storper, 1999) and economies of association (Amin and Thrift, 1999) as mere business assets for the region in the global marketplace. I will now apply this political economy perspective to the regional uneven transition to after-Fordist forms of industrial policy in Belgium and take this as an entry point into the broader question of how the Flemish region has been imagined and institutionalized over time. In doing so, I will move beyond the instrumentalist understanding of political and cultural dynamics that is pre-dominant in new regionalist accounts by grounding the latter’s insights of the importance of the cultural and institutional infrastructure of regional economies into an analysis of the restructuring of state spatiality in the context of neo-liberal globalization. The decentralization of the Belgian state space in 1980 and the regional uneven economic development that has characterized Belgium since its inception makes Belgium, and even more this particular period in its history, a promising case study to analyze regionalism from a political economy perspective. First, it allows me to explore the politics of the resurgence of regions and the creation of agency on the regional scale and the regionally differentiated success of after-Fordist strategies and imaginaries. Secondly, by analyzing the diversity in after-Fordist trajectories, the political voluntarism of many new regionalist accounts in which political configurations are restructured automatically as a result of economic dynamics is avoided and the structural path dependencies at work in state spate spatial restructuring are brought to the fore. Through a focus on the spatial restructuring of the Belgian state (e.g. federalism) political and economic processes of regionalism are connected.

85

3. STATE RESCALING AND THE CRISIS OF FORDISM IN BELGIUM

3.1. REGIONAL UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT AND STATE SPATIAL RESTRUCTURING

Before I move on to the actual analysis of the regional uneven transition to after-Fordist modes of governance, I need to give some historical background of the political economy of Belgium. As said before, Belgium has been characterized by regional uneven economic development since its inception. Wallonia, the French speaking region to the south of Belgium, was the first region on the European continent to industrialize (Mort Subite, 1990). Throughout the 19 th century and the first half of the 20 th century the region flourished on the basis of first industrial revolution sectors, most notably coal mining and steel and glass production. Given the high transport costs of energy and the high energy demands of the steel industry on which economic development hinged at that time, Wallonia with its big coal reserves was well-placed to industrialize. Over the course of the 19 th century, and continuing into the 20 th century, francophone Belgian-national holding capital increased its control over the Walloon sites of economic development and became the economic pillar of the unitary Belgian state (Kurgan-van Hentenryk, 1996; Cottenier et al., 1989). After the Second World War decline set in, Belgian-national holding capital gradually withdrew its investments from the Walloon industries and up until today Wallonia is still struggling with its pre-Fordist economic heritage. Flanders, the Dutch-speaking region to the North of the country, was, except for a few pockets of industry in the cities of Ghent and Antwerp, largely a poor, underdeveloped agricultural region throughout most of the 19 th century and the first decades of the 20 th century. From the 1930s onwards, but accelerating massively in the 1960s and more or less in parallel with Walloon decline, Flanders industrialized on the basis of second industrial revolution sectors such as car manufacturing and consumer durables. This rapid industrialization process was financed mainly by multinational capital (notably from the US and Germany), which pushed Belgian-national holding capital in a secondary role. Multinational capital was supported by Flemish small and medium sized companies in the non-monopoly sectors or supply for multinational production. The political dynamics in Belgium have been strongly shaped by a territorialized language conflict (Murphy, 1988). Over the course of the 20 th century language politics was gradually transformed into “communitarian” politics, i.e. a socio-political conflict between geographically separated cultural-linguistic communities that defend different societal models (Huyse, 1980). Different ideas were perceived to exist in Wallonia and Flanders about how capital and labour and catholics and seculars could live together. Communitarian politics put a lot of pressure on the unitary spatial organization of the Belgian state. Flemish nationalists, inspired by the Flemish language struggle, demanded mainly cultural autonomy. But despite the pre-dominantly cultural focus of Flemish nationalism, the economic wing of the Flemish movement aimed for more regional economic autonomy (Moulaert and Willekens, 1984). The Flemish economic elite, gathered around the Flemish employer’s organization VEV (Flemish Economic Association), felt that, within the Belgian institutional context, it was increasingly difficult to adapt to the rapidly changing international economic conditions. The decentralization of the Belgian state then became a political strategy to weaken the national state, in which contending socio-economic actors such as Belgian-national holding capital and the Walloon labour movement had a strong position. The Walloon federalist movement on the other hand, reinforced by the frustration of the Walloon labour movement about Walloon

86 economic decline, pushed for economic autonomy (Quévit and Aiken, 1978). Regional economic autonomy, they felt, would give them control over the instruments of economic governance, which they now had to share with what they perceived as the socio-economically conservative Flemish political-economic elite that dominated the Belgian state (“l’état Belgo- flamand”). Increasing centrifugal pressures on the unitary Belgian state finally gave way to a wave of state spatial restructuring. The 1 st October of 1980 marked a crucial moment in the decentralization of the Belgian state. The Flemish Community acquired legal personality, i.e. its own territory, competencies, law-making and executive power and financial responsibility. In 1981 the Flemish Executive left the federal government and became the Flemish government. A similar process occurred for the Walloon region. The regionalization of the Belgian state space occurred at around the same time as the crisis of Fordism prompted the emergence of new regionalist theories. This offers a unique opportunity to evaluate how well different new regionalist theories explain the political economy of regional resurgence in the context of globalization. As I argued before, Belgium’s long tradition of regionalism allows us to explore the articulation between the current resurgence of the region and older forms of regionalism. In addition, the strong cultural-linguistic dimension of Belgian regionalism highlights how current economic regionalization strategies draw on cultural and political resources and attributes developed in earlier phases of regionalist struggle.

3.2. THE EMERGENCE OF AFTER-FORDIST IMAGINARIES

Like many other governments in Western Europe in the early 1980s the Belgian federal government and the new regional governments were confronted with high unemployment and a dwindling competitive position. Governments everywhere were muddling through various economic strategies in a continued attempt to address the crisis of Fordism. As in any moment of crisis, discourses on the roots of and most appropriate solution to what was perceived as a structural (rather than merely conjunctural) economic crisis abounded. Among the proliferation of crisis discourses, after-Fordist imaginaries, which later crystallized under the heading of ‘new regionalism’, gradually became predominant, most notably in the field of industrial policy. They highlighted industrial renewal through the introduction of new technologies as the most significant process sustaining successful economies and entrepreneurs, knowledge workers and venture capitalists as the most significant agencies driving this process. The state was imagined as restricting its interventions in the economy to supply side policies. For reasons mentioned before, these agencies and processes were imagined as being primarily regional in character. In Belgium, after-Fordist imaginaries circulated and informed, to different degrees, policy making on every scale of government. On the Belgian-national scale, the Belgian federal Minister for science policy and planning Philippe Maystadt was convinced that micro- electronics was a crucial future growth sector for the Belgian economy. He proposed an action program for micro-electronics based technologies in 1982, despite the fact that most industrial policy competencies had been decentralized to the regional scale of government. The federal Minister for Economy Mark Eyskens equally thought about new ways for industrial policy and saw venture capital as an important agent of industrial renewal. He proposed fiscal and other measures to promote venture capital. In Wallonia the discursive resonance of after-Fordist imaginaries was present, but in a weaker form than on the Belgian scale and in Flanders. In the early 1980s there still was a strong belief in the viability of the Walloon national sectors (Quévit, 2005). Many Walloon politicians believed that investments in bricks and other material assets were superior and

87 more secure than investments in immaterial assets like those required for nurturing after- Fordist industries. However, despite all this after-Fordist imaginaries gained some currency in Wallonia as well, be it with a stronger state as a much more significant actor than is usual in these kind of imaginaries. The Christian-democrat Minister for New Technologies and Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in the Walloon regional government Melchior Wathelet launched “Opération Athéna” (De Batselier, 1991; Institut Jules Destrée, 1995). Opération Athéna was an industrial policy program that aimed for the renewal of the Walloon industrial structure through the development of new technologies. The Walloon government organized Athéna days and business seminars, published the monthly magazine and gave financial incentives to small and medium-sized enterprises that participated in the Athéna operation. Wathelet also created the “Club Athéna Technologies – Education” with the aim to bring together all Walloon “living forces” to stimulate collaboration between universities, research centres, the government and the private sector in the field of new technologies (Dupont, 1987). In Flanders, finally, after-Fordist imaginaries were also highly discursively resonant. The chair of the Flemish regional government, the Christian-democrat politician Gaston Geens, very much focussed his time and energy on industrial policy and set up the Third Industrial Revolution in Flanders action (henceforth DIRV-action). With the DIRV-action Geens aimed to boost Flemish economic self-awareness and re-position the Flemish economy as a dynamic, entrepreneurial and high technology region in the centre of Europe. To that end, he organized the highly successful international technology fair Flanders Technology International, focussed financial support on three “sectors of the future” (micro-electronics, biotechnology and new materials) and organized technology transfer by bringing researchers and entrepreneurs together on “technology days”.

3.3. THE REGIONAL UNEVEN TRANSITION TO AFTER-FORDIST FORMS OF INDUSTRIAL POLICY

However, despite the discursive resonance (to different degrees) of after-Fordist imaginaries on every scale of government in Belgium, only the Flemish regional government succeeded in making the transition from Fordist to after-Fordist modes of industrial policy. Although after- Fordist imaginaries were resonating both in Wallonia and Flanders, but also on the Belgian national scale, only on the Flemish regional scale were actors successful in acting upon this imaginary and embedding it solidly in the operation of the Flemish state’s economic governance strategies. I will argue here that any explanation of this regional uneven transition to after-Fordist modes of industrial governance must take into account both economic structures and forms of political and economic agency. I will look at those two explanatory factors in turn for each of the three government scales, namely Belgian-national, Walloon- regional and Flemish-regional and then (for the Flemish case) integrate them into a more narrative account of how after-Fordist imaginaries in Flanders were used as part of a broader regional search for legitimacy and furthered the institutionalization of the Flemish state space. Despite the attempts of federal minister Maystadt to focus industrial and economic policy on innovation and new industrial sectors in the first half of the 1980s, the Belgian- national scale of government remained throughout most of the 1980s pre-occupied with the so-called “national sectors” as the part of the economy that deserved most urgent government attention. The national sectors were the five traditional economic sectors (textiles, steel, coal mining, shipbuilding and glass) that were in serious difficulties at that time. Because the crisis of the steel industry seemed to threaten the very survival of the Belgian state, the Belgian government considered the steel crisis as a “national problem”, which explains why the national sectors did not become a regional responsibility when industrial policy was

88 regionalized in 1980. The other national sectors, evenly divided over Flanders and Wallonia to avoid complaints about regional discrimination, were awarded similar treatment for their restructuring, which implied that the financial support they needed came from the national budget. The sheer urgency, policy attention and financial resources needed to save the national sectors and the high number of jobs associated with these sectors, meant that even if some ministers were attracted to after-Fordist imaginaries on industrial renewal, they were not able to prioritize the processes, actors and interests singled out as most significant by after- Fordist imaginaries. The weight of the restructuring of the national sectors on the national government’s budget and policy space was such that the discursive resonance of after-Fordist themes did not lead to a reorganization of organizational rules and institutional procedures in the field of Belgian industrial policy. The Walloon regional government was confronted with even stronger versions of structural lock in. The industrial structure of Wallonia was heavily specialized in coal mining and steel manufacturing. A sectoral crisis of the steel industry and coal mining hence immediately turned into a regional crisis. Because of the lack of diversification of the Walloon industrial structure there was no viable alternative to the slow and painful restructuring of the national sectors (Moulaert, 2005). A quick restructuring program as with the coal mines in Flanders was virtually impossible since there was no sector of the economy that could absorb the social and financial costs of restructuring. The slowly emerging after- Fordist sectors in Wallonia were too localized and limited in job creation and could not at all outweigh the continuing decline of the largely pre-Fordist parts of the Walloon industrial structure (Vandermotten, 2005). The economic structure of the Flemish region was very different from that of Wallonia. Although Flanders also had its national sectors, namely textiles and shipbuilding, its economic structure was much more diverse, with multinationals active in various sectors and an extensive network of home-grown export-oriented SME’s. The social and financial costs of the reconversion of the national sectors could more easily be absorbed by healthier parts of the regional economy. Because of the sector and job diversity of its industrial structure, the Flemish economy was more open to alternative economic imaginaries focussing on newly emerging actors, processes and interests. The structural make-up of an economy does not in itself determine transitions shifts in industrial policy. In order to fully understand these, one also needs to look for collective agencies that act strategically to maintain or transform these economic structures and possibly bring about these shifts. From this perspective as well, there are a number of significant differences between the type of collective agencies present at the Walloon and Flemish- regional scales and the Belgian-national scale. I already explained how the Belgian national government’s industrial policy debates and interventions were dominated by concerns about restructuring declining companies and industries. The strong pressure of Belgian-national holding capital, which for the past decades had been using its (dwindling, but nevertheless still very real) power within the national state to make the latter financially assist the rationalization of the Walloon industry which they controlled, and the socialist trade union, whose grassroots was situated in the declining sectors, severely reduced the Belgian government’s capacities to shift its focus to more future directed parts of the economy. Importantly, the Belgian employers’ organization VBO, the official representative of the Belgian entrepreneurs, is structured on the basis of sector federations. VBO hence tended to be dominated by concerns of its biggest sector federations and hence was less likely to act as a vehicle for the promotion of after-Fordist imaginaries. Wallonia had no economic elite that identified itself as Walloon and could hence articulate the Walloon economic interest. The economic elite that controlled most of the Walloon economy during its industrialization was the national francophone holding elite located in Brussels and, over the course of the second half of the 20 th century, had gradually

89 turned its back on Wallonia. In its absence, the socialist movement (party and trade union) gradually became the dominant socio-political force in Wallonia, but was economically, socially and culturally too much embedded in the traditional sectors of the economy to envision new after-Fordist trajectories for the Walloon economy and, despite its political- institutional power, had little access to the economic decision-makers (Vandermotten, 2005). On the Flemish-regional scale, however, the language struggle against francophone dominance within the Belgian state space had nurtured a Flemish-minded economic elite, organized around the Flemish employers’ organization VEV. This elite is of much younger origin than the national francophone holding elite and hence less institutionally and culturally embedded in the traditional industries. Also, VEV is less structured as a conventional interest group, but more as a movement striving for Flemish economic emancipation. This aim is reflected in their organizational model as their members are not sector federations but companies. The implication is that they did not have to take into account traditional sectors as much as was the case for the Belgian employer’s organization VBO and that new and innovative start-up companies have an equal voice in the organization. Remarkably, it was in the research offices of VEV that a Flemish version of after-Fordist imaginaries, namely the “Third Industrial Revolution in Flanders”, was born. The successful creation of a distinctively regional collective capacity to act around this imaginary would lead to a shift to after-Fordist modes of governance in Flanders.

3.4. A REGIONAL SEARCH FOR LEGITIMACY

The diversified economic structure of Flanders and the presence of actors that had an interest in pushing for the development of new and innovative sectors combined to produce a transition to after-Fordist modes of industrial governance on the Flemish scale. The presence of export-oriented SMEs and multinationals, which were critically exposed to foreign competition, made the Flemish economic decision-makers critically aware of the need to direct attention to innovation and new technologies. Moreover, VEV and the first Flemish government both had an important stake in furthering the institutionalization of the Flemish scale of governance and joined forces around the DIRV-action, which rolled out an after- Fordist mode of industrial governance in Flanders. Under influence of the literature on new technologies published in the 1970s, VEV started thinking about the links and synergies between education, production and entrepreneurs. The chairman of VEV asked its research office to produce a report about new technologies and what it could do for the Flemish regional economy. The report, which was finished around 1979, developed a Flemish version of the after-Fordist imaginaries and called for a third industrial revolution in Flanders. The report identified the need to change people’s attitudes towards new technologies as crucially important. Especially the trade unions feared that new technologies would be used to rationalize and destroy employment. The report also suggested the establishment of five technology groups, where researchers and entrepreneurs would exchange innovative knowledge and technologies. When the first Flemish regional government was established the chair of VEV took the report to the government’s chair Gaston Geens and advised him to read it. At that time there was a general economic pessimism among the population. Unemployment figures were soaring, especially among young people, the population feared devaluation and the interest rates were very high. Meanwhile the Belgian national government was embarking on a national crisis policy based on a devaluation, imposed wage restraints, budget cuts, restructuring loss-making sectors and companies and tax reforms in favour of capital to repair the competitive position of Belgian companies. Because there was no social consensus for

90 these crisis measures the government had to bypass the neo-corporatist negotiation procedures by using fast track powers and hence became increasingly authoritarian (Mommen, 1987). Against this background Geens could use the idea of the Third Industrial Revolution in Flanders to position himself and his government as the “saviour” with a much more positive approach to the crisis (Zeeuwts, 2005). This positive approach to the crisis was based on increased co-operation between universities, entrepreneurs and the government, the promotion of entrepreneurialism and the introduction of new technologies. Geens speculated that if his government could be seen as positively solving the crisis, then he could mobilize the general population behind further regionalization demands to the Belgian-national state. VEV from its part was competing with the Belgian-national employers’ organization VBO for the representation of the employers’ interest in Flanders. Launching the DIRV allowed VEV to present itself as the more dynamic and entrepreneurial part of the economic elite. VEV and the new Flemish government thus found each other in a regional search for legitimacy and an alliance around the idea of a DIRV-action that would boost the legitimacy of regional governance level in which they both had a stake. The DIRV-action was envisioned as a movement to break with the sluggish economy, distrust in the future and the lack of interest in innovation and to instil new dynamism, optimism and enthusiasm in the business world and the general population (Geens and Cuypers, 1987). The symbol of DIRV was a human hand shaking a robot hand – implying that technology was not the enemy, but our friend. The DIRV-action wanted to show the opportunities offered by new technologies to create a broad social basis of support for their application in the production processes. DIRV proved to be largely successful in creating a more positive perception of new technologies, with the high number of people attending the international technology fair Flanders Technology International as one indicator of this success. The DIRV-action appealed to the many unemployed in Flanders who suddenly caught a glimpse of hope that there would still be some place for them in the economy of the future. However, underlying the DIRV-action and the alliance formed between the new Flemish government and the Flemish economic elite organized around VRV is a more fundamental shift in the imagination of the role of the state in the economy. Chair of the new Flemish government Geens wanted to create “a state that knows its place” (Cornillie, 2005). DIRV focussed on unleashing the Flemish private entrepreneurial potential by rolling back Keynesian state intervention. Geens considered state planning to be a burden on economic growth. Informing the DIRV-action was a concept of the state that restricts itself to supply side policies and leaves the economy to entrepreneurs. Geens stressed the importance of “Schumpeterian entrepreneurs” over and over again and believed that the government only had to stimulate innovation and bring different actors together, but that the actual decisions could only be made by private entrepreneurs (Geens and Cuypers, 1987). The nature of the DIRV-action as a campaign centred on private capital and entrepreneurs also followed from the way it came into existence. The original idea travelled from the VEV study offices to the Flemish government, but the further development of the DIRV campaign also happened in close collaboration with VEV and hence bore a strong entrepreneurial mark.

4. CONCLUSION

The above analysis of the regional uneven transition to after-Fordist modes of industrial governance confirms the need for a political economy approach of the contemporary resurgence of the region. New regionalist accounts of the new geography of economic development trajectories, focussing on the importance of entrepreneurialism, industry-

91 university co-operation and innovation in knowledge-intensive after-Fordist models of economic development, indeed seem to concur with the imaginaries of policy-makers on various government scales in the early 1980s. After-Fordist imaginaries to different degrees resonated with policy-makers and they were embedded with different degrees of success in state strategies. In the Flemish case acting on after-Fordist imaginaries provided a way for different public and private actors to further the imagination and institutionalization of the Flemish region, hence their success in combining the required resources and powers to act collectively in implementing after-Fordist modes of industrial policy. Regions, as a geographically delimited set of actors, interests and activities, are thus not pre-given as actors, but require a lot of political work to be turned into self-confident regional subjects. The success of this political work is highly dependent on the existing political-economic structures and available actors and cannot be assumed to follow quasi-automatically from institutional- economic pressures.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Amin, A. and N. Thrift (eds) (1994), Globalization, Institutions and Regional Development in Europe, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Amin, A. and N. Thrift (1999), “Institutional Issues for the European Regions. From Markets and Plans to Socioeconomics and Powers of Association”, in T.J. Barnes and M. S. Gertler (eds) The New Industrial Geography. Regions, Regulation and Institutions , London, Routledge. Benko, G. and B. Pecqueur (2001), “Les ressources de territoires et les territoires de ressources”, Finisterra, 36 (71) :7-19. Brenner, N. (2000), “Building ‘Euro-Regions’. Locational Politics and the Political Geography of Neoliberalism in Post-Unification Germany”, European Urban and Regional Studies, 7 (4) :319-345. Cornillie, J. (2005) Interview by Stijn Oosterlynck. Cottenier, J., P. De Boosere and T. Gounet (1989), De Generale: 1822-1992, Berchem, EPO. De Batselier, N. (1991), “Technologiebeleid in Vlaanderen”, Beleidsbrief, Stuk 506. Dupont, J. (1987), “L'école et l'entreprise, quelle collaboration?”, in M. Quévit (ed.), Actes Du Premier Congrès ‘La Wallonie Au Futur’: Vers Un Nouveau Paradigme , Charleroi, Institut Jules Destrée, at http://www.wallonie-en-ligne.net/wallonie-futur-1_1987/wf1- 41_dupont-j.htm. Geens, G. and P. Cuypers (1987), Op Eigen Kracht, Tielt, Lannoo. Huyse, L. (1980), De Gewapende Vrede. Politiek in België tussen 1945 en 1980, Leuven, Kritak. Institut Jules Destrée (1995), Cent Wallons du Siècle, Charleroi, Editions Institut Jules Destrée. Jessop, B. (1999), “Narrating the Future of the National Economy and the National State? Remarks on Remapping Regulation and Reinventing Governance”, in G. Steinmetz (ed.), State/Culture: State Formation after the Cultural Turn , Ithaca, Cornell University Press:378-406. Jessop, B. (2004), “From Localities via the Spatial Turn to Spatio-Temporal Fixes: A Strategic-Relational Odyssey”, SECONS Discussion Forum , at http://www.hcu- hamburg.de/fileadmin/documents/Professoren_und_Mitarbeiter/Gernot_Grabher/seco ns_06_jessop.pdf. Jones, M. (2004), “Social Justice and the Region: Grassroots Regional Movements and ‘the English Question’”, Space and Polity, 8 (2) :157-189.

92

Keating, M. (1998), The New Regionalism in Western Europe. Territorial Restructuring and Political Change, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar Publishing. Keating, M. (2004), Regions and Regionalism in Europe, Cheltenham, Northampton, Edward Elgar Publishing. Kurgan-van Hentenryk, G. (1996), Gouverner La Générale De Belgique. Essai De Biographier Collective, Brussels, De Boeck & Larcier. Lagendijk, A. (2001), “Three Stories About Regional Salience: ‘Regional Worlds’, ‘Political Mobilisation’ and ‘Performativity’”, Zeitschrift für Wirtschaftsgeographie, 45 (3/4) :139-158. MacLeod, G. and M. Goodwin (1999), “Space, Scale and State Strategy: Rethinking Urban and Regional Governance”, Progress in Human Geography, 23 (4) :503-527. MacLeod, G. and M. Jones (2001), “Renewing the Geography of Regions”, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 19 (6) :669–695. Markusen, A. R. (1983), “Regions and Regionalism”, in F. Moulaert and P. Wilson Salinas (eds), Regional Analysis and the New International Division of Labour. Applications of a Political Economy Approach , Boston, Kluwer Nijhoff Publishing:33-56. Mommen, A. (1987), Een tunnel zonder einde. Het neoliberalisme Van Martens V en VI, Antwerpen, Kluwer. Morgan, K. (1997), “The Learning Region: Institutions, Innovation and Regional Renewal”, Regional Studies, 31 (5) :491-503. Mort Subite (ed.) (1990), Barsten in België: Een Geografie Van De Belgische Maatschappij, Berchem/Antwerpen, EPO. Moulaert, F. (2005) Interview by Stijn Oosterlynck. Moulaert, F. and F. Sekia (2003), “Territorial Innovation Models: A Critical Survey”, Regional Studies, 37 (3) :289-302. Moulaert, F. and F. Willekens (1984), “Decentralization in Industrial Policy in Belgium: Toward a New Economic Feudalism?”, John Hopkins European Center for Regional Planning and Research Working Paper . Murphy, A. B. (1988), The Regional Dynamics of Language Differentiation in Belgium. A Study in Cultural-Political Geography, Chicago, University of Chicago. Piore, M. J. and C. F. Sabel (1984), The Second Industrial Divide: Possibilities for Prosperity, New York, Basic Books. Quévit, M. (2005), Interview by Stijn Oosterlynck. Quévit, M. and M. Aiken (1978), Les Causes Du Déclin Wallon: L'influence Du Pouvoir Politique Et Des Groupes Financiers Sur Le Développement Régional, Bruxelles, Vie ouvrière. Scott, A. J. (1998), Regions and the World Economy. The Coming Shape of Global Production, Competition and Political Order, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Storper, M. (1999), “The Resurgence of Regional Economics. Ten Years Later”, in T. J. Barnes and M. S. Gertler (eds), The New Industrial Geography. Regions, Regulation and Institutions , London, Routledge:23-53. Swyngedouw, E. (1997), “Neither Global nor Local: ‘Glocalization’ and the Politics of Scale”, in K. R. Cox, (ed.), Spaces of Globalization , New York, The Guilford Press:115-136. Syssner, J. (2006), What Kind of Regionalism?, Frankfurt Am Main, Peter Lang. Vandermotten, C. (2005) Interview by Stijn Oosterlynck. Zeeuwts, P. (2005) Interview by Stijn Oosterlynck. Zolberg, A. R. (1974), “The Making of Flemings and Walloons: Belgium: 1830-1914”, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 5 (2) :179-235.

93

FORCED TO RESPOND TO GLOBALIZATION. THE DISEMBEDDEDNESS OF ITALIAN INDUSTRIAL DISTRICTS AND ITS DISCONTENTS

Anna Cento Bull

University of Bath, Department of European Studies and Modern Languages

1. INTRODUCTION

Industrial districts have traditionally been defined as socially embedded systems of production, where firms are not simply clustered in space but are interlinked in horizontal networks and/or vertical production chains and also rely on face-to-face social interaction and shared social values. The latter, in turn, facilitate a constant flow of information among local firms, thus contributing to the spread of innovation, and provide the basis for generalized trust, thus reducing uncertainty and opportunism. In short, industrial districts were “self-propelling and self-referential (that is, “closed” in their set of production factors) systems” (Mariotti et al., 2008). In the last two decades, this canonical and relatively static approach to industrial districts has given way to a much more dynamic view of their evolution and adaptability, in the light of greatly changed external conditions. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Italian industrial districts were undergoing a period of uncertainty and having to face the early impact of the process of globalization. After a decade in which they had been hailed as a particularly successful model of industrial production, so much so that its “replication” in both developed and developing countries was often recommended, industrial districts appeared in difficulty and in some cases their imminent demise was even predicted. In the 1990s, however, most districts reacted successfully to their loss of competitiveness through a process of restructuring, which led to their internal reorganization and, increasingly, to their internationalization (Rabellotti et al., 2009). However, not all districts followed the same evolutionary path. This paper explores the economic and social changes that have occurred in Lombardy and the north-eastern industrial districts, since this is the area which constitutes the original stronghold of the Lega Nord, and also the one where the party experienced an extraordinary revival in the 2008 political elections. The paper will address the nature of these changes and their impact upon the local society, particularly in terms of growing tensions and insecurity which include, but go well beyond, the fears of immigration and crime commonly portrayed in the media.

95

2. THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF NORTH-EASTERN INDUSTRIAL DISTRICTS.

Broadly speaking, Italian districts began to diverge in terms of their productive systems and industrial strategies as far back as the late 1980s. Lombardy and the north east of the country developed an internal configuration based on the hierarchical complementarity of “leading” and “satellite” firms, whereas those in Emilia-Romagna and the central regions tended to develop a more horizontal system of production. The emergence of a leading- satellite firm structure was outlined in the late 1980s by Lorenzoni and Ornati (1988) and Lazerson (1988), while their development and role in the industrial district of Como was analyzed by the author in the early 1990s (Cento Bull, Pitt and Szarka, 1993). More recently, this model was defined as a “ localized networked firms’ model : it is characterized by the presence of a medium or large-size leader firm which organizes and controls the local industrial system” (Burroni, 2003:186). The advantages of this model are a high capacity for innovation and co-ordination on the part of the leading firms and a rapid diffusion of innovation down to the satellite firms. By contrast, in the other regions, according to Burroni, a “ localized network of firms’ model prevails: it is characterized by the prevalence of small firms tied together by horizontal linkages” (ibid.). A different typology differentiates between industrial districts characterized by static networks, flexible networks or “evolutionary network-firms” (Belussi and Arcangeli, 1998). The first type was judged to be the weakest competitor, the last type the strongest, where “networks are less and less stable; firms will frequently revise their webs of alliances, abandoning some and joining other (often new ones)” (ibid.:421). In addition, the last type involved a clear process of internationalization of production: “What is probably on the way is not the end of ‘local economies’ or ‘network-based organizations localized in spatial milieus’, but the passage from short-length networks to long-distance networks, where the importance of spatial connections for some activities may be reduced” (ibid.:426). The authors made it clear that each type was to be found in different areas of Italy, although they categorized two of the best known districts in central Italy, Prato and Carpi, as “flexible networks”, while Montebelluna, in the Veneto, was cited as an example of the third type. In the last decade, the process of internationalization has proceeded at a fast rate for nearly all districts, and this has determined a further transformation of the production process and an increasing differentiation not only between districts but also between firms operating within the same district. The key factor in determining this uneven evolution of industrial districts and firms has been their different attitudes “towards export and FDI [Foreign Direct Investment] in internationalization” (Cainelli and Zoboli, 2004:19). Given that internationalization involves the disembeddedness of local production systems, the dismantling of local networks and their replacement with “trans-local networks”, an evolution of this kind has proved both difficult and painful: “industrial districts do not adapt easily to the new paradigm” (Mariotti, Mutinelli and Piscitello, 2008:720). In the same study, the authors assess the degree of internationalization of Italian industrial districts and conclude that the presence of “leader firms” increases “the likelihood that districts will internationalize. Moreover, the leadership of large firms exerts a composite effect on the degree of internationalization of other (non-leader) district firms. It increases 96

the range of foreign growth opportunities available to smaller firms, but it eventually leads to a prevalent substitution effect: the internationalization of large firms prompts an inertial behaviour by the other (smaller) firms, which do not develop any independent ability to grow internationally” (ibid.:731). Although the authors do not distinguish between districts in the North East and in the Centre, it is possible to infer from the previously outlined structural evolution of north- eastern industrial districts that many of them will have experienced such a growing dichotomy between internationalized (and hence increasingly disembedded) larger firms and non-internationalized (still embedded) smaller ones. This trend has in fact been detected in various studies. One of these (Bergamasco, 2008) estimated that the process of internationalization was more advanced among firms located in the North West (53,8 per cent) and North East (53,4 per cent) compared to the Centre (41,8 per cent) and South (31 per cent) and also that the larger firms, with more than 50 employees, were the most internationalized. Focusing on the industrial districts of the Veneto, Spaventa and Monni (2007) argued that while the larger firms had profited from internationalization, the smaller ones “get no returns from the process, bearing instead all the costs” (ibid.:12). In particular, these firms started to lose clients and often ended up closing. This explained, in their view, why the region’s steady growth in exports in textiles, clothing and leather, registered between 1991 and 2001, was accompanied by a progressive loss of employment. With reference to the industrial district of Montebelluna, the authors showed that 52.3 per cent of the firms producing shoes had delocalized to Romania. When disaggregated, the figures showed a polarized picture: while nearly 90 per cent of firms with more than 100 employees and over 50 per cent of firms with 21-100 employees had delocalized by 2004, the percentage dropped to less than 16 per cent for firms with 2-10 employees and just 4 per cent for those with 1 employee (ibid.:21). The authors even hypothesized that the process of internationalization by the larger firms “might lead to the progressive weakening of linkages inside the original districts and eventually […] to the dissolving of the district itself. ‘Closed due to delocalization in Romania’” (ibid.:25). Similarly, Tattara, De Giusti, and Constantin (2006) observed that in the North East “the lengthening of the productive chains involves the loss of a number of local subcontractors, with easily imaginable repercussions in occupational terms”. A somewhat different perspective has been put forward by other scholars. Savona and Schiattarella (2004) argued that internationalization has gone hand in hand with economic growth and employment. Various annual surveys carried out by the Fondazione Nord Est have been similarly sanguine. One of these studies, published in 2008, argued that, after an initial phase of disorientation, the smaller firms had been able to improve the quality of their products and to link up to an international value chain (Marini and Oliva 2008:11). Admittedly, those firms which were unable to innovate had to close down or were sold off, but overall the effect on employment levels had been modest, since “even during the most difficult years (between 2001 and 2005) for the north-eastern economy the rate of unemployment remained below 4 per cent” (ibid.:11). The previous year, a similar survey (Marini and Oliva, 2007:9) also asserted that, while the larger firms had been the ones responsible for internationalizing, they had been able to carry along their minor “colleagues” – i.e. those firms with 10-49 employees - which had subsequently also experienced positive growth. Despite its relatively optimistic readings of the changes related to internationalization and of the districts’ ability to react successfully to the challenges of 97

globalization, the studies by the Fondazione Nord Est also brought to light how such changes had engendered growing tension and stress within districts. The available evidence does indeed point to a situation in which turbulence and uncertainty have come to dominate industrial relations in all districts and how these have reverberated more widely, creating a gulf between the local economy and society. The impact of recent changes upon industrial and social relations and attitudes is very important and will be examined later. First we will consider another crucial dimension of the process of restructuring of industrial districts, that is to say, the growing employment of immigrant labour and what has been termed “inverse delocalization”.

3. INDUSTRIAL DISTRICTS AND IMMIGRATION

Immigration in Lombardy and the North East has grown substantially in the last decade. The number of resident immigrants in Lombardy rose from 419,800 in 2001 to 938,300 in 2007 (Regione Lombardia, 2008:43). In Veneto, numbers rose to 350, 215 in 2006 and were predicted to rise over 400,000 in 2007 (Regione Veneto, 2008:16). As a result, by 2006 Lombardy had the highest percentage of immigrants (24.8 per cent), while the Veneto came second, with 11.9 per cent (Regione Veneto, 2008:16). The vast majority resided in the provinces with a high number of industrial districts and most of these were employed in the manufacturing sector. Thus out of all immigrants employed in the Veneto region in 2007, 36 per cent were employed in manufacturing industry, with a further 14 per cent in the building sector and 10 per cent in the catering industry (Regione Veneto, 2007). According to Belussi and Sedita, immigration (or “inverse delocalization”) forms an alternative strategy to delocalization developed by some districts. They focus on the case of the leather district of Arzignano in the Veneto, where this strategy was adopted largely due to a scarce propensity of local firms to transfer part of their production abroad. The strategy, according to the authors, has so far proved successful from an economic point of view. However, it would be misleading to categorize industrial districts on the basis of whether they have implemented a strategy of delocalization or inverse delocalization, since for many of them it is rather a case of these strategies being complementary rather than in alternative. The already mentioned process of diversification within as well as between districts means that different firms within the same district may pursue different strategies to face external competition, and also that some firms may pursue diverse strategies simultaneously. The reason for this is that, as many surveys point out, immigration for many districts is not a choice but a necessity, because it responds both to demographic and economic needs. That immigration has been and continues to remain vital for the growth of the north-eastern economy is well documented. As Paba and Murat (2006:194) argued, immigration has proved a vital resource for industrial districts, not so much for ensuring that production costs stay low, although this was also a factor, but above all for supplying a relatively low-skilled workforce which was not available either locally or nationally. Various studies produced under the aegis of the Fondazione Nord Est confirmed this assessment. Thus Castiglioni and Dalla Zuanna (2002:7) calculated that the high rate of immigration was directly linked to the positive economic performance of industrial districts and argued that the entire production system of the Veneto depended on a high rate of immigration, given the dramatic rate of ageing of the resident population and the 98

limits to the strategy of industrial relocation abroad. According to Marini and Oliva (2008:20-21), in order to keep the population of working age in the region at its current level for the next twenty years, roughly 36,000 new immigrants per year were needed. This in itself would ensure that the flow of immigrants would continue at the same rate as the last ten years. In an earlier report (Marini, 2006:5), one of the authors was even more explicit, claiming that “year after year, the structural nature of the migratory phenomenon is confirmed, as it is necessary for preserving the local population as well as the labour market. Given the current weak yet stable increase of the birth rate, the need for people from other countries might incur a slight decrease, but certainly not come to an end”. Another clear sign of the need for immigrant labour is given by the number of requests put forward by employers, which were especially high in the North. In Lombardy, for instance, in 2007 requests for immigrant labour on the part of employers rose by a third compared to the previous year, particularly in the provinces north-east of Milan, where most industrial districts are located (Regione Lombardia, 2008:134-135). Often the number of requests by employers is higher than the number of admitted immigrants. As Andall noted (2009), in 2007 the Veneto was assigned a quota of 19,110 workers, whereas the region’s employers had requested 84,554. It is largely this discrepancy which, according to Andall, accounts for the large presence of irregular immigrants. In short, there is no doubt that the high rate of immigration to Lombardy and the North East is primarily due to both economic and social needs, related to an ageing population, a lack of unskilled labour, high labour costs and local firms’ strategies of “inverse delocalization”. Now that the causal factors have been established, let us consider the prevailing reactions and attitudes towards the recent changes undergone by the economic and industrial structure, as experienced among the local society, including those responsible for bringing about such changes.

4. RISING LEVELS OF ANXIETY AND STRESS AMONG PRODUCERS

While most commentators tend to emphasize the positive impact of both delocalization and inverse delocalization upon the economic performance of industrial districts, which have by and large been able to regain economic growth and competitiveness in the face of a tough global environment, a very different picture emerges in terms of social and public reactions to these trends. Employers themselves appear to be divided as regards their evaluation of these changes, which again demonstrates the increasing polarization of strategies and outcomes within districts. Starting with attitudes among employers, the 2007 report by the Fondazione Nord Est (Marini and Oliva, 2007:6) pointed to a growing polarization between winners and losers, a strong sense of disorientation in the face of a radically changed economic and social context, constant uncertainty and persisting fears of the consequences of strong foreign competition. As concerns the latter, complaints about an “invasion” of cheap imports from China and other far eastern countries, together with apocalyptic scenarios of irreversible decline, have been a staple of surveys and reports on attitudes prevalent in industrial districts since the early 2000s. In 2005, one of the worst years for the district economy, various articles appeared in La Repubblica with alarming titles (eg., The Chinese Spectre and The Chinese Syndrome ) and even more alarming content. According to one of these articles, Italian small firms had been crushed by the new phase of globalization, 99

thereby giving vent to “protectionist nostalgia as well as anti-Europe, anti-globalization and anti-Chinese grievances” ( La Repubblica , 6 October 2005). However, competition from abroad was only one of the causes of anxiety and uncertainty within districts. Relations between firms within districts was another important factor, as indicated for instance by the 2008 report of the Fondazione Nord Est (Marini and Oliva, 2008:10), which referred specifically to the pressures placed by the larger firms upon the smaller ones, which had as a result “stressed out the firm and labour markets”. In addition, the report (ibid.:14) emphasized that relations between firms were compounded by the non- cooperative culture of local entrepreneurs, defined as “strongly characterized by individualism and by a culture of command”. Various reports produced by industrial districts themselves have recently emphasized the aggressive nature of both foreign and domestic (intra- and inter-districts) competition and the stress it has caused at local level. For instance, a report on the situation of the gold and silver manufacturing district of Vicenza, dating from 15 September 2006, stated that competition from the Asian countries had become “ever more gun-blazing” and argued that this had created a “climate […] of deep concern”, given that “many of the negative trends which affect the sector depend on global phenomena which our firms are subjected to and cannot influence” (Regione Veneto, 2007a). Similarly, the shoe district of Vigevano (Lombardy) reported “strong market pressures and competition from low-cost countries” (Vigevanoweb, s.d.), while a report for the shoe district of Verona, dating from 29 January 2007, talked of an “invasion”, which had “exploded without limits” in 2005, of European and North-American markets by shoes made in China, Vietnam and Thailand (Regione Veneto, 2007b). The report, similarly to the recent survey by the Fondazione Nord Est, also painted a picture of aggressive behaviour and extremely individualistic and competitive values among local producers, with little evidence of collaboration or cooperation. The leather industrial district of Arzignano, also in the Veneto, went as far as to state that, while 78 per cent of local firms considered competition from low-cost countries to be of concern, another 78 per cent judged the district itself to be the main source of competition (Regione Veneto, 2007c). The report specified that while competition from abroad was felt to be of medium or modest relevance, competition from within the district was perceived to be especially strong, indeed it was defined as “aggressive”. It was also noted that internal competition had increased due to the delocalization strategies of various sub-contracting firms. A specific case is that of the textile district of Val Seriana (Lombardy), which laments a heavy loss of employment, due to “the shift abroad, especially Romania and North Africa, of the manufacturing of medium-quality goods” (Osservatorio Nazionale Distretti Italiani, s.d). An article in Il Sole 24 Ore (12 February 2009) recently referred to this district as the first to “run a serious risk of de-industrialization”, painting a picture of growing discomfort, with one of the local Mayors, from the Lega Nord, complaining of rising unemployment. According to the article, the district had paid the price not of proving reluctant to change, but of having opted for the wrong strategy to face up to foreign competition, thus demonstrating the extreme negative consequences of having to operate and make strategic decisions in such an uncertain global environment. In this context, the strategy of delocalization was particularly targeted for criticism among producers. As a survey carried out in October 2008 showed (Bordignon 2009a), 42.1 per cent of entrepreneurs and self-employed people in the North East stated that delocalization represented a purely negative phenomenon, with another 49.6 per cent 100

declaring that it was positive for local firms but a risk for the economic development of the region as a whole. Only 8.3 per cent in this category stated that it was a positive phenomenon for both firms and the regional economy. The percentages indicating a wholly negative reaction to delocalization among this group were higher than the average, given that 36.1 per cent of all respondents viewed it as totally negative, whereas 58.1 per cent judged it as risky for the regional economy, and 5.8 per cent as wholly positive. Interestingly, negative reactions were especially high among voters of the PDL and Lega Nord parties, and considerably lower among supporters of the PD and IDV parties. A different survey, carried out in July 2008 (Marini, Girardi and Marzella, 2008:18) among employers based in Treviso, recorded considerably lower negative percentages (16.8 per cent) and higher positive reactions (23.3 per cent). Despite this, a majority of entrepreneurs (59.9 per cent) declared that delocalization presented advantages to individual firms but was a risky strategy for the local economy. The strategy of “inverse delocalization” also seems to concern employers. According to a 2006 survey, 65.2 per cent of north-eastern entrepreneurs employed immigrant labour and 74.7 per cent judged immigration as “still an important element for the economic and productive system of the region” (Ferraro, 2008:94). In this context, employers seemed aware of the need to integrate this labour force in the local society and to solve some pressing problems they encountered, above all the need for decent housing, often due to prejudices on the part of landlords. According to a 2008 survey carried out in the city of Treviso, only 3.7 per cent of employers considered immigration a problem, compared to issues such as the high cost of living and inadequate transport. This contrasts with a survey carried out in 2001 (Bordignon and Marini, 2001:5), when 40.4 per cent of north-eastern entrepreneurs declared that immigration had to rise to address the lack of local labour, while 46.8 per cent simultaneously stated that immigration constituted a threat to both law and order and personal safety. Both percentages were higher than those registered among the population as a whole (30.6 per cent and 38.6 per cent respectively). When disaggregated, the data showed that it was mainly the smaller firms which reported alarm for the social consequences of immigration, and above all those firms which did not employ any immigrant labour (Bordignon and Marini, 2001:6-7). Nevertheless, even those firms which employed immigrant labour and considered this a positive element for growth, recorded negative attitudes in terms of its social consequences. The discrepancy between the two surveys may indicate a growing acceptance of immigration among employers, even though the results in Treviso may not be as relevant as those of the wider 2001 survey. In the face of these ambivalent attitudes towards globalization and internationalization registered among employers and entrepreneurs, it is not surprising that relatively high feelings of stress were registered among the producing class in another survey carried out at the end of 2008 (Favaro, 2008). The highest percentages, in fact, were recorded among entrepreneurs, 51.1 per cent of whom declared that they felt stressed, and workers (53.1 per cent), whereas markedly lower percentages were registered among other social groups. In the next section we will analyze the attitudes towards recent socio-economic changes prevalent among the population.

101

5. A DEEPENING SOCIAL MALAISE

The already mentioned annual reports by the Fondazione Nord Est have repeatedly tested the attitudes of the population of the region towards a wide variety of economic and social phenomena, including industrial change, economic development, immigration, quality of life, the environment and crime. The resulting picture is one of deep insecurity or, as a 2008 survey put it, multiple “insecurities”, ranging from fear of economic decline and rising unemployment to fear of crime and immigration, as well as fear of the environmental impact of continuing industrial growth. Judged from a purely rational perspective, many of these insecurities are contradictory to some extent. Thus fear of economic decline is not easily reconcilable with fear of immigration, given that the latter has directly contributed to the economic well-being of many districts. Similarly, fear of environmental degradation somewhat clashes with fear of job losses in the industrial sector. Insecurity, however, is evidently not rational, and it is precisely the contradictory nature of many of the fears experienced by the local population which is revelatory of both a general malaise and, more importantly, of a sense of being caught in the midst of irreconcilable trends and unsolvable problems. This is because solving one issue would simply have the effect of exacerbating another. Starting with economic development, in July 2008 (Marini, Girardi and Marzella, 2008:17) a majority of respondents among the north-eastern population defined the current phase as one of uncertainty (37.2 per cent), followed by 30.8 per cent who thought the economy was in “difficulty”, whether temporarily (19.1 per cent) or structurally (11.7 per cent). Overall, 61.5 per cent of residents felt that the economic situation of their area had worsened in the last five years. In terms of the strategy of delocalization, this particular survey registered a massive opposition to it among the population of the North East, with 55.3 per cent perceiving it as wholly negative and only 8.7 per cent as wholly positive (ibid.:18). As we saw earlier, a lower percentage of negative attitudes (36.1 per cent) was recorded in another survey carried out in October 2008 (Bordignon, 2009a), although even in this survey wholly positive reactions were minimal (5.8 per cent). The July 2008 survey also registered ambivalent attitudes among the population in terms of the benefits that industrial growth had brought to the area, with the vast majority of respondents stating that industrial firms had generated employment and prosperity, another 52.2 per cent stating that they had damaged the environment and the landscape, and a further 37.9 per cent declaring that they had brought inequality and social conflict. It is clear that many respondents subscribed to both positive and negative judgments on the role of industry in their area. Assessing similar results emerging from their 2007 survey, Marini and Oliva (2007:10) concluded that “Industry itself, in the past well accepted for delivering development and wealth, no longer enjoys the same appeal. In fact, it is seen with perplexity, sometimes even with aversion”. Nowhere is this as visible as when we consider social reactions to immigration. As Bordignon (2009b) observed, regular annual surveys carried out by Demos since 2000 to measure social attitudes towards immigration, showed that 2008 and 2009 marked the highest incidence of respondents perceiving immigrants as a threat to law and order and personal security: 40.1 per cent in January 2008 and 42.4 per cent in January 2009, as opposed to 32.6 per cent in January 2007 and even lower percentages in previous years. Results for 2008 and 2009 were similar to, but still higher than, those recorded in the years 2000-02, indicating that there was no greater acceptance 102

of this phenomenon with the passing of time, despite its increasingly obvious long-term and indeed irreversible nature. The survey indicated that feelings of fear and insecurity in relation to immigration were highest among respondents with a lower level of education, as well as among those who lived in small and medium-size communes and were between 55 and 64 years of age. A separate survey by Demos and Pi XIII, carried out in April 2007, also established that such negative perceptions of immigrants were highest in the north east of the country. Here, 48.6 per cent of respondents considered them a threat to law and order and personal security, as opposed to 43.2 per cent in the country as a whole. Similarly, 42.6 per cent of respondents in the North East stated that immigrants constituted a threat to their culture, identity and religion, against 34.6 per cent in Italy. Interestingly, respondents in the North East were also those least inclined to consider immigrants a threat to employment (28.7 per cent against 34.3 for Italy as a whole) and most inclined to view immigrants as a resource for the economy (52.9 per cent against 41.5 per cent for Italy, a difference of more than 10 percentage points). Once again, these figures indicate the existence of ambivalent and contradictory sentiments among the population of the North East towards recent changes, with open recognition of the economic benefits brought by immigration together with strong fears concerning its impact on cultural values and crime. Fear of crime, in fact, has also been on the increase in this area of Italy. As Sartori (2008:289) indicated, the north east of Italy in the last decade witnessed a sharp rise in the percentage of families considering their area of residence at risk of crime, up from 17.3 per cent in 1993 to 28.8 per cent in 2006. The figure was lower than in Italy as a whole, but the level of increase was much higher, given that nationally during the same period the percentage had risen only from 31.2 to 32.7 (Sartori 2008:290). According to Barberis (2005), the wave of foreign immigration into industrial districts since the 1990s has been “perceived as a problem outside the firms and as a resource inside the workplaces”, with the result that it “further increases the gap between local society and local economy” (ibid.:16). Especially in the areas previously dominated by the Catholic subculture, immigration, in his view, has also led to “defensive ethnocentrism: here, the entrepreneurial propensity and the ideology of the “hard work” is coupled with an outstanding social closure toward everything [that] is not local” (ibid.:17). In the 2006 report by the Fondazione Nord Est, Marini (2006:6) put forward a different, albeit still worrying perspective on this perceived process of decoupling between the local economy and society. According to him, “[s]ome of the values upon which north-eastern society has been able to draw (individuals and firms, work and work ethic, community and belonging, responsibility and parsimony, religion and tradition) and have formed the central focus around which it was able to structure its own identity, nowadays show some perverse effects which do not go well with the actions necessary […] to face the challenges of internationalization of the markets, globalization, integration of migrants, social cohesion etc. Even more importantly, in some cases these values risk slowing down the new phase of transformation or prevent new opportunities from being identified”. Among the actions he considered necessary for the continuing prosperity of industrial districts in this area of Italy, Marini cited collaboration and shared planning, openness towards the outside world, learning and communicating, and a new role for politics. It seems clear from the above that, while industrial restructuring and the strategy of internationalization have met with attitudes of resistance and even open aversion among the local population, the latter’s long-standing values and strong sense of local identity, 103

traditionally recognized as an important resource for industrial districts, nowadays have become an obstacle to their further development. Whereas economy and society used to be mutually reinforcing and supportive, today their interests and visions appear increasingly divergent, and this in turn contributes to exacerbating the anxieties and fears felt both by producers and entrepreneurs and by the residents. However, producers and residents are only two of the elements that need to be taken into consideration when analyzing industrial districts today. There is a third social group whose feelings and attitudes are just as important in understanding recent changes and future developments, and this is the immigrants.

6. THE ONLY PARTIAL INTEGRATION OF IMMIGRANTS

As has been pointed out (Andall, 2009; Statera, 2008a), various surveys have indicated that, despite the Veneto being one of the strongholds of the Lega Nord, it is also one of the regions where immigrants appear to be best integrated. Andall pointed out that this seeming contradiction was due to a primarily economic understanding of integration, whereas from a social and cultural point of view immigrants faced explicit discrimination. In addition, in her view, even in economic terms their degree of integration in the region was lower than it appeared, given widespread grievances among migrant workers of discrimination over pay and overtime and the overall weakness of trade unions in the region’s industrial districts. In a study of the tannery district of Arzignano, Andall (2007) had discovered that “paternalistic relationships in small firms masked high expectations in terms of worker productivity” (ibid.:297), particularly in relation to migrant workers, and concluded that social differentiations, traditionally considered weak in industrial districts, had greatly widened since their employment in the local industry (ibid.:303). Similarly, in a survey of the district of Arzignano, Statera (2008b) reported a situation of ethnic separation, based on interviews with local migrant workers. He concluded that “the world has arrived to Arzignano but has not mixed”. According to Barberis (2005), this situation is typical of the north-eastern regions previously dominated by the Catholic subculture and could have serious repercussions on the future development of industrial districts, since the resulting labour market segmentation and the lack of social mobility among migrants are threatening to destroy what used to be the most dynamic traits of this type of industrial economy.

7. CONCLUSION

According to Anastasia and Corò (2008:19), the north east of Italy is the area with the highest degree of international openness: here the ratio of imports-exports in relation to GDP equals 57%, second only to the Lombardy region. This situation testifies to forward- looking and innovative strategies and attitudes among many local firms. Entrepreneurs, as I wrote in 2001 (Cento Bull and Gilbert 2001:100), “did not seem prepared to trade off economic prosperity for a defence of a traditional society and values” and, faced with the challenges of globalization, appeared to accept “the prospects of a multi-cultural society”. While this is still largely the case, various surveys have also shown that there are divided opinions among industrialists themselves concerning both delocalization and immigration, 104

due to divergent strategies undertaken by individual firms, since not all have opted or managed to internationalize, almost intolerable levels of internal and external competition and persisting fears of long-term economic decline. Indeed, the demise of some districts, such as the textile district of the Val Seriana in Lombardy, demonstrates that there is a drastic penalty to pay for choosing to adopt the wrong industrial strategy. If industrialists themselves show clear signs of anxiety and stress, these are even more widespread among the wider population. More importantly, while the former by and large view the recent economic changes as necessary and seem prepared to accept the need for policies aimed at the integration of immigrants, many other social groups express contradictory and often irreconcilable opinions, giving the impression of being swamped by insurmountable problems. Especially with regards to immigration, local residents of industrial districts appear to be simultaneously aware that immigration constitutes an important resource for the local economy and opposed to it. Perhaps their attitudes can be best summed up by Statera’s assertion (2008b), with reference to the experience of a Ghanaian worker in the leather district of Arzignano, that the town had “inlocalized” only his hands, while “the person attached to them has remained extraterritorial”. In other words, immigrants are accepted solely as a labour force, but rejected as far as their culture, customs, religion and identity are concerned. At the social level, this xenophobia creates discrimination and exclusion, which local and national political institutions are unwilling and/or unable to address. At the political level, as I argued elsewhere (Cento Bull, 2009), it makes residents and parties prone to what has been defined as the “politics of simulation”, with reference to a politics which practices “societal self-deception” in order to address people’s growing insecurities. Such a politics “simulates” being able both to devise and implement policies – such as expelling all irregular workers from the country or treating immigration as a “temporary” phenomenon - which are incompatible with economic and social trends, and to reconcile what are irreconcilable, and therefore deeply stressful, anxieties and fears.

REFERENCES

Anastasia, B. and G. Corò (2008), “Bassa crescita, ancora”, in D. Marini and S. Oliva, (eds), Nord-Est 2008. Rapporto sulla società e l’economia , Venezia, Marsilio:31-58. Andall, J. (2009), “La vittoria della Lega: immigrazione e cittadinanza in Veneto”, in G. Baldini and A. Cento Bull (eds), Politica in Italia 2008 , Bologna, Il Mulino:261-280. Andall, A. (2007), “Industrial Districts and Migrant Labour in Italy”, British Journal of Industrial Relations , 45 (2):285-308. Barberis, E. (2005), “Labour Immigrants, Local Economies, and Social Inclusion: An Italian Case”, paper given at the workshop Translocalism. Relinking the Ethnic to the Urban , Paris, ISA, http://www.cevipof.msh-paris.fr/RC21/papiers/eckardt%20eade.doc Bergamasco, C. (2008), “All’estero vince il Nord-Est”, Il Sole 24 ore , 13 June:18. Belussi, F. and F. Arcangeli (1998), “A Typology of Networks: Flexible and Evolutionary Firms”, Research Policy , 27 (4):415-428. Belussi F. and Sedita, S. R. (2008) “L’evoluzione del modello distrettuale: la ‘delocalizzazione inversa’ e il caso del distretto della concia di Arzignano”, Economia e Politica Industriale , 35 (2):51-72.

105

Bordignon, F. (2009a), “Il Nord Est ora chiude le porte agli stranieri”, Il Gazzettino , 17 March. Bordignon, F. (2009b), “‘Delocalizzazioni’: sei su dieci sono contrari” , Il Gazzettino , 20 January. Bordignon, F. and D. Marini (2001), Gli immigrati visti dagli imprenditori: pericolo o risorsa ?, Quaderni FNE Collana osservatori no. 4. Burroni, L. (2003), “The Emerging of Different Patterns of Local Development in the Third Italy”, in F. Sforzi (ed.), The Institutions of Local Development , Aldershot and Burlington (VT), USA, Ashgate:175-90. Cainelli, G. and R. Zoboli (2004), “The Structural Evolution of Industrial Districts and Adaptive Competitive Advantages”, in G. Cainelli and R. Zoboli (eds), The Evolution of Industrial Districts: Changing Governance, Innovation and Internationalisation of Local Capitalism in Italy , Heidelberg/New York, Springer. Castiglioni, M. and G. Dalla Zuanna (2002), “Immigrazioni di stranieri”, in Nord Est 2002. Rapporto sulla società e l'economia , D. Marini (ed.), Venezia, Marsilio. Demos and Pi XIII. Osservatorio sul Capitale Sociale degli Italiani (2007), Gli italiani e l’immigrazione. Rapporto Aprile 2007 , http://www.demos.it/2007/pdf/capitale_sociale_13.pdf Cento Bull, A. (2009), “Lega Nord: A Case of Simulative Politics?”, South European Society and Politics , 14 (2):129-146. Cento Bull A. and M. Gilbert (2001), The Lega Nord and The Northern Question in Italian Politics , Basingstoke/New York, Palgrave. Cento Bull, A., M. Pitt and J. Szarka (1993), Entrepreneurial Textile Communities: a Comparative Study of Small Textile and Clothing Firms , London, Chapman and Hall. Favaro, A. (2008), Nordest, 4 su 10 logorati dallo stress’, Il Gazzettino , 23 December. Ferraro, F. (2008), “Imprese e lavoratori immigrati”, in D. Marini (ed.), Una casa per cominciare , Fondazione Nord Est, http://www.fondazionenordest.net/uploads/media/Unicredit_Immigrati.pdf Lazerson M. H. (1988), “Organizational Growth of Small Firms: An Outcome of Markets and Hierarchies?”, American Sociological Review , 53 (3):330–342. Lorenzoni, G. and O. Ornati (1988) , “Constellations of Firms and New Ventures”, Journal of Business Venturing , 3 (1):41–57. Marini, D. (2005), “La trama del Nord Est: dal patcwork al tessuto tecnico”, in D. Marini (ed.), Nord Est 2005. Rapporto sulla società e l'economia, Venezia, Marsilio:4-15. Marini, D. (2006), “La morfogenesi del Nord Est: un dinamismo frenato”, in D. Marini (ed.), Nord Est 2006. Rapporto sulla società e l'economia, Venezia, Marsilio, at http://www.fondazionenordest.net/UpLoads/Media/Sintesi_NE2006.pdf. Marini, D., D. Girardi and F. Marzella (2008), Sviluppo e industria: una nuova reciprocità. Gli orientamenti della popolazione e degli imprenditori , Fondazione Nord Est. Marini, D. and S. Oliva (2007), “Il ritorno al futuro del Nord Est: famiglia, impresa, lavoratori”, in D. Marini and S. Oliva (eds), Nord Est 2007. Rapporto sulla società e l'economia , Venezia, Marsilio:5-15, also at http://www.fondazionenordest.net/UpLoads/Media/SintesiNE2007.pdf. Marini, D. and S. Oliva (2008), “Il rating del Nord est: 6A (e una E)”, in D. Marini and S. Oliva (eds), Nord Est 2008. Rapporto sulla società e l'economia , Venezia, Marsilio:5- 16.

106

Mariotti, S., M. Mutinelli and L. Piscitello (2008), “The Internationalization of Production by Italian Industrial Districts’ Firms: Structural and Behavioural Determinants”, Regional Studies , 42 (5):719-735 . Osservatorio Nord Est (2008), “Il Nord Est e lo stress”, Il Gazzettino, 23 December. Osservatorio Nazionale Distretti Italiani (s.d), Distretto tessile, confezioni e accessori per l’abbigliamento della Valseriana/Bergamasca-Valcavallina-Oglio , at http://www.osservatoriodistretti.org/osservatorio/16_lo_distretto-abbigliamento- bergamasca.htm Paba, S. and M. Murat (2006), “Immigrazione, distretti industriali e internazionalizzazione dell’attività produttiva”, in I distretti industriali dal locale al globale , in B. Quintieri (ed.), Saveria Mannelli (CZ) , Rubbettino:177-206. Pace, E. (2008), “’Pericolo razzismo a Nord Est’: uno su due dice che il rischio c’è”, Il Gazzettino , 11 December. Rabellotti R., A. Carabelli and G. Hirsch (2009), “Italian Industrial Districts on the Move: Where Are They Going?”, European Planning Studies , 17 (1):19-41. Regione Lombardia, Osservatorio regionale per l’integrazione e la multietnicità (2008), Rapporto 2007. Gli immigrati in Lombardia , Fondazione Ismu, Milan. Regione Veneto, Osservatorio regionale immigrazione (2008), Immigrazione straniera in Veneto. Rapporto Annuale 2008 , Milano, Franco Angeli. Regione Veneto (2007a), Patto di Sviluppo per il Distretto orafo argentiero di Vicenza , http://www.distrettidelveneto.it/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=7&func=fi leinfo&id=575&lang=italian Regione Veneto (2007b), Patto di sviluppo per il Distretto Calzaturiero Veronese http://www.distrettidelveneto.it/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=7&func=s elect&id=622&lang=italian Regione Veneto (2007c), Patto di sviluppo del Distretto vicentino della concia 2007-2010 , http://www.distrettidelveneto.it/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=7&func=fi leinfo&id=669&lang= Sartori, L. (2008), “Lavavetri, punkabbestia e rom, spritz, furti e graffiti: cos’è l’insicurezza in Italia?”, in M. Donovan and P. Onofri (eds), Politica in Italia , Bologna, Il Mulino:283-302. Savona, M. and R. Schiattarella (2004), “International Relocation of Production and the Growth of Services. The Case of the “Made in Italy” Industries”, Transnational Corporations , 13 (2):57–76. Spaventa, A. and S. Monni (2007), What next? How the Internationalization Process Might Lead to the Dissolution of Veneto’s Low-Technology Industrial Districts , CREI Working Paper no. 3/2007, at http://host.uniroma3.it/centri/crei/pubblicazioni.html. Statera, A. (2008a), “Il miracolo di Treviso. Nel feudo della Lega gli immigrati più integrati”, La Repubblica , 12 February. Statera, A. (2008b) “Arzignano, il paese salvato dagli immigrati”, La Repubblica , 18 November. Tattara, G., G. De Giusti and F. Constantin (2006), Il decentramento produttivo in Romania in tre distretti del Nord-Est , MPRA Paper No. 754, at http://mpra.ub.uni- muenchen.de/754/ Vigevanoweb (s.d.), Il Distretto del Vigevanese , at http://www.vigevano.net/index0.html

107

COMPARING AND CONTEXTUALIZING INTERPRETATIONS OF REGIONAL DIFFERENCE: ITALY VS. BELGIUM

Michel Huysseune

Vesalius College, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

1. INTRODUCTION

Like nationalism, political programmes that question the existent institutions and nation- states require discursive justification. The capacity of such justifications to convince public opinion itself depends on their successful re-articulation of broadly shared knowledge, opinions and values. The constructivist paradigm of nationalism has focused on the prominent role of intellectuals in the discursive elaboration of national identities. The credibility of such elaborations relies on their capacity to propose an articulation of national specificity in the universal language of the social sciences. As a discipline, history has played an outstanding role in elaborating narratives of national development, but other social sciences may equally contribute to the justification of nationalist claims (Coppieters et al. , 2002; Huysseune and Coppieters, 2002). In the two cases studied here, affirmations of regional identity and critiques of the central state do find justifications in the social sciences, albeit only in indirect forms. In Italy, reflexions on regional specificity are traditionally related to studies of southern Italy. The long-standing intellectual tradition (generally referred to as meridionalismo ) that reflects on the specific problems of the region and the country’s North-South divide is in fact an original Italian intellectual contribution that has no real parallels in other European countries, including Belgium (Bevilacqua, 1994:76). Its impact on the Italian public debate is, however, not always straightforward and frequently research on the South has been received as a confirmation of existent stereotypes. The numerous social pathologies present in southern Italy or at least in several parts of it, such as corruption and organized crime, have certainly facilitated this process. Hegemonic representations of the region therefore consider that these pathologies exemplify its economic, social and cultural “backwardness”, notwithstanding the modernization of the South after the Second World War (cf. Cassano, 2009:42-50). Such representations, combined with readings of the central state that interpret is as contaminated by the South’s cultural inadequacy (see e.g. Tullio-Altan, 1986), may indeed create an intellectual framework that contributes to legitimize the secessionist claim of the Lega Nord (Huysseune, 2006).

109

In Belgium, the elaborations of narratives of regional identity and political articulations of regional difference have not really been matched by sustained social science reflection on the issue. The present community-level organization of the social sciences enhances the institutional separation of the scholarly community: in this context scholars frequently take subnational identities easily for granted and hence tend to reify regional entities. Comparisons between regions do take place, but generally in a politicized context that does not question the reification of these entities, and in which the terms and the methodology of comparison are under-theorized. The history of Belgium certainly does not warrant any reading of Wallonia, one of the very first regions in the world to experience the industrial revolution, as “backward” or “un-modern” and this rhetoric device is indeed entirely absent from the Belgian debate. As in Italy, however, the superior performance of the richer region may serve as a justification for separation from the underperforming one. In recent years, however, scholars have been tackling the issue in a more reflexive way, parallelling a modest but significant revisionist vein in public discourse that affirms an interest in Belgium as both a problem and a challenge (e.g., Buelens et al., 2007). The different epistemological traditions in Belgium and Italy are, however, also related to their different location in theory and in the social sciences in general. For historical reasons, there is a long-standing international interest in Italy and in interpretations of the country’s particularities, and therefore a surprisingly large amount of social theory has been elaborated with Italy as a starting-point. Ideological and identitarian concerns have influenced students of Italy, since the country has a long- standing position as the Other of Anglo-Saxon modernity that dates back to at least the early 18 th century. Although stereotyped visions and “colonial” interpretations of the country have certainly not been absent even from recent scholarship, foreign interest in the country has undoubtedly enriched the intellectual debate in Italy and contributed to give it theoretical profundity. This foreign interest combined with the tradition of meridionalismo and reflections on Italy’s particularity have given intellectual depth and sophistication to interpretations of the country’s North-South divide (cf. Mastropaolo, 2009). Such a tradition does not exist in Belgium. From an international perspective, Belgium appears as a country with a normal socio-economic development and a (certainly until recently) stable political system, and hence scholars of all disciplines have only expressed a limited theoretical interest in explaining its particularities. This undoubtedly contrasts with the view of many Belgian scholars and a small number of foreign specialists on Belgium, who tend to emphasize the exceptionality of the country and seriously question the sustainability of its institutional model (see the discussion in Peters, 2006). Since the centrifugal dynamics of the federal system are at the heart of discussions on Belgium’s survival, the lack of sustained theoretical interest in regional differences within the country surprises. This relative neglect also contrasts with the important role historical narratives of victimization have played in regionalist mobilizations on both sides of the language border. These narratives attributed a central role to the state in the oppression and economic deprivation of their respective community. The dwindling importance of such narratives (although they certainly have not disappeared entirely) undoubtedly reflects the growing role of the regions and the diminished competencies of the federal government. Regional authorities moreover are sponsoring positive discourses of regional modernity and excellence that tend to 110

downplay rhetoric of victimization (although such rhetoric has a tendency to emerge virulently at moments of interregional controversies). In Italy, discourses of regional victimization also exist both in the South and in the North, although more marginalized because of a public culture bent on affirming the unity of the country. The emergence of the Lega has nevertheless revealed the potential strength of such a discourse, based on a widely shared common sense interpretation of the state as alien to northern society. The mainstream answer to the Lega, the “Northern Question” discourse, rejects the Lega’s racist and ethnocentric language, but as a rule accepts its juxtaposition of a healthy northern society and an inadequate central state. In what follows, I outline and compare the various interpretations and explanations of regional difference students of Belgium and Italy have proposed, and analyze how such interpretations may be congenial to centrifugal regionalism. In a first section, I analyze the cultural interpretations of regional difference that in both cases play a predominant role in contemporary scholarship and in justifications of centrifugal regionalism. After a critical evaluation of these interpretations, the second section evaluates structural theories of regional difference. In the conclusion I propose some alternative elements for interpreting and comparing societies.

2. THE ENDOGENOUS DEVELOPMENT PARADIGM AND CULTURALIST EXPLANATIONS

Taking into account county-specific dynamics, the scholarly and public debates in Belgium and Italy display a similar logic. In both cases the predominant issue addressed in debates on national and subnational specificity concerns regional capacity for economic development (a vision which presumes a classification of countries and regions according to their degree of economic development, a classification that implicitly also makes normative judgements on these territories).1 Globally, such presentations conceptualize the geographically uneven process of development as “the product of a differentiated diffusion process from the centre that leaves behind residuals from preceding eras or meets with pockets of resistance towards the progress and modernization that capitalism promotes” (Harvey, 2006:72). This conceptualization proposes an essentially endogenous explanation of success, roots it in specific territories, and tends to ignore outside factors that may condition societies and their economy. The self-representation of the richer parts of the countries relies in both cases on the image of regions ready and able to take up the challenges of economic globalization. The dominant image the less affluent regions propose is one of territories catching up with the richer ones, and gradually liberating themselves from the inheritance of the past that delayed their virtuous development. Dominant discourses embed, however, economic success in a broader framework, relating it to regional capacity for good

1 Implicitly, this perspective nevertheless also makes assumptions on the quality of development, as is exemplified in evaluations of southern Italian regions. The illegal economy prominently present in several of them undoubtedly produces an accumulation of wealth. The negative evaluation of these regions therefore implies that wealth is not the only relevant issue: a development model with a strong if not predominant role of organized crime is from a normative perspective presumed to be unacceptable. 111

governance (presumed to be less strong or altogether lacking in weaker regions) and a cultural context that supports these assets. Discourses from the less privileged region once again try to assert their gradual adaptation to these standards of accomplished modernity. The logic of such framework tends to focus on those societal features of the underperforming territories that are supposed to explain their presumed inadequacy, while it assumes that the performing territories are essentially unproblematic. Counter- discourses problematizing models of modernity and explanations of economic success are generally only present at the margins of the public and academic debate (for a recent example in Italy, see Cassano, 2009). The so-called “New Regionalism” paradigm plays a central role in representations of successful regions (cf. Keating et al., 2003, see also the contribution of Stijn Oosterlynck in this volume). It argues that a mobilization of local and regional social and cultural resources will produce economic development. This paradigm originated in fact in the 1980s out of Italian and international scholarship on the post-War process of diffuse industrialization of peripheral northern and central Italy, outside the triangle Milan-Turin-Genoa where industrialization had originally occurred (see in particular Piore and Sabel, 1984). This line of research has constantly highlighted how this development was based on industrial districts embedded in local society that mobilized local social and cultural resources. Literature tends to represent the industrial districts of northern Italy as idealtypes of local centres of production inserted in the networks of the global economy and escaping the territorial and social hierarchy characteristic of the fordist economy (for an overview, Huysseune, 2006:99-106; for recent literature see the contribution of Anna Cento Bull in this volume). The importance of the social and cultural dimensions of this development has resulted in an impressive amount of research that is interested in the cross-fertilization of economic and social models that is quite unique. As a direct consequence for this volume, the social sciences are better informed on the socio-economic particularities of these industrial districts than of most other regions in Europe, including Flanders. 2 Starting from the Italian case, the New Regionalism paradigm has resulted in a by now well-established research tradition. Reflections on regional economy have established important variations on the original Italian model. In the case of Flanders, for example, scholars highlight the important role of regional authorities as facilitators of economic development (cf. Keating et al., 2003). The articulation of the relation between economic development and cultural specificity clearly follows partly different dynamics in the two cases studied. In Flanders, culture has played an important place in the articulation of regional identity. Historical narratives that articulate Flemish identity and the victimization of the Flemish nation, however, have lost their previous prominence. The new focus of Flemish public discourse on the region’s modernity understands Flemish regional identity as an instrument for development. It coexists with a vision that differentiates Flanders and the cultural characteristics of its population from the negative image of the Francophone and Wallonian Other, with a focus on the work ethic of Flemings. Public discourse also proposes Flanders as a model of good governance, in contrast with the presumed weakness of governance, clientelism and corruption in Wallonia. Scholarly research on

2 A curious consequence is that recent representations of northern Italy strongly focus on these districts, and pay limited attention to other parts of the region or to economic, social and cultural processes that take place outside this model (Huysseune, 2006:142-143). 112

regional culture, however, has rarely confirmed these dichotomies. If anything, the rare scholarship devoted to cultural comparisons between Flanders and Wallonia has concluded that the two regions display strong cultural similarities (e.g., Billiet et al. 2006). Maesschalck and Van de Walle (2006), for example, observe that there is no solid evidence of any consistent regional cultural difference in attitudes towards corruption (nor of corruption itself): the data they study mention a more extended public perception of corruption in Wallonia, but also a more hostile attitude of public opinion towards it. Discourse on cultural difference has played a more complex role in Italy. Contrasting with a public discourse that has always highlighted the country’s unity, a “northern” vision of the country has articulated the opposition between a modern and entrepreneurial northern culture and a traditional South. The issue of cultural difference has played an important, albeit controversial role in debates on the country’s North-South difference and the South’s particularity. The debate overlaps with international considerations on the differences between modernity and tradition/backwardness, giving this issue an extra edge. Scholarship on the role of culture in development in northern Italy needs to be contextualized within this interpretative tradition. Not all of this scholarship is equally controversial. Historical research on various industrial districts has highlighted how their emergence resulted from the valorization of previously existent local social and cultural resources, but such research makes no assumption on the existence of a presumed typically northern cultural identity (Cento Bull and Corner, 1993; Gaggio, 2007). The temptation to read the weaker development of the South as resulting from inadequate culture nevertheless exists (see e.g. Macry 1997, and for a critique Benigno 1997). Italy is, however, also the scene of the paradigmatic work on the relation between culture, institutional efficiency and regional development, Robert D. Putnam’s Making Democracy Work , published in 1993. This seminal but controversial work, based on extensive research in Italy, highlights the importance of social capital in producing the civic culture that is a necessary prerequisite both for good governance and for economic development. The book argues that because social capital is prominently present in northern regions, absent or much weaker in southern regions, the former reach a much higher level of governmental efficiency than the latter. Putnam’s book is important for several reasons. Its conceptualization of social capital has become immensely popular in social research and has been applied in the most different contexts and with quite different purposes, including in Belgium. Secondly, the book proposes (in fact in line with modernization theory) a model of accomplished modernity characterized both by high economic development and a democratic and civic political culture. Thirdly, it interprets success and failure in developing social capital in cultural terms, quite similar to a well-established Italian interpretative tradition critiquing the alleged excessive individualism of southern Italians. Putnam himself mainly refers to the concept of “amoral familism” that the American political scientist Edward Banfield (on the basis of his field research in 1954-1955 in Chiaromonte, Basilicata) had defined as follows: ‘[m]aximize the material, short-run advantage of the nuclear family; assume that all others will do likewise’ (Banfield, 1967:83). While Banfield was cautious about generalizing the use of this concept although he did assume it could be relevant for southern Italy or even Italy as a whole (idem:10), Putnam traces its origins to the authoritarian past of the South, starting from emperor Frederick II (13 th century). He considers amoral familism as a survival strategy in an authoritarian environment, path 113

dependently reproduced and embedded in society. Northern Italy on the contrary inherited from its medieval city states traditions of cooperation for the common good. Putnam’s contribution has been sufficiently flexible to allow the development of a wide variety of research agendas. Some applications certainly also display the limits of his approach. His model relating economic development to the presence of social capital, applied to Belgium to analyze the Flanders-Wallonia economic differential, gives inconclusive results (see De Rynck, 1998). Marc Jacquemain (2005-2006:151) has raised a more principled critique. He argues that the lower level of social capital in the old industrial subregions of Wallonia ought to be interpreted as a consequence of their economic decline, and that it would be absurd to consider it a cause, since this decline reflects world-wide industrial transformations. In Italy, Putnam’s framework effectively played a role in the public debate on the issue in the 1990s, especially since it corresponded with entrenched stereotypes on southern Italy. Debates on Putnam’s theoretical framework in Italy have, however, provided an opportunity to question the ethnocentrism and the methodological bias of culturalist interpretations. Critics of Putnam (e.g. Lupo, 1993; Sabetti, 1996; Tarrow, 1996) have pointed out how his image of a South without social capital and incapable of collective action offers a largely distorted picture of the region that ignores well-embedded forms of cooperation and a long history of social and political mobilizations. Students of southern Italy have proposed two relevant methodological critiques of mainstream representations of the region and its culture. One, around the Italian review Meridiana , promotes an alternative view of the region that highlights the ineptness of describing it as backward, since it drastically modernized after the Second World War. Instead of being “backward”, it is now fully integrated in the developed world. These scholars are equally concerned to outline how southern Italy has already been undergoing processes of economic modernization at least since the beginning of the 19 th century. Although acknowledging the persistent problems of the region, they drastically reject theoretical models that intend to exclude the region from modernity or emphasize its alleged backwardness, like the one proposed by Putnam (whose historical determinism they equally counter). More internationally oriented critics from Italy and abroad have applied Edward Said’s Orientalism paradigm (Said, 1978) to argue that representations of southern Italy propose an “Orientalism in One Country”, whereby the South becomes the undeveloped Other of the virtuous North (see the contributions in Schneider, 1998). Both schools propose relevant critiques of dominant representational models of southern Italy, without necessarily providing entirely convincing alternatives. The second one is open for the same critique as Said’s work, namely that it does not provide a method for alternative representations. Taken to its extreme consequences, this approach suggests that the issue is essentially one of representation, and hence offers no satisfactory framework for interpreting the problems southern Italy indeed is confronted with. The “modernist” paradigm of Meridiana equally does not provide an entirely convincing framework to understand the problematic features of modernization in the South. The two alternative readings of the South discussed here nevertheless reveal the ideological dimension of the New Regionalism vision of culture and society which they do not really question. New Regionalism promotes a vision of regional excellence that reflects the predominant paradigm in European public discourse and scholarship that emphasizes modernity and “normalcy”, ignoring the much broader and heterodox interpretations of culture proposed in much scholarship in cultural studies. This 114

hegemonic paradigm offers an essentially utilitarian vision of culture as a set of attitudes and values that supports economic development, promotes system stability and institutional efficiency. In both cases, public discourse and the social sciences all too easily idealize economic modernity, as incarnated in the more developed regions. As a consequence, discussions of the problematic features of modernization remain as a rule segregated from those of models of economic modernity. In Italy, the problematic social aspects of the northern development model are often interpreted within the framework of the Northern Question in which outsiders, in particular the Italian state, are indicated as the culprits of northern discontent. In Belgium, the discussion on the strength of radical- right parties in Flanders, for example, is essentially confined to sociological debates and hence does not address the question of whether its emergence may be related to the Flemish economic model. In both cases, there are good reasons for a further investigation of the relation between models of economic success and their potential socially deleterious characteristics. In Italy, some sociologists have outlined the socially problematic dimensions of the culture of northern Italy and its industrial districts in particular. This research has drawn attention to the negative consequences of the instrumentalization of social relations for economic purposes (Bagnasco, 1999), of the predominance of an individualist culture (Magatti, 1998), and of the socially exclusive and often xenophobic nature of networks of trust in the industrial districts (see e.g. Cento Bull, 1996; Sacchetto, 2004). In Flanders, the relation discovered between utilitarian individualism, distrust of politics and voting for the extreme-right equally outlines a relation between dominant socio-cultural values and social pathologies (Derks, 2004). In neither case do we dispose of models that intend to provide a comprehensive alternative framework for the interpretation of regional culture. In Belgium, recent Flemish mainly journalistic representations of Wallonia propose reflections on its social and cultural assets that have been lost in Flanders. Although prone to exaggerated dichotomies, these contributions may provide the basis of a critical reading of the pathologies of competitive modernization. In Italy, a small group of southern Italian intellectuals (clearly influenced by the post-colonial critique of the aberrances of modernity) has proposed a critique of the utilitarianism of modernity and as a rediscovery of traditional southern anti-utilitarian values, for them particularly but not only present in southern Italy (Alcaro, 1999; Cassano, 1996). Rather than a new paradigm for interpreting the South, these intellectuals intend to provide new instruments for social change, but they nevertheless also have the merit of drawing attention to and re- evaluating those social and cultural features of societies that cannot be inserted in dominant narratives of modernization and competitive adaptation. 3

3 It is equally possible to question the development models of Flanders and northern Italy from an ecological perspective, especially since they are among the most polluted regions in Europe. Notwithstanding the omnipresent rhetoric on sustainable development, public discourse in both countries displays limited interest in the deleterious environmental features of the productive system in these regions. 115

3. STRUCTURAL EXPLANATIONS OF REGIONAL DIFFERENCE

Discussions on culture are relevant to understand regional differences, but in both cases these debates tend to stereotype and reify cultural identities, and to develop an essentially utilitarian vision on them. Cultural explanations also propose an unproblematic relation between culture and territories and/or ethnic groups (and in fact they tend to avoid any questions on the nature of this relation). In their present form, they propose small-scale equivalents of narratives that intend to explain inequality on a global scale by the degree of successful cultural adaptation to modernity. They thus ignore the structural inequalities within the global economy and the power relations that have produced them. Undoubtedly, the mechanisms that engender the global structural inequalities of the world economy are not very relevant to understand differences in economic performance within Europe. Scholars like Sidney Tarrow have nevertheless proposed to study culture in Italy not as the main explanation of regional difference, but as an element determined by structural constraints. For him, cultural factors “do play a role, but they are mediated by the structure of constraints and resources that surround the player and shape his strategy of adaptation: in particular, by the kind of state he encounters” (Tarrow, 1977:142). In the following, I analyze two theoretical models, one focusing on centre- periphery relations, one on the role of the state.

3.1. CENTRE-PERIPHERY

In the 1970s, theories that emphasized the unequal power distribution between centre and periphery have played an important role in interpretations of regional difference and the emergence of peripheral nationalism in Europe. In Belgium and Italy, this approach has not raised much interest in recent years. In both cases, public spokespersons of the poorer region tend to emphasize their region’s modernity and hence prefer to sidestep the issue of inequality. Parallel with this evolution, scholars tend to consider the internal colonialism and dependency perspectives intellectually outdated. While references to southern Italy’s peripheral location in the past historically did play a role in explaining its backwardness, presently even Marxists and adherents of World-System Theory do not analyze southern Italy as a dependent territory, since Italy clearly belongs to the core of the First World and southern Italians share the privileges of this location (Arrighi and Piselli, 1987). From a Marxist perspective, John Agnew (1993) has critiqued the core- periphery metaphor by pointing out the difficulties concerning the definition of “peripheries”, and the danger of “ascription of causality to spatial categories” (idem:258). He highlights how this may lead to attribute only a passive or reactive role to territories defined as peripheral, denying their potential for agency (idem:260). The concept of periphery nevertheless does merit some attention in interpreting southern Italy. It has a historical significance, since its past insertion in global trade networks did follow a pattern of exchange between agricultural and industrial goods with all the asymmetries this implies. For its present situation, taking into consideration the location of the region remains relevant, to begin with in geopolitical terms as a region outside the core of Europe’s economy. Its less advantageous position, together with its social consequences such as mediocre labour conditions and a lower standard of living, make southern Italy comparable to other peripheral European regions like northern 116

Greece or central Portugal (Rossi, 2004:470). This model of course cannot be applied to Belgium. The territorial inequalities the post-fordist economic model of just-in-time production may engender are equally of limited relevance in Belgium, since the Belgian territory offers in general favourable conditions, because of its location in the economic core of Europe and the absence of important geographic impediments to development. A more relevant approach to understand regional underperformance in Belgium would be to compare the depressed areas in Wallonia with similar ones in Europe, as “internal peripheries” created by capitalist development (and as such they are exemplar of the inequalities the economy does engender). Why these areas in Wallonia are among the less successfully reconverted then still needs to be explained.

3.2. INSTITUTIONAL EXPLANATIONS

Both in Belgium and Italy, institutions (and central authorities in particular) play an awkward and ambivalent place in debates on regional difference. These debates take place in a context where the state suffers from a lack of legitimacy. Northern and southern Italians, Flemings and Walloons, have moreover all developed a narrative in which the state, allegedly favouring the interests of the other region and/or of an oligarchic elite, has discriminated them. In the public debate of both countries, the claim of the richer region(s) to stop financial transfers to the poorer one(s) has moreover acquired an important place. Beyond the often confusing debates on data concerning such transfers, this claim clearly proposes a normative paradigm shift that questions the traditionally upheld solidarity within the nation-state, since it intends to limit this solidarity to a particular part of the nation. The political importance of such arguments is not really reflected in scholarship, since Belgian or Italian studies that purports to sustain the anti-transfer justifications remain relatively scarce (Hannes, 2007; Ridolfi, 2010). In both countries, overall, scholarly debates on institutions have a tendency to downplay narratives of victimization and perspectives of discrimination. Scholarship discussing the central state nevertheless frequently proposes reflections on the territorially differentiated impact of state policies and also on the performance of subnational authorities. In recent years, scholars have rarely focused their research on the regionally and/or ethnically biased role of the central state. In Belgium, the most important and systematic analysis on this issue dates from 1978 (Quévit, 1978). Quévit’s study analyzes the role of the central government in the decline of the Wallonian economy within a narrative of Wallonian victimization. His starting-point is the dominant position of large holdings and in particular the Société Générale in the Belgian economy. These holdings characteristically developed a global investment strategy with relatively weak links to territory. Through the Flemish Movement, a competing Flemish bourgeoisie emerged, especially after the First World War (around the Vlaams Economisch Verbond and the Kredietbank). This bourgeoisie consistently defended the territorial interests of Flanders, and managed to exercise a strong impact on government policies through its relations with the dominant Christian Democrat party. Wallonia, economically dominated by the holdings who owned most of its coal and steel industry, lacked an elite with a similar territorial interest. Confronted with the decline of its traditional economy from the 1950s on, the region was therefore unable to produce a collective mobilization for economic growth similar to that of Flanders. 117

Quévit’s work reflects both the indigenous leftist roots of Wallonian regionalism and the blend of Marxism and regionalism popular in the 1970s and that found its theoretical expression in the (not necessarily Marxist) internal colonialism paradigm (cf. Hechter, 1975). It has its equivalent in the writings of Anton Roosens, the most important progressive Flemish nationalist (himself influenced by Gramsci), who equally denounced the role of Belgian holdings (Roosens, 1981). In Italy, narratives of southern victimization (e.g. Zitara, 1976), form a curious blend of pro-Bourbon nostalgia and Marxist-sounding rhetoric, and even the Lega’s discourse occasionally displays traces of the influence of leftist regionalism present in its early stages. By the depth of its analysis that transcends a too overtly parochial partisanship, Quévit’s work is certainly the most important Belgian example of scholarship on the way politics of the central state may contribute to the creation and/or preservation of a regional differential. The demise of such approaches undoubtedly reflects the diminished importance of both Marxism and the internal colonialism paradigm that sustained this literature. Quévit himself has recently reiterated his narrative of discrimination of Wallonia (Quévit, 2010) without, however, its original Marxist framework. The relative indifference towards such research - Quévit’s book from 1978 is exceptional in still being frequently quoted, but its approach is rarely discussed and still less applied – implies that its thesis has never really been systematically evaluated, undoubtedly a lacuna in interpretations of Belgian history. In the case of southern Italy, however, the limited intellectual impact of discourses of victimization, undoubtedly related to the prevalent ideological climate, also reflects the critical tradition of meridionalismo , strongly concerned with analyzing and denouncing the abusive practices of southern elites. Interestingly enough, some recent scholarship in southern Italy, theoretically much more mainstream than that from previous periods (e.g. Viesti, 2003), does draw renewed attention to the deleterious effects on the South of recent policies of the central government (and outlines that the strength of the Lega and the prominence the Northern Question has acquired have led to a policy focus on the North, detrimental to the South). In the case of Belgium, the diminished role of the federal government also explains why, besides the specific issue of transfers, analyses of the differentiated regional impact of its policies do not play an important role in the present intellectual debate. In Italy, on the contrary there exists a long-standing tradition of political discussions on the state’s territorially differentiated policies that has also influenced the academic debate. Issues of contention are the modalities of the incorporation of the South (more precisely the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies) in Italy in 1860-1861, the protectionist policies of the 1890s that promoted the industrial take-off of northern Italy, and the debate on the intervento straordinario after the Second Wold War to modernize the South. Although debates on the first two issues still continue, most interest concentrates on the evaluation of post-War policies. Carlo Trigilia’s Sviluppo senza autonomia (Development Without Autonomy) published in 1992, has provided the framework for the presently dominant interpretation. The book, while acknowledging the positive effects of the intervention, focuses on its perverse effects. Its “assisted” development from above, often determined by political considerations, has been unable to generate an autonomous process of growth. He observes the contrast between the development poles subjected to the intervention and confronted with stagnation, with those parts of the South not involved in those policies and their sometimes superior capacities for independent development. Published in the early 1990s, the book certainly (perhaps against the 118

intention of the author) consolidated a view that the South’s problem was state intervention, and hence that this intervention should be downscaled in favour of the natural working of the market (although an alternative paradigm on local development based on pooling and stimulating local entrepreneurial and cultural resources equally plays a role in the debate on southern development policies). The less acknowledged research of Linda Weiss (1988) reveals one weakness in the interpretative framework derived from Trigilia’s study. Like Trigilia, Weiss envisions differentiated regional development as the outcome of state policies. She outlines how the Italian government’s intervention in the South was geared more towards providing infrastructure and supporting large-scale industry. Support for the northern economy concerned much more financial subsidies towards artisans and self-employed people. These policies of extensive economic support to small enterprises, much more generous than in other European countries, tend to be obliterated in entrepreneur-focused narratives of northern development. Her reading suggests that the different regional economic models are the outcome of differentiated policies (Weiss 1988, especially chap. 4:55-80), although these policies themselves reflected existent perceptions of regional difference. Evaluations of regional authorities are a third category of studies on the role of institutions. Standards of good governance form one of the key elements of public discourse in success regions, frequently contrasted with the real or presumed incapacity of less successful ones to reach these standards. Certainly in public discourse, differences in performance are frequently related to cultural difference, and hence once again propose the culturalist paradigm discussed above. Performance of regional authorities is obviously a key element of Putnam’s Making Democracy Work. Critics of Putnam never really question his negative evaluation of southern regional governments; they only reject his culturalist explanation. Recent scholarship on Belgium is equally interested in the analysis and comparison of regional governments. The process of federalization has undoubtedly led to policy divergence between regional authorities. Scholars are for the moment cautious in their explanations of this divergence: rather than referring to culturalist explanations they tend to emphasize the difference in political opportunity structures (e.g., De Rynck and Dezeure, 2006). Evaluations of regional authorities also concern their role in stimulating economic development. In Belgium, public discourse frequently highlights the presumed negative role of the dominant Socialist Party in Wallonia in the region’s development. The hegemonic position of socialists in Wallonia rendered a collective mobilization for economic development more difficult than in Flanders, since the party had weaker links with the entrepreneurial class than the dominant Flemish party, the Christian democrats (Quévit, 1978). A comparison with Italy, where socialists and later the communist party have played an important role in stimulating industrial development in localities and regions they controlled (see e.g. Gaggio 2007), suggests that this argument is not entirely satisfactory. However, Linda Weiss (1988) has pointed out that in its promotion of policies that strongly favoured small enterprises the Italian state was quite exceptional in Europe (the only comparison she makes concerns ). The absence of such policies in Wallonia is hence not exceptional (see also the contribution of Oosterlynck in this volume). Both in Wallonia and southern Italy, scholarship and public discourse frequently relate underachievement to clientelist practices. Up to which point there exists a causal relation between clientelism and economic underachievement is never systematically 119

theorized (if anything, the opposite causality might be more relevant). In the case of Wallonia, the fact that the socialist party (both presumed to be the main culprit of clientelism and for regional underdevelopment) did not participate in regional (and national) governments for most of the 1980s, economically a crucial phase for its failed reconversion, certainly problematizes interpretations that blame this party for this failure. In Italy, scholars have argued that in some southern regions (Abruzzo and Basilicata) the practice of so-called “virtuous clientelism” has played an important role in mobilizing resources for development (Piattoni, 1998). Although such research may underestimate the deleterious effects of clientelism on society, it nevertheless has the merit of questioning the assumption that opposes clientelism to economic growth. 4 An overview of the role of institutions in both cases seems to raise questions rather than provide answers. Institutions certainly play a relevant role, but it is less easy to interpret this role. The narratives that argue that the central state has systematically discriminated particular regions are clearly unilateral. It nevertheless seems fair to concede that central governments have in both cases played a role in producing policies with a territorially differentiated outcome. The history and the logic of these differentiated policies certainly deserve further reflection. In Belgium, they are related to international development trends (the demise of the sectors of the first industrialization, coal and steel, causing decline in Wallonia, the emergence of new industrial sectors and the service economy favouring Flanders). In Italy, the differentiation is rather related to the different interaction between the central state and local and regional elites, the economic elite of northern industrialists (relatively independent of the state but nevertheless acting in strong symbiosis with it), and southern elites whose power is much more related to their insertion in political circuits.

4. ELEMENTS FOR AN ALTERNATIVE INTERPRETATION

Structural explanations offer important correctives to cultural ones. They do not necessarily efface them, but they certainly allow understanding culture in context. Rather than perceiving culture as the cause of structures, they suggest that the opposite relation may be the more relevant one. Structural explanations do not, however, provide an entirely convincing explanation of regional difference, and do not sufficiently address the issue of agency within the less privileged regions. Southern Italy offers the best perspective for going beyond internal (cultural) and external (structural) explanations of regional particularity, starting from the persistent

4 In Belgium, clientelism is also located in the past, as a practice of the pillarized political system gradually reformed in recent years (but this discourse also assumes that these reforms have been more successful in Flanders than in Wallonia). Until the 1980s, oppositional political rhetoric in Flanders frequently critiqued the regionally predominant position of the Christian democrat party in similar terms as present critiques of the socialist party in Wallonia. The Flemish economic take-off in the 1950s and 1960s certainly took place in a context where clientelist practices were extensively present. In Italy, many scholars (e.g. Tarrow, 1977) have pointed out that clientelist practices are systemic, related to the set-up of the Italian state, even when they tend to be stronger in the South (for an overview of this debate, see Huysseune, 2006:107-117). 120

presence of irresponsible and abusive elites in the region. The issue has been a core concern of many interventions in the debate on the Southern Question and from the beginning, contributors to this debate have been divided between those who interpreted this irresponsibility as an expression of a southern mentality or culture, and those who rather emphasized the institutional context and the power mechanisms (including at the national level) that determined the actions of these elites. For sure, the perpetuation of this problem raises a serious interpretative challenge. The optimistic vision that related it to the region’s backwardness and expressed the belief that modernization would bring its disappearance (together with that of organized crime) has been drastically disproved, since these elites and organized crime have on the contrary displayed their capacity to adapt to modernization The scholarship on the South in the 1990s that correctly revised images of backwardness sometimes itself proposed a too optimistic reading of the region (see e.g. Cersomino and Donzelli, 1996). Paradoxically, although many of these scholars had expressed their hostility towards Putnam, their vision on the role of the newly emerging southern civil society that would produce new responsible elites and good governance seems a copy of Putnam’s model highlighting the role of social capital (ibid.). Some ten years later, the limits of change and the persistence of an abusive political class are all too visible. At this point, Judith Chubb’s earlier (1982) analysis of southern clientelism appears as more compelling. She already argued that it was not a transitional phase towards modernity (as social scientists before her tended to assume) but a self- perpetuating and self-reproducing regime. Southern Italy thus raises the question of how the persistent presence of abusive elites in the region may be explained. Research on the origins of this system has related it to the specific conditions of the South’s transition from feudalism to capitalism in the early 19 th century. John Davis has conceptualized this transition as the Great Transformation, highlighting how the process of social disaggregation southern Italy underwent during that period had many elements in common with the social changes that accompanied industrialization in Great Britain, described by Karl Polanyi (Davis, 1998:211). In a context of political and social instability (much more than in northern Italy in the same period), traditional elites in the South reorganized their hegemonic political and social position, including by developing unstable and conflictual alliances with newly emerging social groups that in some regions were the backbone of organized crime. This power system was consolidated and institutionalized in the period after Italian Unification, since it allowed the central government to control the newly annexed regions of the South. There is also a consensus on how this power system was perpetuated after 1945, in the context of the Cold War and the perceived threat of communism. The southern Italian power system undoubtedly has endogenous roots, in local social and political conflicts. It certainly cannot, however, be separated from the Italian state as a whole and its central government in particular, or from northern economic interests. From the 19 th century on, southern Italian intellectuals like have pointed out how the power system in southern Italy was instrumental for the preservation of the power of the country’s dominant northern elite. The recent waste crisis in the southern region of Campania is a good example of the perpetuation of this pattern. Media frequently represent this crisis according to traditional stereotypes that highlight southern cultural ineptness and the involvement of the Camorra. A more in- depth analysis rather reveals a territorial division of labour whereby industrialists from 121

more developed regions in cooperation with organized crime use the territory of less developed ones as convenient abusive outlets for their waste (with the tacit support of the central government, and against the active opposition of at least part of the local population). The particular nature of the power system in southern Italy and its interaction with the Italian state goes a long way in explaining regional particularities. It nevertheless also raises another question, why it has never successfully been challenged. This issue may be related to a more general theoretical problem, concerning the role of social and political mobilizations (including of course ethnic mobilizations) in moulding society. The excellent research on social movements produced in both countries contrasts with a more general tendency to downplay their (past and present) role in politics and their impact on society. In both countries, contemporary hegemonic public discourse articulates a vision that idealizes essentially conflict-less societies (or more precisely one where social conflicts are ignored or re-interpreted as ethnic or cultural conflicts, the only ones that are readily acknowledged). It reflects current social science practice that frequently outlines a model of networked governance that abstracts away the issue of power relations and the unequal access to power, and in fact essentially envisions politics as the elite game of policy-making, in which the role of social mobilizations is marginalized (Hadjimichalis and Hudson, 2006). Hegemonic Flemish public discourse, for example, expresses the historically predominant political tradition of the region, Christian democracy, contrasted with the Walloons prone to (especially working-class and union) mobilization. Such vision seems oblivious of the importance of political mobilization for Flemish emancipation, and more broadly for the establishment of democracy in Belgium (the pre World-War I strikes for universal suffrage). Hegemonic public discourse in Italy cultivates an even stronger dislike of mobilizations and has pronounced a damnatio memoria on the protest cycle of the 1960s and 1970s and (more controversially) on the Resistance, a clear attempt to exorcise social and political conflicts by focusing only on their excesses. The problematic place social sciences attribute to social movements is well illustrated once again by Putnam’s Making Democracy Work . The volume gives a positive value to such movements, since it highlights the role of political grass-roots mobilizations (the socialist, communist and Christian democrat traditions in northern and central Italy) as a crucial element in the consolidation of northern Italian civic culture and equally deplores the in fact largely imaginary absence of such movements in the South. Putnam, however, locates the role of such mobilizations in the past, as a historically constitutive element of a civil society. A mature civil society transcends these conflicts and politics become pacified with its civic elite in charge. That such a narrative of maturation of an essentially conflict-less society may be problematic is certainly clear in the case of southern Italy. The substantial failure of elite-driven reforms in the 1990s (sustained by a mainly middle-class civil society) would rather confirm Chubb’s prediction (1982) that sustained popular grassroots mobilizations are the only instrument that could seriously challenge existent power structures in southern Italy. Equally problematic, however, is Putnam’s image of a mature post-conflict society in northern Italy, since the very emergence of the Lega and its conflictual relation with the central state but also with “deviant” groups within the North problematizes it. These examples suggest us to look more carefully to the role of social conflicts and social mobilization in the regions under scrutiny. Past social mobilizations and 122

conflicts have played an important role in determining social identities in both countries. Knowledge of this history is certainly important for understanding societies and as Santino (2000; 2006) argues for Sicily, ignorance of this history may lead to serious misinterpretations of these societies. He particularly relates the predominant role of predatory elites in the region and the lack of opposition to them to the defeat of social movements contesting their power. More in general, the strong political identities and political subcultures (both national and regional) characteristically present in Italy in Belgium (although recently rather weakened) definitely are sediments of historical processes of political mobilizations, and hence confirm their importance. In both countries, the contemporary affirmation of centrifugal regionalism may indeed be related to cycles of social conflicts and their sedimentation in political cultures. In northern Italy, its emergence followed the demise of the nation-wide cycle of protest that contested Italy’s elites between 1967 and 1980. It equally coincided with the weakening of the historically rooted Christian democrat and communist political identities and subcultures, a process that has its parallel in Belgium, where during the same period these identities and subcultures as well as the pillars that sustained them gradually declined or underwent a process of political disaffiliation. Historians and political scientists in Belgium have pointed out how its political life has traditionally been determined by three cleavages: clerical-anticlerical, capital-labour and Flemish- Francophones. Since the 1960s, after the important mobilizations in the 1950s from Catholics and anticlericals (on the place of Catholic schools in the educational system) and the 1960-1961 General Strike, the latter cleavage has become politically predominant and the other cleavages now are frequently interpreted in “ethnic” terms (cf. Huyse, 1981). The present predominant version of Flemish identity (anti-Wallonian but also tendentially anti-socialist) may hence be read as an intentional exorcization or at least domestication of political traditions that equally exist in Flanders. 5 This excursion historicizes justifications of centrifugal regionalism and reveals that the linkage between cultural identity and economic performance it proposes makes abstraction from political and social history, and the cultural and political plurality that indeed characterizes regions. It also questions the implicit assumption of centrifugal regionalism that the state of development of their region essentially expresses endogenous virtues and is not conditioned by its history and (national and international) power relations. From this perspective, affirmations of centrifugal regionalism should be read as symptoms of the political, social and cultural tensions and contradictions of societies mobilized in the competition for economic excellence. These cases may be read as the reduction of politics to economic interest (Magatti, 1998:175-176), but the politicization of these interests in a secessionist stance reveals how such a reduction is ultimately impossible. Taking into account that the findings concerning Belgium and Italy and in particular the strong economic dimension of their justifications are probably in many aspects case-specific, they nevertheless suggest that the occurrence of centrifugal regionalism in seemingly post-ideological and pacified societies expresses the new shape of tension-lines and conflicts within and between societies, rather than the end of them.

5 Recent representations of social conflicts in Belgium tend to ethnicize them, describing in particular the general strike of 1960-1961 as an essentially Wallonian event. Differences in political traditions in the two regions thus risk to be reified and only represented in opposition to each other, downplaying dissident minorities in each region. 123

Centrifugal regionalism in Europe should hence be envisioned as a constitutive element of the reconfiguration of the democratic political space in the context of globalization and economic and political integration.

REFERENCES

Agnew, J. (1993), “Representing Space: Space, Scale and Culture in Social Science”, in J. Duncan and D. Ley, Place/Culture/Representation , London/New York, Routledge:251-271. Alcaro, M. (1999), Sull’identità meridionale. Forme di una cultura mediterranea , Torino, Bollati Boringhieri. Arrighi, G. and F. Piselli (1987), “Capitalist Development in a Hostile Environment: Feuds, Class Struggles, and Migrations in a Peripheral Region of Southern Italy”, Review , 10 (4):649-751. Banfield, E. C. (1967), The Moral Basis of a Backward Society , New York, The Free Press (first published 1958). Bagnasco, A. (1999), Tracce di comunità , Bologna, Il Mulino. Benigno, F. (1997), “The Southern Family. A Comment on Paolo Macry”, Journal of Modern Italian Studies , 2 (2):215-217. Bevilacqua, P. (1994), “Questione meridionale”, in P. Ginsborg (ed.), Stato dell’Italia , Milano, Il Saggiatore:72-77. Billiet, J., B. Maddens and A.-P. Frognier (2006), “Does Belgium (Still) Exist? Differences in Political Culture between Flemings and Walloons”, West European Politics , 29 (5):912–932. Buelens, G., J. Goossens and D. Van Reybrouck (eds) (2007), Waar België voor staat. Een toekomstvisie , Antwerpen/Amsterdam, Meulenhoff/Manteau. Cassano, F. (1996), Il pensiero meridiano , Roma/Bari, Laterza. Cassano, F. (2009), Tre modi di vedere il Sud . Bologna, Il Mulino. Cento Bull, A. and P. Corner (1993), From Peasant to Entrepreneur. The Survival of the Family Economy in Italy , Oxford/Providence, Berg. Cento Bull, A. (1996), “Ethnicity, Racism and the Northern League”, in C. Levy (ed.), Italian Regionalism. History, Identity and Politics, Oxford/Washington DC, Berg:171-187. Cersomino, D. and C. Donzelli (1996), “Mezzo giorno en mezzo no. Realtà, rappresentazioni e tendenze del cambiamento meridionale”, Meridiana , 26/27:23-73. Chubb, J. (1982), Patronage, Power, and Poverty in Southern Italy. A Tale of Two Cities , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Coppieters, B., I.M. Myhul and M. Huysseune (2002), “Introduction”, in B. Coppieters and M. Huysseune (eds), Secession, History and the Social Sciences . Brussels, VUB Brussels University Press:11-35. Davis, J. (1998), “Casting of the ‘Southern Problem’: Or the Peculiarities of the South Reconsidered”, in J. Schneider (ed.), Italy’s “Southern Question”. Orientalism in One Country , Oxford/New York, Berg:205-224. Derks, A. (2004). “Are the Underprivileged Really that Economically ‘Leftist’? Attitudes Towards Economic Redistribution and the Welfare State in Flanders”, European Journal of Political Research, 43 (4):509–521. 124

De Rynck, S. (1998), “Civic Culture and Institutional Performance of the Belgian Regions”, in P. Le Galès and C. Lequesne (eds), Regions in Europe , London, Routledge:199-218. De Rynck, S. and K. Dezeure (2006), “Policy Convergence and Divergence in Belgium: Education and Health Care”, West European Politics , 29 (5):1018-1033. Gaggio, D. (2007). In Gold We Trust. Social Capital and Economic Change in the Italian Jewelry Towns , Princeton/Oxford, Princeton University Press. Hadjimichalis, C. and R. Hudson (2006), “Networks, Regional Development and Democratic Control”, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research , 30 (4):858-872. Hannes, J. (2007), De mythe van de omgekeerde transfers : fiscale prestaties van Vlaanderen, Wallonië en Brabant (1832-1912) , Roeselare/Brussel, Roularta. Harvey, D. (2006), Spaces of Global Capitalism. Towards a Theory of Uneven Georgraphical Development , London, Verso. Hechter, M. (1975), Internal Colonialism. The Celtic Fringe in British National Development, 1536-1966 , London, Routledge & Kegan Paul. Huyse, L. (1981), “Political Conflicts in Bicultural Belgium”, in A. Lijphart (ed.), Conflict and Coexistence in Belgium: the Dynamics of a Culturally Divided Society , Berkeley, Institute of International Studies, University of California:107-126. Huysseune, M. and B. Coppieters (2002), “Conclusions”, in B. Coppieters and M. Huysseune (eds), Secession, History and the Social Sciences , Brussels, VUB Brussels University Press:275-295. Keating, M., J. Laughlin and K. Deschouwer (2003), Culture, Institutions and Economic Development. A Study of Eight European Regions . Cheltenham (UK)/ Northampton (MA/USA), Edward Elgar. Jacquemain, M. (2005-2006), “La capital social – essai de cartographie wallonne”, in: Fédéralisme-Régionalisme :113-153. Lupo, S. (1993), Storia della Mafia dalle origini ai giorni nostri , Roma, Donzelli. Macry, P. (1997), “Rethinking a Stereotype: Territorial Differences and Family Models in the Modernization of Italy”, Journal of Modern Italian Studies , 2 (2):188-214. Maesschalck, J. and S. Van de Walle (2006), “Policy Failure and Corruption in Belgium: Is Federalism to Blame?”, West European Politics , 29 (5), 999–1017. Magatti, M. (1998), Tra disordine e scisma. Le basi sociali della protesta del Nord , Roma, Carocci. Mastropaolo, A. (2009), “From the Other Shore: American Political Science and the Italian Case”, Modern Italy , 14 (3): 311-337. Peters, B.G. (2006), “Consociationalism, Corruption and Chocolate: Belgian exceptionalism”, West European Politics , 29 (5):1079–1092. Piattoni, S. (1998), “’Virtuous Clientelism’: The Southern Question Resolved?”, in J. Schneider (ed.), Italy’s ‘Southern Question’. Orientalism in One Country , Oxford/New York, Berg:225-243. Putnam, R.D. (1993), Making Democracy Work. Civic Tradition in Modern Italy , Princeton (NJ), Princeton University Press. Quévit, M. (1978), Les causes du déclin wallon , Bruxelles, Éditions Vie Ouvrière. Quévit, M. (2010), Flandre-Wallonie quelle solidarité? De la création de l’Etat belge à l’Europe des Regions , Charleroi, Editions Couleurs livres.

125

Ridolfi, L. (2010), Il sacco del Nord. Saggio sulla giustizia territoriale , Milano, Guerini e Associati. Roosens, A. (1981), De Vlaamse Kwestie. “Pamflet” over een onbegrepen probleem , Leuven, Kritak. Rossi, U. (2004), “New Regionalism Contested: Some Remarks in Light of the Case of the Mezzogiorno of Italy”, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research , 28 (2):466-476. Sabetti, F. (1996), “Path Dependency and Civic Culture: Some Lessons From Italy About Interpreting Social Experiments”, Politics and Society , 24 (1):19-44. Sacchetto, D. (2004), Il Nordest e il suo Oriente. Migranti, capitali e azioni umanitarie , Verona, Ombre Corte. Said, E.W. (1978), Orientalism , New York, Pantheon Books. Santino, U. (2000), Storia del movimento antimafia , Roma, Editori Riuniti. Santino, U. (2006), Dalla mafia alle mafia. Scienze sociali e crimine organizzato . Soveria Mannelli, Rubbettino. Schneider, J. (ed.) (1998), Italy’s “Southern Question”. Orientalism in One Country , Oxford/New York, Berg. Tarrow, S. (1977), Between Center and Periphery. Grassroots Politicians in Italy and France , New Haven/London, Yale University Press. Tarrow, S. (1996), “Making Social Science Work Across Space and Time: A Critical Reflection on Robert Putnam’s Making Democracy Work ”, American Political Science Review , 90 (2):389-397. Trigilia, C. (1992). Sviluppo senza autonomia. Effetti perversi delle politiche nel Mezzogiorno , Bologna, Il Mulino. Tullio-Altan, C. (1986), La nostra Italia. Arretratezza socioculturale, clientelismo, trasformismo e ribellismo dall’unità ad oggi , Milano, Feltrinelli. Viesti, G. (2003), Abolire il Mezzogiorno . Roma/Bari, Laterza. Weiss, L. (1988), Creating Capitalism. The State and Small Business since 1945 , Oxford, Basil Blackwell. Zitara, N. (1976), L’unità d’Italia. Nascita di una colonia , Milano, Jaca Books (first published 1971).

126

HOW TO UNDERSTAND THE PECULIAR PUBLIC DISCOURSE ON IMMIGRATION AND INTEGRATION IN FLANDERS?

Patrick Loobuyck (*) and Dirk Jacobs (°)

(*) University of Antwerp, Centre Pieter Gillis (°) Université Libre de Bruxelles, Institut de Sociologie

1. SEVERAL KINDS OF FLEMISH NATIONALISM

There are good reasons to conclude that the extreme rightwing and nationalist party Vlaams Blok (since November 2004 Vlaams Belang – from here VB) advocates a sort of rigid ethnic nationalism (Martiniello, 1995:136; Hossay, 1996). This conservative, ethnocentric wing of Flemish nationalism is a legacy of what happened during the Second World War. The “Flemish collaboration” with the Nazis marked a dramatic change for the Flemish movement. Decades later, in its political rhetoric the VB steered increasingly towards overt (cultural neo-)racism and xenophobia, so it was not surprising that in November 2004 the party was condemned by the Court of Cassation for racism. In fact, that is the reason why Vlaams Blok changed in Vlaams Belang . Since this judgement the party focuses more on anti-Islamic stances. However, apart from the VB, there are also other forms of nationalism in Flanders which are less extreme, more open, democratic and progressive. Flemish nationalism was in the beginning essentially a movement for Flemish cultural and linguistic emancipation in the context of a state dominated by the Francophones. Flemish nationalists were involved in a struggle for cultural autonomy and for the affirmation of a denied Flemish identity (Farrell and van Langenhove, 2005; Murphy, 1988; Zolberg, 1974). With the independence of Belgium in 1830, French was established as the state’s only official language. While the constitution of 1831 guaranteed linguistic liberty, the Flemings were denied any cultural and linguistic rights for a long time. Speaking French was the key for upward mobility and a part of the upper class in Flanders became necessarily Francophone (McRae, 1986:276-85). Several series of language laws (adopted in the late 19 th century, the 1930s and the 1960s) gave the Flemish people adequate language rights and transformed the Flemish society into a unilingual Dutch-speaking community. Since the language law of 1963 Belgium is divided into four language areas: unilingually Dutch-speaking (Flanders), unilingually French-speaking (Wallonia) and unilingually German speaking areas, and the bilingual area of Brussels (although some municipalities in the unilingual regions retain limited bilingual facilities). The increasing influence of

127

the Francophones (so-called verfransing ) in these areas and in Brussels itself is nowadays almost the only linguistic problem on the agenda of the Flemish nationalists. Currently, Flemish nationalism is much more involved in discussions about political autonomy, state-reform and territorial questions. So while Flemish nationalism grew from linguistic roots, gradually the language grievances reached out to broader aspects of political and social life (Hooghe, 1993). This kind of Flemish nationalism is a form of “cultural” nationalism. It defines the nation in terms of a common culture and language, and the aim of the nationalist movement was to protect the survival of that culture. This sort of concern is also the basis of the Catalan, Scottish and Québécois nationalist movements. However, this nationalism is open to diversity and immigration and has nothing to do with xenophobia. Many authors equate “ethnic” nationalism with “cultural” nationalism, but this equation is incorrect. Flanders, Québec and Catalonia “accept immigrants as full members of the nation, as long as they learn the language and history of the society. They define membership in terms of participation in a common culture, open to all, rather than on grounds of ethnic descent” (Kymlicka, 2001:243-244). This kind of democratic cultural nationalism is to be found now in almost all the Flemish political parties (there are no Belgium-wide parties anymore). All the Flemish parties, and thus not only the explicit nationalist parties, are in favour of more political autonomy and use arguments from a nationalist discourse to protect the Flemish identity, language, territory and culture especially against the Francophones. One of the problems for the more progressive Flemish nationalists is that, since the Second World War until today, the negative, ethnocentric connotations unjustly overshadow the whole Flemish movement. Unlike Québécois nationalism (cf. Kymlicka, 2001: chapter 15), Flemish cultural nationalism is indeed not associated with progressive multiculturalism. However, if we look at the Flemish minority policy and the way how Flanders copes with ethnic diversity, the resemblances with Québec are greater than one should expect. Of course, there are illiberal, xenophobic strands within the Flemish nationalist movement (the same is true in the Scottish, Catalan and Québécois movements), but there is also a very powerful liberal, democratic strand which is committed to the creation of a modern and multicultural society of free and equal citizens.

2. POLITICS OF AUTONOMY AND POLITICS OF IDENTITY

Nationalism is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon that takes different forms in different societies, areas and periods. Craig Calhoun (2007:86) suggests treating nationalism as a “discursive formation”: rather than to search for an essentialist definition of nationalism, it seems better to see nationalism in terms of (Wittgensteinian) family resemblances. Two elements play an important role in defining nationalism (Béland, 2005:678). The first is an identity derived from common markers such as language, religion, history, or ethnic origins. Indeed, nationalism insists on a form of identity politics. This identity element also accounts for the more emotional aspects of many discussions about nationalism (Smith, 1998:146-199). The second element is a politics of autonomy or independence. Nationalism seeks to gain or maintain for a group – the nation – a measure of self-government. Therefore, nationalism’s existence is inseparable from the existence 128

of political power and from the power struggles in which its claims are grounded. Both elements usually define an “enemy” or “other” that is said to threaten the cultural identity and/or the political autonomy of the group. In Flanders this enemy has multiple forms: in some discussions the immigrants and especially the Muslims are the enemy, in other discussions all the Francophones, especially those living in Brussels and its periphery, are evil, in another debate, the enemy tag is applied to the Belgian central government system and the royal house as one of the most important symbols of Belgium. The “hard core” Flemish nationalists fight all these enemies at the same time. As we will see, both elements of nationalism (identity and autonomy) have their influence on the integration policy and discourse in Flanders. After several state reforms the Flemish community has much greater autonomy concerning integration policy and the struggle for matters of identity and language was an important element in the development of the Flemish approach on migrant policy. Moreover, both elements are intertwined with each other. Thanks to the political autonomy of Flanders, the Flemish community could develop a minority policy with special attention to language and identity.

3. THE DIVISION OF LABOUR IN BELGIUM

Federalism and state reform have resulted in a situation whereby migration policy is mainly a competence of the Belgian government and migrant policy is mainly a local competence of the Communities, Regions and cities. Education, integration, language, housing, and matters pertaining to the religion of migrants, are all competences handled at the level of the Regions and/or Communities. This division of labour is also clear when we look at the list of ministers on the different political levels: on the national Belgian level there is since 2008 a coordinating minister of migration, while in the Flemish governments (2004-9, 2009-14) there is a minister of so-called “civic integration” (inburgering ) who has the central and final responsibility for the entire minority policy.

4. MIGRATION AND INTEGRATION POLICY OF THE FEDERAL BELGIAN GOVERNMENT

4.1. DISCUSSIONS ON IMMIGRATION POLICIES

Entry and removal of migrants is still within the jurisdiction of the Belgian government. Until 2008 the federal ministry of the interior had many responsibilities concerning asylum seekers, regularization, visa-policy, family and marriage migration and the control of illegal migration. In March 2008, however, Belgium has for the first time instituted a coordinating ministry of migration. Since July 2009, this portfolio has been handled by the prime minister himself. However, social integration and housing of asylum seekers is still within the jurisdiction of the federal minister of social integration, labour policy (inclusive economic migration) is a competence of the federal minister of labour and the governments of regional levels are responsible for the implementation of the labour policy and the issue of work permits for foreigners. Also, the federal ministry 129

of the interior still has some responsibilities concerning immigration and security. In 2007, the government launched a new immigration law with a mind to reform the asylum seeking procedure and more conditions for family migration (e.g. the age limit for family reunion with a non-EU husband or partner increased to 21). In 2008-9, the discussion concerning immigration on the Belgian level was dominated by the “hot” issue of regularization of undocumented migrants. Despite many actions of the sans-papiers and the pressure of many different societal organizations, there was for more than two years no consensus for a governmental initiative (as promised in the autumn of 2007). Ostensibly, the gap between the French and Flemish political parties in the Belgian government was too deep. The Flemish politicians were much more restrictive on this issue than most of their French speaking colleagues. Finally, in July 2009 there was an agreement for a new regularization campaign between September 15 and December 15 2009 for undocumented people who have been fore more than 5 years in Belgium, and are socially integrated in the Belgian society. The Belgian government policy statement of 2008 also shows the intention to facilitate economic immigration. This was mainly asked for by the Flemish parties in the government. In 2008-9, there was also some discussion about the housing of asylum seekers since there was a lack of free places in the relief centres.

4.2. NATIONALITY LEGISLATION

Beside anti-discrimination and anti-racism policies, another tool for integration still in the hands of the Belgian government is the nationality legislation. The nationality legislation has been considered as an essential instrument to stimulate integration and (political) participation. The Belgian Nationality Law from 1984 changed several times (1991, 1995, 1999 and 2000) and the idea of ius soli determines Belgian citizenship now. Between 1985 and 2008 more than 600,000 foreign residents changed their nationality and became Belgian citizens. Since 2000 Belgium has one of the most liberal and open legislations in the world. Every child born on Belgian soil from a parent also born in the territory (“third generation immigrants”) automatically acquires Belgian nationality. There is, however, a “residence” condition for the parent(s): he or she has to have been living in Belgium for at least five years of the ten years preceding the birth of the child. Furthermore, “second generation immigrants”, born on Belgian soil, can fairly easily become citizens. Indeed, the Belgian nationality can be acquired for a child born on Belgian soil by simple declaration made by the parent(s) on behalf of the child before the age of 12. There is also an optional procedure for second generation migrants and certain groups of first generation migrants. Adults born in Belgium or who have been living in Belgium for seven years and have a permanent resident status can simply opt for the Belgian nationality. Access to citizenship through option is a simple right, that is, if one has not been convicted for severe crimes and is not being considered as a threat to national security. In addition, Belgium has a system of discretionary naturalization. Everyone residing legally in Belgium since three years (and two years for refugees) can request naturalization. In contrast to the option procedure, naturalization is a favour, not a right. This is also expressed by the fact that parliament decides on naturalization. 130

Hidden behind an apparent uniform vision on the federal level, there are important divergences between Flemish and Francophones with regard to their vision on citizenship. During the parliamentary debates on the liberalization of the nationality legislation in the nineties, these differences have particularly come to the fore. Paradoxically, there is currently no language requirement to obtain citizenship in a country which is obsessed by the issue of language use. The reason is simple albeit somewhat peculiar: although most politicians agreed language knowledge is a normal condition for obtaining citizenship, no agreement could be found on how to impose a language requirement for nationality acquisition. Moreover, a majority of Flemish politicians wanted to maintain a number of more “subjective” criteria (as the degree of cultural integration or the loyalty to the receiving society) and language related criteria (such as knowledge of Dutch when living on Flemish territory) for the acquisition of citizenship. A majority of Francophone politicians, on the other hand, preferred to retain only “objective” criteria such as the length of legal stay on the territory. Furthermore, if a language requirement were to be upheld, knowledge of one of the national languages was deemed to be sufficient, no matter where in the country one would live. Since the Flemish and Francophones could not reach an agreement on modalities, there was since 2000 simply no language or integration condition withheld for obtaining Belgian nationality. In the campaign for the federal elections in 2007, it seemed that many political parties – especially the Flemish parties – agreed that this legislation must change to give more “dignity” (sic) to the Belgian nationality. In October 2009 the government reached an agreement that naturalization is only possible after five years of legal residence in Belgium. Moreover naturalization is no longer possible without “evidence of integration”. This evidence also implies knowledge of one of the official national languages in Belgium and this knowledge must be affirmed by the (French-, German- or Flemish-speaking) Community.

4.3. ENFRANCHISEMENT OF FOREIGN RESIDENTS

Belgian politicians have been remarkably reluctant in enfranchising foreign residents. (Jacobs, 1999; 2000) They argue that voting rights for foreign residents are superfluous, since it is easy to acquire Belgian nationality and all the political rights associated with it. It took until early 1999 before Belgium finally enfranchised EU-citizens. The Belgian government has even been urged to make legislation by a judgment of the European Court of Justice in 1998. The delay was the result of a (sub-)nationalist electoral rationality: the Flemish politicians were afraid that the enfranchisement of EU citizens in Brussels and its periphery would result in electoral advantage for the Francophone political parties. For non-EU citizens the electoral law has been modified in 2004, following heated political debates. The opposition was organized by the Flemish political parties (especially by the right-liberals VLD and by VB), while there existed a consensus about local enfranchisement between most of the Francophone parties. This language cleavage has two reasons, apart from the fact that VB as an anti-immigrant party is logically against enfranchisement (Jacobs and Swyngedouw, 2002). Firstly, Flemish democratic parties were more reluctant than their Francophone colleagues because they feared a white backlash and growing success of extreme right. Secondly, the Flemish parties were 131

afraid that the foreign vote would immediately benefit French speaking politicians thus weakening the electoral position of Flemish politicians in Brussels and its periphery, a reason already invoked when talking about EU-nationals. On October 8, 2006 third country nationals could participate in local elections for the first time, albeit only as voters and not as candidates. The participation is voluntary, while for Belgians voting is compulsory.

4.4. TWO CULTURES

The debates on immigration and integration on the Belgian national level, make clear that Flanders has another public and political opinion than the French speaking part of Belgium. In Wallonia and Brussels there is less reluctance against regularization of undocumented migrants. Differing from their Flemish colleagues, Francophone politicians were not against voting rights for foreign residents and the revision of the open nationality law is not a priority. The presence of nationalist parties on the Flemish side can explain this difference. Especially the most radical and popular nationalist Flemish political formation VB always argues without nuance against regularization, voting rights, etc. Moreover most of the democratic Flemish parties are afraid of growing success of the extreme right if they are too positive and open on migration issues. But the direct and indirect influence of extreme right and nationalist parties is not the only thing. Almost all the Flemish parties use “nationalist” arguments (concerning autonomy and identity) to defend their position. They want more economic migration because the Flemish economy needs a more open labour market; they also want that naturalization requires language acquisition because language is an important part of the Flemish identity; and finally they were against the enfranchisement of foreigners because foreign votes could be dangerous, giving more power to Frenchspeaking politicians.

5. THE FLEMISH INTEGRATION POLICY

5.1. THE FLEMISH MINORITY POLICY

Since the state reform of 1980, the Flemish Community has jurisdiction over the reception and integration of migrants. The Flemish government has developed its own policy plans and the first policy note on migrant policy was accepted by the Flemish government in March 1989. The Flemish minority policy is a mix of categorical (1980s) and inclusive (1990s) elements. In April 2009, the Flemish parliament accepted a new decree on integration. The key concepts are: emancipation and equal participation of certain target groups, accessibility of regular services, and living together in diversity. It is striking that the decree has not only the equal participation and emancipation of the immigrant population as subject, but also the whole society. One of the main aims for the near future is to promote the coexistence in diversity by all citizens and to further the intercultural competence of political and social institutions. As per this policy document, living together in a diversified society is every citizen’s responsibility.

132

5.2. CIVIC INTEGRATION OF NEWCOMERS ( INBURGERING ) IN FLANDERS

One of the central components of the Flemish policy was the integration of newcomers. Since the end of the 1990s, there were various local experiments and projects related to reception policy for newcomers. However, only in February 2003 was the official legislation about the so-called citizenship trajectories (inburgeringstrajecten ) officially accepted. The citizenship trajectories contain Dutch as a second language, lessons of introduction to Flemish/Belgian society and democratic values, and some help for access to the labour market. The idea of “citizenization” ( inburgering ) is copied from the Netherlands and has provoked a lot of discussion. Most of the time, the political discussion was about the compulsory character of the trajectories. Right-liberals, nationalists and conservatives stressed the importance of “obligation” and “sanctions”, while more progressive politicians said that obligation is only fair when there is sufficient availability of tutoring and the waiting lists for lessons have been eliminated. The idea of inburgering is also controversial in the migrant communities, because people usually discuss the policy in terms of “assimilation” and “obligations”, while it could actually be legitimized in terms of qualification, empowerment, emancipation and capabilities. Although much has been said about the obligation, it is worth mentioning that the target group is larger than the group that is obliged to undertake tuition. From April 2004 onwards, the trajectories have become compulsory in Flanders for asylum seekers whose application has been declared admissible and for non-EU newcomers who marry a non- EU citizen. On the basis of international regulations and European legislation, citizens of the European Economic Area (EEA), their spouses, their children aged under 21 and their parents are not compelled, but entitled, to go through a civic integration process. However, they have a right to participate in these programmes. Newcomers aged 65 and older or newcomers who are seriously ill or disabled are also exempt from the requirement. Also, all the newcomers who register in one of the 19 Brussels municipalities are not subject to this obligation and for them, the course is optional. In 2006 and 2008, the Flemish parliament has adopted amendments to the decree to broaden the priority groups. Since 2007 the ministers of recognized religions from non-EU countries (especially imams) are obliged to participate in a citizenship trajectory and also non-EU partners of established and naturalized Belgians of non-EU origin belong to the target group with obligations. Before 2007, a citizenship trajectory was optional for a Turkish man who married a naturalized Turkish woman, while it is now compulsory. The decree of 2006 also mentions that established non-EU origin immigrants insufficiently mastering the Dutch language can be obliged, even when holding Belgian nationality, when they are unemployed, have children at school, or want to make use of social housing facilities. And since September 2008, non-compliance can lead to fines ranging from €50 to €5,000. There is, for the moment, only an obligation to participate to citizenship trajectories, not to achieve a certain knowledge level, but the Flemish decree of 2006 does foresee that at some point actual tests could be introduced.

133

5.3. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FLANDERS AND FRANCOPHONE BELGIUM

The political autonomy of the Regions and Communities makes it possible that their minority policy is in line with their history and sensitivities. It is not by accident that the Francophone approach of immigrant integration is inspired by the French model, just as it is not by accident that in Flanders there is a lot of emphasis on language competence and the importance of ethnic cultural identities – two issues which have had a prominent role in the history of the Flemish nationalist movement. In the overarching policy framework in Flanders, the recognition of ethno-cultural groups and group-based multicultural policies play an important role. The Flemish approach is based on the belief that preservation and development of the cultural heritage and identity can stimulate emancipation and participation within the host society. The Francophone governments, in contrast, have been unwilling to recognize ethic-cultural groups as specific entities in its policies. The cultural and ethnic dimensions of immigration are almost neglected in the Francophone academic and political debates in Belgium. Any approach in terms of ethnicity and culture, and thus specific policies for immigrants are almost automatically rejected, because they are perceived as an implicit form of racism (Martiniello, 1995:143). There are many examples that can illustrate the difference between the Flemish and Francophone policies. Whereas headscarves were actively discouraged or forbidden in the Francophone education system, the Flemish schools have taken a much more pragmatic attitude (Verlot, 2001). However, this Flemish attitude changed dramatically after 2000 and resulted on a September 11, 2009 ban on all religious symbols in all public schools of the Flemish Community. Contrary to Wallonia, in Flanders and in Brussels there have been experiments with education in the language and culture of the immigrants. The Flemish policy has also had a clear preference for supporting the self- organization of migrants, and consultation of immigrant organization representatives has become good practice in several political domains, while this is much less the case on the Francophone side. In Wallonia, there is no specific policy for addressing the problems of immigrants and neither are these formulated in cultural terms but in the more general terms of economic marginalization, social ex/inclusion and citizenship (Martiniello, 1995:142-143; Martiniello et al., 2007). Typical for the Flemish approach is the special programme for newcomers and the language courses, compulsory for a part of the target group. This kind of reception policy is absent in Wallonia. The policy statement of the French speaking Community of 2009 shows the intention to organize some reception policies, but this is still in the initial stages of planning. It is not clear if the different models and policies of integration in the Flemish and the Frenchspeaking Community have also different results e.g. for equal opportunities in education or on the labour market. Allochthonous citizens are overrepresented in unemployment statistics and the facts and figures of the PISA reports show that allochthonous students obtain equally bad results in both Communities (Jacobs et al., 2009). In terms of social (in)equality, there is still a lot of work to do in all the different Regions and Communities in Belgium.

134

5.4. THE FLEMISH COMBINATION MODEL

In general, we could say that the Flemish government has clearly adopted a target approach towards immigrants, while the Francophone government has deliberately opted not to develop any categorical policy towards immigrant groups - at least not officially. It has been argued that while the Francophone policy toward immigrants leaned towards the French republican model, Flanders’ approach was for a long time inspired by the Anglo- Saxon and (former) Dutch multicultural model (Rea, 2000; Verlot, 2001). These distinctions, however, are too generalized and also outdated. The different Regions and Communities in Belgium use elements of both models. Today Flanders, like the Netherlands (cf. Entzinger, 2003), has a hybrid policy towards immigrant incorporation, combining both more assimilationist and more multiculturalist stances. Although Flanders has moderate assimilationist ambitions with its citizenship trajectories, the overall picture still fairly justifies labelling Flemish policy as oriented towards multiculturalism (Jacobs, 2004). The Flemish government sees no contradiction in combining a (more multicultural) targeted ethnic minorities policy with a (more assimilationist) programme for citizenship trajectories (Jacobs and Rea, 2007:268). To become a new Flemish citizen, immigrants must learn the language and agree with the “Flemish” values of pluralism, democracy, the rule of law, freedom, equality, solidarity, respect and citizenship (cf. Bossuyt, 2006). Cultural distinctiveness, in particular language, serves as a relatively straightforward criterion for defining the Flemish national community, that is, for specifying who should be included and excluded. However, the Flemish government keeps insisting that its civic integration policy is open to diversity and is not aimed at “assimilation”:

We want to achieve social cohesion in which everyone’s particularity and cultural identity can prosper, but in which the current values, norms and rules of our democratic state and the rule of law, remain the corner stone of Flemish society. The Flemish government judges it to be important that allochtonous Flemings do not give up their cultural and religious values, but rather integrate these as added values to Flemish society. Respect of diversity is one of the fundamental values of Flemish society: just like the equality of all humans, the separation of church and state and the freedom of expression. (Flemish government, 2004:5)

The division of tasks related to immigration as sketched above offers some opportunities, but it has also some disadvantages and incoherencies (Loobuyck and Jacobs, 2006; 2009). The federal system gives Flanders the opportunity to develop its own approach, but this approach conflicts not only with the approach of other Communities, but also with the approach undertaken at the Belgian national level. The latter is especially clear when we confront the present nationality legislation with the Flemish idea of “citizenization” ( inburgering ). The idea behind the citizenship trajectories is that people can only reach full membership of the Flemish society on the condition that they learn the language and learn about the organization and some basic values of the guest society. The idea behind the present nationality legislation is 135

completely different. Foreigners can easily get the Belgian nationality (some of them after two or three years), without any language test or requirement of integration. Many politicians are aware of this contradiction between the Belgian and Flemish approach and there is now a political consensus that the nationalization legislation needs to be reviewed.

6. THE INFLUENCE OF FLEMISH NATIONALISM ON MIGRATION AND INTEGRATION POLICIES

Sub-state nationalism can affect migrant policy making in two specific ways: by reshaping the policy agenda at both the state and the sub-state levels and by reinforcing regional political autonomy. These two phenomena are often related, but it is possible to distinguish them analytically (cf. Béland, 2005:681-682).

6.1. NATIONALISM AS AGENDA SETTER

First, there is the influence of nationalist parties on the political agenda. The concept of political agenda setting refers to that cluster of issues considered as the “pressing problems of the moment”. The term agenda points to “the list of subjects or problems to which governmental officials, and people outside of government closely associated with those officials, are paying some serious attention to at any given time”. Consequently, agenda setting is the process that narrows the “set of conceivable subjects to the set that actually becomes the focus of attention” (Kingdon, 1995:3-4). We can say that in Belgium the discussion on integration and immigration was not on the agenda until the end of the 1980s. It is clear that the extreme nationalist party VB is responsible for a reshaping of the policy agenda on this issue and had a function as agenda setter. The VB has played an important role in the politicization of immigrant and ethnic issues in Belgium (Martiniello, 1995:141). It was only after the electoral success of this party that the debate about an integration policy emerged. Like most other extreme-right parties in Europe, the ideological core of VB is formed by nationalism, xenophobia, welfare chauvinism and “law and order”. (Mudde, 2000:177) The real core business of the party is Flemish nationalism and separatism, but gradually, the VB gave more space to the struggle against immigration and multiculturalism. In the eyes of many people VB is a one-issue party because its nationalism and anti-migrant stance are not separable. Nationalism, according to the VB, concerns not only the defence of the Flemish community of language, customs and historical tradition, but also the defence of an ethnically pure Flemish State. “How can a party resist the Francification of Brussels without resisting its Moroccanization?”, asked party leader (Hossay, 1996: 354). The role of this extreme nationalist party is two-fold. On the one hand it puts immigration issues on the political agenda, again and again. In every campaign for elections and in every meeting and programme of the party migration and its (negative) consequences are important topics. Consequently, because of the electoral success of this party, it was not possible to keep these themes from the political agenda. Moreover, some

136

of the ideas defended by the VB and some parts of their anti-immigrant discourse are also penetrating the discourse of traditional parties. On the other hand, the presence of this xenophobic nationalist party is also the reason why other politicians shun the public debate about immigration and integration. They don’t want to communicate and to debate these issues in an open way because they are afraid to lose voters to the extreme-right party. Every discussion of these issues was perceived as grist to the mill of conservative populists and extreme-right political formations. Again it is the presence of the extreme nationalist party who decides (indirectly) how other political parties think and communicate (or not) about this theme. But, as we have seen, apart from the VB, there are also other forms of nationalism in Flanders which are less extremist, more democratic and more open on the issues of immigration and integration. Until 2001 the most explicit nationalist democratic party was the Volksunie (after 2001: N-VA and Spirit) and we must say that this nationalist party had a function of agenda setter, especially in the debate of civic integration in Flanders. They supported the idea of encouraging the integration of immigrants through language. Together with the Flemish liberals (VLD) they argued several times during the 1990s in favour of a compelling policy of citizenization with compulsory language education. And in a city () where the nationalist party Volksunie delivered the mayor, they organized already compulsory civic integration trajectories since 1998 - long before there was a coherent legal framework to do it. Of course, all this does not mean that nationalist forces have full control over the integration agenda but rather that they can successfully pressure regional and national policy makers to address specific issues that are essential to them. Moreover nationalist forces are not only agenda setters, they stipulate also in what kind of terms and concepts these issues can be discussed.

6.2. NATIONALISM AS A MOVEMENT TOWARDS MORE AUTONOMY

A second related point is that nationalist parties and mobilization can strengthen the legislative and administrative autonomy of territorial entities. This is what happened in Belgium. The Belgian process of state reform was clearly inspired by the nationalist idea to get more political autonomy for the Regions and Communities, also concerning integration of newcomers and migrants. The argumentation for more institutional and political autonomy was nevertheless not always framed in terms of pure nationalism, there were also arguments of efficiency and good governance. After all, there are a lot of elements in the integration policy (like language, education, employment) which might be better served with local governance, so subsidiarity and regionalization was “inherently logical” here. If the (autonomy) logic of nationalism proceeds, we could expect that also claims for more autonomy concerning immigration policy arise. However, at the moment, besides the radical nationalist party of VB, only the Flemish nationalist formation N-VA had this autonomy claim in its programme. There were already some particular, not binding initiatives (like conferences and papers) to explore the possibilities and the advantages of more autonomy in migration policy - especially concerning additional economic migration, family migration and migration based on special ties. However, most of the parties still agree that, for the moment, a genuine transfer of competencies 137

about immigration towards local governments seems both impossible and undesirable. Of course the Flemish political parties insist on consultation and good communication between the Communities, Regions, Belgium and the EU because they want to avoid overarching immigration regulations that conflict with sub-state policy objectives. The local government and parties want at least to be a partner in the (national and international) dialogue about immigration policy.

7. CONCLUSION

Without the notion of Flemish nationalism it would be impossible to understand the peculiar public and political discourse on immigration and integration in Flanders. There is not only the undeniable influence of the extreme-right nationalist party VB, since almost all the Flemish parties make use of nationalist elements, arguments and reflections in the debate on immigration and integration issues However, the relationship between Flemish nationalism and the Flemish approach to newcomers and migrants is Janus-faced. On the one side the Flemish history of nationalism and the struggle for autonomy, language rights and cultural emancipation, are used to accept that newcomers are bound to their own language, culture, etc. It supports the idea of “emancipation without loss of cultural identity”. On the other hand the Flemish history of nationalism is used as an argument for assimilation and against multiculturalism. The languages, cultures and religions of the newcomers are conceived as a (new) threat for the Flemish culture. As the Belgian anthropologist Eugeen Roosens (1994:269) notes, “natives, who closely associate language, territory, and culture, view it as somewhat ironic that after winning their long battle against the Walloons, they are now in danger of forfeiting their cultural rights to foreigners on their own soil”. However, the conclusion that the Flanders is unlikely to adopt the perspective of multiculturalism because of their long struggle for linguistic rights and cultural autonomy is not correct. Here, the distinction between the Flemish and Walloon-approach to diversity and integration is instructive. The idea of ethnic-minorities and group-based multicultural policies is clearly much more present in Flemish policy documents than is the case in Wallonia. One could say that, through structural homology, the Flemish elite now do not want to impose on its ethnic minorities what it had lived itself as a formerly discriminated group. At the same time there is a strong language policy and for many newcomers the citizenization trajectories have become compulsory. As we have seen, the Flemish government sees no contradiction in combining a more multicultural with a more assimilationist approach. It sees no contradiction in combining the idea of obligatory civic integration with the explicit acceptance of cultural differences and the formation and support of ethnic communities and associations. In essence, the Flemish situation can be qualified as being one of “inegalitarian multiculturalism”: the cultural identity of minorities is important, but the Flemish culture always had to take precedence (cf. Martiniello, 1997). Perhaps, this combination is most characteristic for the Flemish discourse on immigration and integration.

138

REFERENCES

Béland, D. & Lecours, A. (2005), “The Politics of Territorial Solidarity. Nationalism and Social Policy Reform in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Belgium”, Comparative Political Studies , 38 (6):676-703. Bossuyt, M. e.a. (2006), Eindverslag van de Commissie “ter invulling van de cursus maatschappelijke oriëntatie”, overhandigd aan Vlaams minister van Binnenlands Bestuur, Stedenbeleid, Wonen en Inburgering Marino Keulen , Brussel, Vlaamse Regering. Calhoun, C. (2007), Nations Matter: Culture, History, and the Cosmopolitan Dream , London, Routledge. Entzinger, H. (2003), “The Rise and Fall of Multiculturalism: The Case of the Netherlands”, in C. Joppke and E. Morawska (eds), Towards Assimilation and Citizenship. Immigrants in Liberal Nation-States , Houndmills, Palgrave Macmillan:59-86. Farrell, M. and L. van Langenhove (2005), “Toward Cultural Autonomy in Belgium”, in E. Nimni (ed.), National Cultural Autonomy and its Contemporary Critics , London, Roudledge:222-236. Flemish government (2004), “Beleidsnota Inburgering 2004-2009. ‘Samenleven in diversiteit’: een verantwoordelijkheid van éénieder”, ingediend door de heer Marino Keulen, Vlaams Minister van Binnenlandse Bestuur, Stedenbeleid, Wonen en Inburgering. Stuk 84 (2004-2005) , Brussel, Vlaamse Regering. Fraeys, W. (2004), “Les élections régionales et européennes du 13 juin 2004, analyse des résultats”, Res Publica , 46 :357-376. Hooghe, L. (1993), “Belgium: from Regionalism to Federalism”, Regional Politics and Policy , 3 (1):44-68. (update: http://www.unc.edu/~hooghe/downloads/03_bel_feb24.pdf) Hossay, P. (1996), “‘Our People First!’ Understanding the Resonance of the Vlaams Blok ’s Xenophobic Programme”, Social Identities 2 (3):343-364. Jacobs, D. (1999), “The Debate over Enfranchisement of Foreign Residents in Belgium”, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies , 25 (4):649-664. Jacobs, D. (2000), “Giving Foreigners the Vote: Ethnocentrism in Dutch and Belgian Political Debates”, in J. Ter Wal and M. Verkuyten (eds), Comparative Perspectives on Racism , Aldershot: Ashgate:117-138. Jacobs, D. (2004), “Alive and Kicking? Multiculturalism in Flanders”, International Journal on Multicultural Societies , 6 (2):280-299. Jacobs, D. and A. Rea (2007), “OPEN FORUM : The End of National Models? Integration Courses and Citizenship Trajectories in Europe”, IJMS: International Journal on Multicultural Societies , 9 (2): 264-283. Jacobs, D. and M. Swyngedouw (2002), “The Extreme-Right and Enfranchisement of Immigrants: Main Issues in the Public Debate on Integration in Belgium”, Journal of International Migration and Integration/Revue de l'intégration et de la migration internationale , 3 (3/4):329-344. Jacobs, D., A. Rea, C. Teney, L. Callier and S. Lothaire. (2009), L'ascenseur social reste en panne. Les performances des élèves issus de l'immigration en Communauté française et en Communauté flamande , Bruxelles, Fondation Roi Baudouin.

139

Kingdon, J.W. (1995), Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policy , New York, HarperCollins. Kymlicka, W. (2001), Politics in the Vernacular. Nationalism, Multiculturalism, and Citizenship , Oxford, Oxford University Press. Loobuyck, P. (2003), “Politique d’intégration en Flandre. Un status quaestionis”, Nouvelle Tribune (Numéro special: Quand la Belgique intègre…) , 31/32:104-110. Loobuyck, P. and D. Jacobs (2006), “The Flemish Immigration Society: Political Challenges on Different Levels”, in L. D’Haenens, M. Hooghe, D. Vanheule and H. Gezduci (eds), “New” Citizens, New Policies? Developments in Diversity Policy in Canada and Flanders , Gent, Academia Press:105-123. Loobuyck, P. and D. Jacobs, D. (2009), “Self-Government, Immigration and Integration in Flanders. Political Opportunities, Tensions and Challenges”, in R. Zapata-Barrero (ed.), Immigration and self-government , Bern, Peter Lang:74-93. Martiniello, M. (1995), “The National Question and the Political Construction of Immigrant Ethnic Communities in Belgium”, in A. Hargreaves and J. Leaman (eds), Racism, Ethnicity and Politics in Contemporary Europe , Aldershot & Vermont, Edward Elgar Publ.:131-144. Martiniello, M. (1997), Sortir des Ghettos Culturels , Paris, Presses de Sciences Po. Martiniello, M., A. Rea and F. Dassetto (eds.) (2007), Immigration et intégration en Belgique francophone. Un état des savoirs , Louvain-la-Neuve, Academia-Bruylant. McRae, K. (1986), Conflict and Compromise in Multilingual Societies: Belgium , Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier Press. Mudde, C. (2000), The Ideology of the Extreme-Right , Manchester, Manchester University Press. Murphy, A (1988), The Regional Dynamics of Language Differentiation in Belgium , Chicago, Chicago University Press. Rea, A. (2000), Immigration, état et citoyenneté. La formation de la politique d’intégration des immigrés de la Belgique , Dissertation en vue de l’obtention du titre de Docteur en sciences sociales, Bruxelles, ULB. Roosens, E. (1994), “A Native Belgian’s View of Immigration”, in W.A. Cornelius, P.L. Martin and J.F. Hollifield (eds.), Controlling Immigration : A Global Perspective , Stanford, Stanford University Press:269-272. Smith, A.D. (1998), Nationalism and Modernism . A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations and Nationalism , London, Routledge. Verlot, M. (2001), Werken aan integratie. Het minderheden- en het onderwijsbeleid in de Franse en Vlaamse Gemeenschap van België (1988-1998) [Working on integration. Policy on minorities and education in the French and Flemish Community of Belgium (1988-1998)] , Leuven, Acco. Zolberg, A. (1974), “The Making of Flemings and Walloons: Belgium 1830-1914”, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History , 5 (2):179-235.

140

XENOPHOBIA OR DEMOCRATIC DIFFERENTIATION? A NEW PATH OF SEPARATION AND DISCIPLINE FOR MIGRANT WORKERS IN ITALY

Devi Sacchetto

Università di Padova, Dipartimento di sociologia

1. INTRODUCTION

This paper focuses on the social relations between Italian and foreign workers in northern Italy, particularly in industrial district areas. Starting from an analysis of social relations in the workplace and in the public space of immigrants and natives, the paper will show how racist and xenophobic campaigns promoted by politically-controlled institutions and adopted by local politicians, are central to control migrant workers and to deprive them of voice. At the same time we note an advancing integration of migrants in a subaltern way. The rapid restructuring process of the labour market during 1997-2009 in Italy has been followed by more institutional regulations of the public places where migrants appear conspicuous in comparison with local natives. The insecurity linked to their jobs and to their legal position induces immigrants to behave as individual economic actors seeking their own self-interest. Political parties have tackled the issue of migrant workers in different ways. While some of them, such as the Northern League party, have gradually taken openly xenophobic positions, other, among them both right and left-wing parties, prefer a democratic form of differentiation. The xenophobic positions are obsessively announced and reiterated with much rhetoric, a sign of their difficulties in gaining the favour of their constituencies in these times. Despite a broad spectrum of discriminations perpetrated by Italians against migrant workers, attempts to reconstruct some solidarity have arisen in order to remove barriers between Italians and migrants. Will these efforts be able to overcome the panoply of forms of discrimination in the workplace and in the public sphere? This is the challenge of our future.

2. THE LONG SHADOW OF ITALIAN RACISM

In January 1954 Snia Viscosa, a leading Italian company producing artificial fibres with headquarters in Turin, sent a blueprint to its personnel at Torviscosa (Udine). These employees had been recruited by Saiccor and were to be sent to build some industrial

141

plants in South Africa. The approximately 350 Italian workers who moved to South Africa could well appreciate Snia Viscosa’s peculiar public relations:

It is necessary first to maintain a clear distinction between individuals of White Race and of Coloured Races [...] The White Race is rightly regarded as the superior race and it is the one that leads the country’s management and creates jobs and prosperity [... ] With your behaviour at all times you should prove your superiority [...] You should learn as soon as possible to command the Negroes so that they serve you at work (cit. in Scrazzolo, 2000).

In the 1950s in Italy forms of racism were quite explicit, although there was hardly any immigration to the country. 1 The permanence of a racist discourse was not only a legacy of the Fascist period (1925-1945). In fact, the liberal governments and Italian culture gave an important contribution to the construction of European racist ideology since the last decades of the nineteenth century, when Italian colonial expansion in its early stage was on the rise. From 1880 until 1941 Italian colonialism was no less barbaric than others, in spite of the fact that the domestic rhetoric presented an image of “the good Italian” (Bidussa, 1994). The final result of this rhetoric was to make racism acceptable both in the colonies and at home. 2 On the other hand, Italian colonial expansion did not reduce Italian emigration abroad. Indeed, just in the 1880s, when Italian colonial expansion began in the Horn of Africa, a mass migration from Italy to the Americas took place, as hard economic conditions prevailed among the landless population in Italy. Italian migrants moved first to the Americas (1876-1914), and to other European countries in the interwar years (1920-1939). Relatively few Italians settled in colonies, in spite of official propaganda to emigrate to the lands of the Fascist Empire, particularly to Libya. After the 1939-1945 war Italian migrants went to some European countries (mostly France, Germany and Switzerland). These experiences have seldom suggested Italian people forms of solidarity in favour of immigrants who arrive in Italy today; the rhetoric of hard work and sacrifice of Italians abroad has led public opinion to expect immigrants to behave as mere labour- power to be used at will. As it has been noted, some analogies with the current presence of foreigners can be traced in the long history of the presence of Muslim slaves in Italy between late Middle Ages and the early decades of the nineteenth century. Despised as infidels, feared as criminals, but also popular and in demand for domestic services, slaves improved their circumstances in the eighteenth and nineteenth century (Bono, 1999). Perhaps it is not just a coincidence that the city of Caserta where the latest presence in Bourbon Southern Italy of “slaves” was registered in 1851 (ibid.:363), is also the place where the first racist assassination took place in recent years. Jerry Essan Masslo, a South-African worker and political refugee escaped from Apartheid to Italy, was murdered in 1989 in Villa Literno,

1 Nevertheless, in the 1950s and 1960s racism in north-western Italy was directed against immigrants from north-eastern Italy and even more against immigrants from southern Italy that moved to Turin and Milan (see Alasia and Montaldi, 1960). 2 On the Italian colonies, see the works by Del Boca (particularly Del Boca, 1992). 142

near Caserta. Italy was shocked and an immediate protest march in Rome drew more than half a million people. went through a long incubation phase (1975-1990), when early groups of immigrants were entering the country in relatively small numbers. The country was becoming a land of settlement, although as a second choice. It was no longer just a country of transit to other European countries. Thus immigrants began to settle and be employed in domestic work, in low-paid personal care, in agriculture and in small factories, often without any form of registration. They joined the labour force at the end of a decade (1968-1978) of strong working class conflicts, especially in large factories. This conflict had forced employers to pay greater attention to the composition of the workforce and to the location of their plants 3. In the eighties a progressive miniaturization of the production structure began, with factories moved to rural areas, while the Italian labour market became more segmented and collective bargaining was increasingly under attack (Blim, 1990). The new organization of labour processes could be flexible and decentralized so that it could be based on the enlargement of the recruitment pool through the hiring of both Italian women and of male and female immigrants. In 1991 there were about a million migrants in Italy.4 Their number increased in the nineties, and reached about 2 million in 2001. 5 In the last eight years the ranks of foreigners have expanded exponentially: at the beginning of 2009, in Italy there were about 4.3 million foreigners (7% of the total population). More than half of them are clustered in four regions of northern Italy: Lombardy (23.3%), Veneto (11.7%), Emilia Romagna (10.8%), Piedmont (9%) (Caritas/Migrantes 2009). Along with a significant amount of migrants who have settled in major urban centers, the dispersion of immigrants in smaller centers is significant: in 2001 more than 50% lived in municipalities with fewer than 30,000 people (Caritas/Migrantes, 2004:74). A characteristic of immigration to Italy is the presence of a high number of nationalities: besides Romanians (20.5% of total), Albanians (11.3%) and Moroccans (10.4%) there are fourteen nationalities, each of them counting more than 60,000 individuals.

3. ITALIAN DISTRICTS AND LABOUR MIGRANTS

During the 1980s some areas of northern Italy have been described as industrial districts (Piore and Sabel, 1987) or, better, areas where small and medium-sized enterprises produce for export with an extensive use of manufacturing labour. In 1990s these industrial districts began to recruit, regularly or irregularly, labour migrants coming from a large number of countries with very different migratory histories and employment experiences (Andall, 2007:286). The increasing integration into the regular labour market, particularly within the industrial districts, improved their working conditions,

3 As Beverly Silver (2003) notes, the attention of entrepreneurs towards the location of the factory and the composition of the workforce are an important element for profitability. 4 These are estimates. The number recorded by the Census of 1991 was 350 thousand foreigners (Istat, 2004). 5 In this case too the figures are resulting from estimates. The Census of 2001 recorded about 1.3 million foreigners (Istat, 2004; Caritas/Migrantes, 2004). 143

after the first years of prevailingly informal activities. At the beginning of their working experience in Italy the vast majority of foreign workers was employed as unskilled workforce, irrespective of their educational qualifications and skills, while more recently a small fraction of them has become recognized as skilled personnel; usually these are migrants coming from Eastern Europe who can find better jobs than those coming from African and Asian countries. In the first decade of the 21 st century industrial districts have undergone drastic transformations. Close and informal relations typical of the districts have been developed abroad, thus exporting socio-economic models. At the same time in the industrial districts in Italy only relatively few entrepreneurs have been able to survive and many have folded up. The surviving industrial districts have undergone a process of tertiarization resulting in a smaller industrial production and in a larger quantity of managerial personnel coordinating production at home and abroad. In industrial districts of northern Italy forms of collaboration among entrepreneurs based on informal relations have emerged. According to economist Giacomo Becattini these forms of collaboration tend to strengthen the commitment of single entrepreneurs to the industrial district they belong to (Becattini, 1998:36). At the same time in these districts a low level of unionization, the ascendancy of informal bargaining and a widespread discrimination against migrant workers have been noted. Migrants perform those activities in which wage levels, and in general working conditions, are worse, and which Italians avoid when possible, sometimes in complicity with their employers so that Italian are relieved from heavy duties (Allasino et al., 2004). The recruitment of foreign workers for heavy and hazardous tasks allows the vertical mobility of local workers; consequently these will earn more, with significant spill-overs in the ossification of social order. In some industrial districts of northern Italy the employment of migrants has allowed employers to maintain a low average technological level, while avoiding shutdowns or relocation. At the same time, a rigid separation of good jobs for natives and bad jobs for migrants in the absence of any seniority rule could become a form of job segregation. The “differential treatment” to which immigrants are subjected allows the preferential treatment of native workers (Ambrosini, 2003:32). The increasing separation of tasks within factories has led to accommodation involving a permanent differentiation between local and foreign labour. Natives have increasingly turned into groups of control and discipline by imposing patterns of behaviour on working migrants, although here and there underground collective arrangements between natives and migrants are enforced to lower the pace of work (Perrotta, 2007). In general command is white. People in leading positions are almost exclusively white Italians or white immigrants from Eastern Europe. In fact hierarchy and racism seem to be two categories that move together. The diffusion in rural areas of an important fraction of the Italian manufacturing system (the so-called industrial districts), has coincided with the recruitment of migrant workers in isolated places. In 2005 in Italy there were about 4.4 million business enterprises in the industry and service sectors, with 4.8 million local units and 16.8 million people employed for an average size of 3.8 employees per business (compared with 6.6 of the average EU-15): “firms with fewer than 10 employees are about 4.2 million (94.9 percent) and employ around 7.8 million people (46.9 percent), while those with at least 250 employees are 3,435 (just 0.1 percent of the total) and employ around 3.3 million people (almost 20 percent of the total)” (Istat 2008:60-62).

144

The explosion of types of legal labour contracts that occurred in Italy starting in 1997 provides a wide choice of arrangements on how to buy labour. In industrial districts, as elsewhere, short time labour contracts involve both Italians and immigrants, although the latter are overrepresented. The proliferation of various types of labour contracts has expanded employment without stimulating economic growth: in the decade 1997-2007, Italy suffered a certain economic stagnation and a weak export growth, while having “a higher growth in the level of employment than the European average” (Istat, 2008:55). A significant part of this growth is to be ascribed to employment without a collective contract and to temporary jobs. Work under discriminating conditions results in major splits and divisions. The restructuring of firms and the gradual appearance of sub-contracts can easily segment the labour market, while making union control on working conditions more difficult if not impossible. In industrial districts of northern Italy the decline in labour solidarity has been slowed down by social ties, family and community relations that provide good networks to find jobs and to discipline people; for entrepreneurs this system is a valuable aid in the preliminary selection of the workforce and in the general control over it. Paternalism in small and medium factories of northern and central industrial districts has strengthened community and family relationships with its despotic styles (Blim, 1990; Harrison, 1994). Moreover, in rural areas working relations are tightly intertwined with social relationships. Consequently, in most cases unions and collective bargaining have no chance, as class differentiation between small entrepreneurs and “their” workers appears to be tenuous. The reorganization of the production structure in recent years reshaped these patterns of behaviour and of life perspectives. Social differentiation, for example, occurs extensively even in the industrial districts of northern Italy, while the process of relocation, often to Eastern Europe, can undermine employers’ loyalties to “their” companies. Employers are increasingly losing interest in revitalizing the relationship of trust and consensus with the workers and the identification with a territory in Italy, even if they force a strategic competition between natives and "foreigners", the latter being supposedly responsible for any social or economic disruption. For a long time and up to the eve of the current economic crisis beginning in 2007, Italian workers and entrepreneurs kept repeating that “immigrants do those jobs that Italians do not want to”. In fact, entrepreneurs have continued to exercise the power of choice in widening their labour pools, according to a combination of characteristics of labour, levels of wage and technology. Usually the technologically-advanced machines are reserved to Italian workers, while migrants have to work with materials, equipment and machinery that are rather rudimentary and often hazardous. But the current economic crisis is forcing a return, at least in part, of natives to tasks from which they had thought they would be free for ever. Stereotyping in the labour market is a practice supported by the employers and reinforced by social networks “integrating” immigrants. Ethnic specialization means unrecognized skills and low social mobility; these are aspects that often affect also the second generation of migrants, showing how, according to Goffman (1963), the tribal stigmas of race, nation and religion are still operating. We should probably add economic stigma to Goffman’s list. This kind of arrangements is irreconcilable with the real idea of “integration”, a vague idea that policy makers and employers have freely adopted as an empty slogan in their public statements. 145

4. THE PRETENCE AND VULGARITY OF ETHNIC COHESION

The experiences of migrant workers in Italy differs depending on where they live (in the northern, central or southern parts of the country), on the kind of sector they are employed in (agriculture, industry or service) 6, and on the dimensions of the employing enterprise. Migrant people in recent years are objects of a special legislation (the so- called Bossi-Fini, Law No 189 of 2002) that, as in other European countries, rigidly makes residence permits conditional on regular jobs. This legislation has forced migrants to undertake any type of regular work in order to appear a migrant in good standing. This move puts a lot of pressure on migrants, and such pressure is very high in times of economic crisis. They accept employment in cooperatives where they can obtain a long- term contract and therefore a two year’s residence permit. Cooperative jobs in Italy means often low wages and bad working conditions. Moreover residence permits are given through a strongly discretionary process, and cooperatives are often driven by profiteers. In the last 30 years many migrants entered Italy with tourist visas and later they found themselves as undocumented foreigner after their visas had expired. A fraction of them had to pay substantial sums of money to get access to “migrant amnesties” (in 1990, 1995, 1998, 2002), a politically hot issue, and also a main venue of episodes of corruption. A migrant had to pay between €1,000 and €3,000 to his/her employer, and the latter pay a small part of that money to the state in order to regularize his/her employee. In Italian society the regular presence of the migrants depends on work under a legal contract and on the authorization issued by the local police. 7 In particular, for migrants who have lived for a few years in Italy, their employment contract with a family for personal care, or with an employer in a factory has become a prerequisite to prevent their falling into irregularity. The so-called Bossi-Fini Law has produced a sharp division between legal and illegal migrants, thus encouraging a caste system in the labour market (Raimondi and Ricciardi, 2008). The production of irregularity by the Italian law is a long-term trend (Melossi, 1989:37) that provides further segmentation of the employment systems, or, to use a fashionable euphemism, “a flexible labour market”. The natives expect migrants to insert themselves where Italian society needs them. This perception has caused an increase in aggressiveness by local people trying to defend their social and economic positions. Moreover, even among migrants there is a degree of segmentation, so that the newcomers or those less familiar with an approved and deferent performance of their tasks are condemned to hazardous jobs. The basic question that immigration has put to Italian public opinion seems to be whether migrants are here to stay. Their permanence provokes intolerance, as migrants who have been living in Italy for a long time are more aware of their rights, and usually show a certain ability to bargain and a lower propensity to accept mistreatment. The more hazardous are the tasks, the more likely it is that other migrants will come: the high

6 Migrants are often excluded from the public sector where access is reserved to workers with Italian citizenship. 7 The huge delay in the delivery of the renewal of residence permits in some cities has ranged between 6 and 12 months, a delay aiming to prevent migrants from leaving Italy. 146

turnover in so-called three D (dirty, difficult and dangerous) jobs is evidence that they refuse disadvantaged jobs in the long run. 8 In the last two decades (1990-2009) in Italy a new division of labour has emerged with significant gender differences: about one million migrant women are employed in personal and domestic service for two and half millions Italian families (Catanzaro and Colombo, 2009). The gradual privatization of health care has opened opportunities for migrant women and transformed families into employers. 9 The cost of personal care for the elderly has been largely left to families, and families have recruited migrant women to whom low wages are paid. However usually women migrants from Africa and from some Asian countries are largely excluded from domestic work because of skin colour discrimination, while Eastern European women are preferred. On the other hand, male workers are found in manufacturing, construction and agriculture sectors, and are often employed by temporary employment agencies and cooperatives. This fate is not absolute and migrant workers themselves have tried to avoid these jobs that lower skills rather than enriching them. A fierce stereotyping by Italians prevents the recognition of a common destiny as workers. It is obvious that in such a situation the isolation, the difficulty to find places and people with which to rebuild a collective self-help, is a central element towards bearable working conditions. Racism is growing in isolation. In spite of a popular belief, racism is not aimed solely against migrants, but also against whoever seems to express some degree of diversity. In May 2008 a leaflet posted to the dashboard of a factory in the Veneto Region announced:

Veneto Region – Hunting Calendar 2007-2008. The Veneto Region communicates the opening of the hunting season (all year) for the following migratory game: Romanians, Albanians, Kosovars, the Taliban, Afghans, and extra-EU people in general. From this moment the hunting of communists is suspended as they have joined the endangered species, while there is the possibility of hunting them in areas such as “case del popolo” (homes of the people), coop [supermarket cooperatives], social [youth] centers. In this case, given the tough skin of the above game, the use of weapons such as guns of all kinds (possibly smooth-bore) to more than five shots, precision rifles and large calibre guns is allowed. In presence of numerous flocks, it is possible to use hand grenades, howitzers, automatic machine guns and poisonous gas. You can hunt day and night, without time limits. The use of night vision, nets, traps, search and attack dogs, such as pitbull, rottweiller is tolerated. The use of “live” decoys is allowed. There is no daily limit to the number of animals to be killed. We recommend the culling of young leaders towards faster extinction of races. For each thousand animals culled a travel prize of a week will be awarded to the whole family. It is kindly offered by the Austrian Minister Jörg Haider. On reaching the number of two thousand

8 The job turnover rates of migrants are still fairly high. For example, in Piedmont, they are twice as high as the job turnover rates for Italians (Luciano et al., 2007:139). 9 This is why the current Italian legislation provides easier criteria for regular migration to the domestic workers living under the same roof as their employer 24 hours per day. 147

animals slaughtered, the conferred honorary citizenship of Austria will be granted. 10

The strong and continuous political propaganda for ethnic cohesion and against foreigners is perhaps a revealing sign of the difficulty of maintaining these fictitious divisions. The rupture of these separations and the construction of a “common” field seem to be still possible, thanks to the work of trade unions and of a large number of association defending migrants rights. Migrants join trade unions, although they use them more for services than for the union’s debatable capacity to improve their working conditions. In early 2008 there were 814 thousand migrants as members of Italian trade unions, representing some 30% of migrant employees (2.7 million) (Caritas/Migrantes, 2008). The 1 st of March 2010 a strike for the rights of labour migrants took place in Italy, as in France. Groups of migrants and Italians, in particular in northern Italy (Milan, Brescia, Bologna, Padua) and in some large cities (Rome and Naples) participated to the strike, but major unions did not declare a strike at the national level so people took part to it only on an individual basis. The strike has highlighted the difficulties of the Italian labour movement to overcome the divisions between different nationalities, but also revealed the emergence of a movement for equality in the workplace and in society.

5. FORMS OF SEPARATIONS AND SIGNS OF A NEW SOLIDARITY

The forms of social differentiation between natives and migrants in society are wide- ranging. This differentiation may be avoided in daily work, but usually not outside of workplaces. Industrial districts in northern Italy are usually located in the countryside where towns are small, often under 10-15 thousand inhabitants, and where separation between Italians and migrants is clearly marked in public spaces. Here the atmosphere is one of loneliness and inability to get any form of organization. Individual solutions prevail also because of the lack of collective action and of public spaces of debate. In these small towns where people gather at bars, squares, streets, parks, a sharp separation prevails, which is fed by the use of dialect and a sense of closed community and protective personal contacts, although one can notice some small groups of people spending their time with migrants and supporting their views. In fact, in the past two decades non-profit associations and unions have helped overcoming some forms of discrimination against immigrants. These groups of activists manned by native and foreign people are trying to overcome discriminating legislation and racist patterns of behaviour. In northern towns the natives feel a sense of abandonment. Political decision- making and political representation seem far away. The Northern League, which has built its success in these areas, has exploited every opportunity to divide natives from migrants, and feed the separation into ghettos. Its presence in the territory, combined with its rhetoric, makes it more concrete and understandable according to many ordinary

10 See Anonymous (2008b); a few months later Giancarlo Gentilini, deputy mayor of Treviso, stated that it is necessary to sink ships full of illegal immigrants (Anonymous, 2008c). 148

people. Central at this point is the myth of one’s own turf. Consequently identity takes a hue of racism: "Masters at home", "Fiscal Federalism", "We are sending all of them [foreigners] back". In general the League’s ideological influence is deep. Each clan is a small state in itself, and no attention is paid to alternative opinions. The discrimination against foreigners has generated social and economic divisions that have guaranteed the regimentation of Italian society. Consequently tensions between immigrants and Italians have multiplied in recent years. They are fed not only by right-wing racist propaganda, but also by those progressive groups who think that a democratic form of differentiation between locals and foreigners is on the agenda. The press campaigns that feed public discourse in towns and cities assign an inferior social position to migrants. 11 The production of stigma is widespread in Italian society according to a current evolutionary worldview that is expressed in everyday discursive and cultural practices at all levels. In these world-views, different cultures are often taken as stable and homogeneous and each migrant seems ontologically to be different from an Italian person. It is in particular in these small towns and in rural areas that the process of “soft” differentiation leads to explicit forms of racism against immigrants, while in the outskirts of big cities, such as Milan, Rome or Naples and in cities with less then half a million inhabitants such as Padua, Verona, Bergamo, Alessandria one can find even more right-wing, ideologically oriented racism. The construction of industrial districts in northern Italy has given prominence to new economic and political actors. These local entrepreneurs began to build cultural and social models around their firms. In the same way entrepreneurs coming from Italian industrial districts promote a new kind of relationship inside and outside the factory in Eastern Europe. The forms of neo-colonialism developed by Italian businessmen abroad contributed to a neo-colonial attitude at home. The domestic neo-colonialism does not relate only to migration but to the history of Italian migration and to Italian foreign policy, including the policy of direct investments abroad. It is no coincidence that among white migrants in Italy, the Romanians are at the moment the most stigmatized groups: in Romania around 100 thousand Italians entrepreneurs, technicians and managers supervise directly or indirectly the work of 800 thousand Romanians with highly discriminatory practices and with a widespread hostility to any form of collective bargaining (Redini, 2008; Sacchetto, 2007). The neo-colonialist policies by political entrepreneurs are largely underpinned by racism. Many media, often controlled by businessmen or political parties also support these policies. 12 The campaign that was unleashed against the Romanians at the end of 2007 and lasting throughout 2008 found a large support in the world of Italian media. The

11 It should be added that in some cases union members contribute to fuel these forms of differentiation: at the end of 2008, the secretary of the Cgil (leftist) union in the Treviso province, Paolino Barbiero, said it was necessary to suspend issuing permits of residence for migrants in Italy. It is a measure that would put undocumented immigrants in Italy to the mercy of traffickers. 12 A recent study by the Center of radio and television audiences in Italy has brought to light that time devoted to crime, violence and robberies has more than doubled from 10.4% of television news in 2003 (when Berlusconi was premier, coalition of centre-right parties) to 23.7 % of 2007 (when Prodi was premier, coalition of centre-left parties); see Centro d’Ascolto dell’Informazione Radiotelevisiva (2008). 149

hysteria was fed by the social invisibility of Romanians who can easily pass for Italians. In northern Italy the widespread activism of local public administrators of the Northern League has led to the approvals of many municipal injunctions and resolutions that are imbued with racism. The systematic nature of this “dirty work” is legitimated by members of parliament and Berlusconi cabinet members of the Northern League, as well as from other parties of the center-right and to some extent of the center-left, who have joined forces in the name of “order”.13 Consequently the deputy mayor of Treviso, 14 Giancarlo Gentilini, felt free to proclaim to the annual meeting of the Lega Nord in Venice in September 2008 (Negroski, 2008):

People of the League! The League has awakened! The walls of Rome are collapsing under the blows of the League’s hammer. My word is revolution. This is the Gospel according to Gentilini, the Decalogue of the first mayor sheriff. I want the revolution against the illegal immigrants. I want the revolution against the camps of nomads and gypsies. I have destroyed two of them in Treviso. And now there are no more there. I want to eliminate the children who come to steal from the elderly! If Maroni [the home secretary and a member of North League] said “zero tolerance”, I want double zero tolerance. I want the revolution against television, newspapers that tarnished the League. I'll put the cork in the mouth and in the ass to those journalists. I don’t want to see them anymore... I want the revolution against the prostitutes. They too must pay taxes. All pay taxes; also the prostitutes must pay. I want the revolution against those who want to open mosques and Islamic centers, including the Catholic Church hierarchy, who say: “Let them pray”. No! Go to pray in a desert! I want to open a carpet factory to give them the carpets, but they must go to pray in a desert. Stop! I have also written to the Pope: Muslims must go back to their countries. I want the revolution against the judiciary. Venetian judges must apply the law. I want the revolution against those who want to give pensions to the elderly relatives of “extra-EU” domestic workers. This is our money! And I want to take it. This is the Gentilini’s Gospel: everything to us and if something remains to the other ... But nothing will be left over. I want the revolution against the phone centers where visitors eat in the middle of the night and then piss on the walls: let them go and piss in their mosques. I want a revolution against the burqa and veils for women. I want to see women in the face, because behind the veil there could be a terrorist with a machine gun between his legs. Let them show their navel ... if anything. I want the revolution against those who would give the vote to non-EU people. I do not want to see blacks, browns or greys who teach our children. What will they teach, the civilization of the desert? The vote is entirely up to us. I need the Northern League people.

13 On this subject see a chronicle by Bettin, 2009. 14 Treviso was recognized by a report of Caritas as the area where greater integration of immigrants on the basis of parameters (such as employment rate, level of wages, school participation) that are not related to local public policies, but to market mechanisms or national policies. 150

The migrant is identified as a dangerous figure who must be monitored and inspected in depth before “we” are able to offer him/her an option to become "like us". The creation of the immigrant threat is perhaps an attempt to reconstruct a lost legitimacy, mirroring a shift from the welfare state to the security state. The narrow space where today people can build mutual trust does not include extensive public socialization. And this stricture gives rise to the autonomous initiatives of civil society, such as private paramilitary patrols, which aim to re-build forms of community that are based on belonging to some form of communality.

6. RHETORICAL PATTERNS AND FORMS OF PROTECTION OF MIGRANTS

The segmentation of the labour market is the product of the action of both employers and migrants when they rely on social networks for their needs. In the Italian labour market some nationalities are excluded from certain tasks, while almost all the immigrants are precluded from high-wage jobs and more generally from managerial work. Once their university degrees and professional skills are devaluated, migrants are stereotyped, sometimes in a soft way, sometimes with a hard hand. The devaluation of their degrees is a process analogous to what currently happens to many young Italians, but the latter have the advantage of family and personal networks. In fact, in areas where it is easy to find jobs, as in northern industrial districts, local young people often drop out of school and are initiated in their late teens to early paid work. These strategies, particularly in small towns under 10-15 thousand inhabitants, are sustained by the young people’s hunger for income and even more by pressure from the local community, which wants them to prove their mettle. The rhetoric surrounding the culture of work supports the idea that work is an instrument of integration, a position widely shared by all parliamentary parties and approved by a significant proportion of people working in self-help groups of migrants and sometimes by migrants themselves. The extreme economic rationality that society requires from migrants sets them into a world where they “are fine as long as they work”. Migrants may sometimes seek to maximize their presence in economic terms because they do not want to sacrifice themselves forever on the of accumulation. However, in the migrants’ conduct one can easily detect strategies to minimize the consumption of their bodies. The monetization of health, as well as of other “rights” that sometimes migrants claim is a response to a climate of racism, to bureaucratic resistance to the renewal of their permits of residence and to obtaining family reunion, besides low wages. The more insecure the presence of migrants, the more they try to make money during the time they have to spend in Italy. In this regard it should be noted that in the first period of presence in Italy, when they have little money, migrants are very vulnerable to all sorts of blackmail. The so-called deserving migrant should be a flexible homo oeconomicus, who might one day even become a citizen. This is one of the forms of access to citizenship through economic achievement. In the town of Cittadella (Padova) the local government passed an injunction by which it is stated that legal residence will be given only to those persons who can prove they have an income of at least 5000€ per year. What happens, for example, with a family of four persons where there is just one breadwinner making € 151

19,000 a year? Thus the easiest way to citizenship is the possession of considerable wealth. For most migrants wage labour is the only road to inclusion. Social integration into Italian society takes place in a long process of good behaviour under a hierarchical command that radiates from the workplace to the public space. The presence of immigrants is tolerated when it is connected to their subordination and deference, a fate that is chained to their labour situation (Sayad, 2002). It is not surprising that in 2008 the Northern League proposed a points residence permit (Anonymous, 2008a), according to a principle of rewards and punishments in order not only to discipline migrants, but also to transform their presence into a state of constant insecurity. Stereotypes and institutional practices that migrants have to confront are widening. The need to establish a social order in which the privilege of skin colour and of Italian-ness dictates the migrants’ conduct produces strong changes in public discourse. Public discourse has become obsessed with identifying the problems caused by migrants on the basis of different rhetorics (moral, demographic, cultural and economic) shaping common sense (Dal Lago, 1999). Indeed, the discretion in providing the services offered by the public bureaucracy (social workers, policemen, officers of agencies) is wide- ranging. It reaches the point of building routines, which differ from place to place and from person to person; these routines are obviously detrimental to the rights of migrants (Rambaldi, 2007:104). From police stations to public agencies, from school to real estate agencies such operators practice micro-transactions on the basis of their broad discretion. To migrants’ eyes they are a mirror of the real way of working of “really-existent” democratic regimes. We turn now briefly to two of these agencies: the first one in relation to jobs, the second one in relation to housing. The temporary work agencies and cooperatives allow the construction of forms of indirect discrimination through the definition of profiles in which the individual experiences and the professional or academic qualifications are devaluated if not unrecognized. At the same time they contribute to employment segregation with a selection targeted by nationality, gender, age, based on the demands of employers as well as on their prior knowledge. Stereotyping becomes one of the methods that facilitate this selection (Fullin, 2004; Sacchetto and Sbraccia, 2006). On the other hand, even without the mediation of temporary work agencies or cooperatives entrepreneurs themselves, particularly in small and medium companies, are the ones who implement specific personnel selections by segregating migrant workers in the heavier tasks and lower wages without much respect of standard work schedules (see Andall, 2007). In some cases companies, especially those of medium-large size, discriminate all migrants, or in the case of smaller companies, select immigrants of certain nationalities only. As it has been noted (Luciano et al., 2007:161), small businesses and semi-legal firms do the discriminating job of the early stage of discrimination and socialization to brutal conditions of work, while larger firms collect the fruits of this selection by offering better working conditions later on. In the case of real estate agencies their role is often crucial in finding housing, especially in urban centers. The widespread prejudices of real estate agents, tenants, owners and managers of condominiums tend to separate natives and immigrants. With the general reluctance to rent to foreigners or the request of heavy down payments in advance, we are not far from the formation of real ghettos (Vianello, 2006). Especially in cities the management of the property market is in the hands of agencies that sometimes ask for advance money for brokerage, without any guarantee that they provide housing 152

for rent. Agencies and owners have built a sort of separate housing market for migrants. Below standard housing is usually first offered to migrants. There are also cases in which the same entrepreneurs solve migrants’ housing needs by offering housing of their own property for rent, thus lowering the level of labour costs. The most evident form of discrimination with regard to the use of buildings, is no doubt the endemic denial of any stable place for public cult for Muslims. The campaigns against building and opening mosques have spread across northern Italy, although there are strong differences in the offer of spaces for religious practices between different municipalities.

7. CONCLUSION

In some ways the current situation seems similar to that of other European countries that have long experienced the presence of migrants in their working environments. The development and sustenance of forms of racism in Italy are not unique but they have some specific characteristics. As we have seen one element of the current Italian racism and its development, has been its link not only with the presence of foreigners in the country, but with the first colonial adventures and with the re-localization of production abroad in recent years. At the same time, the defeat of the working class at the end of the seventies led the left institutional parties to a gradual shift away from the so-called “popular masses” in favour of the so-called middle class. From this perspective, the transformation of industrial districts in northern Italy with their transfers of operation abroad and, in some cases, their dissolution has also profoundly changed the social and working relationships between local workers and employers on one side and between them and migrant workers. In 1990s the “inclusion” of immigrant workers has been developed as a model creating a differentiated system avoiding work and social tensions. In fact, that type of "integration" promoted the forms of discrimination that became the normal treatment and later spread to the rest of the country. The migration system that Italy seems to embrace is that of a sustained turnover on the basis of a “just-in-time” migration, which should lead to sending back migrants once jobs get scarce (Düvell, 2004:45). The current production model of contracts and subcontracts, internal or external to the so-called industrial districts, is working as it succeeds in controlling and directing migration. But migrant workers in Italy, as elsewhere, seem unwilling to submit to bullying recruitment agencies, as well as to daily discrimination.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alasia, F. and D. Montaldi (1960), Milano, Corea: inchiesta sugli immigrati , Milano, Feltrinelli. Allasino, E., E. Reyneri, A. Venturini and G. Zincone (2004), La discriminazione dei lavoratori immigrati nel mercato del lavoro in Italia , Genève, ILO. Andall, J. (2007), “Industrial Districts and Migrant Labour in Italy”, British Journal of Industrial Relations , 45 (2):285-308.

153

Anonymous (2008a), “L’idea della Lega Nord: ‘permesso di soggiorno a punti. Via chi sbaglia’”, Il Corriere della Sera , 7 October. Anonymous (2008b), “Volantino xenofobo in fabbrica. Crisi diplomatica con la Romania”, La Tribuna di Treviso , 26 May, http://tribunatreviso.gelocal.it/dettaglio/Volantino-xenofobo-in-fabbrica-crisi- diplomatica-con-la-Romania/1466965?edizione=EdRegionale [consulted on 12 June 2009]. Anonymous (2008c), “‘Affondiamo le navi piene di clandestini’”, Il Manifesto , 24 August. Bagnasco, A. (1977), Tre Italie. La problematica territoriale dello sviluppo italiano , Bologna, Il Mulino. Becattini, G. (ed.) (1987), Mercato e forze locali. Il distretto industriale , Bologna, Il Mulino. Bettin, G. (2009), Gorgo. In fondo alla paura , Milano, Feltrinelli. Bidussa, D. (1994), Il mito del bravo italiano , Milano, Saggiatore. Blim, M. (1990), Made in Italy: Small-Scale Industrialization and Its Consequences , New York, Praeger. Bono, S. (1999), Schiavi musulmani nell’Italia moderna. Galeotti, vu’ cumprà, domestici , Napoli, Edizioni scientifiche italiane. Burgio, A. (ed.) (1999), Nel nome della razza. Il razzismo nella storia d’Italia: 1870- 1945 , Bologna, Il Mulino. Canetta, S. and E. Milanesi (2008), “I cinesi che piacciono al leghista”, Il Manifesto , 23 August. Caritas/Migrantes (2004), Immigrazione. Dossier Statistico 2004. XIV rapporto, Roma, Idos. Caritas/Migrantes (2008), Immigrazione. Dossier Statistico 2008. XVIII rapporto , Roma, Idos. Caritas/Migrantes (2009), Immigrazione. Dossier Statistico 2009. XIX rapporto, Roma, Idos. Catanzaro, R. And A. Colombo (eds), Badanti & Co. Il lavoro domestico straniero in Italia , Bologna, Il Mulino. Centro d’Ascolto dell’Informazione Radiotelevisiva (2008), “L'analisi del Centro d'Ascolto sulle notizie di Cronaca nera nei Telegiornali”, at www.centrodiascolto.it/content/lanalisi-del-centro-dascolto-sulle-notizie-di-cronaca- nera-nei-telegiornali [consulted on 12th June 2009] Dal Lago, A. (1999), Non-persone. L’esclusione dei migranti in una società globale , Milano, Feltrinelli. Del Boca, A. (1992), L’Africa nella coscienza degli italiani. Dall’Unità alla marcia su Roma , Roma/Bari, Laterza. Düvell, F. (2004), “La globalizzazione del controllo delle migrazioni” in S. Mezzadra (ed.), I confini della libertà , Roma, DeriveApprodi:23-50. Fullin, G. (2004), Vivere l’instabilità del lavoro , Bologna, Il Mulino. Gambino, F. (2003), Migranti nella tempesta. Avvistamenti per l’inizio del nuovo millennio , Verona, Ombre Corte. Goffman, E. (1963), Stigma. Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, Englewood Cliffs (NJ), Prentice-Hall.

154

Harrison, B. (1994), Lean and Mean , The Changing Landscape of Corporate Power in the Age of Flexibility , New York, Basic Books. Istat (2004), XIV Censimento generale della popolazione e delle abitazioni , Roma, Istat. Istat (2008), Rapporto annuale 2007 , Roma, Istat. Luciano, A., R. Di Monaco and E. Allasino (2007), “Immigrati in fabbrica. Una ricerca sul lavoro operaio nelle imprese metalmeccaniche piemontesi”, Mondi Migranti , 1 (1):139-169. Melotti, U. (1989), “L’immigrazione straniera in Italia: da caso anomalo a caso esemplare”, in G. Cocchi (ed.), Stranieri in Italia. Caratteri e tendenze dell’immigrazione dai paesi extracomunitari , Bologna, Istituto Cattaneo:31-43. Negroski (2008), Dal Vangelo secondo Gentilini , at http://negroski.wordpress.com/2008/10/02/dal-vangelo-secondo-gentilini/ [consulted on 12th June 2009]. Osservatorio regionale sull’immigrazione (ed.) (2008), Immigrazione straniera in Veneto , Milano, Franco Angeli. Perrotta, M. (2007), “Immigrati romeni tra lavoro regolare i regolare. Ricerca etnografica in un cantiere edile a Bologna”, in F. Gambino and D. Sacchetto (eds), Un arcipelago produttivo. Migranti e imprenditori tra Italia e Romania , Roma, Carocci:95-132. Piore, M. J. and C.F. Sabel (1984), The Second Industrial Divide: Possibilities for Prosperity , New York, Basic Books. Raimondi, F. and M. Ricciardi (2004) (eds), Lavoro migrante , Roma, Derive&Approdi. Rambaldo, E. (2007), “Discriminazione nel distretto vicentino della concia”, Economia e società regionale , 99:96-117. Redini, V. (2008), Frontiere del ‘made in Italy’ , Verona, Ombre Corte. Sacchetto, D. (2007) “Isolani dell’arcipelago. Delocalizzatori e forza lavoro in Romania”, in F. Gambino and D. Sacchetto (eds), Un arcipelago produttivo. Migranti e imprenditori tra Italia e Romania , Roma, Carocci:133-170. Sacchetto, D. and A. Sbraccia (2006), “Un’area di manovalanza stigmatizzata”, in F. Vianello (ed.), Ai margini della città , Roma, Carocci:118-159. Sayad, A. (2002), La doppia assenza , Milano, Cortina. Scrazzolo, E. (2000), I friulani a Umkomaas , Udine, La Nuova Base Editrice. Silver, B. (2003), Forces of Labor , New York, Cambridge University Press. Stefani, G. (2007), Colonia per maschi. Italiani in Africa Orientale: una storia di genere , Verona, Ombre Corte. Treves, A. (1976), Le migrazioni interne nell’Italia fascista , Torino, Einaudi. Vianello, F. (ed.) (2006), Ai margini della città. Forme del controllo e risorse sociali nel nuovo ghetto , Roma, Carocci.

155

VALUE PATTERNS AND LOCAL IDENTITY IN FLANDERS: IN SEARCH OF A REGIONAL IDENTITY

Marc Hooghe

K.U. Leuven, Centre for Political Research

1. CULTURAL IDENTITIES AND POLITICAL CULTURE

Calls for centrifugal regionalism often are based on cultural arguments. It is claimed that distinct regional identities call for institutional change, in order to arrive at a closer match between political structures and cultural realities. The political structures should cover the same geographical region as the pre-existing cultural distinctions, it is argued. This kind of argumentation, self-evidently, is not new. Already from the more romantic nationalism in the 18 th century, it was argued that the Volksgeist , i.e. the whole of attitudes and cultural artifacts that are considered as typical for one specific group of the population, should have a direct bearing on political structures and the functioning of the political system. Indeed, more recent nationalist movements too, have increasingly relied on the argument that specific cultural identities should lead to the construction of autonomous regions (Llobera, 1983). It is striking to observe that in most of the current scholarly literature, the question whether the argument about cultural identities is empirically valid, is simply ignored. By itself, bracketing this question sounds like a sensible research strategy. Previous attempts to arrive at a fixed list of criteria to establish whether a group has a “sufficient” cultural distinctiveness, did not lead to reliable results. Linguistic, ethnic or religious cleavages might serve as obvious markers of identity, but here too, there are no reasons to assume that these cleavages would automatically lead to the formation of distinct cultural identities. Ever since the seminal volume by Benedict Anderson (1983), it is more or less taken for granted that cultural identities always tend to be constructed, and that therefore, there is no way to make any firm, more objective claims about the occurrence or the stability of these identities. To summarize it all too crudely: if a group decides to consider itself as a distinct cultural or ethnic group, then we might as well assume that this claim is founded and can be defended in a successful manner. For the Flemish nationalist movement, too, the cultural identity argument has worked well. Especially in recent years, it has been argued that more autonomy for the distinct communities in Belgium would lead to “better” government, as it would allow

157 the development of political institutions that are more closely tied to the preferences of Flemish citizens. Since 2007, it has been difficult in Belgium to form a stable and performative federal government. This political stalemate has even further increased the claim that a regionalization, or even a split-up of the country could lead to more effective government, by granting the Dutch speaking part of the population of the country more autonomy. It is hoped that this autonomy will be used in an effective manner, since the regional government of the Flemish region does not have to deal with strong cultural differences among the population. Another reason for the increasing popularity of the cultural identity claim is that it has become rather difficult in the Belgian context to find other good elements or identity markers to legitimize the claim for more autonomy. Self-evidently, there are no ethnic differences between the two language communities, and religious differences have also become very limited. Back in the 1950s it could still be argued that Flanders was a ‘catholic region’, while the Socialist Party was much more strongly present in Wallonia, leading to a strong counterbalance to the power of the Catholic church. Currently available data, however, show that the process of secularization is equally strong in both regions of the country, so that in practice, both in the French as in the Flemish region less than 10 per cent of the population can be considered as a practicing Catholic. The only identity marker that is still available, therefore, is at first sight the different language of the two major communities in the country. It is striking to observe, however, that language as such is hardly ever used as an argument in favor of a distinct identity. The fact that part of the population of Belgium speaks Dutch, and another part speaks French as a first language, does not lead to the claim that both groups inherently have different cultural and political identities. The kind of romantic nationalism that was prevalent in the 18 th and 19 th century, apparently has completely been abandoned. One of the reasons for this evolution might be that the Flemish nationalist movement no longer can align itself with leading novelists or composers, that would express the “essence” of the Flemish cultural identity and heritage. Back in the 19 th century this was still the case, and the idea was that these novelists or composers expressed the essential Flemish identity. As such, language or culture in general could be portrayed as defining elements of that culture, uniting ordinary citizens and the leading cultural elite. This kind of “natural alliance” between the nationalist movement and the cultural elite, however, has now altogether disappeared and some of the best known novelists in Flanders are even rather critical about the political claims of the Flemish nationalist movement. It has therefore become difficult to see the Dutch language by itself as the major defining element of the Flemish identity. There are two other, more strategic reasons why language arguments are seldom invoked in the current discourse. First, the use of language arguments inevitably refers to the Netherlands, as Flanders and the Netherlands share the same language. In practice, however, there is no relationship at all between the Netherlands and the Flemish national movement. In the Netherlands itself, there is hardly any sympathy for what is considered to be an outdated romantic nationalist movement and again this stands in contrast to the situation in the first half of the 20 th century. Leading intellectuals like the historian Pieter Geyl, during that era still had a marked interest in the Flemish nationalist movement, but this has now completely disappeared. For the more traditional parts of the Flemish nationalist movement, the Netherlands is not seen as a natural ally, either, because of a discontent about the “progressive” side of Dutch society and politics, e.g., with regard to

158 multiculturalism, soft drugs and youth culture. Since 2002, the Netherlands itself seems to have turned away from this multicultural and tolerant culture, and this is associated with the rise of populist parties. These populist parties, too, however, stress Dutch identity, and they do not seem to have much interest in Belgium. In the past, there have been some contacts between the extreme right Vlaams Belang, and Dutch right populist politicians, but these contacts did not lead to any clear cooperation. If the Flemish claim for autonomy and cultural distinctiveness would be based on language arguments, the only logical construction would be a close union between Flanders and the Netherlands. Since, for various ideological reasons, there is obviously no preference for this scenario, language has become outdated as an argument, and it is even striking to observe that some of the leading Flemish nationalist politicians do not even bother anymore to use standard Dutch, but decide to express themselves in some local dialect. It has to be noted in this respect that Flemish nationalism is quite unique. A national minority in a country usually enjoys a more or less privileged relation with the country where its language is used as the majority language. In some cases there is even an intensive stream of information and resources between the “mother country” and the national minority. For the Dutch speaking group in Belgium and the Netherlands, however, this relation has become extremely weak. The second strategic reason not to use language as a “founding myth” or major marker of identity is that this almost automatically would imply the abandoning of the Brussels region. As it is clear that ca. 85 per cent of the population of Brussels does not speak Dutch at home, it would be completely incoherent to claim that Brussels should still be seen as a part of the autonomous region of Flanders. In the best case, one could obtain some special minority rights for the Dutch speaking population of Brussels, but much more could not be hoped for. This too is a step that Flemish nationalists are very reluctant to take. It has to be noted in this regard that, while since a couple of years, Flemish nationalist groups have called for a stronger autonomy for the Flemish region, they remain very vague on what this would entail for the Brussels region. Some politicians have argued that the two communities would govern Brussels “together”, but no further details have yet been given on how this could be envisioned. It is more or less taken for granted, however, that some relation between Flanders and Brussels would remain in existence, despite the fact that this is seldom made very explicitly. To cite but one example: when the extreme right-wing Vlaams Belang party in January 2010 organized a conference on “full independence for Flanders”, the map that was used to illustrate this claim simply included Brussels as part of the “independent Flemish state”, despite the fact that only a small minority of the Brussels population speaks Dutch. Given all these considerations, “language” clearly is no longer sufficient to use as a claim for special groups rights for the Flemish population of Belgium. In the current discourse on Flemish identities, therefore, the concept of culture is used in a much broader but also much vaguer sense. It is taken to include all forms of attitudes, beliefs and ideological preferences, and the claim self-evidently remains that the Flemish cultural identity is rather distinct from the Walloon, of French-speaking cultural identity. This claim is related to economic differences. It is argued that the cultural differences explain part, or even most of the differences in the economic dynamic of the two regions in the country. Again, there are some good grounds for this claim. Since the 1960s, the economic dynamic of the two regions has moved in sharply opposite directions and it is argued that part of the explanation for this trend lies in the different cultural identity of

159 the two regions. Economic research indeed indicates that cultural characteristics of a society can have a strong impact on economic development, so in this regard too, this claim seems plausible. Claiming that a different cultural identity is responsible for the observed difference in economic outcomes, strategically is a very clever move. It would be considered as not legitimate to quote the economic differences directly as a major reason for more autonomy. This claim, most likely would be seen as a form of group selfishness, and this would jeopardize the odds that the claim would be accepted. Not invoking the economic differences directly, but rather relying on the alleged cultural causes for this different dynamic is much more legitimate. On the one hand, it builds on a centuries old tradition, linking culture and nationalism. But on the other hand, it also has a very strong impact on the moral status of the “other” group involved, i.e., the French speaking population of Belgium. By using this argument, they are no longer seen as just a part of the population that happens to have lower average income levels, but the implicit claim is that they themselves are to blame for this lack of economic development. It is because they have the “wrong” culture, that economic life in the Walloon region is less prosperous than it is in the Flemish region. From a rhetorical perspective, this is a very strategic move as it actually shifts the blame to the other community. Centrifugal regionalism is no longer seen as an expression of group selfishness, but it is rather implied that the other group is to blame, because of its failure to adapt to a more modern, enterprise-oriented culture. While the claim about “different cultures” has been rhetorically very successful, the disadvantage, of course, is that it is open to empirical falsification, as we have access to reliable survey data on prevalent value patterns and cultural orientations of the Belgian population. An analysis of these data should allow us to ascertain whether the cultural identities of the Dutch and the French speaking population of Belgium really are as different as is often claimed they are. If there are indeed strong differences in political ideas, value patterns and levels of geographical identification, these should be seen in survey figures. Population surveys routinely assess the most important social and political values, and if there are no significant differences in this regard, the conclusion should be that value patterns only reside in some obscure and trivial values, that are not included in this kind of survey research.

2. CULTURAL IDENTITIES

The claim that societies and populations have distinct cultural identities, by itself, is plausible. Even if we limit ourselves to a European context, it can be ascertained quite easily that national cultures can differ quite strongly from another. The question on what kind of dimensions societies could be differentiated, however, remains open for debate (Hofstede, 1980). It can be noted, however, that cultural identities differ with regard to support for equality and egalitarian distribution of values, trustworthiness and support for authoritarian social arrangements. While in the Scandinavian countries and Western Europe trust and egalitarian arrangements seem to be more dominant, respect for hierarchy and institutions is more clearly present in Southern and in Eastern Europe. An important element clearly are the religious traditions of the country involved. Even in highly secularized societies, survey research shows convincingly that traditional

160 patterns of religiously inspired attitudes still prevail and have an impact on current value patterns. Inglehart (1997), e.g., shows that in Protestant countries postmodern attitudes and values are more prevalent. Protestant countries scores systematically higher on support for equal rights, protection of the environment, gender equality and trusting attitudes. Ethnocentrism and authoritarian attitudes, on the other hand, are systematically lower in Protestant countries, compared to European countries with a Catholic or an Orthodox tradition. The finding that religious tradition still plays such a fundamental role in explaining value patterns might be counter-intuitive to some extent, since we know that secularization has fundamentally changed the attitudes and values of the European population. This is even more so in formerly Protestant countries like the Scandinavian countries, where church attendance stands at a remarkably low level. Nevertheless, it seems that this kind of historical background still has an effect on contemporary value patterns. The assumption is that religious traditions still operate as a kind of background cultural setting, determining the set of cultural and attitudinal options that are available for a secularized population. A second major distinctive feature is the role of trust. Basically, trust can be seen as a kind of coordination mechanism, governing the interactions between citizens. The presence of trust facilitates these interactions, and it reduces the need for a third-party enforcement of interaction deals among citizens. Empirical research shows quite convincingly and consistently that while some societies score very high on trust levels, others are equally characterized by low trust levels (Nannestad, 2008). Trust also has important side-effects on the way a society is being run. It has been shown that trust is generated more easily when social en economic differences between groups of the population are more limited. In political systems and societies with strong patterns of inequality, trust levels are systematically lower as neither the dominant group, nor the oppressed group in society has much reason to develop trust in the way society is being run. Generalized trust, therefore, is related to the feeling of reciprocity, and we can also expect to find higher levels of generalized trust in more egalitarian societies (Newton, 2007). As such, we can make the claim that generalized trust measurements are an essential element if we want to understand the way a society ‘typically’ would function. In the remainder of this section, empirical evidence will be presented about the distinctiveness of Dutch and French groups of the population. In this regard, we will rely on the results of the European Social Survey (ESS), where we will use the results of the 3rd wave, that was collected in 2006. The European Social Survey can be considered as the most reliable source of survey data on attitudes and behaviors of the European population. First, starting with the feeling of generalized trust. The claim is that trusting societies have it easier to prosper economically, and they are also able to ensure in a more successful manner quality of life indicators for their population. The standard survey question for generalized trust is the item: “Most people can be trusted, or you cannot be too careful in dealing with others”. Within the ESS, respondents could answer on a 0-10 scale on this item, with high figures indicating a trusting attitudes and low figures a distrusting attitude. Figure 1 shows strong differences between Northern European countries and Eastern European countries. We can observe – and this is also in line with previous research – that trust levels tend to be lower in the French speaking part of Belgium, but differences are rather limited, compared to the strong differences between other European countries. While the trust level of the respondents in the Dutch speaking

161 part of Belgium is quite closely related to the trust level in the Netherlands, we can observe that the trust level in the French speaking part is almost the same as the trust level in France.

Figure 1. Generalized Trust levels in Europe, ESS 2006

8 7 6 5 4 3 2

k s ) y e ) d a r d D n c F n i a n ( a n ( a n m a a l e n rl m rm r m o v e e iu e F iu P lo D th lg G lg S e e e N B B

If we subsequently ask respondents to place themselves on a left-right scale, the same pattern emerges. Both the Dutch as the French speaking population of Belgium can be found quite closely in the middle of the European sample of countries (Figure 2). Again, the Dutch speaking population is very close to the level of the Netherlands, while the French speaking population just as closely mirrors the level of France. Differences with countries like Germany or Poland, on the other hand are quite outspoken. The figure clearly shows that the political differences between the two communities in the country should not be overestimated. Despite the fact that the party system shows fundamental differences between Flanders and Wallonia, this clearly does not imply that the ideological preferences of the two communities would be radically different.

Figure 2. Left-Right Scale in European Countries, ESS 2006

7

6

5

4

3

Finally, we also have a look at an attitude that can be considered as politically very salient in the current debate: ethnocentrism. Here too, it is often taken for granted that there must be strong differences between the two communities, as Flanders has a highly successful extreme-right and ethnocentric party, while this is not the case in the Walloon region. Again, however, it is shown that differences in ethnocentric attitudes are not that strong (Figure 3). While indeed ethnocentrism levels are a bit higher in Flanders than in the French speaking community, the difference remains limited. The fact that the

162 Vlaams Belang party is so strong in Flanders, while the Front National is rather marginal in the Walloon region therefore also has to be explained by differences in organizational structure and in the political opportunity structure in the region, and not just by differences in the level of ethnocentrism.

Figure 3. Ethnocentrism levels in European countries, ESS 2006

6

5

4

3

2

a e y ) s ) k d i c n D d F r n n n a ( n ( a a e a a m l v r rm m rl m n o lo F e iu e iu e P S G lg th lg D e e e B N B

The same analysis can be performed for other socially and politically relevant value patterns too. In practice, however, results are usually comparable. Both the Dutch and the French speaking communities of Belgium are always close to the European average, with the Dutch speaking community closer to the score of the Netherlands, and the French speaking community closer to the score of France. As such, this confirms the notion that Belgium in practice can be considered as an average European country, uniting elements from the Northern and the Southern culture of Europe. The cultural distance between the two communities, on average, however, remains limited. If there are strong and insurmountable differences between the two communities in the country, standard survey research methods at least fail to detect them.

3. GEOGRAPHICAL IDENTITY

We can also opt for a more direct test of the cultural argument. Maybe there is not as much difference in value patterns, but it could be argued that Dutch and French inhabitants of Belgium still identify in a completely different way. The argument goes that the Flemish population identifies most strongly with its region and its own language group, and not with the level of the Belgian state. Identity can be operationalized in a number of ways. The identification with an ethnical, cultural, religious or ideological group can be measured and the intensity of this bond can be assessed. As Belay (1996:323) states: “Society within the nation-state pushes and pulls the individual towards a variety of identities such as ethnicity, gender, race, class and the like.” One way of measuring identity is measuring the subjective closeness to these concepts. This involves, however, a rather arbitrary choice of the categories that will have to be included in the questionnaire. A second, and in the scope of this chapter more applicable way, is by defining identity as a feeling of belonging to a certain place. Place attachment serves a number of

163 purposes, such as giving us a sense of security, linking us to people who are important to us, and as a symbolic bond to people, past experiences, ideas and culture (Altman and Low, 1992). A rather pragmatic but nevertheless important consideration is that this also allows us to measure the concept in a more reliable manner. In most survey formats (whether face-to-face or postal), respondents provide answers from their home context, i.e., the context that they actually spend an important part of their lives in. We can therefore be quite confident that if they state that the city, or the country they live in, provides them with their most important geographical identity, this is indeed something that will remain relatively constant. An important part of research therefore uses identity as place attachment. This is also the case in the European Values Survey (EVS) that we will use in this analysis. As the European Social Survey did not include sufficient information in its variable on this topic, it could not be used for this specific analysis. The EVS is a large-scale, cross- national, and longitudinal survey research program on basic human values. It is carried out under the responsibility of the European Values Study Foundation. It provides insights into the ideas, beliefs, preferences, attitudes, values and opinions of citizens all over Europe. The survey uses face to face interviewing of a nationally representative part of the population to ensure the reliability of the collected information (Halman, 2001). The data used are from the 3rd wave in 1999/2000. To reflect a locally oriented identification versus a broader, more European or universal identification, the following question was used in the EVS questionnaire: Q Which of these geographical groups would you say you belong first of all? Q And second? The possible answers consisted out of the following list: - Locality or town where you live - Region or county where you live - Your country as a whole - Europe - The world as a whole

A first look at the distribution of the answers sheds a light on the feelings of belonging of the Belgian respondents. Furthermore, it is striking to observe some difference in the answering pattern according to the three regions of the country (Figure 4).

164 Figure 4. Primary identification according to region (N=1912)

Flanders Brussels Wallonia

45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 locality or town region county country as a Europe world as a whole whole

Main level of geographical identification for respondents in Flanders, Brussels and Wallonia. Source: EVS.

A first look at the data already shows that local forms of identification are much more predominant than global forms of identity: less than 10 per cent of all respondents would label themselves primarily as “world citizens”. The data allow us to observe some clear differences between the three regions of the country. For the respondents in Flanders, the identification with the own city or town is clearly most important, while their level of identification with Belgium is rather low, compared to that of the respondents in Wallonia and Brussels. One out of three respondents in Wallonia identifies first with the country, a bit less than a third with their town. Only 15% identifies first with the Walloon region, and one out of ten identifies first with Europe or the world as a whole. Inhabitants of Brussels are quite similar, except that a smaller group identifies first with the town, and a slightly bigger group identifies with Europe or the world. This is quite understandable, since the distinction between town and region is not so clear in the case of Brussels. Furthermore, Brussels also has the most diverse and most cosmopolitan population of the entire country. We can observe, however, that the region never emerges as the most important level of identification, as is sometimes suggested in some of the nationalist rhetoric. One will remember that the questionnaire allowed respondents to fill in two priorities. The reason to do so was that it was felt as rather artificial to force respondents to give just one priority, and to give paramount importance to that one single level. It was hoped if respondents were offered two possibilities, this might lead to a more qualified, and therefore more valid measurement instrument. The answer on this second priority, however, does not seem to be that informative. For the respondents in Flanders, the region clearly comes second, but for the other two regions it is hard to find a pattern (Figure 5). What is clear however, is that European and global citizenship, still are not the most favoured levels of identity (Table 1).

165 Figure 5. Second identification according to region Flanders Brussels Wallonia

45,0 40,0 35,0 30,0 25,0 20,0 15,0 10,0 5,0 0,0 locality or town region county country as a Europe world as a whole whole

Secondary level of geographical identification for respondents in Flanders, Brussels and Wallonia. Source: EVS.

Table 1. First and second identification, according to region (Column %) Flanders Brussels Wallonia Belgium First identification locality or 40,5 20,9 29,9 35,2 town region or 24,3 20,0 15,0 20,9 county country as a 23,1 27,5 34,7 27,3 whole Europe 5,0 15,3 10,3 7,7 world as a 7,0 16,4 10,1 8,9 whole Total Valid N 1082 176 611 1869 Second identification locality or 18,4 14,7 23,0 19,5 town region 39,9 24,7 25,0 33,7 county country as a 25,4 30,3 30,1 27,4 whole Europe 11,8 23,1 15,5 14,0 world as a 4,4 7,2 6,5 5,3 whole Total Valid N 1085 173 596 1854

Is the option to allow respondents a first and second order indeed a good and valid way to measure identity, and does it lead to additional information that would not have been available, if respondents were offered only one option? In order to answer this

166 question, we first made a simple cross-tabulation of the two answers (Tables 2, 3, 4). The results suggest that respondents mostly use the second option to reinforce their original position, as they prefer the option that is immediately adjacent to their first option.

Table 2. Crosstabulation first and second identification (Flanders) (N=1067) (Row %) Second identification locality region country Europe world or town county as a as a whole whole First locality or 0,0 61,7 32,0 3,3 3,0 identification town region county 43,3 0,0 40,3 12,6 3,8 country as a 23,1 54,2 0,0 18,9 3,8 whole Europe 15,7 27,2 28,1 0,0 29,0 world as a 27,1 18,4 13,5 41,0 0,0 whole

Table 3. Crosstabulation first and second identification (Brussels) (N=172) (Row %) Second identification locality region country Europe world or town county as a as a whole whole First locality or identification town 0,0 48,8 33,4 13,4 4,5 region county 21,6 0,0 57,3 16,3 4,8 country as a whole 23,9 39,2 0,0 28,6 8,3 Europe 9,6 20,2 51,0 0,0 19,2 world as a whole 14,6 3,3 26,1 56,0 0,0

In the Flemish region respondents tend to be most oriented toward the own local community or to Belgium as a whole. Brussels does not have a clear profile on this point, which may be because of the small sample and the very diverse composition of inhabitants. Respondents of the Walloon region clearly identify strongly with the country in general.

167

Table 4. Crosstabulation first and second identification (Wallonia) (N=595) (Row %) Second identification locality region country Europe world or town county as a as a whole whole First locality or identification town 0,0 39,5 49,8 5,0 5,7 region county 32,0 0,0 44,7 18,6 4,7 country as a whole 39,6 31,1 0,0 24,5 4,7 Europe 16,4 15,2 44,8 0,0 23,5 world as a whole 28,3 5,1 40,7 25,9 0,0

The cross tabulations suggest that “city” and “region” are often used together, while the same is true for “Europe” and the “world”. Country, as an in-between level, is less clear, as there is a different pattern in the two major regions of the country. If we want to summarize the results of this question, therefore, we propose to construct two different groups: one stressing local or regional identities (i.e. local and regional), and one stressing European or global identities. The figures suggest indeed that a regional identity is more important in Flanders than it is in Wallonia. Contrary to some of the nationalist claims, therefore, it is clear that the first, and most important level of geographical identification in Flanders refers to the town or local community one lives in, and not to the region or the language group as such.

4. CONCLUSION

Despite the claims that the French and the Dutch speaking population show fundamental differences with regard to their value patterns and level of geographical identification, empirical research fails to reveal any evidence for this claim. For most attitudes that are routinely included in survey research, it is clear that both language communities in Belgium score quite closely to the European average. While the Dutch speaking community usually is more in line with the scores obtained in the northern part of Western Europe (especially the Netherlands), the scores for the French speaking respondents are usually close to the ones obtained by the respondents in France. Still, however, differences between both languages usually are not, or only weakly significant. Also with regard to identity, it has to be noted that we did not find empirical support for most of the claims made by advocates of centrifugal regionalism. A typical feature of Belgian society rather seems to be the strong focus on local identities, that are often considered as more important than regional or national identities. Given the fact that local communities in Belgium already have a strong degree of autonomy, one cannot observe any preference within public opinion to grant (even) more autonomy to these local communities.

168 This leads to an interesting observation. Most of the claims that are being made about distinct identities or levels of identification, do not receive empirical support. Other analyses have hinted at the fact that for Flemish voters, a reform of Belgian state institutions that would lead to more autonomy for the regions, is not a priority. Both in the 2007 and the 2009 elections, Flemish voters were first of all motivated by concerns about employment and economic development. Despite the fact that reform of the state institutions figured so high on the political agenda, election research showed in a very convincing manner that for a vast majority of the voters, state reform was not considered as a highly salient issue. Simultaneously, however, it can be observed that the drive toward centrifugal regionalism further gains momentum, and remains an important topic on the Belgian political agenda. The call by some political parties to implement a strong reform of Belgian state institutions even led to a prolonged and fundamental political crisis in Belgium during the 2007-2008 period. Empirical research, however, fails to find evidence for the claim that this drive would be society-driven, and thus it rather suggests that some elements within the political elite seem to be the main driving force for the salience attached to this item on the political agenda. The analysis of the Belgian case, therefore, suggests that the dynamics of centrifugal regionalism cannot always be explained by referring to the cultural dynamics among the population. Apparently, the role of political entrepreneurs, and the availability of a conducive political opportunity structure are much more important in this regard. Whether this observation is also valid for other examples of centrifugal regionalism, however, can only be ascertained if we would have access to comparative research on this matter.

REFERENCES

Altman, I. and S. M. Low (1992), Place Attachment. New York, Plenum Press. Anderson, B. (1983), Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London, Verso. Belay, G. (1996), “The (Re) Construction and Negotiation of Cultural Identities in the Age of Globalization”, in B. Ruben and H. Mokras (eds), Information and Behavior Vol. 5. Interaction and Identity , NewBrunswick, Transaction:319-346. Hofstede, G. (1980), Culture’s Consequences. International Differences in Work-Related Values , Beverly Hills, Sage. Inglehart, R. (1997), Modernization and postmodernization. Cultural, Economic, and Political Change in 43 Societies , Princeton, Princeton University Press. Llobera, J. (1983), “The Idea of Volksgeist in the Formation of Catalan Nationalist Ideology”, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 6 (3):32-350. Nannestad, P. (2008), “What Have We Learned about Generalized Trust, if Anything?”, Annual Review of Political Science , 11, 413-436. Newton, K. (2007). “Social and Political Trust”, in R. Dalton and H.-D. Klingemann (eds), Oxford Handbook of Political Behavior. Oxford, Oxford University Press:342- 361.

169

CULTURE, VALUES AND THE SOCIAL BASIS OF NORTHERN ITALIAN CENTRIFUGAL REGIONALISM. A CONTEXTUAL POLITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE LEGA NORD

Roberto Biorcio (*) and Tommaso Vitale (°)

(*) Università di Milano – Bicocca, Dipartimento di sociologia e ricerca sociale (°) Centre d’études européennes, Science Po, Paris

1. INTRODUCTION

In the last twenty years, the issue of the autonomy of the northern regions has always been on the Italian political agenda, even if with ups and downs. The traditional “Southern Question” has been supplanted in the public debate by the so-called “Northern Question”. Its appearance and achievement were promoted by three processes. The first, typically Italian, concerns the crisis of the First Republic and, above all, the dissolution of the main mass parties (DC, PCI, and PSI) which had guaranteed for many years the stability of national political representation, while keeping at the same time close relationships with the local communities. The second process, the current phase of globalization subsequent to the end of the Cold War, caused many economic and social problems in Italy, as in the other European countries, and had a very specific impact on the North of Italy, with its diffused economy and urbanization characterized by industrial districts and their systems of flexible specialization (Cento Bull and Gilbert, 2001; Cento Bull in this volume). The third process, strictly interlaced with the second, is the strong increase of migratory flows from countries of the ex-soviet block and from other continents: their swiftness and intensity caused disorientation, anxieties and fears among Italians, since they were historically more accustomed to emigration and little prepared to face the increasing processes of immigration. The effects of these dynamics created some favourable but not sufficient conditions for the appearance of the “Northern Question”. It would have hardly emerged without the success of a political party – the Lega Nord – that built its own identity on the opposition between the northern regions and the national government. Still, the relationship between the party founded by Umberto Bossi and the so-called “Northern Question” is really complex and can be understood according to very different interpretative keys. We can read it in accordance with a determinist key, by considering the Lega Nord as a consequence of the Northern Question. Even if this party had not

171

existed, other northern movements would have been born in answer to problems, needs, and the deficit of representation which characterizes society in many areas of the North of Italy. A nominalist interpretation, on the opposite, reduces the Northern Question and the northern movement to a skilful propagandistic invention to manage a large variety of interests, the only ones considered important and concrete by the political actor and its electors. The idea of “Padania”, in this view, has no real foundation, and the electoral success of Lega Nord stands for something else: the complaint against parties, the middle classes’ tax rebellion, the needs of the ideal “North-eastern entrepreneur”, the inefficiency of public services, the demand for regional decentralization. The two opposite perspectives seize some aspects of the relationship existing between the Lega Nord and the Northern Question, and can provide some significant cognitive contributions. Nevertheless, both consider the political process as irrelevant, and deem the dynamics of creation of a public problem as epiphenomenal, by-products of structural evolutions without autonomy. Besides being criticizable on a theoretical plan, because indifferent to the generative character of political action (McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly, 2001), the determinist and the nominalist approaches, in the end, are unable to explain the whole of factors and actions that led to the appearance of the Northern Question. In this chapter we therefore are proposing a different option, of the constructive type. The main idea is that the growing importance of the Northern Question within the political debate and the collective imagination could be explained by relating the subjective political initiative of the Lega with the conditions and replies of the political, economic and social world. In this sense, our theoretical option follows recent developments of the aptly defined “Contextual Policy Analysis” (Goodin and Tilly, 2006) that aims to explain political processes by observing how pertinent actors behave in some contexts structured by cultural and value constraints, by institutions and their respective prescriptive and operational instruments, by environments made up of opportunities and economic interests. In this sense, what we call a constructive approach is very similar to that sort of studies of the political process which we often refer to, even according to pragmatic sensitivity (Cefaï and Pasquier, 2004; Cantelli et al., 2009). This approach is based on the theoretic conviction that a certain degree of autonomy and inventiveness of political action, even if bound by the context it is placed in, would make a difference and should be taken into account to obtain reliable explanations of the configurations of power and the dynamics of public opinion (Boltanski and Claverie, 2007).

2. THE WEAKNESS OF ITALIAN REGIONALISM AND THE FRACTURE NORTH/SOUTH

The issues of regional autonomy and federalism have never had great political relevance in Italy, at least until the eighties. The process of building the unitary state had taken a shape “at the same time so feeble to turn out largely inefficacious and so strong to multiply the opposing reaction of the country and to reinforce the secular particularistic feelings” (Romanelli, 1991:714). The persistency of parochialism and particularism and the differences of the local sub-cultures did not give rise to claims for regional autonomy and did not provoke conflicts capable to question national unity. Localist type trends are not usually characterized by the opposition to the state-nation dimension, but by the 172

extraneousness and lack of interest for politics: those who share these trends refer almost exclusively to the limited horizon of the local communities (Merton, 1949:725). Local sub-cultures very often coexist with the prevailing culture on a national scale, without developing significant oppositions. In Italy, localism had expressed itself within the different subcultures and local political traditions (Bagnasco and Oberti, 1998). From the Second World War until the end of the Cold War, the local sub-cultures have been integrated by the most important political cultures on a national scale (Biorcio, 2003). The mediation of interests on a territorial scale had been guaranteed during the first forty years of the Republic, both by single parties’ inner mechanisms (with the co-optation of regional élites and the aimed redistribution of resources), and through a geographic division of tasks among the most important parties that, due to their privileged relationships with some territorial areas, were perceived as spokespersons for their interests and values. In this sense, the main mass parties had guaranteed for many years a sort of institutionalization of the management of the centre-periphery fracture in the framework of the Italian state, with an administration characterized by a longstanding tradition of absolutism and centralism. The distribution of economic recourses between the different territorial areas did not cause noteworthy protests in the regions of northern Italy until the eighties. After the creation of the nation state, the economic and social fracture between North and South was deep, but the absence of strong ethno-cultural differences allowed the political system to support an alliance between the economic interests of the two areas, making territorial mobilization difficult (Trigilia, 1984:82). During the second post-war period, even though the economic difference between the North and the South was reduced, an autonomous productive system did not develop in the southern regions (Mingione, 1991). In the speech of the main Italian parties, the Southern Question was represented as a national matter: problems of economic development and social modernization of southern regions were shown as priority commitments for the whole national community. The institution of “Regions with ordinary statute” in 1970 did not promote regionalist trends. Only in those regions with a strong linguistic and cultural autonomy (Valle d’Aosta, South Tyrol, Sardinia, regions with an extraordinary statute) autonomist parties were able to obtain a considerable electoral following. The ethno-cultural distinctions between the northern regions and the other Italian regions were really limited and there were no linguistic gap or religious differences to support more or less spontaneous mobilizations. During the second half of the eighties, the rising tax pressure and the high costs of financing public debt were creating increasing problems for the economy of northern Italy and the well-being of its population. In years of high inflation and of halving of the Gross Domestic Product growth rate (relative to the two previous decades), the intense and sometimes dramatic post-Fordist transition had created an economic context in which the traditional defence of southern interests lost legitimacy. In a context of strongly increasing patronage, mass parties were not able to offer a coherent reformulation of the problems of the South of Italy, and started losing their strategic and selective ability to represent organized interests. The Southern Question increasingly lost its credibility, reducing itself to a matter of simple redistribution of resources, often from a political viewpoint (Cantaro, 1990). The loss of an adequate cultural reference dragged with it a crisis of legitimacy of the political instruments to support the South of Italy and, shortly

173

afterwards, of the very possibility to consider the Southern Question as a matter of general interest (Huysseune, 2006: ch. 4) Nevertheless, it was not just a loss of legitimacy of the South of Italy that created the conditions for the rising of the Northern Question. In the same period, in fact, another very significant trend was registered: the weakening of the mass parties’ power of territorial interest mediation, invested by the effects of the end of the Cold War and by the crisis of the two main political sub-cultures. The relationship between Italian regions and national institutions radically changed during the nineties after the unexpected emergence of Lega Nord. Federalism and the Northern Question attained such an importance that they strongly affected Italian politics during the following stages.

3. REGIONALIST POPULISM AND THE INVENTION OF PADANIA

The researches on the formation and the first successes of the Lega Nord have analytically reconstructed the process of development of the new political subject, by dividing it in different stages, considering both the changes in its proposals, and the transformation in the distribution of electoral support in relation with territorial contexts and political and social positions.1 In order to study in a longer period the transformations of the party led by Umberto Bossi and its interaction with the Italian political system, today a different periodization can be more suitable, by considering firstly the alternation that was registered between stages of high electoral growth and stages of decline and stagnation of support. The simple inspection of the vote percentage obtained by the Lega Nord during the European and national elections between 1983 and 2009 allows singling out three waves of electoral successes, spaced out so far by two stages of relative decline (see Figure 1). The three waves developed in a context of different social and political opportunities that the Lega Nord could efficaciously manage. In the eighties the regional leagues created in Piedmont, Lombardy and Veneto had only played a secondary role. They were small formations that re-proposed in Italy the fundamental ideas of regionalist movements: the defence of traditions and culture existing in specific territorial contexts together with a request of decentralization of political power and the promotion of local self-government. For many years, the outcomes of the autonomist leagues were disappointing (see Figure 1). The qualitative leap happened in Lombardy in 1989 when the party founded by Umberto Bossi became the fourth party within the richest and most populated region in Italy with 470.997 votes (8,1%). The original political proposal of the autonomist leagues was deeply modified. Under the direction of Bossi, the ethno-regionalist protest was turned into a popular battle against roman party-power . The North was, in the speech of the Lega Nord leader, an “economic giant and a political dwarf”. The autonomy of all the Italian northern regions was presented as the more radical way to get rid of the power of traditional parties and state bureaucracy. The polarization Lombardy/Rome symbolized in a very effective way the existing tensions between civil society and the party system and provided citizens with a concrete point of reference for collective identification (Diani, 1996).

1 See Diamanti, 1993:16-19; Rovati and Mazzette, 1993: 25; De Luna, 1994:43-52; Biorcio, 1997:35-38: for a recent re-reading see Biorcio, 2010. 174

Far from just being an emerging phenomenon, the Northern Question was “invented” by the Lega and embedded in a well-defined frame: that of the dispute of the labouring North against an inefficient, inefficacious and ineffective (good-for-nothing) political centre.2 The exaltation of values such as the laboriousness and efficiency of Lombard people in contrast with the shortages of the bureaucratic machinery, gave the Lega vote a general meaning of rebellion and of affirmation of the weight of a healthy civil society against the political class. This presentation of its political offer drew its strength from long period structured modalities to conceive the relationship between civil society and political representation in Lombardy: here, the tendency to perceive the productive abilities and the solidarity of civil society in contrast with an extraneous and mediocre political power has always been diffused (Biorcio, 2001). The regionalist identity became a point of reference to express a whole set of tensions experienced by some classes of the population: tensions between citizens and the political class, between natives and immigrants (southern people before, and “non-Europeans” later), between common people and the different forms of criminality and deviance (Biorcio and Mannheimer, 1995). The Lega Lombarda thus managed to establish a mass following by proposing a combination of regionalism and populist dissent (Biorcio, 1991). Umberto Bossi’s party proposed an appeal intended both as demos (people as a whole and at the same time the common people, the mob, the popular masses in opposition to the élites ), and as ethnos (people as ethno-national entity). The efficacious

2 On the most recent developments of the frame analysis for the study of political processes, cf. Cefaï & Trom, 2000; Snow, 2004; Barisione, 2009. 175

management of this formula was the basis of the successes of all the European populist movements and parties of the last twenty years because it connected the pole of popular protest with that of identity (Mény and Surel, 2000:187; Taguieff, 2002:57). This mixture of populism and regionalism impressed a very defined brand on the formulation of the Northern Question in Italy, since it not only implies a demand for self-government, but also as open opposition and challenge to national parties, censured as corrupted because of their centralism and consequently “Southern-ness”. The electoral success of Lega Lombarda dragged also that of other regional leagues that converged in the Lega Nord. In 1992 the expansion in all the northern regions did not significantly change the general characteristics of the Lega electorate compared with those of the first electorate of Lega Lombarda (cf. table 1). The social profile remained interclass, with a particularly accentuated penetration within the traditional lower middle class (traders, craftsmen, independent farmers) (Mannheimer, 1993:256). As for the social composition, the Lega electorate profile was very similar to the traditional Christian Democrat one. Then again, the deepest infiltration of the took place, in fact, within the areas long ruled by the Catholic party, while the diffusion of votes for the Lega was much more reduced within the “red areas”.

TAB. 1. Vote for Northern League by Professional Condition (1991-2008) Occupation 1991 1994 1996 2001 2006 2008 Businessmen-Prof-Managers 14 15,8 12,4 12 4,4 13,5 Employee Teacher 13,3 16 18,8 10,1 8,2 10,9 Traders-Shopkeepers-Craftsmen- Farmers 24 26,5 23,9 7,6 16,8 21,7 Blue Collar Worker 16,6 21,4 31,2 10,7 9,2 19,8 Unemployed 11,2 14,2 17,3 5,9 8,1 15,5 Northern Italy 14,1 16,9 19,8 8,2 8,5 17,2 Sources: Eurisko, Cirm, Abacus, Doxa Pools – Northern ItalianRegions

Some characteristics of territorial contexts particularly influenced the diffusion of the vote for the Lega. In short, the percentage of votes for the Lega reached very high levels above all in three types of zones: a) areas where the catholic sub-culture was more deeply-rooted; b) small villages, in particular those far from big cities; c) areas marked out by small enterprises systems that in some cases had taken the profile of real industrial district, and that in other cases remained local production systems that were nevertheless capable of flexible specialization. In Italy, the Lega Nord had an essential role in starting up and characterize the so- called “anti-politics cycle” (Mastropaolo, 2000; Marletti, 2002; Mete, 2010) which strongly contributed to provoke the crisis of the Italian party-system between 1992 and 1993. Berlusconi’s entering the field in 1994 stole from the Lega the representation of the middle class and of the opposition to the post-communist left, and grabbed a large part of its electoral consensus. Therefore, the Lega abandoned federalism as a political project in favour of an independence movement, with a mobilization for the construction of the “Padanian nation”. By attacking both right-wing and left-wing parties, the Lega managed to maintain a faithful electorate in many provinces and in 1996 it became the first party in the northern Italian regions (Agnew et al., 2002).

176

If during the first wave of its electoral successes the Lega Nord had assumed as privileged reference the crisis of the Italian party-system, afterwards the projects and initiatives of the “movement” referred primarily to the crisis of the nation-state. The Lega Nord, during this phase, invested above all in identity-making initiatives, culminating in the “march on the Po” and the election of the “parliament of Padania”. Of course, it continued its polemic against the government and party-power, as well as the management of hostility against new immigrants (no longer Southerners, but “non- Europeans”) even if the migratory phenomenon had not reached the present levels. This second wave was characterized also by a transfer of its reference social basis. The first “anti-partyist” Lega had more success among the lower middle classes and the northern small entrepreneurs. During the second secessionist wave, workers, most of all, voted for the Lega Nord (see table 1). In 1996 the Lega collected nearly a third of the votes among workers residing in the northern regions of Italy (31%). These votes came above all from small and medium firm workers, those somehow more exposed to competition and where the identification of workers with the interests of the firms they are engaged by, is much easier. In these industries, workers attribute more importance to the dangers of international competition than to those of class relations within the firm. Analysis shows that votes came also from a lot of trade unions members, even from the CGIL (the left-wing trade union). Dissociation occurred between the representation of economic interests strictly speaking, and the political and “identity- making” representation: workers went on relying on traditional trade-unions (CGIL, CISL and UIL) for the defence of their economic interests, in fact, Lega unions never had a great success. As for their political representation, on the contrary, the reference of Bossi’s party to the local/regional community seemed to intercept better the emerging “desire for community” within contemporary society discussed by Bauman (2001). Besides, during those years, the left-wing experienced an increasing crisis of its capacity to propose efficacious politics to local communities, and the tensions and fears present in them (Centemeri, 2011). The disorientation of many social sectors in the context of globalization was beginning to be perceived (Beirich and Woods, 2000) and the basic idea the Lega Nord proposed was that only by closing in the local/regional community, it would be possible to secure it from the dangers of neo-liberal globalization (Huysseune, 2006:184-185). This way, it is possible to explain the insistence on separatist projects and at the same time on the policies of international institutions, and the idea of introducing protective duties against Chinese competition. After 1998, the Lega Nord’s criticisms against the construction of the European Union also increased. The separatist turning point was a strategic choice, the outcome of a reflective elaboration in connection with the difficult fulfilment of the federalist project because of the impossibility to arouse autonomist movements in the Centre and in the South (Biorcio, 1997). The separatism of Lega Nord is distinguishable from the historical separatist and nationalist movements by two essential elements. These movements impose themselves beginning from a clear form of ethno-cultural differentiation (linguistic or religious) and involve at least part of the national élites (Cirulli, 2005). The Lega Nord could not rely upon such resources. The project of secession of the Padania did not involve the economic, financial, industrial and intellectual élites of the North. The party has on the contrary always run an explicit polemic against the élites of the North, by accentuating and displaying its own populist or “common people” character, by 177

simplifying its political language at the most and by introducing in politics expressions typical of the masses (Dematteo, 2007). In the second half of the nineties, then, the few intellectuals that joined the movement in the first growing phase abandoned it, while the electorate of Lega has become more and more popular. After 1996, the radicalization of the separatist position had accentuated the isolation of the Lega, reducing its weight in Italian politics. The consensus gained could not be translated in a significant acquisition of political and institutional power. After the disappointing outcome of the European elections of 1999, Bossi stipulated a new coalition with Berlusconi. The Northern Question was tactically redefined, by linking the possibility of reinforcement of the regional autonomies to the conquest of the national government; the fight against Roman centralism, a frame on which the Lega Nord had so much invested, was articulated and partly re-represented in relation to the battle of Forza Italia against “statism”, i.e. against the intervention of the state in economics considered pervasive and paralyzing (Biorcio, 2000:261). The axis Lega Nord-Forza Italia was accredited to the militants of Lega as a sort of alliance for the productive North, strengthened by the common Lombard origin of the two political formations. In other words, the coalition was presented as a political way to solve the Northern Question. The centre-right wing won the political elections in 2001, but the Lega Nord weakened (8,1% out of the votes in the northern regions, 3,9% on a national scale) (see Figure 1). Bossi lost support among the most radical electors, while other electoral areas that had voted for the Lega in the past, were attracted by Berlusconi and his party (Cavatorta, 2001).

3. THE POLITICIZATION OF SENTIMENTS OF TERRITORIAL BELONGING

The Lega Nord has largely used sentiments of territorial belonging to give a basis to its project of autonomy of the northern regions. This policy, typical of all ethno-regionalist movements, had already been followed by the autonomist leagues of the eighties. Sentiments of territorial belonging assume deeply different meanings according to the dimensions of the territory and the reference population. The local context is specific and peculiar, characterized by the possibility for anyone to socially interact with the majority of the others. The sociological profile of other contexts such as regions and larger territorial areas is, on the contrary, much more different, as they can originate specific forms of identification or collective belonging. In this case, references are made to an area and a populace that cannot be the object of direct and personal experience. These contexts can only become the referent of specific forms of collective identification by using symbols and cultural elaborations. The problem, from this point of view, appears substantially similar to that of the creation of sentiments of national belonging which refer to an “imagined community”, the projection in a larger context of communitarian identities existing in a local context 3. Even the regional communities and the North,

3 According to the famous definition of Benedict Anderson, the nation is fundamentally a mental representation, “a political imagined community – and imagined as intrinsically limited and supreme. It is imagined because the members of a nation, even the smallest, never know the majority of their fellow-citizens, nor they ever hear of them, and, nevertheless, the image of their communion lives in everyone’s mind” (Anderson, 2006). 178

central referents for the Lega political identity, belong to the category of imagined communities. They were built and assumed meaning and significance thanks to the action of specific political actors that understood the importance and urgency of investing on the relationship between identity and representation. The attempts of the autonomist leagues to create a movement and to obtain consensus around sentiments of regionalist belongings were frustrated at first. In the beginning of the nineties just a sixth of the northern Italy residents indicated those sentiments of belongings as primary reference (see table 2). Sentiments of local (municipalities) and national community belonging were much more diffused. The main differences between the North and the South appear above all for the sentiments of belonging to the local context (much more diffused in the South of Italy) and for those concerning Italy (much more diffused in the North). In 1990 there were no signs of reinforcement of sentiments of regionalist belonging, nor a significant potential growth of the fracture centre/periphery. In all the Italian regions, sentiments of territorial belonging – local, regional and national – coexisted and overlapped with different intensity, without excluding each other (Segatti, 1995:109). The overwhelming majority of the Italians recognized themselves at the same time in the local or regional context as well as in the national one (ibidem:137). The break-through of the Lega Nord was possible, as shown, thanks to the combination of the original ethno-regionalism with the populist protest against national parties. The claim for regional autonomy was changed into a popular battle against the Roman party-power. After the first electoral successes of the Lega Lombarda and the Lega Nord, the party proposals began to be known to the public and to assume meaning for the electorate. The voters of Lega presented an identity-making profile completely different from the other voters because they more frequently pointed out a greater feeling of regional belonging. The Lega Nord had progressively built up and promoted a well- defined interpretative outline for the Northern Question: the protest of an industrious North against an inefficient and parasitic political Centre that distributed resources in the southern regions to cultivate clienteles and to gain electoral support. During the following years, the difficulties of realizing the federalist project due to the impossibility to mobilize autonomist movements in the regions of the Centre and the South, promoted the Lega separatist turning point. The idea of the regions/nations was progressively replaced by that of Padania. Appealing to the grudge against the cultural and political “colonization” and the “robbery” of resources by Rome and the Southerners, the political initiative of the Lega tried to operate a fusion of sentiments of both local and regional belonging with the belonging to a new imaginary community with larger borders: Padania or more simply the “North”.

179

TAB. 2. Sentiment of territorial belonging and electoral preference (1990, 2001 and 2006) (%) VOTE IN NORTHERN ALL GEOGRAFIC ZONE REGIONS DIFFERENCE Centre- Centre- Other- North- Lega- North Centre South Lega right left NR South Nord Main identification 1990 Municipality where I live 36,0 26,8 46,0 43,6 26,5 26,7 30,8 24,4 -16,8 -0,3 Region where I live 13,3 15,9 8,5 12,4 37,6 17,3 12,0 13,1 3,5 21,7 Italy 36,0 43,6 36,1 24,5 27,1 47,2 46,4 43,5 19,1 -16,5 Europe/world 13,7 12,2 8,9 19,0 8,8 7,6 10,8 16,2 -6,8 -3,4 NR 1,0 1,5 0,5 0,5 0,0 1,3 0,0 2,8 1,0 -1,5 TOTAL 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 0,0 0,0 2001 Municipality where I live 30,3 29,2 26,9 33,7 27,3 32,5 23,8 31,1 -4,5 -1,9 Region where I live 11,0 11,5 6,4 13,2 30,7 9,8 10,7 11,8 -1,7 19,2 Italy 35,5 35,7 40,9 32,2 30,6 38,9 35,8 32,3 3,5 -5,1 Europe/world 21,7 22,2 24,7 19,3 11,4 17,7 28,9 22,4 2,9 -10,8 NR 1,4 1,4 1,2 1,6 0,0 1,2 0,8 2,5 -0,2 -1,4 TOTAL 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 0,0 0,0 2006 Municipality where I live 27,6 27,7 21,8 30,6 29,8 32,5 24,5 26,8 -2,9 2,1 Region where I live 13,0 13,3 7,1 15,8 31,0 12,5 11,1 13,9 -2,5 17,7 Italy 35,5 35,1 42,4 32,3 26,4 38,2 34,5 34,3 2,8 -8,7 Europe/world 21,8 22,6 26,5 18,2 12,8 16,6 29,6 21,8 4,4 -9,8 NR 2,1 1,2 2,2 3,1 0,0 0,3 0,2 3,2 -1,9 -1,2 TOTAL 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 0,0 0,0

Which were the effects of the political campaigns promoted by the Lega on sentiments of territorial belonging? Two researches carried out in 2001 and 2006 demonstrate that no great changes occurred. In general, we registered a diminution of localist identification, but the differences between the North and the South did not increase. Sentiments of regionalist and localist belonging in northern Italy turned out to be relatively less diffused than in the southern regions (see table 2). Of course, the Lega voters were different because they shared to a greater extent the regional identification and acknowledged the Lega’s role of expressing a particular territorial identification (Cavazza and Corbetta, 2008). On the other hand, in 1998 we could already point out how the Lega voters tended to separate local from national identification, unlike all the

180

other northern citizens (Biorcio, 1999:69). The researches carried out in the last ten years prove how sentiments of belonging to Europe or to the entire world are much more diffused among citizens of the North of Italy compared with the national average. Among the electors of Lega, transnational belongings dropped at a definitely lower level than that registered in the southern regions. Even if the Lega Nord abandoned the idea of secession, and Padania stayed an administrative entity with unclear borders, the weight of the Northern Question does not seem to diminish within public opinion. In fact, we have pointed out an increasing tendency in some parts of the population to acknowledge some importance to sentiments of belonging to northern Italy (or to the North), beyond the specific localist or regionalist belongings. It deals with an attitude that refers not only to the cultural and economic differences between the North and the South, but points out also other themes and contents. In 1996 belonging to northern Italy was recognized as a priority by about 5,3% of the interviewees on a national scale, and by more than a tenth of the residents of the northern regions (11%). The diffusion of this type of belonging has increased in the following years, above all in the last years, parallel with the electoral outcomes of the Lega Nord. In 2000 belonging to the North was declared by 9,3% of the interviewees on a national scale 4 and this increased up to 13,9 % in 2005, 18,1 % in 2006, reaching 22,7 % in 2008.5 This attitude does not only reflect a territorial belonging: belonging to the North is also acknowledged by some residents of other regions. The reference to the North includes at the same time a common belonging and a series of problems and contents that were associated to it in the campaigns promoted by the Lega Nord. This attitude is naturally largely spread within the Lega electorate, but it is also shared by some sectors of the electorate of centre-right parties resident in the North, more tuned with the proposals and the propaganda of Bossi’s party.

4. THE ADVANTAGES OF AUTONOMY AND DEVOLUTION

In the last twenty years, the opinions of the northern Italian population on federalism and devolution have changed, but attitudes are often ambivalent and partially contradictory. After the first electoral successes of the Lega Nord in the beginning of the nineties, the demand for more regional autonomy progressively spread among voters of all parties. In 1991, a third of northern voters shared the claim for more regional autonomy. The adhesion to the request for tax autonomy was even higher and was supported by half of them (Biorcio, 1997:123). Above all traders, artisans and workers promoted this request that obtained less support among the upper classes. The proposal to recruit teachers regionally was backed by one out of four persons in northern Italy. This proposal was the main goal of the campaign of the Lega Nord against the “colonial school” and it obtained consensus in particular among electors of low cultural level. During the nineties, the general claim for more autonomy for the North increased, beyond the demands for autonomy for the single regions. It was a prospect the Lega had promoted since 1990 with the proposal of the division of Italy into three large macro- regions. The claim for autonomy was not only shared by almost all the Lega voters, but it

4 The data come from a Lapolis-Limes poll of February 2000. 5 Data were taken by different polls carried out by Demos, cf. Diamanti (2008). 181

gained plenty of support also among voters of other parties in the northern regions. The invention of Padania, that many people considered groundless, had significantly influenced public opinion (Albertazzi, 2006; Avanza, 2003). Only a small minority of voters declared themselves for the independence project, but nearly a third of the northern regions residents deemed this prospect advantageous (Diamanti, 1997). The secessionist project had provoked, as we have seen, strong oppositions, and therefore, in the end of the nineties, it was reduced to the more manageable form of devolution (Loiero, 2003). The claim for regional autonomy, in any case, had acquired relevance in the political agenda and in the public debate. The centre-left wing coalition tried to recover support in the northern regions by offering a partial answer to the problem. A proposal of reform of article V of the Constitution, that increased the powers of regions was presented and voted in Parliament. The Lega Nord opposed the reform considering it completely inadequate. Afterwards, the project was approved by the constitutional referendum of 7 October 2001. The participation to the vote, nevertheless, was very limited (34%): a clear mark of the weak capacity of mobilization of the reform proposed by the centre-left, but also of the loss of relevance of the problem. Still, the convergence of almost all parties on the prospect of federalist reforms had influenced the orientations of public opinion. The favourable opinion to a generic extension of regional autonomy had become almost unanimous mainly in northern Italy (see table 3). The request to delegate the management of taxation to the regions was more controversial: the proposal was supported by two thirds of northern regions residents, but nearly half of the residents of other regions residents opposed it (cf. also Gangemi, in this volume).

TAB. 3. Importance attributed to federal reform (2001) (%) VOTE IN NORTHERN ALL GEOGRAFIC ZONE REGIONS DIFFERENCE Centre- Centre- Other- North- Lega- North Centre South Lega right left NR South Nord The Federal Reform of the State is a: very impor- tant problem 26,2 29,4 17,5 26,8 66,0 33,4 21,0 28,5 2,6 36,6 quite impor- tant problem 33,4 36,5 31,1 30,7 23,4 41,1 36,5 32,5 5,8 -13,1 secondary problem 28,7 25,2 35,1 29,6 8,4 19,4 34,6 24,7 -4,4 -16,8 don’t know 11,7 8,9 16,4 12,8 2,2 6,1 7,9 14,3 -3,9 -6,7 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 0,0 0,0 The Federal Reform of the State is the: First/second priority 0,9 1,5 0,6 0,3 10,4 1,8 0,6 0,8 1,2 8,9

However, the issue of a federal reform of the state was not considered very important, especially if compared to other problems. In 2001 the federal reform was judged a very important matter by little more than a fourth of voters, without many differences between northern and southern residents (table 3). Anyway, this reform did

182

not represent one of the most important priorities: in northern Italy it was pointed out among the two most important problems to be dealt with only by 1,5 % of the interviewees. Support to federalism was of course much stronger within the electorate of the Lega Nord. But, only one voter in every ten pointed out the federal reform among the priorities. Other “problems” such as criminality, unemployment, immigrants and taxes often appeared as more relevant to the electorate of the Lega Nord. The general support of public opinion for an extension of powers and jurisdictions of the regions did not seem enough for the development of specific mobilizations. In order to put forward the proposals of a federalist reform, the Lega Nord employed above all its weight within the centre-right coalition after the elections of 2001 (Biorcio, 2003b). The realization of a constitutional federalist reform was set as an inalienable condition for the alliance with Berlusconi. Therefore, in 2005 a constitutional reform was presented in Parliament and approved by the parties of the Casa delle Libertà; it included a series of rules oriented to devolution , in particular the increase of powers of regions on subjects such as the school system, administrative police both regional and local, welfare and health administration. Still, in public opinion, the support to the project introducing a federalist reform was limited (see table 4). It was quite wider in the northern regions compared to the southern, especially in the small towns and among the self-employed workers. A strong support to the reform was expressed by the electorate of the Lega Nord, but it was less spread among that of the other centre-right parties and, above all, among the centre-left wing electorate (see table 4). In the elections of 2006, the coalition led by Berlusconi obtained almost half of the votes but, a few months later, the project of a constitutional reform was rejected by referendum by a large majority. The participation of citizens to the vote was higher than the previous referendum and it exceeded half of the electorate (52,3). But the defeat was very clear: the reform proposal got little more than a third of the valid votes (38,7 %), while a large majority had mobilized to reject it (61,3 %). Even within the northern regions the reform was rejected. Only in Lombardy and Veneto the electorate approved the introduction of devolution supported by the whole centre-right coalition. In order to restart the process of federal reform, the Lega Nord, back in power with Berlusconi in 2008, has tried to obtain political support even beyond the centre-right alliance. So, on 5 May 2009, a bill for the introduction of fiscal federalism was approved by the centre-right majority with the favourable vote of Italia dei Valori and the abstention of the PD. The proposal, however, did not receive a great support from public opinion. The expectation of positive effects is not much diffused (see table 4). Instead, many doubts and uncertainties remain among the great majority of citizens. They do not expect significant changes, fear negative effects or declare they do not have clear ideas on the matter. Within the southern regions the diffusion of expectations of negative effects is double compared to that of positive expectations. But, even in northern Italy, the expectations of positive effects are clearly a majority only among the Lega voters. Among those of other parties many people still do not have an opinion or do not expect any changes. The Lega Nord received much consent among that part of the electorate more interested in devolution and, in general, in reconsidering tax transfers to the state and to other regions. But it was unable to launch a larger movement on these matters, even if in northern Italy the opinions favourable to an enlargement of regional autonomy, above all related to the expectation of economic advantages, are really widespread. 183

TAB. 4. Assessments on Devolution and Fiscal Federalism (%) VOTE IN NORTHERN ALL GEOGRAFIC ZONE REGIONS DIFFERENCE Centre- Centre- Other- North- Lega- North Centre South Lega right left NR South Nord Judgement on the reform introducing devolution Very favourable 15,6 22,4 10,5 9,7 70,5 37,7 12,0 12,7 12,7 48,1 Quite favourable 32,0 35,6 35,8 25,3 25,9 46,7 32,5 30,5 10,3 -9,7 Opposed 35,9 28,4 40,2 43,2 2,4 9,1 48,5 27,1 -14,8 -26,0 Don’t know - no answer 16,5 13,7 13,6 21,8 1,3 6,5 7,0 29,8 -8,1 -12,4 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 Consequences of the Law on Fiscal Federalism for your region: Positive 31,8 44,5 28,4 14,5 62,4 42,1 23,7 21,2 30,0 17,9 Negative 15,9 7,3 11,2 32,2 5,9 12,9 24,5 12,3 -24,9 -1,4 Nothing will change 36,9 31,5 43,3 40,7 22,4 32,7 40,5 40,5 -9,2 -9,1 Don’t know - no answer 15,5 16,7 17,0 12,7 9,3 12,3 11,3 26,0 4,0 -7,4 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0

5. IMMIGRANTS AND THE SECURITY EMERGENCY

In the elections of 2008, the votes for the Lega Nord almost doubled, returning to the level of 1992, and approaching the result of 1996. Once again, support increased above all among workers, confirming a trend not limited to northern Italy, but widespread all over Europe whereby populist formations often succeed in substituting left parties as the political representation of the popular electorate, and enlarge their support especially among workers (Biorcio, 2009). The Lega Nord was also very successful at the European elections in 2009 and in 2010 obtained the governors of the Veneto and Piedmont Regions. During the nineties, immigrants with residence permit doubled, passing from 649.000 in the end of 1991 to 1.341.000 in 2000. The increase has continued and become more intense during the following decade. Even if the restrictions provided in the Bossi- Fini law remain in force, the number of regular immigrants in the whole country tripled in a few years, passing, according to the Istat estimates, from 1.356.590 at the end of 2001 to 4.330.000 in 2008 (see Figure 2). The number of immigrants over the population reached 6,5 % in 2008 and 7,2 % in 2009, clearly exceeding the European average.

184

Figure 2 - Immigrants in Italy

5.000.000

4.500.000

Number of Immigrants inItaly Immigrants of Number 4.000.000

3.500.000

3.000.000

2.500.000 Immigrants

2.000.000

1.500.000

1.000.000

500.000

0 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

The growth of immigration and its visibility were considered by many people as a menace since these phenomena were perceived as an invasion of social spaces and above all because, as a series of opinion polls revealed, public opinion since 2005 increasingly related them to concerns about the alleged increase of criminality. The mass perception of the increase of immigration is strongly marked by the way mass media treat the problem. The changes in behaviour of some actors (municipal councils, police, tribunals, security committees), the ideas diffused by mass media and the social alarm for the problems raised by the presence of non-European immigrants mutually reinforced changing perceptions on immigration. This situation created new opportunities for the initiatives of the Lega Nord, in building and managing a contentious relation between immigrants and Italians (cf. Sacchetto, in this volume). The Lega Nord succeeded in showing itself as the party most sensitive to the increasing claim for security that arises from the impact of globalization on social life. These problems were also perceived in the regions of Emilia and Liguria: territorial areas extraneous to the original areas of strength of the Lega Nord. We can say that the Lega Nord anticipated the other parties – even the left-wing parties – on the subject of the negative consequences that globalization causes within local communities (Cousin and Vitale, 2007). For many years, Bossi’s party had expressed itself in a very strong way against international and supranational institutions, such as the European Union and the WTO. Today, “local communities” effectively suffer from on-going economic and social processes and especially from the consequences of globalization. The Lega Nord provides an answer to these problems by focalizing hostility on immigrants and gipsies (Vitale and Claps, 2010), by promoting “patrols” to defend the local population, and by proposing duties and barriers to restrain international competition.

185

In this way, in 2008, the Lega Nord managed to regain support and to reintroduce the battle for federalism by using changes in the social and political situation. The propaganda of the Lega Nord redefined the uneasiness and popular insecurity by establishing an explicative chain, at the same time causal, rational and metaphoric, to connect immigrants, unemployment, criminality, welfare crisis, taxes and future uncertainties. In this phase, Forza Italia and Alleanza Nazionale converged in a common party, accentuating their “cartelization”, with a proposal of individualized and mediatized political integration without participation and a reduction of the relations with interest groups, and hence separating and distancing themselves from the territory (Diamanti, 2009:229). The strategy of the Lega Nord consisted in particular in insisting to build up, by every possible means and through a participative rootedness within the territories, a frame connected with the presumed negative practical consequences deriving from the presence of immigrants: increase of criminality, unemployment, social degradation of the most visible areas (as gardens and some public spaces), and diffusion of new infections. The hostility against immigrants served to guarantee a popular consensus around the Lega Nord, according to logics similar to those of other populist parties in Europe. Researches carried out between 1996 and 2008 show how the importance given to security and immigration problems in the northern regions is relatively higher than in the southern regions (see table 5). Still, the two problems remain at a lower level than employment, economic development and economic insecurity. Worries about the presence of immigrants are in most European countries more diffused among the less educated interviewees (see tables 6A and 6B). The electors of Lega Nord are distinguishable by all the others because they point out much more frequently worries about immigration and criminality.

TAB. 5. Importance given to issues of immigration and criminality (1996-2008) (%) VOTE IN NORTHERN ALL GEOGRAFIC ZONE REGIONS DIFFERENCE Centre- Centre- Other- North- Lega- North Centre South Lega right left NR South Nord 1996 Proposed as the first two priorities Immigration 14,1 16,8 17,7 8,0 30,0 18,8 11,1 16,5 8,8 13,2 2001 Proposed as the first two priorities Criminality 39,6 41,2 41,1 36,8 45,8 44,9 35,5 41,8 4,4 4,6 Immigration of foreigners 11,5 16,5 10,0 5,8 26,1 18,7 15,3 13,7 10,7 9,6 2006 Problems considered very important Criminality 72,6 71,3 76,7 72,0 77,0 74,4 64,8 74,9 -0,7 5,7 Immigration 58,1 59,7 66,2 51,7 76,2 66,4 50,1 61,1 8,0 16,5 2008 Problems spontaneously proposed as the most important Security, criminality, public order 13,3 15,7 14,5 9,5 25,5 24,0 8,9 14,0 6,2 9,8 Immigration 4,9 6,9 3,3 3,3 9,2 11,1 2,0 7,8 3,6 2,3 Sources: Itanes 1996, 2001, 2006, 2008

186

TAB. 6A. Most Prominent Perceived Social Problems in Italian Northern Regions by Educational Qualification (%) LEGA ALL EDUCATIONAL QUALIFICATION VOTERS None/Primary Junior High High school School School University 1996 The First or the Second Priority: Immigration 16,8 19,0 19,1 12,8 8,7 30,0 2001 The First or the Second Priority: Crime 41,2 55,0 40,0 35,1 30,6 45,8 Immigration 16,5 15,2 18,5 16,2 12,7 26,1 2006 Issues Considered "Very Important": Crime 71,3 75,6 76,7 68,7 48,8 77,0 Immigration 59,7 54,3 65,4 59,9 48,2 76,2 2008 Problems Spontaneously Proposed as the Most Important: Security, Crime, Public Order 15,7 13,8 16,6 16,8 12,4 25,5 Immigration 6,9 7,3 8,0 6,5 2,2 9,2

TAB. 6B. Most Prominent Perceived Social Problems in Italian Northern Regions by Occupation (%) LEGA ALL OCCUPATION VOTERS Emplo- Self- Not Em- Managers yees employed Workers Others ployed 1996 The First or the Second Priority: Immigration 16,8 14,1 11,5 12,3 16,8 25,7 15,9 30,0 2001 The First or the Second Priority: Crime 41,2 38,4 36,4 41,5 37,1 30,3 44,8 45,8 Immigration 16,5 20,1 16,7 20,1 18,1 8,7 14,8 26,1 2006 Issues Considered "Very Important": Crime 71,3 65,2 64,2 73,3 70,8 63,0 75,6 77,0 Immigration 59,7 54,2 57,5 62,1 63,9 53,7 60,2 76,2 2008 Problems Spontaneously Proposed as the Most Important: Security, Crime, Public Order 15,7 10,8 14,3 22,1 14,9 20,0 16,0 25,5 Immigration 6,9 2,7 4,8 10,3 8,5 4,0 7,4 9,2 Sources 6A and 6B: Itanes 1996, 2001, 2006, 2008

187

TAB. 7. Opinions on Immigrants and their Rights (2006 and 2008) (%) GEOGRAFIC VOTE IN NORTHERN DIFFE- ALL ZONE REGIONS RENCE Centre- Centre- Other- North- Lega- North Centre South Lega right left NR South Nord 2006 Immigrants are dangerous for our culture and identity 52,6 51,4 49,4 55,7 79,1 67,7 34,6 51,5 -4,3 27,7 Immigrants are a threat to employment 50,1 44,2 46,8 59,7 66,1 57,9 31,4 42,8 -15,5 21,9 It ought to be forbidden to gypsies to settle down in our town 78,8 78,0 81,7 78,1 91,5 88,1 69,9 76,0 -0,1 13,5 Regular immigrants should have the right to vote in administrative elections in the town where they live 62,9 60,4 70,3 62,0 23,5 53,9 75,4 55,1 -1,6 -36,9 It is right to permit to Muslims to built some Mosques in Italian Country 34,4 31,7 45,4 32,0 18,7 24,1 44,3 26,3 -0,3 -13,0 2008

Immigrants are dangerous for our culture 38,3 39,0 33,7 39,9 57,5 55,4 19,7 40,1 -0,9 18,5 Immigrants are a threat for employment 41,6 38,2 36,3 49,0 52,1 50,6 16,9 43,8 -10,8 13,9 It is right to permit to Muslims to built some Mosques in Italian Country 36,1 34,1 38,1 37,7 13,0 24,0 57,0 28,0 -3,6 -21,1 Sources: Itanes 2006, 2008

At the same time, it is very noteworthy to observe how hostile opinions against immigrants are relatively less diffused in the northern regions than in the southern (see table 7). These positions, on the other hand, are much more diffused even in the northern regions among the less educated interviewees and in general among workers, traders and self-employed persons (see table 8). The opinions of the Lega voters on these matters seem closer to the opinions present at a popular level in southern Italy. As regards the massive increase of immigration and the perception of increasing criminality, developed also thanks to moral panic waves on mass media (Maneri, 2001; Palidda, 2009), the Lega Nord was perceived as the more coherent and combative political party, capable of criticizing even Berlusconi when he admitted the possibility to grant immigrants the right to vote for local elections (Cousin and Vitale, 2006). In the northern regions, the Lega Nord could appear as the party that – in the centre-right ambit – engaged itself more coherently and with more strength on such matters; this happened thanks to a higher attention to the territory, to relationships with people within local sections and to the role played by the network of elected mayors, in a phase in which parties became presidential in order to de-link themselves from the territory (Diamanti,

188

2009:11) 6. The capacity of Lega Nord to obtain support is, as a matter of fact, to be understood not only considering the strategies engaged by the party leadership, but also looking at the actions engaged by the Lega political class within the territories (territorial branches, militants and administrators). One of the most noteworthy aspects of the Lega’s political action concerns, in fact, the coherence between the instances promoted by the party leadership and the priorities of administrative action of the Lega’s local political representatives (cf. among others Andall, 2009; Cento, Bull, 2009). The different changes of strategy of Lega Nord took place while keeping, in many localities of the North, a strong capacity to mobilize its grass roots activists, well rooted in their own territory, and able to translate instances and local problems into the language and priorities of the party (Biorcio, 2010).

TAB. 8A. Opinions on Immigrants and their Rights (2006 and 2008) (%) LEGA ALL EDUCATIONAL QUALIFICATION VOTERS None/ Junior Primary High High Univer- school School School sity 2006 Immigrants are dangerous for our culture and identity 51,4 67,7 56,3 43,9 20,8 79,1 Immigrants are a threat to employment 44,2 55,7 49,6 38,0 17,3 66,1 It ought to be forbidden to gypsies to settle down in our town 78,0 86,3 78,2 74,0 73,6 91,5 Regular immigrants should have the right to vote in administrative elections in the town where they live 60,4 61,3 56,9 60,9 71,4 23,5 It is right to permit to Muslims to build Mosques in Italy 31,7 17,3 26,3 38,9 60,8 18,7 2008 Immigrants are dangerous for our culture 39,0 55,2 41,0 32,6 17,9 57,5 Immigrants are a threat to employment 38,2 54,4 40,8 31,1 15,7 52,1 It is right to permit to Muslims to build Mosques in Italy 34,1 18,3 31,6 40,6 56,4 13,0 Sources: Itanes 2006, 2008

6 It is therefore not surprising that Bossi readily worked to obstacle the so-called mayors movement that could constitute a transversal coalition of territorial political subjects, alternative to the political project of the Lega Nord (cf. Jori, 2009) 189

TAB. 8B. Opinions on Immigrants and their Rights (2006 and 2008) (%) LEGA ALL OCCUPATION VOTERS Mana- Emplo- Self-em- Wor- Not Em- gers yee ployed kers Others ployed 2006 Immigrants are dangerous for our culture and identity 51,4 32,8 40,4 56,3 51,1 44,0 57,8 79,1 Immigrants are a threat to employment 44,2 26,3 33,2 46,0 52,2 47,8 47,8 66,1 It ought to be forbid- den to gypsies to settle down in our town 78,0 80,4 78,1 71,3 76,6 84,0 79,0 91,5 Regular immigrants should have the right to vote in administra- tive elections in the town where they live 60,4 55,1 61,4 51,7 54,8 76,0 63,3 23,5 It is right to permit to Muslims to build Mosques in Italy 31,7 52,2 41,0 36,0 31,0 39,6 24,7 18,7 2008 Immigrants are dangerous for our culture 39,0 24,7 29,8 35,3 44,9 37,0 42,2 57,5 Immigrants are a threat to employment 38,2 16,9 31,8 25,0 49,0 44,4 40,4 52,1 It It is right to permit to Muslims to build Mosques in Italy 34,1 44,2 41,1 26,5 31,8 48,1 31,8 13,0 Sources: Itanes 2006, 2008

The Lega Nord is not characterized by a precise and fresh local government style, or by distinctive modalities of regulation, in particular modalities of contrasting particularism and patronage within the governance networks (policy network, networks of political interchange, structures of influence of the élites) from one side, and in the choices of allocation and distribution in public politics from the other. Nor is the party particularly innovative, in the ability of attracting resources from Europe or from enterprises, and concerning the presently most delicate challenges in northern Italy, relative to the multilevel articulation of decisional processes (Berta, 2008) and to the coordination between different cities in large areas, in a context of interurban competition (Perulli and Pichierri, 2010). If anything, the Lega Nord developed a political mobilization of its basis and top administrators able to select the priorities of public action by focusing on symbolic aspects that enable the party to obtain positive outcomes. These priorities, rather than matters of local development or competition between territories; concern issues of law

190

and order, proprieties, care of open spaces that, once being defined as priorities, allow to accumulate easy successes and to demonstrate a dynamic of incremental outcomes.

6. THE PARADOXES OF THE LEGA'S “NORTH-ISM”

The Lega Nord tried to offer to the northern regions a comprehensive political representation that was not limited to the defence of economic interests. And, sometimes, Bossi’s party managed to be acknowledged as an almost exclusive referent as regards the Northern Question. Can the Lega Nord be considered the radical expression of cultural trends spread in the North, different from those prevailing in the South? In order to answer this question, it is necessary to analyze value trends and political attitudes of citizens resident in the northern regions, by confronting them with those found in the southern regions. It will then be possible to display the specificities that the Lega’s electorate presents compared to trends and values of the northern regions. To deal with these problems, we used the techniques elaborated and proposed by the psychologist Shalom Schwartz who has researched peoples’ values in more than sixty countries of different continents.7 The analysis on the Italian value trends reveals some clearly differentiated tendencies between northern and southern regions, but also between Lega followers and those of other parties in northern Italy (see table 9). As regards some values such as security and conformism (respect for rules and respect for the conventions of “good manners”) the answers of the Lega voters seem to reinforce the differences between trends prevailing in the northern regions and those which characterize the southern regions. In this case, the Lega Nord voters stress the tendencies that more strongly characterize the North compared to the other parts of Italy. Lega voters, on the contrary, definitely differentiate from the trends prevailing in the northern regions for other values such as universalism and benevolence, much more spread among northern citizens than among southerners. Universalism synthesizes tolerance for different ideas and people, and the will to give everybody the same opportunities in life; benevolence shows the availability to respond to the others’ needs and to help people around us. It deals with values that, in general, are less shared by less educated people. We can further observe how among the Lega Nord electorate the value of traditionalism is very accentuated: a trend that does not present great differences between northern and southern regions, but it is much more shared by small provincial centres residents and, in general, by the less educated interviewees (see tables 10A and 10B).

7 Schwartz identified ten types of basis values that people of all cultures recognize as more or less important targets of their life (Schwartz, 1992; 1994; 2006). His research concerns values that have been defined as universal both because acknowledged by people from very different cultures and societies, and because they are based on some fundamental human needs, such as that of controlling reality around us or establishing relationships with other people. 191

TAB. 9. Value-orientation (2006) (%) VOTE IN NORTHERN ALL GEOGRAFIC ZONE REGIONS DIFFERENCE Centre- Centre- Other- North- Lega- All North Centre South Lega right left NR South Nord Security 69,8 72,1 77,9 63,7 83,3 75,6 69,9 65,5 8,4 11,2 Conformism 51,9 53,3 59,3 47,1 70,0 57,5 50,8 43,9 6,2 16,7 Tradition 38,3 38,0 44,6 35,8 45,8 45,6 32,0 34,3 2,2 7,8 Self- determination 43,4 47,5 47,7 37,2 47,4 49,4 48,4 41,7 10,3 -0,1 Universalism 41,8 45,2 47,0 35,8 39,5 40,8 54,7 32,8 9,4 -5,7 Benevolence 34,6 36,4 39,5 30,5 29,8 34,1 42,5 28,8 5,9 -6,6 Source: Itanes 2006

TAB. 10A Basis Values in Italian Northern Regions by Educational Qualification (%) LEGA ALL EDUCATIONAL QUALIFICATION VOTERS None/Primary Junior High High school School School University Security 72,1 77,5 73,4 66,9 74,8 83,3 Conformism 53,3 58,2 57,1 45,3 57,3 70,0 Tradition 38,0 49,7 41,2 29,6 31,5 45,8 Self-determination 47,5 40,5 44,6 50,3 63,7 47,4 Universalism 45,2 32,3 42,6 50,0 64,3 39,5 Benevolence 36,4 35,0 37,3 34,3 43,8 29,8 Source: Itanes 2006

TAB. 10B. Basis Values in Italian Northern Regions by Occupation (%) LEGA ALL OCCUPATION VOTERS Self- Not Managers Employee Employed Workers Others Employed Security 72,1 72,0 70,7 73,6 69,8 68,7 73,3 83,3 Conformism 53,3 64,3 46,8 55,7 49,3 41,4 56,3 70,0 Tradition 38,0 40,6 29,4 43,6 36,6 42,0 40,5 45,8 Self- determination 47,5 58,7 50,4 61,4 46,7 52,3 42,5 47,4 Universalism 45,2 62,9 52,6 41,3 41,2 49,8 41,2 39,5 Benevolence 36,4 53,0 38,9 29,5 30,1 43,9 35,8 29,8 Source: Itanes 2006

Confirming these trends, researches carried out in 2006 and 2008 show other interesting aspects of the profile of the Lega’s electorate. We examine four areas of attitudes which are very important to orient political and social behaviours: interpersonal confidence, demand for authority, civil rights and neo-liberal economic politics.

192

Interpersonal confidence is considered one of the fundamental conditions for the development of the public spirit of a community (Putnam et al., 1993).8 More recent researches substantiate the historical difference as regards the level of interpersonal confidence, between northern and southern regions (Inglehart, 1993:35) (see table 11). It is interesting to notice that, concerning this attitude, Lega voters appear more similar to the inhabitants of the southern regions. The level of distrust towards the others that characterize the Lega voters can be found within the northern regions only among people of a very low cultural level (see table 12).

TAB. 11. Opinions and Social Attitudes (2006 and 2008) (%) GEOGRAFIC VOTE IN NORTHERN DIFFE- ALL ZONE REGIONS RENCE Centre- Centre- Other- North- Lega- North Centre South Lega right left NR South Nord Interpersonal Trust You can trust most of the other people 17,8 20,3 19,2 13,8 13,7 18,8 30,6 15,2 6,5 -6,6 You ought to be cautious in dealing with the people 79,3 76,6 77,6 83,6 84,2 79,3 64,7 82,1 -7,0 7,6 Individual Rights Extend rights of married couples to couples who decide to have a stable relationship without marrying 66,1 70,6 70,0 58,0 65,8 56,8 88,1 66,2 12,6 -4,8 Extend rights of married couples also to homosexual couples 34,3 39,5 38,4 25,2 28,8 28,0 61,4 32,2 14,3 -10,7 Abortion has to be restricted 34,9 30,8 29,8 43,0 41,8 45,8 14,4 32,4 -12,2 11,0 Demand of Authority Today in Italy we need a strong leader 75,7 74,7 74,3 77,8 93,2 90,0 56,7 75,4 -3,1 18,5 Death penalty for worst crimes 42,2 39,1 37,0 49,0 56,1 50,8 24,2 42,9 -9,9 17,0 Neo-Liberalism Enterprises ought to have more freedom to hire and fire 41,1 42,8 40,2 39,5 62,3 59,4 27,1 40,7 3,3 19,5 Unions' power is too high 42,6 42,0 44,8 42,0 68,4 67,5 21,6 38,1 0,0 26,4 Government ought to intervene less in economy 31,9 34,1 28,0 31,1 37,0 36,2 30,6 34,9 3,0 2,9 Income divide between rich and poor has to decrease 79,0 76,8 84,6 78,7 59,7 70,1 81,0 80,9 -1,9 -17,1 Sources: Itanes 2006, 2008

8 The presence of public spirit is based on a set of conditions that refer both to structural aspects (relationships networks), and to cultural aspects (rules, social values and interpersonal confidence) that characterize a community (Putnam et al., 1993:196). The different aspects are related, and it is difficult to establish which one is prior to the others in causal terms, cf. Almond and Verba (1980). The point, all the same, is really delicate, with important political repercussions, as is argued, among others, by Sabetti (2002: ch. 9) and Huysseune (2002). 193

TAB. 12A. Opinions and Social Attitudes in Italian Northern Regions by Educational Qualification (2006) (%) LEGA ALL EDUCATIONAL QUALIFICATION VOTERS None/ Junior Primary High High Univer- school School School sity

Interpersonal Trust You can trust most of the other people 20,3 14,1 17,4 24,9 32,9 13,7 You ought to be cautious in dealing with the people 76,6 83,4 79,4 72,9 61,4 84,2 Individual Rights Extend rights of married couples to couples who decide to have a stable relationship without marrying 70,6 61,8 72,0 72,3 75,7 65,8 Extend rights of married couples also to homosexual couples 39,5 14,5 43,5 42,6 57,1 28,8 Abortion has to be restricted 30,8 44,4 29,6 26,0 25,0 41,8 Demand of Authority Today in Italy we need a strong leader 74,7 78,8 77,7 72,6 59,3 93,2 Death penalty for worst crimes 39,1 51,2 41,9 34,3 17,3 56,1 Neo-Liberalism Enterprises ought to have more freedom to hire and fire 42,8 36,9 44,4 44,3 41,4 62,3 Unions' power is too high 42,0 42,4 40,0 44,2 41,8 68,4 Government ought to intervene less in economy 34,1 28,2 34,3 37,4 35,0 37,0 Income divide between rich and poor has to decrease 76,8 81,4 80,3 73,8 62,5 59,7 Sources: Itanes 2006, 2008

A similar outline characterizes opinions on individual civil rights. In the northern regions there is a more open attitude towards these matters compared with the southern: a greater disposition in favour of laws that recognize rights to common-law and homosexual couples; a lesser availability towards more restrictive measures for abortion. On these problems, the positions of Lega voters tend to be similar to those expressed by residents of the southern regions and, above all, correspond to the opinions of older and less educated people. We can also find similar differences in the quest for authority, which is usually related to a demand for more severity in punishment. These opinions are less diffused within the northern regions than within the southern. In the northern regions, in fact, the idea of death penalty for the most serious crimes and the claim for authority expressed with the demand for a “strong leader” are definitely less spread. On these matters, the trend of Lega voters comes closer (accentuating them) to the most widespread position of southern Italy and reflects, once more, the prevailing opinions within the less educated popular sectors.

194

TAB. 12B. Opinions and Social Attitudes in Italian Northern Regions by Occupation (2006) (%) LEGA ALL OCCUPATION VOTERS Mana- Emplo- Self-em- Wor- Not Em- gers yee ployed kers Others ployed Interpersonal Trust You can trust most of the other people 20,3 23,4 23,3 16,2 16,7 18,5 20,4 13,7 You ought to be cautious in dealing with the people 76,6 70,1 73,6 77,9 80,3 81,5 77,0 84,2 Individual Rights Extend rights of married couples to couples who decide to have a stable relationship without marrying 70,6 76,6 75,6 75,0 77,8 77,8 66,1 65,8 Extend rights of married couples also to homosexual couples 39,5 46,8 54,3 48,5 48,5 51,9 30,3 28,8 Abortion has to be restricted 30,8 20,8 21,7 22,1 28,3 29,6 36,2 41,8 Demand of Authority Today in Italy we need a strong leader 74,7 66,2 74,4 75,0 80,8 85,2 73,3 93,2 Death penalty for worst crimes 39,1 29,9 28,3 47,3 50,9 44,3 39,4 56,1 Neo-Liberalism Enterprises ought to have more freedom to hire and fire 42,8 59,7 35,7 61,8 39,4 59,3 41,8 62,3 Unions' power is too high 42,0 58,9 36,4 63,8 38,2 23,7 40,9 68,4 Government ought to intervene less in economy 34,1 37,7 33,7 45,6 35,4 29,6 32,2 37,0 Income divide between rich and poor has to decrease 76,8 65,4 72,4 74,3 81,0 56,1 79,7 59,7 Sources: Itanes 2006, 2008

We can, finally, observe how the Lega Nord voters are characterized by a strong support for . Within the northern regions Lega voters differentiate themselves by a much stronger support to claims for reducing the power of unions and to extend the enterprises’ freedom of dismissal. The support to policies directed towards the reduction of social disparities is much more limited compared to the rest of the electorate. The Lega Nord intended to create a party which represented the whole of the northern regions, capable to defend their interests and culture. If we examine the profile

195

of people that voted for the Lega Nord, we find some discordant features compared to the project. A large majority of the party’s electorate naturally supports federalism and devolution. However, the party’s electorate paradoxically displays value trends and convictions that, for many aspects are in countertendency compared to the population of northern Italy, and much closer to those of the southern electorate. The relationship between the Lega Nord and northern society remains ambivalent and the party is unable to represent the whole of value instances that its citizens consider most important. Bossi’s party gave only partly expression to the dominant ideas and values in northern Italy. This would seem a quite strange paradox for a regionalist party born to draw attention to the Northern Question. This paradox is all interior to political dynamics, where actors interact in a complex way, considering the context in which they are included, that binds them, but does not determine them: far from being the expression of a homogeneous territory as regards culture and values, the Lega Nord is a particular political actor that builds its own identity by selecting themes and questions to represent. On the other hand, the North presents some very noteworthy interior differences both in territorial and socio-cultural terms; even if in the last years some converging dynamics are emerging around the medium enterprise model with long networks (Bagnasco, 2009; Perulli and Pichierri, 2010). As Michel Huysseune reminds in the beginning of this volume, centrifugal regionalism reveals deep conflicts not only between territories, but also and above all, within the same regional territory, of the same “regional culture”, showing this way the value heterogeneity internal to every territory. The Lega was able to intercept and mobilize a specific type of electorate – present above all in particular territorial contexts and within the popular and less educated sectors of the population – that on the point of view of values, of public spirit and of social attitudes, is distinguishable from the prevailing trends within the northern population and resembles the most diffused ones in the South. The Lega Nord was able to obtain support especially in these areas, by reinforcing fears, prejudices and some specific value trends of its inhabitants. By acting in such way, however, it progressively mobilized around a number of political matters quite distinctive from the territorial ones, engaging itself rather in the defence of identity and national frontiers.

REFERENCES

Agnew, J., M. Shin and G. Bettoni (2002), “City versus Metropolis: The Northern League in the Milan Metropolitan Area”, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research , 26 (2):266-283. Albertazzi, D. (2006), “Back to Our Roots or Self-Confessed Manipulation: The Uses of the Past in the Lega Nord’s Positing of Padania”, National Identities , 8 (1):21-39. Almond, G. and S. Verba (1980), The Civic Culture Revisited , Boston, Little Brown. Andall, J. (2009), La vittoria della Lega: immigrazione e cittadinanza in Veneto , in G. Baldini and A. Cento Bull (eds), Politica in Italia 2009 , Bologna, il Mulino:261-280. Anderson, B. (2006), Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London-New York, Verso (originally published in 1983). Avanza, M. (2003), “Une histoire pour la Padanie. La Ligue du Nord et l’utilisation politique du passé”, Annales , 58 (1):85-107. Bagnasco, A. (2009), “Il Nord: una città-regione globale?”, Stato e mercato , 2:163-186. 196

Bagnasco, A and M. Oberti (1998), “Italy. ‘Le trompe-l’oeil’ of Regions”, in P. Le Galès and C. Lequesne (eds), Regions in Europe , London, Routledge:150-165. Barisione, M. (2009), Comunicazione e società , Bologna, Il Mulino. Bauman, Z. (2001), Community. Seeking Safety in an Insecure World , Cambridge, Polity. Beirich, H. and D. Woods (2000), “Globalisation, Workers and the Northern League”, West European Politics , 23 (1):130-143. Berta, G. (2008), Nord, dal triangolo industriale alla megalopoli padana , Milano, Mondadori. Biorcio, R. (1991), “La Lega Lombarda come attore politico: dal federalismo al populismo regionalista”, in R. Mannheimer (ed.) La lega lombarda. , Milano, Feltrinelli:34-82. Biorcio, R. (1997), La Padania promessa. La storia, le idee e la logica d’azione della Lega Nord , Milano, Il Saggiatore. Biorcio, R. (1999), “La Lega Nord e la transizione italiana”, Rivista italiana di scienza politica , 29 (1):55-87. Biorcio, R. (2000), “Bossi-Berlusconi, la nuova alleanza”, Il Mulino, 49 (2):253-264. Biorcio, R. (2001), “La società civile e la politica: dagli anni del boom a fine millennio”, in D. Bigazzi e M. Meriggi (eds), Storia d'Italia. Le regioni dall'Unità a oggi. La Lombardia, Torino, Einaudi:1025-1064. Biorcio, R. (2003a), Sociologia politica. Partiti, movimenti sociali e partecipazione , Bologna, Il Mulino. Biorcio, R. (2003b), “The Lega Nord and the Italian Media System”, in G. Mazzoleni, J. Stewart and B. Horsfield (eds), The Media and Neo-Populism. A Contemporary Comparative Analysis, Westport. Conn., Praeger:71-94. Biorcio, R. (2009), “Trasformazioni della democrazia e declino delle forme tradizionali di legittimazione politica”, in L. Sciolla (ed.), Processi e trasformazioni sociali. La società europea dagli anni Sessanta a oggi , Bari/Roma, Laterza:161-187. Biorcio, R. (2010), La rivincita del Nord. La Lega dalla contestazione al governo , Roma/Bari, Laterza. Biorcio, R. and R. Mannheimer (1995), “Relationship between Citizens and Parties”, in H.D. Kliengeman and D. Fuchs (eds), Citizens and the State , Oxford, Oxford University Press:206-226. Boltanski, L. and E. Claverie (2007), “Du monde social en tant que scène d'un procès”, in L. Boltanski, E. Claverie, N. Offenstadt and S. Van Damme (eds) Affaires, scandales et grandes causes. De Socrate à Pinochet , Paris, Stock:395-452. Cantaro, A. (1990), La modernizzazione neoliberale , Milano, Franco Angeli. Cantelli, F., L. Pattaroni, M. Roca, and J. Stavo-Debauge (eds) (2009), Sensibilités pragmatiques : enquêter sur l'action publique , Bruxelles, P.I.E. Peter Lang. Cavatorta, F. (2001), “The Role of the Northern League in Transforming the Italian Political System: From Economic Federalism to Ethnic Politics and Back”, Contemporary Politics , 7 (1):27-40. Cavazza, N. and P. Corbetta (2008), “Quando la difesa del territorio diventa voto”, Il Mulino , 57 (3):441-448. Cefaï, D. and D. Pasquier (eds) (2003), Les sens du public. Publics médiatiques, publics politiques , Paris, PUF. Cefaï, D. and D. Trom (eds) (2000), Les formes de l’action collective. Mobilisations dans des arènes publiques , Paris, Editions de l’Ehess. 197

Centemeri, L. (2011), “L’innovazione politica come articolazione di livelli di coinvolgimento degli abitanti: la riparazione del danno ambientale a Seveso”, in T. Vitale and N. Podestà (eds), Dalla proposta alla protesta, e ritorno. Conflitti locali e innovazione politica , Milano, Bruno Mondadori:1-25. Cento Bull, A. and M. Gilbert (2001), The Lega Nord and the Northern Question in Italian Politics , Basingstoke, Palgrave. Cento Bull, A. (2009), “Lega Nord: A Case of Simulative Politics?”, South European Society and Politics , 14 (2):129-146. Cirulli, A. (2005), “Etnonazionalismo in un’epoca di globalizzazione”, Sociologia , 1:55- 64. Cousin, B. and T. Vitale (2006), “La question migratoire et l’idéologie occidentaliste de Forza Italia”, La vie des idées , 11:27-36. Cousin, B. and T. Vitale (2007), “La gauche italienne face au mouvement pour les libertés civiles des sans-papiers”, Critique internationale , 4 (37):9-21. De Luna, G. (1994), Figli di un benessere minore. La Lega 1979-1993 , Firenze, La Nuova Italia. Dematteo, L. (2007), L’Idiotie en politique. Subversion et néopopulisme en Italie , Paris, CNRS Éditions-MSH. Diamanti, I. (1993), La Lega. Geografia, storia e sociologia di un nuovo soggetto politico , Roma, Donzelli. Diamanti, I. (1997), “Il Nord senza l’Italia. L’indipendenza diventa ‘normale’”, Limes , 1:297-314. Diamanti, I. (2008), “Così sta rinasceno l’identità nordista”, La Repubblica , 15-06-2008. Diamanti, I. (2009), Mappe dell’Italia politica. Bianco, rosso, verde, azzurro e tricolore , Bologna, Il Mulino. Diani, M. (1996), “Linking Mobilisation Frames and Political Opportunities: Insight from Regional Populism in Italy”, American Sociological Review , 61 (6):1053-1069. Goodin, J. and C. Tilly (eds) (2006), The Oxford Handbook of Contextual Political Analysis , Oxford, Oxford University Press. Huysseune, M. (2002), “Institutions and Their Impact on Social Capital and Civic Culture: The Case of Italy”, in M. Hooghe, and D. Stolle (eds), Generating Social Capital: Civic Society and Institutions in Comparative Perspective , New York, Palgrave:211-230. Huysseune, M. (2006), Modernity and Secession. The Social Sciences and the Political Discourse of the Lega Nord in Italy , Oxford, Berghahn. Inglehart, R. (1993), Valori e cultura politica nella società industriale avanzata, Torino, Liviana (originally published in 1990 as Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society , Princeton, Princeton University Press). Jori, F. (2009), Dalla Liga alla Lega. Storia, movimenti, protagonisti , Venezia, Marsilio. Loiero, A. (2003), Il patto di ferro : Berlusconi, Bossi e la devolution contro il Sud con i voti del Sud , Roma, Donzelli. Maneri, M. (2001), “Il panico morale come dispositivo di trasformazione dell'insicurezza”, Rassegna Italiana di Sociologia , 42 (1):5-40. Mannheimer, R. (1993), “L'elettorato della Lega Nord” , Polis, 7 (2):253-274. Marletti, C. (2002), “Il ciclo dell’antipolitica e i risultati delle elezioni del 13 giugno in Italia. Verso un nuovo clima d’opinione?”, Comunicazione Politica , 3 (1):9-30.

198

Mastropaolo, A. (2000), Antipolitica: all’origine della crisi italiana , Napoli, L’ancora del mediterraneo. McAdam, D., S. Tarrow and C. Tilly (2001), Dynamics of Contention , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Mény, Y. and Y. Surel (2000), Par le people, pour , Paris, Librairie Arthéme Fayard (italian translation Populismo e democrazia , Bologna, Il Mulino, 2001). Merton. R. (1949), Social Theory and Social Structure , New York, The Free Press. Mete, V. (2010), “Four Types of Anti-Politics: Insights from the Italian Case”, Modern Italy , 15 (1):37-61. Mingione, E. (1991), Fragmented Societies. A Sociology of Economic Life beyond the Market Paradigm , Oxford, Basil Blackwell. Palidda, S. (ed.) (2009), Razzismo democratico. La persecuzione degli stranieri in Europa , Milano, Agenzia X. Perulli, P. and A. Pichierri (eds) (2010), Economia e società del Nord , Torino, Einaudi. Putnam R., R. Leonardi and R. Nanetti (1993), Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy , Princeton, Princeton University Press. Romanelli, R. (1991), “Le radici storiche del localismo italiano”, Il Mulino, 40 (4):711- 720. Rovati, G. and Mazzette A. (eds) (1993), La protesta dei “forti”. Leghe del Nord e Partito Sardo d'Azione , Milano, Franco Angeli. Sabetti, F. (2002), The Search for Good Government: Understanding the Paradox of Italian Democracy , Montreal, McGill-Queen's University Press. Schwartz, S.H. (1992), “The Universal Content and Structure of Values: Theoretical Advances and Empirical Tests in 20 Countries”, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 25:1-62. Schwartz, S.H. (1994), “Beyond Individualism-Collectivism: New Cultural Dimensions of Values”, in K. Uichol, C. Kagitcibasi, H.C. Triandis and G. Yoon (eds), Individualism and Collectivism , Newbury Park, Sage:85-119. Schwartz, S.H. (2006), “Les valeurs de base de la personne: Théorie, mesures et applications”, Revue française de sociologie , 47 (4):929-968. Segatti, P. (1995), “Una nazione di compaesani. Localismo e sentimento nazionale” , in A. Parisi and H. Schadee (eds), Sulla soglia del cambiamento. Elettori e partiti alla fine della prima Repubblica , Bologna, il Mulino:105-138. Snow, D. (2004), “Framing Processes, Ideology, and Discursive Fields”, in D. Snow, S. A. Soule and H. Kriesi (eds), The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements , Oxford, Blackwell:380-412. Taguieff, P.A. (2002), L’illusion populiste , Paris, Berg International Editeurs. Tosi, S. (2004), Azioni locali nella crisi del welfare state , Milano, Libreria Clup. Trigilia, C. (1994), “Nord e Sud: se il Belpaese si spezza”, Limes , 4:81-94. Vitale, T. and E. Claps (2010), “Not Always the Same Old Story: Spatial Segregation and Feelings of Dislike against Roma and Sinti in Italian Large Cities and Middle Towns”, in M. Stewart and M. Rövid (eds), Multi-Disciplinary Approaches to Romany Studies , Budapest, CEU Press:228-253.

199

THE EMBEDDING OF RADICAL RIGHT PARTIES IN LOCAL NETWORKS: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY AT THE NEIGHBOURHOOD LEVEL IN ANTWERP (FLANDERS)

Lien Warmenbol

University of Antwerp, Department of Political Sciences

1. INTRODUCTION

The last few decades, a lot of pages have been spent describing or explaining the success of populist radical right parties. The main focus in this research has been the demand side, which is the voters’ side of the story (Carter, 2005; Mudde, 2007). As far as the scope of these studies is concerned, most of them take place at the macro level which is formed by a society, for example comparing the parties’ successes in several countries (e.g. Perrineau, 2002; Schain, Zolberg et al., 2002). Another level that has been worked on quite often is the micro level, namely researching individual voters (e.g. van der Brug and Fennema, 2003; Dülmer and Klein, 2005). All in all, it appears that two pieces of the explanations are missing: at the one hand, the supply side of explanations, namely the political context and party behaviour; on the other hand, the “in-between” level i.e. the meso level: how to explain regional, local or even sub-local differences in the success of these parties? What we aim with this paper is exactly to uncover the combination of these two: the supply side at the meso level. We ask ourselves how we can explain local success of a populist radical right party focusing on the political context of this entity. The case studied in practice is a district in the city of Antwerp, Belgium. The Flemish party “Vlaams Belang” (Flemish Interest) has had its traditional base in the city of Antwerp since the 1980’s, and currently commands around 33% of the votes. The city has been divided into nine districts, which are partly governed by district councils (for some fields of authority). In one of the districts under study, Deurne, the percentage of VB votes was even higher at the last local elections, namely 43.5% of the votes. We selected two neighbourhoods within this district in order to look for some sublocal differences, while keeping the political context constant. In the other studied district, Berchem, the party gained 25.7% of the votes, i.e. below the city average. What we will do in this paper is firstly situate the considerations made in order to define the research question, based on previous research. After sketching the methods and

201

case selection, we will describe as detailed as possible the results of the qualitative analysis. After that, we will draw conclusions in the form of preliminary hypotheses.

2. POLITICAL OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURE

Explanations for the electoral success of radical right parties can be divided horizontally as well as vertically. Vertically the demand and supply side can be discerned, focusing upon voting behaviour and political factors respectively. Horizontally, explanations can be divided into three levels of aggregation, namely micro, meso and macro. Whereas the micro level refers to individual attitudes, behaviour and characteristics and the macro level to elements of society or the political system, the meso level falls in between these two, referring to social and political processes at the regional or local level. The meso level contains all explanations between, roughly, individual voting behaviour and general societal changes. In contrast to the macro level, the meso level is not based on national means or theoretical-philosophical descriptions of the evolution of society, which ignore the existence of regional variation. Contrary to micro-level data, the meso level transcends individual demographical characteristics, socio-economical situations, and attitudes. The meso level focuses on (social) settings like the neighbourhood, city or region. It therefore allows investigations of, for example, social networks or local political contexts. The demand side studies at the meso level, on which we will not elaborate in this study, seek to find explanations for the variation in the area’s or its inhabitants’ characteristics. Factors such as the number of immigrants or unemployed are traditionally used in this kind of studies, and in addition for example a neighbourhood’s criminal rate. These phenomena have been studied by a range of authors, but hardly any scientific consensus could be reached (e.g. Andersen and Evans, 2003; Jesuit and Mahler, 2004; Coffé, 2005; Dülmer and Klein, 2005). The supply side of political factors in explaining radical right’s success has been understudied. Although several authors have highlighted the importance of the “political opportunity structure”, and have stressed the explanatory power it possesses, the studies within the field are limited (Schain et al., 2002; Carter, 2005; Mudde, 2007). Moreover most of these studies are situated at the micro or macro level. Micro level supply side studies focus at specific party characteristics, such as charismatic leadership or party organization. The macro level comprises elements of the party system, electoral system or institutional system of a country. Studies at the meso level apply micro and macro factors to a certain area, city or neighbourhood, and add certain specific meso-level factors. This implies that the distinction between levels is artificial to a certain extent, and that they are intertwined. We will give an overview of the literature situated at the meso level only, bearing in mind that there are a lot of authors dealing with both micro and the macro level. The explanations for meso-level success of radical right parties can be considered comparable to those for other parties’ success. In this way, we can rely on literature on local politics in general. Here we highlight the explanations specific to radical right parties. We can make a distinction between two important, often stressed factors in the local political context, which can make or break the success of a radical right party. The first is related to the position of the other (traditional) parties in the regional or local

202

council. The other is the network of local organizations woven around the radical right party. As far as the political context formed by the other parties is concerned, the most discussed element is clientelism and the traditional “village politics”. The idea is twofold: in places where the traditional parties historically made use of systems of clientelism or patronage but now have let it go, or in places where they are put in a bad daylight because of scandals, the radical right has more chances to break through or strengthen its position. The clientelistic system was common in a lot of countries with a strong political division of societal institutions like education, health care or housing; for example in Italy, France or Austria (Kitschelt and McGann, 1995; Mény and Surel, 2002). This implied a highly developed system of clientelism at all levels, in which party members could get advantages and help from the party in these institutions. Citizens had to be party members to reach certain goals, and politicians therefore could rely on a steady basis. Since this system has begun to break down and the emphasis moved more to state power, traditional parties began to lose contact with the citizens as a result. The citizens themselves felt left alone and began to become more and more alienated from politics in general. This left an empty hole for protest parties, of which radical right or populist parties were most successful (Blöss et al., 1999; Swyngedouw, 2000). This process was felt even stronger at the meso level, since the contact between politicians and citizens is a local phenomenon par excellence. For example Viard (1998) sketches this decline of the clientelistic system in a few French cities where the Front National came in power of the local council. Another aspect of this traditional “village politics” is the issue of corruption or other scandals. Related to this issue is the mere longstanding presence of the same party in the local majority, a so called oligopoly that can cause a protest reaction, sometimes embodied by a radical right party (Swyngedouw, 1998; Veugelers and Magnan, 2005). But, of course, the opposite is also true: where traditional parties are successful, in keeping contact with the citizens, the radical right has fewer chances. (e.g. Swyngedouw, 2000; Faniel, 2001) Another aspect of the political context that other parties create, is their fragmentation . This could play a role not only at the macro but also at the meso level, since the supply of political parties often differs between these levels. It seems that radical right parties benefit from a politically fragmented context. At least, some studies show that radical right parties are more likely to contest elections in municipalities with a large number of parties (e.g. Coffé et al., 2007). But also the fragmentation in the radical right party family itself can be of importance. When the party is divided in different camps that lead their own life, or if new radical right competitors appear in the neighbourhood, its success will decline (e.g. Laurent and Perrineau, 1999; Lubbers et al., 2000). A clear example of this phenomenon is offered by the situation in the two main regions of Belgium, Flanders and Wallonia. In the former the radical right party Vlaams Belang is very strong and its organization very well developed. In Wallonia, several smaller radical right parties contested elections, but none of them was very successful over a longer period of time (Alaluf, 1998; Faniel, 2001; Coffé, 2005). This is due to the internal organization of the parties and their leaders, but also to the historical presence in Flanders of ideologically close associations and organizations, as we will discuss. As far as the second factor is concerned, i.e. the network of local organizations as an element of the political context, several kinds of organizations are considered of great 203

importance. First and foremost, the historical presence of concordant organizations in a certain area can play a major role in the radical right party’s success (Mudde and Van Holsteyn, 2000; Klandermans and Mayer, 2005). Again, the comparison between Flanders and Wallonia in Belgium is illustrative. While Flanders has a history of collaboration and nationalistic organizations following the First and Second World War, Wallonia more or less lacks this basis (Alaluf, 1998; Faniel, 2001; Hossay, 2002; Coffé, 2005). But not only traditional networks are useful in increasing the party success. In some cases, radical right parties are not ostracized and find contact with new organizations or social movements quite openly (van den Brink 1999; Van Craen and Swyngedouw, 2002). There are some examples of radical right parties which have connections with existing (unpillarized) organizations without any political purpose. The BNP in Oldham for example could rely on the “Fine Young Casuals” football club in its protest against violence by ethnic minorities in the town (Eatwell, 2004). Secondly, the degree up to which candidates are known within the local civil society or the relations they keep with members of the civil society is seen as a major element in the explanations. Caused by the already discussed decline of clientelism and village politics, the relation between local politician and civil society has also experienced a breakdown. Depillarization and the consequent downfall of a traditional rank-and-file have had a great impact at the local level too. Especially in the cities that have experienced a population increase over the last few decennia, the contact between citizens and local politicians is only a fraction of what is was (Swyngedouw, 1998). Thijssen and De Lange’s (2005) study on preferential voting shows that the familiarity with local candidates can play a larger role than has been assumed up until now. Alidières (2006) emphasizes the difference that a locally well-embedded radical right party activist can make in electoral support. Although this aspect is understudied, it seems that both for traditional parties as for radical right parties embedding in the local social life (still) is important.

3. METHODS AND CASE SELECTION

We conducted ethnographic case studies in one of the largest cities of Belgium, Antwerp. The city counts 500 000 inhabitants and is divided into 9 districts. These districts are partly governed by the city council, and partly by a directly elected district council. Vlaams Belang was founded in this city, experienced its first successes here, and traditionally scores very well in Antwerp. We conducted an exit-poll in 18 neighbourhoods spread over seven districts in October 2006, at the last local elections. Within one district, Deurne, we selected two demographically comparable neighbourhoods, which had totally different scores for Vlaams Belang in the exit-poll. In general, Deurne was one of the districts with the highest VB scores, namely 43.5%. In the central neighbourhood of this district, Deurne-Centre, VB scored very well with 41.8% of the votes. 1 In the southern neighbourhood, Deurne-South, the party “only” gained 26% of the votes. In this way, we could exclude explanations at the demand side which are based on demographic analyses, and instead focus on some other demand-side factors and, even

1 This is an underestimation of the real score VB must have gained in the neighbourhood, due to the social undesirability of the answer in the exit-poll. 204

more so, on supply-side factors. 2 By choosing two neighbourhoods within the same district, we could keep the political factors constant. In addition, we chose another neighbourhood within a district where VB achieves its lowest score in the city, namely Old-Berchem in the district of Berchem. The party had an average score of only 25.7%, and based on the exit-poll in this specific neighbourhood only 13.9% of the population supported it. This case is still under study at the time so this paper will elaborate more on the first two. Ethnographically based fieldwork was conducted in all three neighbourhoods. At the voters’ side, we had conversations and in-depth interviews with local shopkeepers, inhabitants, and key informants from all kinds of organizations and associations: neighbourhood associations, parochial associations, social organizations, and action committees. We observed informal and formal social interaction within both the public space and these organizations. At the political side, we conducted in-depth interviews with district council members from all parties. We also observed district council meetings and party meetings. The results from the analysis that follow below, are based on both these interviews and observation reports.

3.1 DEURNE

We will now sketch the selected cases, beginning with the two neighbourhoods in the district of Deurne. Deurne is a district at the east side of Antwerp that counts 70 000 inhabitants. The independent municipality merged with other municipalities into the city of Antwerp in 1983. This merger was very important for its further development. Since the implementation of Universal Male Suffrage in 1919, which emancipated manual workers politically, the socialist BWP (Belgische Werkliedenpartij/ Belgian Workers Party) made its breakthrough in Deurne. Already in 1926 the party gained more votes than the “Katholieke Volksbond” (Catholic Peoples Party) which had been in power up until then. In 1938 the party gained the absolute majority, which it would keep until 1976. Only the socialist and Catholic party would play a role of importance in Deurne until 1964. At that moment the nationalistic Frontpartij/Volksunie (Front Party/ Peoples Union) gained 13% of the votes out of the blue, and grew to 18% in 1976. Deurne thus went into the merger with a large deal of Flemish-nationalistic inhabitants (Nooyens, 1982). In the meanwhile, the socialist party (now SP) was able to elaborate its organization in Deurne thanks to the successive election victories and stable majorities. The party set up a whole network of associations and organizations like sport clubs, theatre associations and orchestras, which were very loyal to the party. Furthermore, the SP and therefore the whole of Deurne, was led by a remarkable mayor, Maurice Dequeecker. He ruled the municipality with an iron fist between 1954 and 1982, but was a “man of the people” at the same time. He was a charismatic populist leader who often met with ordinary people and was the incarnation of socialist social support. Dequeecker

2 Although not discussed here, the original study devotes quite some attention to demand- side factors such as the infrastructure and the use of the public space, the function of the main shopping street, the reach and impact of several local associations and the interethnic relationships in the neighbourhood. 205

had a great influence until his retirement in 1982, which came with the merger of (Great-) Antwerp. The municipal council was abolished and full authority was transfered to the central city council of Antwerp. The district council, which was constructed right after the merger to still keep a connection with the population, had only an advisory authority. This council was not directly elected and had no decision power. In the meanwhile, Dequeecker’s person could not be fully replaced by the technocrat Mangelschots. The SP started to lose contact with its voters, partly because of the merger but also because of the “depillarization” that fully developed in those years. The membership of the party and the related associations started going down and led to the slow implosion of the “red bastion” Deurne for so many years had been (Nooyens, 1982). The SP still gained 44.7% of the votes in 1976, but had fallen back to 18.2% in the first directly elected district councils, in 2000. That means a loss of more than half of its electorate in 25 years. It is no coincidence that Vlaams Blok (Flemish Block) 3 started to grow in the same period. Still, one can not simply conclude that there is a direct link between the losses of SP and the gains of VB. Deurne counted a relatively large Flemish- nationalistic base too; this party also lost its strong position. Hence, all parties, but the SP in the first place, lost votes to the VB. The latter climbed from 5.2% in 1982 to 17.7% in 1988 in Antwerp as a whole (the district councils were not elected directly at the time). In 1994 VB even got 28% of the Antwerp votes. In 2000 the district councils got decisive power over a number of fields of authority (see below). They are now directly elected to “bring the politics back to the citizens”. In these elections VB in Deurne gains its highest score ever and the highest in Belgium: 38% (compared to 33% in Antwerp as a whole). Due to the “cordon sanitaire”4 which was implemented by the traditional parties in 1989, VB never shared power. In 2006 the party was even able to extend its support to 43.5% of the votes in Deurne, comparable to the socialist vote share in the merger year.

3.2 BERCHEM

Berchem has a totally different history which can also be reflected in the current political situation in the district. It is located east of the city centre, but closer to it than Deurne. The old village centre of Berchem is even included in the part of Antwerp that lies within the area that is demarcated by the city highway. The other two main neighbourhoods of the district are located outside that ring and are relatively new. Politically speaking, both the socialists and the Catholics have been influential in the municipality’s history. The two parties have mainly governed together for the last few decades. The liberals as well as the Flemish-nationalists have always had a great deal of support as well, which explains the smaller success of the socialists in comparison to other Antwerp districts (Nicolaï, 1988). The town has been populated by a very diverse public, including a fair share of members of the petite bourgeoisie. Unlike in Deurne, the socialists were never

3 The original name of Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest) is Vlaams Blok (Flemish Block); the party had to change its name due to a trial for racism it was involved in. 4 The term refers to the agreement the traditional parties made after the breakthrough of VB not to form in any case a coalition with the party. Consequently, the party is doomed to be in the opposition unless it gains an absolute majority. 206

able to build a vast network of political associations, as there was no real working class community. There are no data available on the voting behaviour in the district separately for the city council elections. So, the evolution sketched above applies to Berchem as well probably: VB grows enormously and eats away voters from all different parties. Fact is that VB gets 25.5% of the votes in the first direct district councils elections in 2000. Also remarkable are the high scores of the (22.4%) and the greens (16.4%). Both the socialists and the Catholics, the parties that had governed the independent municipality were decimated to less than 15%. Interestingly, Berchem was one of the few districts where the growth of VB stagnated in 2006. Even more remarkable is the fact that the SP more than doubled its score (from 13.7% to 28.8%). As will be discussed below, the district mayor, who is a socialist, is of importance in this evolution. Certainly, part of the increase can be explained by the popularity of the SP at the city level too. The Catholics go up as well, while the liberals and greens see their scores decrease (although they remain quite high compared to other districts). The district is now governed by the socialists, Catholics and liberals. VB and the greens are in the opposition.

4. RESULTS: LOCAL POLITICIANS AND LOCAL NETWORKS

In this part we will discuss the actual results that came out of the analysis. Constantly comparing VB and the other parties, we will elaborate on certain aspects of social and political networks and relationships in the two districts. We will first look at the personal networks politicians keep with inhabitants and organizations. Secondly, the role of connections between individual citizens and politicians will become clear. Finally, we focus on the communication of politicians or institutions to citizens, and the special place campaign efforts take in this.

4.1 PERSONAL NETWORKS

We first look at personal networks representatives are in. We will investigate whether the representatives are fully embedded in local social life or maintain networks with citizens in another way; whether this is a factor of success for the candidates and what the differences are between the parties. As far as personal networks as a success factor are concerned, almost all informants agree that they are important in the explanation of a candidate’s success in local elections. A candidate who is totally not embedded in the social life, or only knows a few people from other networks, will not be easily elected in a local election, is the line of reasoning. This image is differentiated by a number of informants, who stress the importance of campaigns and media. Following the same line of reasoning, some people (including members of VB itself) remark that VB does not need this embeddings to be successful anyway. One informant tells about his personal experiences with embedding:

So I am more and more known by now, by people who ask me: “we want this and that, and can you help me?”. That happens once a week, but I am not planning to use that electorally by saying: “hey I helped you then, do 207

you remember, think of me”. I am not like that. Maybe I am not a good politician, but I don’t believe in that. Those people, if I have good relationships with them, they have to decide for themselves whether I am worth voting for or not. And, in the end, an election result is maybe partly influenced by such elements, but it is mostly dependent upon the total atmosphere. First of all: who are you as a person, as a man? They have to decide whether that is good or bad. But most of all: how is my party doing in the public opinion in general? (Politician 2)

In line with the implosion of the socialist associations there are only few SP.A- representatives 5 that have a personal relation with several ‘red’ associations. Some of them are members of a sport club or neighbourhood committee, and in these cases it seems to be a successful way to pick up problems, on the one hand, and to translate that network electorally on the other. The same goes for the Christian-Democrat party, where the relations with the Christian (parochial) associations are not as close as they once were, but people who maintain this tie, seem to get elected easier. Representatives of the green and liberal parties can not rely on traditional rank-and-file through associations, but seek their connection to citizens through personal contacts or their position as an alderman. A representative tells:

Yes, of course, everybody knows my telephone number and address too. And also, we have a very well functioning branch with a lot of mutual contacts. For example, we have two people that have joined the sports council, who are active in a sports association in Sint Ruggeveld, and they often come up with problems that exist there. Moreover, I personally keep contact with all the neighbourhood associations; I am one of the few in the district council who attends the meetings between the police and the neighbourhood associations in Deurne-North, where all these problems are discussed. Frankly, I don’t need any association to do that. You know, the signals come in other ways than that. (Politician 6)

The communist party Partij van de Arbeid (PVDA/ Labour Party ) is not included in the coalition, and is the only other opposition party next to VB. The party gains very few votes in general; they gained a first seat in Deurne in 2006. The results from the exit- poll indicate that this is almost totally thanks to the support in Deurne-South, where the party has its own doctor’s practice, which offers free health care for disadvantaged inhabitants. The PVDA thus can rely on these potential voters, but also actively works with them to know what lives in this group. Members of the doctor’s practice make their political convictions clear, and even conducted a survey in which they investigated the inhabitants’ priorities in certain problems or issues. For this party, the patients are the main source of information but also the group they can partly rely on at election time. Furthermore, the party members are very active organizing actions and being members of neighbourhood committees.

5 SP-A stands for Socialistische Partij Anders (Socialist Party Different), the new name of the social democrats. 208

As we turn to the embedding of VB’s representatives, the situation gets a little paradoxical. On the one hand, the representatives are often banned from traditional associations at the moment their party affiliation gets known. However, this is only in principle, since in reality they are often welcome in organizations or at least keep good contacts with certain members of these associations. Here, the case of the director and secretary from the largest Christian-Democrat organization in Deurne, the ACW, is most important. These two men left the Christian-Democrats, first to join the Flemish nationalist N-VA and later the radical right party, VB. Consequently, they lost their position in the ACW, which had an enormous impact on the association and also on the Christian-Democrats. Not only did some of the members follow their director and secretary, but this also happened in the year before the 2006 local elections. Both men were and are well embedded in the traditional Christian social life and they still maintain these relations while being elected on a VB-list. In their own words:

I still know quite a lot of people of the religious community, and if there is a problem they still will come to me. There still is a certain bond that stems from the past but is still alive, and I always receive the necessary feedback. It is not like, yes the official relationship has been broken, but a number of people that I helped in the past, for whom I brought up a problem, they still come to me. Even like, I love orchestra music, and the people from the socialistic orchestra still ask me certain things, and always ask: “would the party support that?”. And then, as far as possible, it will be supported, that is no problem for me. (Politician 8)

On the other hand, the VB-branch in Deurne as a whole is strongly focused at maintaining networks with citizens. One way is the “community centre” (see below), another way is making contact with organizations and associations of all kind, most of them not traditionally related to another party. Specifically, this includes neighbourhood or street associations, local action committees, but also sport clubs. Furthermore, VB seems to organize spontaneous protests in streets or neighbourhoods. These issues of protest do not only involve ‘traditional’ radical-right issues like the building of a mosque or the installation of a Muslim school, but also other issues like the renewal of a street or the installation of a new tramway. The question is how this process works: does the party itself, or its members, seek out the protests, or is it the other way around? Do VB- representatives find spontaneous support when they seek contact with some active citizens because almost half of the population votes for them anyway? Are VB- representatives more active in seeking and bringing to the fore issues they encounter as a neighbour or as an association member? Or do citizens find their way to VB- representatives or the community centre on their own? In Deurne of course the position of VB as the only main opposition plays a role in this issue. In Deurne there are several examples of the close interaction between local protest committees and VB. The largest action committee has been gathered around the building of a new complex in Deurne-South, Eksterlaar. The committee exists of a small board of four men, but can count 2 000 households to its rank and file. The committee has the reputation of being close to VB, especially among other politicians. It is remarkable that VB is the party in the district council that often brings the case into the attention and often has a lot of new information that other parties (and so the councillors) don’t have. 209

Upon closer inspection, it seems that there are no direct links between the board and members of the party at all, although it is not unthinkable that several members of the association support VB. Furthermore, it seems that some parties benefit from pushing the committee into the VB-corner, to stigmatize it. A member explains:

Local officer X has accused us some time ago, I think obviously in the direction of Vlaams Belang, he said: “those action committees, and he named Eksterlaar, you never know who is behind them.” (…) It is not known to us that VB would support it, we don’t know if VB is supporting it. The only thing we know is, because we attended the city council for the first time since the approval of the road planning, that VB has held indeed an interpellation about the topic to our big surprise. But we say: where does their information come from? That was a lady, how she had this information, we don’t know. Of course, there are issues that we discuss in the board of directors with four people but do not talk about with even our other members, because it is too discreet. But there are other issues that we discuss in the larger meeting with the inhabitants of the Dascottelei, because we have to inform our rank-and-file. You can’t go around that, issues are being discussed. So it could well be that there are VB-members among them, we can’t rule that out. And even when there are no VB- members, but if there is one who tells his neighbour, and this neighbour picks up his telephone and starts making phone calls: “that has been discussed, and that.” (Member of association 9)

In this case some VB members or representatives living in the neighbourhood supposedly picked up the information from the action committee to give it to the VB- committee. The links between the action committee and the party at the protest action against the reopening of an open air swimming pool where there had been some issues with immigrant youth, also in Deurne-South, were comparable. Some VB-representative lived in a neighbouring street and led the local street protest and kept it alive up until the elections. These are two examples of how members let information through to the top. There are also some cases in which probably the action group did not count any VB- members, but approached the party to find support. This was the case for example when the AA (Anonymous Alcoholics)-club would have to move because of the renewal project. Although the processes are hard to disentangle, is it possible that the movement first starts in some cases at the party itself. For example, when it became known that the tram would be extended to another street, the party spread notes in the mail boxes of the street involved. This was probably also the case with the protest that the party led against the moving of a mosque in Deurne-South. A VB representative explains:

No, no, no, you should see it like this: a number of our members see this strange yellow poster hanging there, and they come to us: “we have a problem!”. And then we say: we can lead that neighbourhood protest as a party, but we say: “no, you are the neighbourhood inhabitant, go around with a petition”. Because when we would do that, everyone would say “it is politically loaded”. Because there could as well be another party that says: “we are in favour”. We then try to say: no, that is something from the 210

neighbourhood, go around with a petition, they organized a petition against the coming of the mosque at that spot as well. The same goes for the kitchen-gardens, the people then come to us, yes but: 2you have to group yourselves a bit, and let your voice be heard in the debate”. (…) There are a few members in these groupings, but as these groups grow larger, you see that… For example, I saw members of the CVP [Christian-Democrat party] there, and others who were members of the VB and for me the essence is: they are being confronted with a problem. That problem does not always have to be politicized. (Politician 8)

In Berchem, the picture is completely different. All informants do agree that being embedded in local networks is necessary to be elected. Especially being known by one’s own neighbours and being a member of neighbourhood committees or parish organizations is considered important. Still, like in Deurne, informants have their doubts about that being the only influential factor, pointing at political evolutions at the city or regional level, taking into account media effects as well. That said, informants in Berchem are generally more convinced that personal networks do matter. The socialist party is led by the over-active district mayor who makes it a case of honour to be known in all local networks in his neighbourhood. He spends all his time building up networks, visiting neighbourhood committees, and being involved in all local issues. Another representative of the party was elected on the basis of his engagement in a neighbourhood committee as well. Still, the party can only modestly rely on socialist networks and had to (re)build everything from their low score in 2000. So we should say that some members of the party succeed in this task, but others do not and probably got elected on another basis. As a party, the Catholics have more of a traditional rank-and-file in Berchem. Mainly through parish organizations their representatives are known to a part of the population. The liberal and green parties do not have many traditional networks to rely on, but do deem it important to be embedded in, or at least come in contact with, the local networks. As far as VB is concerned, the picture is a bit mixed. The party is led by a popular figure who is very known in his own neighbourhood. He was the leader of a neighbourhood committee concerned about security issues before he was elected. He still is very much embedded in his own neighbourhood and the committees there. But he is the only one in his party, which has been inactive for years, until it was partly renewed during the electoral campaign in 2006. The improvement in political personnel also meant an improvement in the efforts to build networks with neighbourhood committees or unorganized neighbours of the same street. Comparable to the actions in Deurne, VB in Berchem is now starting to maintain contacts with people from action committees or organizing protest. For example, in a street where a Muslim school would be located, VB mailed flyers and organized the protest. But this is only very recent, so the electoral benefits can not be discerned yet.

4.2 CONTACT WITH CITIZENS

There are several ways in which the district government and the opposition parties come into contact with Deurne’s inhabitants. As far as the governing parties are concerned, 211

there are some first-line services citizens can contact in case of problems. These are most notably the neighbourhood supervisors and the local police officers, who cross the neighbourhoods by bike or foot. These services are embedded in meetings with other services, in which they pass the issues on to other authorized second-line services. Citizens are also able to fill in so-called declaration cards to send their complaints to the council. Also, once a month inhabitants can ask questions or report problems to representatives at the “question hour”. Moreover, sometimes meetings are organized for inhabitants of a specific neighbourhood in which they can communicate with the councillors. A difference can be made between “information meetings” at which the citizens are informed about a reconstruction in their street, “hearing sessions” at which their opinion is asked about this reconstruction, and “neighbourhood fora” at which they can share their concerns with the councillors. Recently there have also been some separate meetings for communication between citizens and the police services. There are quite a lot of possible channels, but some informants deem these not sufficient or not sufficiently known or effective. It is also remarkable that often the same active inhabitants make use of these channels, also called “professional complainers”, who most often represent a committee or at least a group of other people. Many other inhabitants are not reached through these institutionalized channels though. A politician explains:

Giving the people some say, we see that with hearings as well, it’s participation that people want. When there are plans for the rearrangement of a street, they are clarified to the neighbourhood’s inhabitants; they come and can give their comments, in case they can be taken into account, I think that is an important thing. Maybe we should do that in an earlier stage, that is only one of my thoughts. I think there are always neighbourhoods, like the Unitas neighbourhood, where a good neighbourhood committee is at work, with the best intents for their neighbourhood. And then I think: maybe we should talk to these people first, before we are really planning: “we are going to do something about the neighbourhood or your street, how do you see that?”. The danger is, as more experienced politicians say, that there are a lot of people who only look at their own front door: “I want some trees but not in front of my house”. And that makes it difficult to talk, but on the other side: maybe there will come up ideas that you don’t think of yourself, because you don’t live there. (Politician 1)

Furthermore, members of several governing parties keep up contacts with the population in another, more informal way. Some of them, like representatives of the SP.A, have consultation hours. Members of other parties point to the possibility to have direct contact with their party’s councillors. They often refer to VB’s methods, like the opening of their community centre. Most of them recognize its success, but don’t see it as an option for their own party. Others have recently invented an easy accessible way of coming into contact, by organizing a consultation hour in popular bars:

What I do with X, well not only with X but also with other party officials, is that we sit in a bar every two weeks, where we put up a poster that says: “We listen to you from this to that hour”, and then we sit there with a 212

number of representatives where people can come with their questions. (…) It is only embryonic; we did it only three times. There are three different bars, every two weeks on a Saturday. (…) I don’t know whether it is going to help, but I think that the people feel or know: “they are listening to us”, and not only that one party that ever stirs up the complaints. Because I can imagine that when someone says: “my street is dirty, and full of weeds”, they say “yeah, all these weeds, and everywhere, and they don’t do anything about it!”. That will probably be the case, whereas they say to me “a lot of weeds”, then I explain “yes there has been a problem in summer with the weed, we are working on it, it will be done by next summer”. We shouldn’t say: “that’s not true what you say”, but yes, just tell the truth. (Politician 6)

Vlaams Belang as a permanent opposition party organizes its contacts with the citizen not through institutionalized channels. As mentioned earlier, the party has a lot of contacts with people from unpillarized associations. But it has canalized the contacts with unassociated citizens in the permanent opening of their community centre. Every weekday people can enter the centre to simply have a drink, ask their questions to the ever present representatives or to seek help with the treatment of their problems. In addition to volunteers, every day some representatives are present to take care of the visitors’ complaints. As far as the kind of questions that are being asked are concerned, these are for the main part complaints that need to be addressed by the district council, but that citizens find too complicated to ask on their own. One could say that in the tradition of the socialist “political assistance”, these community centre workers not only help inhabitants to fill in declaration cards, but also by passing them on to the right authority. Since the party never has been part of the majority, the help they can offer in reality is probably quite limited. But at least VB has the image of being easily accessible and helpful in case of complaints. The party itself attaches a great meaning to this communication channel, if only by mobilizing the volunteers to keep the centre open. This is something other parties also notice:

No, but they have a community centre at the Turnhoutsebaan, and I am convinced that there is a whole bunch of people walking in there, and they have a concrete point of contact, right. You can walk in there and tell your thing. I think, there are two people from the ACW over there; they will have their tentacles to find out about things. A number of those people work somewhere at a ministry cabinet, and they have some more time. I have a full time teaching job, so I don’t have the time to visit bars during the day or open a community centre where people can come and speak to me. (Politician 3)

In Berchem, the situation also differs in this respect. First of all, all representatives share the idea that they should listen to what ordinary people have to say. So, in Berchem there are a lot of hearings, neighbourhood fora, and other opportunities where people can come into contact with the councillors. All aldermen take their presence on these opportunities serious, unlike in Deurne. But other representatives see the importance of being present on these events as well, both members of the coalition and members of the 213

opposition. Remarkably, this idea has a long tradition in Berchem and some even call it “the Berchem model”, pointing to the early initiatives to bring together all actors of a neighbourhood in meetings, and communicating to the inhabitants since the late 1990’s. VB does not have a community centre in Berchem and is still developing its networking functions, but is very open to the population as well. The means are rather limited however, as their website is not actively used, and they do not have a central point like a secretary. But they are very active themselves to establish contact with the people. Of course, since they experience competition from other parties in this field, the results are not comparable to those in Deurne.

4.3 COMMUNICATION

In all described contact channels, like the neighbourhood meetings, the responses to the declaration cards and the answers the neighbourhood supervisors give to complaints, the way the communication to the citizen takes place is of high importance, according to the informants. The district council has a difficult position because its authority is limited and it depends on higher authorities for a lot of issues. That makes communication more difficult, because the solution process is slower and some –even very local- problems cannot be solved. Still, informants are of the opinion that clear communication and feedback should take place, even when the problem can not be solved. Apparently, up to now complaints have too often starved away without any feedback. The communication process is not only dependent upon the politicians but also on the citizens themselves. According to several informants, the inhabitants’ mentality is an important factor in the communication process. When inhabitants have a more negative point of view, or expect to get a quick solution, the communication between both parties will be more difficult. Several informants indicate that there is a clear difference in mentality between Deurne-South and Deurne-Centre/North. Although this is partly explained by the fact that the last has to deal with more and larger problems, some remark that inhabitants in neighbourhood meetings in Deurne-South cooperate more constructively, instead of simply reacting against the councillors. In the observations of the neighbourhood meetings the number of participants was remarkably different in the two neighbourhoods: not even 10 inhabitants in the Centre, whereas the meeting in South attracted more than 40 people.

Yes in Deurne-South people are more constructive, they are more able to have meetings. Yes, it is just those inhabitants’ mentality, you can feel it in the neighbourhood associations, they really want to come to a neighbourhood meeting to have a debate, with us and with the politicians in particular. But they will hardly be rude or start shouting, or sabotage the meeting. I once attended a meeting in Deurne-North, which we just had to interrupt a few years ago. (Politician 10)

Of further interest are the campaign strategies and the role of (local) media. The most important issue that informants bring to the fore is the discrepancy between the governing parties and the opposition parties. Whereas the first only invest in campaigning during the month previous to an election, the communist and radical right party do so all 214

year long. In general members of governing parties give the impression of not being very involved in the campaigns, or question their value. They rather stress the role of media that can counteract campaign effects through negative announcements. Media seem to play a major role, even at the local level, although several politicians complain about the little media attention they receive and the fact that only major negative issues are reported.

So it is more a general discourse that is being received well, and you know they also work a lot with paper right: they mail their magazine a few times a week. But it is not only dealing with Deurne, there are a few pages in on Deurne. But also, when there is a problem somewhere, they will spread a leaflet in the surrounding mailboxes. Usually it is protest, usually not with a positive aim, and then they post that in the mailboxes. And they do that regularly, and other parties do that less. It happens, but less. (…) They have to try to attract the attention; you will not appear that much in newspapers right, and certainly not on television. So, that is not a simple thing. You have to rely on contacts and that is not that easy. (Politician 5)

5. CONCLUSION

We first ascertained that there is a lack of literature on the local and regional successes of radical right parties. Through this ethnographic comparative case study we found some concepts and processes to work with in the future, which can be applied to several contexts. It seems that not only the efforts of populist radical right parties themselves, but even more the image and role of the traditional parties are of great importance. We believe these elements to be part of the explanation for populist radical right’s success at the local level, although we would have to compare with still other cases and elaborate the factors on the demand side as well. Another question is related to causality: does this embedding and the efforts cause VB’s electoral success or is it the other way around? And finally: there are several cases in which VB is not active but yet very successful: how can we account for this? As far as Vlaams Belang is concerned, it became clear that the party is well organized at the local level in the case of Deurne, in the sense that it has an elaborate network of contacts. The main characteristics of its approach are openness and activity. The party officials and members are actively and constantly looking for contact with both individual citizens and associations. This element is most prominent in its contacts with neighbourhood associations and action committees, but also in, for example, its campaign methods (i.e. the whole year long) and its briefings in “protest areas”. The openness is mainly mirrored in the establishment of the community centre, where every citizen can make use of the low-level services. And even when this might not really be true in reality, the party gives at least the impression to be close to the ordinary people and willing to help them with their personal and public issues. The other parties in Deurne, except for the communist PVDA, which uses mainly the same strategies, are nearly completely the opposite in both reality and perception. This is most tangible in the social democrat party, since it dominated Deurne for a long time and developed an extensive network of associations. Omnipresent as this party once 215

was, so all-absent it is now. In the first place, the party has not managed to build a new associational rank-and-file which it lost in the last few decades. This applies less to the Christian-democrat party, which can still partly rely on its traditional parochial associations. And second, as coalition members, these parties do not seem to have found a good way to approach and inform citizens, and to deal with their questions and issues. These findings are conversely confirmed by the case of Berchem. The open and active mentality among the different parties and the efforts some representatives from the majority make to become embedded in the local networks, can explain at least in part the relatively high scores of the socialists, Catholics and liberals. VB suffered and still suffers from this, and was inactive and incapable to do the same thing for a long time. This was reflected in their relatively low scores throughout the years, and the stagnation of their growth in 2006. The current efforts in both the fields of networking and communication could be rewarded in the next local elections, but that is still unsure. The Berchem case stresses the role the traditional parties play: VB does not necessarily have to be active, but when the other parties are not, VB will have more chances to be successful, regardless of their own efforts.

REFERENCES

Alaluf, M. (1998), “L'émergence du Front National en Belgique est plus redevable aux circonstances qu'à son programme”, in P. Delwit, J.-M. De Waele and A. Rea (eds), L'extrême droite en France et en Belgique , Bruxelles, Editions complexes:101-118. Alidières, B. (2006), Géopolitique de l'insécurité et du Front National , Paris, Armand Colin. Andersen, R. and J. Evans (2003), Social-Political Context and Authoritarian Attitudes: Evidence from Seven European Countries , Gent, EREPS annual meeting. Blöss, T., J. Rouan and G. Ascaride (1999), “Le vote Front National dans les Bouches- du-Rhône: Laboratoire de l'alliance entre la droite et l'extrême droite? ”, Revue française de science politique , 49 (2):295-312. Carter, E.L. (2005), The Extreme Right in Western Europe: Success or Failure? , Manchester, Manchester University Press. Coffé, H. (2005), “Do Individual Factors Explain the Different Success of the Two Belgian Extreme Right Parties?”, Acta Politica , 40 (1):74-93. Coffé, H., B. Heyndels and J. Vermeir (2007), “Fertile Grounds for Extreme Right-Wing Parties: Explaining the Vlaams Blok's Electoral Success”, Electoral Studies , 26 (1):142-155. Dülmer, H. and M. Klein (2005), “Extreme Right-Wing Voting in Germany in a Multilevel Perspective: a Rejoinder to Lubbers and Scheepers”, European Journal of Political Research , 44 (2):243-263. Eatwell, R. (2004), “The Extreme Right in Britain: The Long Road to ‘Modernization’”, in R. Eatwell and C. Mudde (eds), Western Democracies and the New Extreme Right Challenge , London, Routledge:62-80. Faniel, J. (2001), L'extrême droite après les scrutins de 1999 et 2000: représentation électorale et implantation , Bruxelles, CRISP (Centre de recherche et d'information socio-politiques).

216

Hossay, P. (2002), “Why Flanders? ”, in M.A. Schain, A. Zolberg and P. Hossay (eds), Shadows over Europe: The Development and Impact of the Extreme Right in Western Europe , New York, Palgrave Macmillan:159-185. Jesuit, D. and V. Mahler (2004), Immigration, Economic Well-Being and Support for Extreme Right Parties in Western European Regions , Bourlingster, European Union Center. Kitschelt, H. and A.J. McGann (1995), The Radical Right in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis , Ann Arbor, The University of Michigan Press. Klandermans, B. and N. Mayer (eds) (2005), Extreme Right Activists in Europe: Through the Magnifying Glass , London, Routledge. Laurent, A. and P. Perrineau (1999), “L'extrême droite éclatée”, Revue française de science politique , 49 (4/5):633-641. Lubbers, M., P. Scheepers and J. Billiet (2000), “Multilevel Modelling of Vlaams Blok Voting: Individual and Contextual Characteristics of the Vlaams Blok Vote”, Acta Politica , 35 (4):363-398. Mény, Y. and Y. Surel (ed.) (2002), Democracies and the Populist Challenge , Houndmills, Palgrave. Mudde, C. (2007), The Populist Radical Right in Europe , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Mudde, C. and J.J.M. Van Holsteyn (2000), “The Netherlands: Explaining the Limited Success of the Extreme Right”, in P. Hainsworth (ed.), The Politics of the Extreme Right. From the Margins to the Mainstream , London/New York, Pinter:144-171. Nicolaï, K. (1988), Het dorps- en gemeentebestuur van Berchem , Berchem, Kring voor Heemkunde. Nooyens, F. (1982), Geschiedenis van Deurne, deel II (van 1648 tot heden) , Deurne, Gemeentebestuur van Deurne. Perrineau, P. (2002), “Le vote d'extrême droite en France: adhésion ou protestation? ”, Futuribles , 276:5-20. Schain, M.A., A. Zolberg and P. Hossay (2002), “The Development of Radical Right Parties in Western Europe”, in M.A. Schain, A. Zolberg and P. Hossay (eds), Shadows over Europe: The Development and Impact of the Extreme Right in Western Europe , New York, Palgrave Macmillan:3-17. Schain, M.A., A. Zolberg and P. Hossay (eds) (2002), Shadows over Europe: The Development and Impact of the Extreme Right in Western Europe , New York, Palgrave Macmillan. Swyngedouw, M. (1998), “Anvers: une ville à la portée du Vlaams Blok? ”, in P. Delwit, J.-M. De Waele and A. Rea (eds.), L'extrême droite en France et en Belgique , Bruxelles, Editions complexe:291-315. Swyngedouw, M. (2000), “Belgium: Explaining the Relationship between Vlaams Blok and the City of Antwerp”, in P. Hainsworth (ed.), The Politics of the Extreme Right. From the Margins to the Mainstream , London/New York, Pinter:121-143. Thijssen, P. and S.L. De Lange (2005), “Explaining the Varying Electoral Appeal of the Vlaams Blok in the Districts of Antwerp”, Ethical Perspectives , 12 (2):231-258. Van Craen, M. and M. Swyngedouw (2002), Het Vlaams Blok doorgelicht: 25 jaar extreem rechts in Vlaanderen , Leuven, ISPO. van den Brink, R. (1999), De jonge Turken van het Vlaams Blok: extreem-rechts tussen uniform en maatpak , Gent, Scoop. 217

van der Brug, W. and M. Fennema (2003), “Protest or Mainstream? How the European Anti-Immigrant Parties Developed into Two Separate Groups by 1999”, European Journal of Political Research , 42 (1):55-76. Veugelers, J.W.P. and A. Magnan (2005), “Conditions of Far-Right Strength in Contemporary Western Europe: An Application of Kitschelt's Theory”, European Journal of Political Research , 44 (6):837-860. Viard, J. (1998), “Dire l'extrême droite aux affaires. Toulon, Orange, Marignane et Vitrolles - France”, in P. Delwit, J.-M. De Waele and A. Rea (eds), L'extrême droite en France et en Belgique . Brussel: Editions complexe:267-281.

218

THE NORTHERN LEAGUE (ITALY) A PARTY OF ACTIVISTS IN THE MIDST OF A PARTISAN MILITANCY CRISIS

Martina Avanza

Université de Lausanne, Institut d'Etudes Politiques et Internationales, CRAPUL

1. INTRODUCTION

In more or less radical terms, the following observation is today almost unanimous: militancy is facing crisis (Ion, 1997). This diagnosis is particularly severe when it comes to partisan militancy, which is now the most discredited form of political commitment (Dalton and Wattenberg, 2000; Katz and Mair, 1993). Of course, Italy is not hit as hard as other countries by the rejection by potential members of one of the most traditional forms of political participation, which is party membership and partisan militancy (Ignazi et al. 2010; Raniolo, 2002). Yet, whilst the parties remain more dynamic than in other European countries, the number of members has considerably decreased since the golden age of the mass parties, such as the Communist Party and the Christian Democracy of the 1950s and 1960s (Biorcio, 2003; della Porta, 2001). In this national and international context, very rapidly summarized here, the Northern League comes out as an exception. Despite numerous changes of its political line (the League switched from being autonomist, to federalist, to secessionist, to devolutionist and is now again requesting a federation) and apparently opaque alliance strategies (first allied with, then the enemy of, and again allied with Berlusconi), the League has managed to establish and maintain a breeding ground for active and devoted card carriers. In fact, the organization of the League does not rely on the existence of a small group of professionals, but depends largely on the participation and mobilization of its members (Biorcio, 1997; Diamanti, 2003; Gómez-Reino Cachafeiro, 2002). Hence, the party proposes what can be called an ideal-type militancy based on total commitment; the same as was previously incarnated by the Communist Party, and which is the exact opposite of the individualized and distanced types of participation, believed to be compatible with what members today are ready to give to an organization (Ion et al., 2005). Despite this demanding form of support, the party manages to recruit an important membership. It has been able to recruit a considerable number of young people 1, whilst parties are generally not attractive organizations for this age category (Muxel and Cacouault, 2001). This recruitment success is difficult to measure, since the party

1 Partly due to a sizeable and dynamic youth movement. On this topic, see Dechezelles, 2006.

219 has published contradictory figures regarding the number of its members.2 But beyond these unverifiable statistics, it only takes walking along the corridors of the party’s headquarters, sections and associations, counting the number of celebrations the party organizes every summer, or even wandering through the cities of the pre-alpine area (which is the League stronghold) to witness the activist vitality of the party. In this region, the League members are by far the most visible: every inhabitant has, at some point, been approached by a leguist activist for a distribution of leaflets, has faced a bridge tagged Padania libera in giant letters (Padania being the nation which should have been created following the independence of the North, demanded by the League, between 1995 and 1999), has probably met a nocturnal patrol organized by the party to protest against immigration, and has certainly come across a leguist demonstration. The party activists, recognizable by their green shirts (green being the color of the party) and the padanian flags hovering over their stalls, are therefore a strong social presence. By contrast, to come across members from Forza Italia, the most important party of the North, outside election periods, is more than unlikely. As far as the left- wing parties are concerned, they are poorly represented in this region, especially outside urban areas. The Catholics are very active in associative networks linked to the Church, but have no existence as party members. A more quantifiable data can also show the strength of the militant mobilization: the League is the only Italian party that does not obtain the majority of its revenues from state subsidies but from private donations and political activities specially finalized for fundraising (Ignazi et al., 2010). This article ambitions not only to report on the attachment that link the activists to the League, but also to unveil the partisan strategies aiming at maintaining these affinities; thus understanding the essence of the League’s success. The empirical data mobilized for this demonstrations were collected during a long-term field investigation amongst some of the most active members, who themselves describe their commitment as “absolute”. All of them deeply attached to the idea of Padania, saw their loyalty under harsh trial with the League’s sudden shift of 2000, forsaking the idea of secession in order to link up with Berlusconi (which the League until then considered as the head of a “mafia” party) in view of the 2001 Legislative Elections. My fieldwork was carried out during this precise moment of the party’s history, between 1999 and 2002, when activists were roaring against what they termed as treachery, thinking that the League had “sold its soul to Berlusconi” in order to recover power. This context of crisis proved to be particularly relevant for conducting an investigation on the links between activists and the party. In reference to Albert Hirschmann’s categories (Hirschmann, 1970), voice was never an option in this organization, as expulsing anyone opposing the party’s founding father, and indisputable leader, Umberto Bossi’s directions is common

2 During my fieldwork (1999-2002), the League counted between 110.000 and 180.000 members, depending how partisan the estimations are. Comparing these figures with those of contemporary parties, the League appears clearly as a party of activists, especially in front of the other new right wing party, Forza Italia . Of course there are larger parties. The DS, inheritors of the PCI, and AN, inheritor of the neo- fascist MSI, had over 500.000 members in 2002. But the leguist membership must be weighed against the fact that, unlike other parties, the League is not implanted on the whole national territory: its followers almost all belong to Lombardy and Veneto, and the party is marginally present in the Piedmont, Friuli, and more recently in Emilia- Romagna.

220 practice, and internal political currents are inexistent, if not unthinkable. The members who were disappointed with forgoing the “padanist dream” were faced with only two alternatives: exit or loyalty . The identity crisis context of the Party enables to understand the reasons why some have chosen to stay (the great majority) while others (far less in number) left. It sheds light on what ties the activists to their Party, but also on the strategies deployed by the latter to preserve this link and prevent exit from becoming the massive response to the membership’s unrest.

2. THE PADANISTS “UNIVERSE” 3

My field study took place within a network of activists which belongs to the partisan milieu , but do not entirely coincide with it. It is the “padanist universe”, to adopt the indigenous terminology, which includes the leguists (from the basic activist to the Parliamentarian, but in great majority made up of simple members) who do not conceive the League as a political Party aiming at obtaining power, but as a “national liberation movement” with the main purpose of obtaining the political acknowledgement of Padania. These activists refer to the organization as a “movement”, never as a “party”. The fact that the padanist network does not coincide entirely with the party appeared clearly to me when the League stopped, in 1999, supporting the idea of independence. Those in favour of independence mobilized themselves as such. As a sign of (passive) protest against the alliance with Silvio Berlusconi, most of them did not participate in the legislative electoral campaign of 2001, while still supporting the padanist network. Some of them, while still card carriers, did not vote for the League in 2001, at least not for the majority ballot.4 The padanist members consider themselves as a sub-group within the party. For example, the European parliamentarian Mario Borghezio 5, a convinced secessionist, declared during an official gathering of the (virtual) Padanian Parliament which I attended in 2000: “ we, the padan patriots, are more free than the Party is, even if we remain loyal to it ”. Similarly, an activist of one of the League ancillary organization called Young Padania, characterized his commitment to me in the following terms: “ there is the padanist, whose vision of the movement is first and foremost based on ethnicity and identity. And there are those who leave those aspects aside to emphasize a socio-economic discourse, the struggle against taxes, and these

3 My PhD thesis (Avanza, 2002) was dedicated to the comprehension of this “universe”. 4 The votes were conducted under a “mixed” ballot, whereby 75% would be elected with a majority ballot, and 25% by proportionality. For the majority ballot, electors had to vote for a coalition (which did not feature the League’s symbol separately, but had a symbol of its own), as opposed to the proportional ballot which featured individual parties and symbols. 5 Born in 1943, bachelor and without children, Mario Borghezio used to be a lawyer before living off politics as a Deputy (1992-2001), and a European Parliamentarian (since 2001). He joined the party in 1989 after a long period of militancy within far right groups. Not only does he represent the most extremist and xenophobic wing of the party, but he is also the politician most active on the ground and thus the most popular with padanian activists.

221 kinds of things” .6 Not only can this sub-group be defined ideologically (identity claims versus economic ones), or organizationally (movement versus party), but also in terms of relationships: the padanists knew each other, would spend time together or organize common actions. Thus, Andrea 7 (one of my “main informers”), replying to my question regarding the composition of the jury for a poetry contest the party organized, said: “ oh, you know, there will be Roberto, Archimède, Mariella, you see, always the same people, always from the padanist circle ”.8 Charles Tilly identified two variables that define the internal sociability of organizations (Tilly, 1978). The netness (from net , or network) refers to a voluntary social network. Social agents are the architects of these forms of sociability which are established according to elective logics. For example, an organization based on voluntary association is exemplary of this type of social ties, all the more so that it bears substantial consequences on several aspects of daily life. By opposition, the catness (idiom forged from the word category ) defines categorical identities to which individual are assigned according to objective properties which are not chosen by them (to be a woman), and attributes linked to professional occupation (to be a worker). When the two domains of sociability are combined into catnet ( catness + netness ), the converging social links become very solid. According to Tilly, a group is all the better organized to defend what it considers to be its interests, when its catnet is strong. If those categories were to be applied to padanism, netness stands out to be very relevant: the strongly mobilized padanists are connected with one another, and their belonging to the movement has strong influence over their lives.9 Adversely, catness is weak: the movement brings together very different people in terms of class, age, or even political sympathies (combining the extreme left or extreme right, moderate Catholics and, for the most part, people who have little, if any, political background). The padanists seem to be very much aware of the fact that they are linked by elective rather than “objective” binds; reason for which they claim to be padanists (their link is militant, therefore voluntary), and not Padans (which refers to a pre-existing cultural group). Here, and explicitly, “it is the political communal activity that produces the community” (Weber, 1971:421), and not the other way around. It is precisely this catness deficit that led us to investigate what motivates the voluntary sociability that structures the “padanist universe”. This will be analyzed from the bottom, basing the demonstration on individual activist trajectories, but also from the top by looking at the leguist organizational features.

6 Interview with Lorenzo, Milan, November 2000. Lorenzo, Milanese, was a law student, 20 at the time and activist of the League since High School. Simple card carrier, he had close sympathies with Mario Borghezio. 7 Fifty years old at the time of my fieldwork, bachelor, no children, professor of literature in Junior High School, Andrea was a very active member and an important figure of the (very scattered) group of intellectuals of the party. He had joined the party since its creation in 1984 because of his interest for issues around regionalism. Notably, he voluntarily presided the Culture Commission of the party and a cultural ancillary organization, as well as animated radio programs. 8 Field notes, December 2000. 9 This includes their tastes (they would for instance start to listen to dialectal music) or their free time (they no longer go on vacation to Rimini, one of the most popular seaside resorts, but rather to Scotland in order to come closer to what their party claims to be their Celtic origins).

222

2.1. A DOUBLE-LAYERED ORGANIZATION, OR HOW TO CONSTRUCT A “NICHE” AGAINST DISENGAGEMENT

Maintaining its active and generous (in term of financial donations) militant base is a central stake for the party. But how to maintain members, who have been radicalized and socialized to unconventional modes of mobilization, when at the same time preparing to govern the country? We will describe here which organizational features has prevented massive defection from the “hard core” members. It is by reasoning in terms of organizational fields that one can understand the unequal capacities of organizations to attract, retain and gain the loyalty of their sympathizers (Sawicki and Siméant, 2009). The leguist activism, made of voluntary participation, associative life, party celebrations, radicalized mass rituals (secessionist and xenophobic), goes beyond conventional partisan militancy which is usually reduced to electoral mobilization and section meetings, when they take place. The activist League, focused on mobilization and protest 10 , which resembles more a social movement than a political party, is in indigenous terms named the “Battle League”. But it is coupled with the “Government League”, made of elected representatives and capable of influencing political decisions, including at national level. By managing cohabitation within the same structure of these two levels, the League cumulates the advantages of a radical and marginal party (capable of mobilizing activists), and those of a governmental party (acceding to power and associated resources, but with poor mobilization capacity). The present article will show how this double-layered partisan organization functions, being able to keep its activist (most of them against Berlusconi and considering the League as natural opposition party) while being part of a governmental coalition of which Silvio Berlusconi is the Prime Minister. When transforming itself from a federalist party to a “national liberation” movement, the League underwent significant organizational modifications. The conventional activities of the political party, essentially made of putting posters on the walls and meetings, did not fit the aims that the League fixed for itself since 1995. While pursuing the independence of a Nation that no one claims, the League needed to put in place new structures in which padanist proselytism could grow. These resources were essentially of three types. The party first developed partisan media structures (daily and weekly press, radio television and websites) defending independence. It then started materializing the existence of Padania by investing places through fictive institutions, such as the Government and Parliament of Padania, and mass rituals (such as the anniversary “declaration of independence of Padania”, which was self-proclaimed by the League in 1996, taking place every year in Venice and where thousands of members gather). Finally, it has supported the creation of a myriad of ancillary organizations in charge of developing partisan sociability, of “defending the territory” (for the “patriotic” organizations responsible for organizing surveillance patrols against immigration) and to produce the “national culture”: padan poetry contests, rewriting history, promoting local dialects, etc. Most of my

10 The party specialized itself is choc actions, such as the “Declaration of Independence of Padania” in 1996, a demonstration called “the walk over Rome” in 1999, or making pigs urinate on a plot alloted for the construction of a mosque.

223 observations were conducted regarding these three organizational levels, and especially within ancillary organizations. The League did not benefit from pre-existing networks of organizations that would have facilitated its implantation in the social fabric, as was the case for Christian Democracy after the war, which was supported by catholic organizations and the structures of the Church. The pre-alpine area did host autonomist organizations, but without the necessary means to support the leguist growth (unlike environmental associations, born in the 1980s, from which Italy’s Green Party was born). As Ilvo Diamanti demonstrated (Diamanti, 1993), leguism saw the light in an environment hostile to commitment dissociating partisans and social links. Previous to partisan commitment, sociabilities were scattered. Those members who were engaged in associative activities individually transferred their social capital to leguist organizations, but never the symbolic capital of the organizations they belonged to. For example, many small industrialists or artisans (in a region characterized by a very dense fabric of SMEs) have supported the party, but the professional organizations to which they belonged never did. This lack of support to institutions emanating from civil society is clearly expressed through the polls, since the leguist electorate has a very feeble tendency to use preferential vote. In Italy, prior to the 2006 electoral reform, individuals could vote for a list mentioning the preferenza for an individual candidate. If a candidate represented groups or organizations, his/her name would collect a high number of preferences to ensure his/her election. Such was the case of Roberto Formigoni, President of Lombardy since 2000 and member of the locally very influential Catholic movement Communion and Liberation, who benefited from a high number of preferential votes at every poll. On the contrary, the leguist electorate expresses little preference and, if so, would generally go towards the heads of list. They cast a partisan vote, rather than one rooted in “civil society” (Ceccanti, 1993). In order to bridge this gap, Bossi gave birth, during the 1998 Congress, to satellite organizations that would increase the party’s sphere of influence. The aim was to create a truly associative movement that would assist the birth of Padania with popular support. The “padan associations” (more than 20 in number), explicitly following a gramscian approach, were therefore intended to bring the League within civil society, thereby extending its recruitment basin. These associations were not an emanation of civil society, but were created by the League which exerted tremendous influence on them, especially through the direct nomination of the persons in charge. The main consequence of this control is the closing of the padanist world. This universe became self-referential to the point of being immune to external commitments. In the , members were strongly advised to invest the non-politicized local organizations, to the point of taking this investment into consideration for internal promotions (Biorcio, 2003). In the League, not only are these extra-partisan investments not encouraged, but, if they exist, they are often short-lived. Entering the League leads to breaking from previous links and associative activities, without it being ever explicitly demanded. Many of my informants were actively involved in organizations, sportive or Catholic for the most part, before joining the League. All of them abandoned their previous activities and the social network attached, once they became members of the League. On the one hand, belonging to the League does not lead to family or professional breakdowns, as seems to be the case in other countries with Extreme Right activists (Linden and Klandermans, 2007). All of those I have interviewed, even those who are part of the anti-immigrant patrols, are still invited to family reunions, none of them have been

224 fired because of their political activities, and none of the businessmen ever lost their clients on these grounds. On the other hand, none of them have pursued their previous collective commitments, even when non-political. The padanists do not enrol in sportive, charitable, or cultural organizations outside those of the party, and if they had done so before, they stop their activities once member of the League. This closure has important repercussions on the associative enrolment. Instead of enlarging their social basis by attracting a non-activist public, which had been their initial role, associations end up recruiting only within the League. This appears to be a peculiar situation. Whether in France or in Italy, the communist organizations had allowed the party to enlarge their recruitment base (Manoukian, 1968; Mischi, 2003). Even the French stigmatized has been able to utilize associations to increase its membership and create an advocacy platform. According to Valérie Lafont, “few are those who enter the party directly, especially among the youth”, without going through an “initiation process” provided by National Front’s satellite organizations (such as scouts, student associations, religious brotherhoods…) (Lafont, 2001:428). On the other hand, one exception aside, all my informants, including the youth (who have become section activists at the age of 16 or 17), entered directly into the party. The members I met were not socialized to leguism within student groups or associations, but within the party itself and were only then strongly incited to join the party’s satellite organizations. Far from “conquering civil society”, these padan organizations became the stronghold of the most radical members: convinced and openly xenophobic secessionists. Headquarters of the “ultras”, these associations are clearly part of the “movementist” era aiming at promoting the “revolutionary” project of an independent Padania, and the political actions which it implies. Their management and members are therefore, in majority, opposed to any compromise, including the alliance with Silvio Berlusconi. They consider the League as fundamentally a party of opposition aiming at mobilizing society for Padania’s independence, not a party which would govern Italy which is, to their eyes, an “occupying State”. The associations’ patent failure to carry out their hegemonic strategy was predictable. The League was, at that time, a minor party and labeled as favouring the the Independence of a Nation not claimed by anyone else. It would have been surprising that organizations officially affiliated to it would have attracted external sympathies. This limitation was quickly analyzed by the party itself. As proof, the citation of Max Weber displayed by on the party’s official website under the section “How associationism comes to be ”: “what is possible could not be achieved if the impossible was not constantly nagged. The role of politics does not lie within mediation and compromise, but in the capacity to hold a political project, resisting the most profound disillusions and responding to incomprehension with a proud reaction: it does not matter, let’s go on ”.11 I remained long startled with what seemed to be the impossible-to-achieve hegemonic strategy. Although difficult to prove, everything seems to show that Bossi had launched these associations knowing perfectly well that they would be invested by the more radical pro-independence members. Anticipating the deception of the “purists” in case of an alliance with Berlusconi (which he had already begun to discretely negotiate), Bossi could have well considered the ancillary organizations as a place dedicated to them. Whether intentional or not, they have indeed created a “niche” hosting the most part of the ultra-activist public, keeping them within the movement, preventing massive

11 Anonymous, 1999. No reference is given for this quote.

225 resignations and, more importantly, the defection of its members in favor of separate autonomist movements.12 If the ancillary organizations did not fulfill the “hegemonic mission” that the League had officially set for them, they have nonetheless played an important role in maintaining the activists within the party. Confronted to adverse political opportunities, the pro-independence activists saw in the padan organizations an opportunity to make the “metapolitical battle” for Independence move forward. It is only by taking this shelter role in consideration that the persistence of these associations (with closings and openings) can be fully understood, during the five years (2001-2006) that the League acceded to the government, and until today. This retreat offers four types of advantages: it enables “hard core” activists to keep a clear conscience (they are affiliated to padanist associations, and therefore have not betrayed Padania); they are able to safeguard the social links forged in the party; they don’t have to give up on the padanist movement style of participation they appreciate and continue to value the competences they have developed within it (more details on this will be given). The term “retreat” should not hint at the fact that organizations members are less active than section ones, on the contrary. The associative life is not, as with the National Front, a “softer form of political life”, a “lesser commitment” which gives to members an opportunity to step down from the hectic political life during specific moments of their lives (marriage, maternity, etc.) or political conjuncture (Lafont, 2001:427). The padan associations are groups of activists requesting sustained dedication. They are able to produce very dense activity schedules. Every time I went in the field, I had a choice, at the end of each week, to attend sportive, cultural, humanitarian or festive activities. Associations actively contribute in keeping the partisan collective alive. Hence, the dual structure of the leguist organization (power enterprise and movementist area) is efficient because it “protects” the activists from the demobilizing effects of the party’s institutionalization which began after its access to power, but also because it offers a wide variety of possibilities of political participation, including for people devoid of any precise competence or cultural capital.

2.2. A PARTISAN CULTURE OFFERING PARTICIPATION AND EVEN PROFESSIONALIZATION POSSIBILITIES TO UNSKILLED MEMBERS

Frédéric Sawicki and Johanna Siméant argue, in a stimulating article (Sawicki and Siméant, 2009), that it is through the organization of political parties and movements that their militant success or failure can be understood, by looking at the socially selective, or not, aspect of their activities. According to the authors, some organizations remain attractive because they manage, more than others, to offer activities that make little technical or ideological demand on those who wish to engage with them. The militant success of some organizations, such as the Peasant

12 Several autonomist groups were created after the League gave up on the project of Independence, hoping to collect membership from the disappointed “hard core” party members. Although they managed to highjack some of the leguist votes during the 2001 Legislative Elections, they never managed to structurally organize themselves and soon disappeared.

226 Confederation in France, is therefore linked with their capacity to design activities where any of their members can find their place (dismantling the McDonald in Millau, pulling out GMO plants, demonstrations, road blocks, etc.) (Bruneau, 2004). In short, these organizations are described as socially less exclusive than those whose activities (debate, expertise) require more specific competences, and which therefore are not able to open themselves to vaster possibilities of recruitment. Although I agree with this analysis, it seems to me that to approach the question of social exclusion produced by political organizations, which is a central question to understand the conditions of their militant success, requires to focus not only on the organization itself (types of activities, division and organization of militant labour), but also the partisan culture of the group analyzed (conceptions and beliefs which cement this division of labour). In the case of the Northern League, the activities proposed by padan associations do not appear, at first glance, to favour the attraction of activists devoid of significant technical competence or cultural capitals. The animation of a cultural association or a Radio programme, or making a speech during a session of the Padan Parliament in front of elected representatives or leaders of the party are, seemingly, activities which are socially selective. Yet, in the context of a partisan culture that belittles intellectuals, diplomas, the “official culture” and ideology, while promoting the “heart”, emotion and self-gift, this does not seem to be the case. To illustrate the possibilities of participation, and even of professionalization, which are offered through this particular partisan culture, the following retraces two members trajectories and one situation of observation at the Padan Parliament.

Antonella, from waitress to organizer of cultural circuits In her forties, living with a partner but with no children, Antonella comes from a large and popular family. She grew up in a Pre-Alpine village where the League is very influential. She discontinued her education at the age of 14 (official age limit at her time) and started to work as a waitress, which she still does today. Having “always” voted for the League, she became, encouraged by her brother-in-law, an active member in 1998, the year padan associations were created: “ since sections always need active people, I was interested. So I entered, and I began demonstrating, collecting signatures, and the usual stuff, you know. And then the associations appeared, and the secretary requested that each person of the section would take a reference association to promote it, and to develop it on the territory, and I related most to Beautiful Padania” 13 , association which offers cultural visits to create a sense of belonging amongst militant of the padan legacy. In fact, Antonella would have liked to work in tourism and “see the world”, but she never did. While listening to the party radio, Free Padania Radio, Antonella decided to contact the President of Beautiful Padania, Roberto14 , to bring to his notice a medieval

13 Interview with Antonella, Trezzo, February 2001. 14 Born in 1945 in Milan from an illegitimate union, Roberto started working as a photographer after High School. He then became teacher and theatre director. Once divorced, his career became unstable (import-export, communication). Politicized during the 1968 movement, he used to be close to extreme left extra-parliamentarian groups. After a brief membership with the PC (1975), he continued to vote for the Left, but left activism altogether. He voted for the League for the first time during the local Election of 1990, took membership in 1992 and became a party employee (“permanente”) in 1993 as President of the Cultural Commission of the party. During

227 village which could be worth a visit. Indeed, Roberto was at that time requesting members, on the partisan radio, to report on the “unknown treasures” of Padania. She therefore called him “ to explain where the place is and he told me: ok, fine, organize a visit. I told him: but I never organized anything in my life. He said: so what?” Roberto’s indifference to Antonella’s diplomas or professional experience, her being neither a tourist professional nor an expert of fine arts, has had a liberating effect on her, the same which I observed with other members coming from poorer backgrounds. The disdain within the League for the legitimate culture milieu leads to a strong isolation of the partisan scene, which has become self-referential; but the little consideration given to the activists’ personal capital, especially when it comes to education, can also lift the complexes of those who have none. It enabled Antonella, a waitress, to become an organizer of cultural visits and a radio animator. Antonella therefore organized her first tour. Three years later, she still seemed surprised that “ everything had gone well. Quite a few people came, and they liked it”. Encouraged by Roberto, she then was put in charge of visits for the Lombardy section of the League, without giving up on her full time job as a waitress, knowing that Beautiful Padania could not give compensation for her work. She organized 12 visits in 1999, 20 in 2000 and 24 in 2001 (comprizing each time of an itinerary, a restaurant and a printed presentation). She also started to speak on the party radio once a week to advertise for the visits. Yet, despite Roberto’s trust, Antonella cannot shake off the feeling of being culturally unworthy, especially when she needs to talk on the radio (“ from time to time, I stammer and my diction is not good” ), and compares herself to other members of the organization with depreciating eyes: “ Mariella mostly organizes meetings where they speak of culture and things like that; but I couldn’t start doing conferences if I wanted to. Mariella, yes, she even wrote a book. She’s a writer, a person of culture. I consider myself a little bit like the arm, the one that does things, but does not put much brain into it, but… (left in suspense)” . Antonella is not a stranger to the feeling of cultural indignity which, according to Bernard Pudal, strikes any working class activists acceding to political responsibilities (Pudal, 1989:139- 199). To overcome her sense of inadequacy, Antonella needs to prepare herself thoroughly. In order to prepare the presentation of the tour to be distributed to the participants, she goes to the library: “ we are soon going to the Bagolino carnival, so I go to the library to find out what they do there. After that, I make a summary, I choose photographs, I make photocopies and that is how I prepare the information brochure ”. But Antonella also looks at the political aspects. When choosing a destination, she tries to “ favour places which are least known, because the aim of the association is to make unknown things known to the public, which is not yet politically aware ”. Antonella understands perfectly that the aim is to construct a patrimony for Padania, which requires investing in what is not already Italianized. In order to constantly make a link between a monument, or a specific locality, and padanity, Antonella uses the brochures that she writes and the radio shows on which she describes the circuit. She therefore carries out an eminently political work of “writing and representation” indicating to the participants, before they are on the site, “what needs to be seen and felt” (Thiesse, 1999:246). According to Daniel Gaxie, by mobilizing agents belonging to deprived categories, partisan organizations can contribute to the socialization and political authorization (process by which a person ends up feeling authorized to have political my field work, he was a simple permanente , but very active as President of Beautiful Padania.

228 opinions) of its members, and the compensation, for some of them, of the exclusion effects of education dominated politicization processes (Gaxie, 1978; Mauger, 1990). This process of political authorization has worked well with Antonella who has accomplished, for the party, a political and cultural work that she is proud of. It is easily understandable how such a process produced a strong link between Antonella and the party.

A truck driver in the Padan Parliament Gathering once a month and animated by activists, the Padan Parliament that was active at the time of my fieldwork 15 was part of a strategy which I named “let us do as if”, aping the Italian State (through a Padan Government or competitions for Miss Padania) and to “do as if” Padania already existed. The Parliament’s work is divided in two: the different commissions (“constitutional and legal affairs”, “environment”, “culture, school and university”, “economy”, “external affairs”, “family and society”, “interior and immigration”, “labor”, “youth”, “health”, “sport”) get together in the morning to prepare the texts; in the afternoon, their motions are presented by rapporteurs to the delegates and voted under close watch of the “officials”. The day of my visit (18 th March 2000), the latter were: the Padan Parliament President Francesco Speroni (European Parliamentarian who came from Brussels for the occasion), Mario Borghezio and Renata Galanti (a party staff in charge of the associative sector of the League). The exercise imposed to the rapporteurs shows that the Padan Parliament can play the role of a true “political school”, especially for those activists devoid of any cultural capital: they can learn how to speak in public, how to shape arguments and how to refer to the existing legislation. The rapporteurs work at home and come to the meeting with a written paper, which implies that they have learned how to consult law texts and how to lay on paper their thoughts. But the Padan Parliament has also another attribute: it personifies, as the following example will show, the ideal of politics made by “people” rather than by professionals. The “interior and immigration” commission was presenting, on the day of my visit, a text on long distance truck driving regulations, and aiming at improving safety on the roads. On such a topic, one would expect a very technical discussion. Yet, instead of hearing a speech full of references to the Labour Code and figures on transport, as it would have been the case at the Italian Parliament, the “Padan Parliamentarians” listened to a truck driver, himself rapporteur of the law project, describing the harshness of his profession. According to the “Padan Parliamentarian”, visibly emotional about talking on the microphone in front of “officials” and a large public (around 200 people), the already difficult working conditions of truck drivers had considerably declined since the “extra-communitarians” had become part of the trade. By “breaking prices”, the “immigrants” have diminished the strength of the drivers in front of their employers. The latter thereby imposed longer working hours, which meant insufficient time to rest. Hence, according to this member of the Padan Truckers Association, this was the root cause of road safety problems. The foreseen solution was to regulate the trade so as to exclude “extra-communitarians” from the job. Therefore, technical in appearance only, this motion rapidly became a plea, emotionally charged, against immigration. It appears that, even for the more neutral issues (such as the truck driving profession), the “padan style” politics is not equivalent, in content and in language, to that of “Rome”. At the “Padan Parliament”,

15 Since 1995, several forms of “” were put in place, whether animated by elected representatives, or directly by members.

229 only those entirely immerged in a situation have legitimacy to talk about it (rather than professional politicians) and the language used is charged with emotions (instead of trying to be objective and technical, as “real” Parliamentarians would). The League therefore bestows to its activists the hope of a world where truckers can express themselves, be heard and respected. It is easy to see how such a space not only provides the opportunity for its members to participate and develop their competences, but also to re-enchant partisan politics.

Igor, from being a failing student to a partisan journalist. The partisan apparatus developed by the party to support the claim for independence, despite being largely fed by volunteers such as Antonella or the truck driver of the Parliament, also created a number of permanent posts (exact figures cannot be obtained) which were given to the most devoted activists, including those devoid of personal capital (especially cultural capital), some of which in sectors which would normally require strong technical competencies, such as journalism. Almost all leguists staff are promoted activists, irrespective of the task they have been assigned. The administrative, intellectual and technical posts are occupied by members devoting an important part of their time to political activities, instead of the task they are being paid for. Party headquarters doorkeeper, secretary or La Padania journalist posts are often given to activists to ensure that they have the means to devote most of their time to political activities. The League has not professionalized its recruitment. It seldom hires non-militant specialists and, if so, only because of a lack of better alternatives. As an example, the journalists at La Padania were in majority professionals when the partisan daily began to be published in 1997. But these professional journalists have, since then, been progressively replaced by activists who learned journalism “by doing” and do not carry any diplomas which would normally lead to such a profession (they are generally High School diploma holders). The League does not abide by the “modernizing” ideology which, to take a French example, the Socialist Party (PS) has adopted. There, it has become customary to establish a “job profile” for any advertized post. Some even require a job interview (Aldrin and Barboni, 2009; Sawicki and Lenoir, 2006). These practices are unknown at the League, which still considers permanent posting as a “bonus” given to the most devoted activists, their loyalty being of more worth than their technical skills. This is how Igor, party member since the age of 17, very active in the associative branch of the party’s youth sector (25 years at the time of the interview), has been offered a journalist job at the party’s daily newspaper, first as a freelance, and then as a permanent employee. At the time, Igor had given up on his studies, which he had never really started, since he was a full time activist since the age of 18. His job at La Padania not only gave him a salary, but also the ability to continue active militancy. His salary is not that of a journalist, but Igor does not complain, especially considering he could never pretend to such a level of employment with his level of education. In fact, he is considerably less educated than those of his colleagues at La Padania who were recruited outside the militant network. Employment depending directly on the party which perceives it as a vocation (employees have to devote all their time to “the cause”), the small scale of the pay is not seen as unjust. These low salaries (a partisan staff used to be paid 900 Euros at the time of my field work) explain, in part, that the permanents of the League are particularly young and often with no family, if not living with their parents (like Igor). Despite the small remuneration and the intense commitment requested, the greatest

230 aspiration of the padanists is not to access a highly paid elective post (as is the case for Deputies of regional governments), but to climb the internal ladder. For activists such as Igor, who “ does not like party politics very much ”, the aim is not to get elected, but to remain “ in the movement ” where “ it is about defending liberty. So, it is not to know whether enterprises should be privatized or not, or if we need more highways. Here, the line is that there is an entire people to liberate from oppression, so the motivations are much stronger ”.16 In Igor’s case, as in many others, the League promotes members to posts for which they do not have the required capitals: Igor, son of a semi-wholesaler in mineral water and holding an A level diploma without any professional experience, did not have a chance to become a journalist. Yet, this professionalization does not lead to the activist’s individual emancipation, but to his captivity. Outside the League, Igor cannot make his acquired competencies recognized. Symptomatically, he remains, today, at the same post. “Recycling” him is impossible. His ascension, which was solely founded on his militant capital (Matonti and Poupeau, 2004), entirely depends on the party which can, if needed, demean him. It is therefore understandable that the leguist staff, truly underpaid, is particularly faithful to the party.

3. CONCLUSION

The militant success of the League, which not only gave it a social base, but also legitimacy in the political game, is therefore based on two factors. The first is of a cultural order: by promoting a partisan culture based on “the heart” and devotion, despising the legitimate culture’s model and giving only marginal value to education and diplomas, the League opens up new possibilities of participation, or even professionalization, to activists devoid of technical competencies a priori required for the activities in which they engage themselves (cultural activities, journalism, etc.). The League thus retains the loyalty of its members, and even more so of its staff which have been both “promoted” and enslaved, due to the impossible transfer of their leguist militant capital in other spheres. The other is organizational: by ensuring cohabitation of “the party” and “the movement”, the League is able to access power (and associated resources), while keeping its activists who see the League as an opposition party by essence, if not a revolutionary movement. The party offers these activists some of the benefits derived from being in power. In fact, the padan apparatus is very costly to sustain, and the party was almost bankrupt before recovering power by allying with Berlusconi (the La Padania newspaper almost closed down). Therefore, the party’s professionalization does not reduce the weight of militancy. On the contrary, the public funds obtained have also been used to support the partisan apparatus. In return, the party “base”, which considers the organization as a movement, can also serve the “Government League”. It is often being used to threaten its Rightwing allies: if they do not support the federalist and anti-immigration policies of the League, then who can prevent this “base” from giving way to their secessionist aspirations? The equilibrium is nonetheless fragile. It requires some commitments from the leguist leaders, such as going to acclaim the padan football team, or the newly elected

16 Inteview with Igor, Milan, November 2000.

231 Miss Padania, while holding office as Interior or Reform ministers. They end up taking positions difficult to understand unless considering their role as representatives of the “Government League”: they refuse to take part in the National Day official ceremonies, do not support the Italian football team during the world championships, or refuse to subsidize the 150 years commemoration of Italy’s merger. It also requires to put in place unifying rituals, especially during the big meetings taking place twice a year, in Pontida and Venice respectively (commemorating the virtual independence of Padania) where the party, including elected representatives, reverts to the popular language of the “Battle League” putting the “Padanist World” to the forefront. The ministers’ and elected representatives’ thunderous speeches (threats of secession, virulent criticism of allies…), to which the press systematically gives a front cover, are generally denied the next day. But the activists “know” that their elected members “had to” withdraw their statements for strategic reasons, but that they had spoken what they truly had at heart during the meeting. This equilibrium between a governmental party and a “revolutionary” movement is increasingly difficult to keep as the party accumulates years of being in power (with its allies, it has governed the country between 2001 and 2006, and again since 2008). But, to this day, it still seems to be holding.

REFERENCES

Aldrin, Ph. and T. Barboni (2009), “Ce que la professionnalisation de la politique fait aux militants. L’identité du permanent socialiste, du militant professionnel au salarié encarté”, in M. Surdez, M. Voegtli and B. Voutat (eds), Identifier- s’identifier , Lausanne, Antipodes:203-224. Anonymous (1999), “Perché nasce l’Associazionismo ?”, Lega Nord, s.l. Avanza, M. (2002), Les “purs et durs de Padanie ”. Ethnographie du militantisme nationaliste à la Ligue du Nord, Italie (1999-2002), thèse pour le doctorat en sociologie de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales de Paris. Biorcio, R. (1997), La Padania promessa. La storia, le idee e la logica d’azione della Lega Nord , Milano, Il Saggiatore. Biorcio, R. (2003), Sociologia politica. Partiti, movimenti sociali e participazione , Bologna, Il Mulino. Bruneau, I. (2004), “La Confédération paysanne et le ‘mouvement altermondialisation’. L’international comme enjeu syndical”, Politix , 17 (68):111- 134. Ceccanti, S. (1993), “Nessuna falcidia : i giovani, le donne e l’elettorato razionale”, in G. Pasquino (ed.), Votare solo un candidato. Le conseguenze politiche della preferenza unica , Bologna, Il Mulino. Dalton, R. and M. Wattenberg (2000), Parties without Partisans. Political Change in Advanced Industrial Democraties , Oxford, Oxford University Press. Dechezelles, S. (2006), Comment peut-on être militant ? Sociologie des cultures partisanes et des (dés)engagements. Les jeunes militants d’Alleanza Nazionale, Lega Nord et Forza Italia face au pouvoir , thèse pour le doctorat en sciences politiques, Université de Bordeaux IV. della Porta, D. (2001), I partiti politici , Bologna, Il Mulino. Diamanti, I. (1993), La Lega. Geografia, storia e sociologia di un nuovo soggetto politico , Roma, Donzelli. Diamanti, I. (2003), Bianco, rosso, verde… e azzurro. Mappe e colori dell’Italia

232 politica , Bologna, Il Mulino. Gaxie, D. (1978), Le cens caché. Inégalités culturelles et ségrégation politique , Paris, Seuil. Gómez-Reino Cachafeiro, M. (2002), Ethnicity and Nationalism in Italian Politics. Inventing the Padania: Lega Nord and the Northern Question , Aldershot, Ashgate. Hirschmann, A. (1970), Exit, Voice and Loyalty , Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University Press. Ignazi, P., L. Bardi and O. Massari (2010), “Party Organisational Change in Italy (1991-2006)”, Modern Italy , 15 (2):197-216. Ion, J. (1997), La fin des militants ?, Paris, L’Atelier. Ion, J., S, Franguidakis and P. Viot (2005), Militer aujourd’hui , Paris, Autrement. Katz, R. and P. Mair (1993), “The Evolution of Party Organizations in Europe: Three Facets of Party Organizations”, The American Review of Politics , 14:593-617. Lafont, V. (2001), “Lien politique et lien social : la vie associative et l’engagement au Front National”, in C. Andrieu, G. Le Bégues and D. Tartakowski (eds), Associations et champ politique , Paris, Publications de la Sorbonne:419-437. Linden, A. and B. Klandermans (2007), “Revolutionaries, Wanderers, Converts, and Compliants: Life Histories of Extreme Right Activists”, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography , 36 (2):184-201. Manoukian, A. (ed) (1968), La presenza sociale del PCI e della DC , Bologna, Il Mulino. Matonti, F. and F. Poupeau (2004), “Le capital militant. Essai de définition”, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales , 5 (155):4-11. Mauger, G. (1990), “Ascension sociale, promotion culturelle et militantisme. Une étude de cas”, Sociétés contemporaines , 3 (3) :117-129. Mischi, J. (2003), “Travail partisan et sociabilités populaires. Observations localisées de la politisation communiste”, Politix , 16 (63):91-119. Muxel, A. and M. Cacouault (eds) (2001), Les jeunes d’Europe du Sud et la politique. Une enquête comparative France, Italie, Espagne , Paris, L’Harmattan. Pudal, B. (1989), Prendre parti. Pour une sociologie historique du PCF , Paris, Presses de la FNSP:139-199. Raniolon, F. (2002), La partecipazione politica , Bologna, Il Mulino. Sawicki, F. and R. Lenoir (2006), La société des socialistes. Le PS aujourd’hui , Bellecombe, Editions du Croquant. Sawicki, F. and J. Siméant (2009), “Décloisonner la sociologie de l’engagement militant. Note critique sur quelques tendances récentes des travaux français”, Sociologie du travail , 51 (1):97-125. Thiesse, A.-M. (1999), La création des identités nationales. Europe 18 ème -20 ème siècles , Paris, Le Seuil. Tilly, C. (1978), From Mobilization to Revolution , Reading (Mass.), Addison-Wesley. Weber, M. (1971), Économie et Société , vol. 1, Paris, Plon.

233

CENTRIFUGAL REGIONALISM AND POLITICAL MOBILIZATION IN BELGIUM

Jeroen Van Laer

University of Antwerp, Department of Political Sciences, Media, Movements & Politics (M2P) Research Group

1. INTRODUCTION

Belgium is often depicted as a “divided society” with two regions, a Flemish and a Walloon, having a difficult “marriage of convenience”, at the same time bound to each other as well as drifting further away both politically, economically, and culturally. In Belgium the ongoing process of further regionalization has led to several mobilizations where people take to the streets either to defend strong regional claims, either to defend the current federal system and interregional solidarity. The process of (centrifugal) regionalism in Flanders has a longstanding history of political mobilization. The Flemish Movement goes back to the late 19 th century, originally struggling against the political, economic and cultural dominance of the francophone elite, but later on – and still today – also questioning the mere existence of a unitary Belgian state. On the other hand, dynamics of centrifugal regionalism certainly also have an impact on the dynamics of political mobilization itself and the Belgian social movement sector at large. With two separate political and cultural “spaces” in Belgium, the social movement space is also clearly divided in a Flemish part and a Walloon part. The shift from a national social movement industry, using Zald and McCarthy’s (1987) term, towards two regional social movement industries was especially encouraged in the late ‘70s with the regionalization of the grant system for socio-cultural organizations and associations. This was very clear in the peace movement sector where peace organizations like Pax Christi or the BUVV/BUPD created a Flemish and a Walloon chapter so that both parts could claim money in their respective region. 1 Although it is still common for social movement activists from both Flanders as well as Wallonia to join forces, to mobilize for a common cause, and to organize massive protest demonstrations in the streets of Brussels, capital of Belgium, still dynamics of regionalization somehow seem to divide the protesting public in a Walloon and Flemish part. For instance, after the massive demonstrations against the imminent war in Iraq in 2003 some people stated that the Walloon part of the

1 Personal interview with Georges Spriet, Vrede vzw, 2/06/2008 235

mobilization was much more radical and left-wing than the Flemish attendees. And more recently, when Flemish and Walloon environmental groups organized their national demonstration against climate change, a similar sound was raised with the Walloon organizations much more inclined to use more direct forms of protest action while the Flemish groups saw more merit in lobbying strategies or small scale forms of action. 2 In this contribution we will look at “centrifugal regionalism” in the context of political protest mobilization, making a systematic comparison of individual protesters from two different angles. In the context of political mobilization one can look at dynamics of centrifugal regionalism as a political movement or as a process having consequences for social movements that operate in these regions. More specifically we are interested in how dynamics of centrifugal regionalism result in different mobilizing constituencies. A “regional divide” can be present between demonstrating constituencies as regionalism becomes a cause in itself (e.g. a Flemish versus a Belgicist March), or it can be present among a population of demonstrators protesting for the same issue (e.g. Flemish and Walloon peace activists marching together in a national demonstration to protest against an imminent war in Iraq). In order to test whether dynamics of centrifugal regionalism also have a consequence for mobilization dynamics at the individual level, we will use two sets of individual level data collected among actual protest participants that took part in several demonstrations in Belgium between February 2006 and December 2007. 3 A first set contains two specific demonstrations with specific “regionalist” claims: a first one was organized in the run-up to the Belgian federal elections in 2007 claiming Flemish independence (the Flemish March). The second one was organized in the aftermath of the difficult governmental negotiations between Flemish and Walloon coalition partners in that same year. Several thousands of people took to the streets to defend the unity and interregional solidarity of the Belgian federal state (March for Unity). A second set contains national demonstrations where activist from Flanders as well as Wallonia joined forces: an antiwar demonstration, a climate change demonstration, two union mobilizations (VW Vorst and Purchasing Power), and a silent march in memory of a youngster that was killed during a mug. With the first set of demonstrations we want to find an answer for the question whether protest mobilization is similar or different for people pursuing further regionalization versus those people who are reluctant to further regionalization. With the second dataset we are interested in the way the Belgian “divided society” is also reflected in a distinct Flemish and Walloon mobilizing constituency pursuing the same cause, but each with its own mobilizing capacities and protest characteristics. Here the question is: Is protest mobilization similar or different for Flemish versus Walloon protest participants in a particular protest demonstration? This contribution is in the first place empirical and explorative. By closely looking at the different dynamics on the individual level we can learn much about the impact of processes of regionalization in civil society. Looking at people who participated in the Flemish March versus those who participated in the March for Unity can learn us a lot about the Flemish Movement and the Belgian Movement (if one can speak of a movement). Which kinds of people are committed to these movements? Their

2 Personal interview with spokesperson Climate Change demonstration, 24/11/2008 3 A full description of each demonstration is presented in the methodological section of this article 236

claims are diametrically opposing each other, but they still might share similar characteristics in terms of socio-demographics or how they were mobilized. In a similar vein we can learn a lot about a possible regional divide present among participants in the same demonstration. Do Flemish and Walloon participants, besides living on a different side of the language border, still share the same characteristics in socio-demographics terms or in how and why they were mobilized? In more general terms both comparisons will learn us a lot about the extent to which regional tendencies are indeed dividing Belgian civil society.

2. METHODS AND DATA

In order to analyze activist characteristics across diverse protest demonstrations, we distributed individual-level protest surveys at seven different demonstrations that took place in Belgium between February 2006 and December 2007. For each of these demonstrations a standardized sampling and interview procedure was followed as introduced by Favre and colleagues (1997) and further refined by Van Aelst and Walgrave (2001) and Walgrave and Verhulst (2008): two groups of interviewers, each directed by a fieldwork supervisor, hand out similar questionnaires asking protesters to fill in the survey at home and send it back with the prepaid envelope. The fieldwork supervisor selects the participants to be interviewed in order to reduce possible selection bias. A short face-to-face interview with each respondent makes it possible to check for response bias. Protest participants were picked out according to a carefully designed selection method following a probabilistic logic: a rough estimation of the number of attendants is made, which is then turned into an estimation of demonstration rows. In every nth -row, surveys are handed out to attendants alternatively in the middle of a row and at the left- and right-hand side of it. A first group of interviewers moves from the head of the demonstration towards the tail. A second group carries out the same procedure, but starting from the tail up to the front of the demonstration. This way every protester should have a similar “chance” to participate in the survey. This method proved to generate reliable results and only minimal response bias (the only bias is that older people are somewhat more willing to send the survey back). A more detailed description of this method, difficulties in the actual execution, and reliability tests can be found in Walgrave and Verhulst (2008). We provide descriptive figures and facts and response rates for each demonstration in Table 1. For our double comparisons we created two subsets of demonstrations. A first set contains two protest demonstrations. First, the Flemish March, a demonstration organized by a coalition of the Flemish nationalist movement and some right-wing nationalist student organizations. The principal claim of the Flemish March was Flemish independence and it attracted a lot of political far-right militants. Second, the March for Unity, a large mobilization that was organized about half a year later after government negotiations failed because of regionalist tensions between several coalition partners. On 18 November 2007 more than 35,000 people took to the streets in Brussels. Their principle claim: that political leaders should focus on the “real problems of people” instead of fighting about communitarian issues. A second set of demonstrations contains five demonstrations that can be further categorized in three distinct groups. First of all we have two demonstrations traditionally 237

labeled as “new social movements” covering issues like peace and antiwar (Antiwar— against the enduring occupation of Iraq), and environmental concerns (Climate Change). A second subset of demonstrations is typically labeled as “old social movements”, staged by long-established movement organizations. These are very typical trade union mobilizations organized around characteristic “bread and butter” issues. VW Vorst is about possible redundancies in a large car factory, and Purchasing Power mobilized against inflation and lowering purchasing power. Finally, we have a rather a-typical subset containing one demonstration and which is often labeled as “new emotional movement” (cf. Walgrave and Manssens, 2000; Walgrave and Verhulst, 2006). What is distinct about these kinds of protest events is that they are spontaneous and emotional with no clear movement organizations involved in staging the event, and without a clear- cut cleavage around which participants are mobilized, and hence attract a very diverse and broad group of citizens. They are typically organized following an act of random violence (cf. Million Mom March in the U.S.). The March for Joe was organized after the brutal killing of a youngster named Joe Van Holsbeeck. General response rates for these demonstrations are satisfying, with an average of 37 percent. Both sets, with demonstrations across movement types and demonstration issues, imply a great deal of contextual differences, which allows for an interesting test about centrifugal regionalist tendencies across different activist populations.

Table 1. Descriptive Figures and Response Rates for Each Demonstration Name Flemish March for Anti- Climate VW Vorst Purcha- March for March Unity war Change sing Joe Power Movement REGIONAL REGIONAL NSM NSM OSM OSM NEM type Time 6 May 2007 18 Nov 2007 19 Mar 8 Dec 2007 2 Dec 2006 15 Dec 23 Apr 2006 2007 2006 Place Rode Brussels Brussels Brussels Brussels Brussels Brussels Aim More Interregional Against Against Against Against Against autonomy for solidarity occupa- global restructu- inflation random Flemish tion Iraq warming ring VW and violence + region and climate car factory lowering in memo- change purchasing riam Joe power Van Holsbeeck # participants 1,500 35,000 5,000 3,000 15,000 20,000 80,000 # question- naires Distributed 554 515 915 548 878 398 1018 Completed 235 221 316 189 270 126 437 Response rate 42 43 34 34 31 32 43 (%) Note: NSM = New Social Movement; OSM = Old Social Movement; NEM = New Emotional Movement

238

3. ANALYSES AND RESULTS

In their classic study on political participation Verba, Schlozman and Brady (1995) argue that people participate because they can , because they are asked to , and because they want to. People can participate in collective action because, first of all, their present personal and professional demands do not hinder participation (e.g. students are more likely to participate because they generally have fewer demands on their time) (cf. McAdam, 1986), and second, they hold certain beliefs and political attitudes that make them more susceptible to participate (Downton and Wehr, 1997). This thus points to some kind of “attitudinal availability” next to a certain “biographical” availability. People are more likely to be asked to participate when they are embedded in a network of interpersonal relations. Network ties, both informal (with friends or family) as well as formal (with co-members in an organization) are consequently found to be a strong and robust predictor of protest participation (Snow et al. , 1980; Schussman and Soule, 2005). Finally, people participate because they want to . People participating in collective action, at least, are willing to do so (Klandermans, 1997). But their motivation, or the different motives and reasons why they do so, can be very diverse. According to Klandermans (2004:362-365) people can, broadly speaking, be motivated for collective action participation in three ways: for instrumental reasons, out of a sense of collective identity, and out of ideological reasons. Instrumental benefits are based on the rational cost- benefits calculation of future participation on both collective incentives (usually the common goal of a protest demonstration) as well as selective incentives (Olson, 1971; Wilson, 1973; Verba et al. , 1995; Klandermans 1997; 2004); the latter sometimes include material benefits, but often also purposive (a participation-intrinsic gratification by getting a sense of fulfilment of doing the right thing and promoting our beliefs), as well as social benefits (by, e.g., gaining respect and engaging in social interaction with others). Related to these social incentives is the concept of collective identity, which is, in a nutshell, determined by the participants’ feel of group belonging; in-group solidarity, as well as some sort of oppositional consciousness (“ us ” versus “ them ”) (Melucci, 1988; Gamson 1992; Klandermans, 1997). The third participation motive of ideology (Klandermans, 2004:363) is closely related to the concept of purposive incentives, since it refers to people “wanting to express one’s views” (Klandermans, 2004:365), out of a sense of moral indignation, which is to a large degree determined by an emotional response to an aggrieving situation, like feelings of injustice, anger, moral outrage, indignation, or confusion. It is this classic threefold distinction between who, how, and why that serves as the framework in this article to discuss the differences between first, Flemish versus Belgicist mobilizations, and second, Flemish versus Walloon protest participants. Since the aim of this article is explorative, we will only use simple crosstables to illustrate the different comparisons.

239

3.1. COMPARISON 1: CENTRIFUGAL REGIONALISM AS A POLITICAL MOVEMENT 4

Who?

Table 2. Socio-demographics (in %) Flemish March for

March Unity Sex Man 72 53 Woman 28 47 Total 100 100 Age <30 26 23 31-40 14 15,5 41-50 17 20 51-65 25 29 65+ 18 12,5 Total 100 100 Education No/primaries 3 4 Technical 15 8 secondary General 25 15 secondary Higher non- 28 28 university University 29 45 Total 100 100 Occupation Full time 40 50 Part time 6 9 Student 10,5 4 Unemployed 4 4,5 Retired 29 25 Husband/housew 2,5 4 ife Other/missing 8 3,5 Total 100 100 N 235 221 Note: missings for “occupation” are mostly people aged 65 or higher.

For this first comparison we make a distinction between on the hand the Flemish March and on the other hand the “Belgian” March for Unity. Following our threefold distinction

4 This section is based on previous work that can be found in Walgrave, Van Laer and Verhulst, 2008. 240

we first of all will look at the socio-demographic characteristics of the people participating in each of these events. At the Flemish March we find slightly more male, younger and lower educated demonstrators compared to the March for Unity (see Table 2). The Flemish March was a predominantly male demonstration whereas the March for unity contains much more equal proportions of men and women. Average age on the Flemish March is slightly younger, although there is a much larger cohort of seniors (+65) at the Flemish March compared to the March for Unity. Compared to the other demonstrations (see further), both demonstrations in this dataset contain on average a higher proportion of older people. The Flemish March was an initiative of a right-wing student organization (the KVHV) but they built on a longstanding history of the Flemish Movement, represented most prominently by the Vlaamse Volksbeweging (VVB – Flemish Popular Movement ), founded in 1956. This is also clearly reflected in the professional profile of the “Flemish” demonstrators amongst which we find relatively more students and retired people. The March for Unity, in fact the initiative of only one person, especially attracted higher educated people between 40 and 50 with a full time job. Yet, also in this demonstration there is a significant amount of retired people who wanted to show their solidarity with the Belgian state. One specific socio-demographic characteristic we want to focus a little bit more on is language (Table 3). Of course this feature is of very little relevance for the Flemish March, where – unsurprisingly – 100 percent was Dutch-speaking. At the March for Unity, however, some interesting results can be found. We asked our respondents both where they live as well as which language they speak at home. We find that the majority of “Belgian” demonstrators were French-speaking (65 percent); 21 percent was Dutch- speaking and 15 percent indicated to speak both languages equally well. Furthermore, it appeared that most participants came from Brussels itself, followed by Walloons and Flemings. This means that nearly one third of the participants at the March for Unity were French-speaking inhabitants of Brussels. There was thus only a limited amount of “pure” Flemings—Dutch-speaking and living in Flanders—present at the March for Unity. Yet, also the amount of “pure” Walloons—French-speaking and living in Wallonia—is in fact not that large. The majority of the participants has a more ambivalent statute: they speak a different language than we would expect according to the region where they live, they live in a dual-speaking area, or they speak two languages themselves (together 64 percent). One might say that these are the “real” Belgians, or, at least, the Belgians that want to take to the streets for Belgium. The low figure of Flemings at the March for Unity was, according to some people, the result of the very little attention for the March in the Flemish mass media. We will return to this in a next section.

Table 3. Language according to region for the March for Unity (in %) Dutch French Bilingual Total Region Brussels 6 31 7 44 Wallonia 3,5 24 4 32 Flanders 11,5 9 4 24 Total 21 64 15 100 N 107 325 74 506 Note: Figures represent total percentages

241

How? The way both demonstrations gained momentum differs fundamentally. As mentioned earlier, the Flemish March was principally organized by the KVHV and the VVB, both important organizations of the current Flemish movement. The March for Unity, on the contrary, was the initiative of one single housewife. Here there were no clear organizational connections or links, nor was there any previous experience in organizing a demonstration. In De Standaard of 16 November 2007, one of the main quality papers in Flanders, the following appeared: “The organizers repeat over and over again that this movement is ‘a-political and spontaneous’ ... ‘That is why things can get very confused sometimes here’, says one co-organizer Andy Vermaut, after a very chaotic press conference yesterday afternoon.” An analysis of the media coverage in the run-up to both demonstrations would probably reveal that the Flemish March only got minimal media attention, while the March for Unity was more widely covered, especially in the Walloon press. The question is whether this different organizational background, a structured movement on the one hand and a more informal happening with a lot of media support, is also translated in specific activist characteristics. Well, that certainly seems to be the case. Table 4 clearly illustrates the differences. First of all, we asked our respondents with whom they attended the demonstration. The Flemish March was for the largest part attended by people who were accompanied by co-members of an organization (53 percent). The Flemish March very much is a typical well-organized demonstration, comparable to the more frequent protest actions organized by trade unions. The March for Unity is almost the exact mirror image: people participating in this event were there with informal relations, family or friends (together 76 percent). Moreover, a lot of people were there alone (20 percent). In fact the March for Unity much resembles the White March of 1996 or the recent Silent March in 2006, both “new emotional events” (cf. Walgrave and Verhulst, 2006). Finally, both demonstrations are not rooted in a professional sphere: the amount of colleagues or co-students is negligible. A second indicator about the way the demonstration was organized and how the social movement behind it operates, is the information channel through which the participants heard about the event. Again we find very different patterns in both demonstrations (Table 5). Participants at the Flemish March principally heard about the demonstration via other members of an organization, while participants at the March for Unity were mostly informed via classic mass media (TV, newspapers, radio). Similar to both demonstrations is the relative importance of informal relations (friends, family) and especially new communication technologies (websites, email) to be informed about the demonstration. The Flemish March can be termed as a typical “closed” mobilization, that strongly benefited of a robust network of organizations, while the March for Unity has a diametrically opposed “open” mobilization pattern where mass media play a crucial role and organizations are almost completely absent or passed-by (cf. Walgrave and Klandermans, 2010). As mentioned, mass media attention for the March for Unity was lower in Flanders than in Wallonia. Still, a lot of Flemings present at the demonstration indicated that they heard about the event via mass media channels. However, compared to Walloons present at the March for Unity, Flemings also much more benefited from informal relations and online media channels for information about the demonstration (figures not shown in table).

242

Table 4. Protest company (in %) Flemish March for Are you at this demonstration…? March Unity Alone 10 20 With partner and/or family 19 45,5 With friends and/or acquaintances 17,5 31 With colleagues and/or co-students 0,5 1,5 With fellow members of an 53 2 organization Total 100 100 N 232 219 Note: originally respondents could check multiple answers. Here only the most formal category was used. Thus, if a respondent indicated both ‘partner’ and ‘members’, only the latter category was used.

Table 5. Information channel (multiple response) (in %) Flemish March March for Unity TV, newspapers, radio 6 64 Family, friends, colleagues 36 39 Websites, e-mail 59 56 Posters/flyers, ads 54 18 Members (magazines) of an 69 3 organization N 230 220 Note: Percentages are based on respondents.

Finally, we investigate whether these different mobilization patterns are also translated in different protest experiences. We expect that especially the Flemish protesters are, as a result of their strong organizational embeddedment, much more experienced with protesting than the “Belgian” demonstrators. Table 6 contains the results and confirms this expectation. Typical for the March for Unity is the large amount of first-times: 26 percent of the respondents reported that they participated in a collective action event for the very first time. The difference with the Flemish March is huge. Flemish marchers clearly have a lot more experience: almost half of them report that they previously participated more than 10 times in other demonstrations. At the March for Unity this is only 6 percent. In sum, in terms of mobilization and protest experience, thus the kind of social movement, there are fundamental differences between the Flemish March and the March for Unity.

243

Table 6. Protest experience (in %) Flemish March for

March Unity First time 6 26 2 - 5 times 31 54 6 - 10 times 16,5 14 More than 10 times 46,5 6 Total 100 100 N 231 218

Why? Why did both “Flemish” and “Belgian” demonstrators participate in a collective event? As mentioned, we can broadly speak of three general motivations: people participate for instrumental reasons, because of a collective identity, or because of expressive ideological reasons (Klandermans, 2004). In order to measure instrumentality we asked our respondents to what extent they believed the demonstration would be effective in attaining its goals. In both demonstrations opinions are divided. Participants of the Flemish March are mostly pessimistic: 52 percent reports that the demonstration will not help to reach its goals. Participants of the March for Unity are much more optimistic: more than a third believes the demonstration will help to change things. Yet, an equal proportion believes the opposite or is undecided on this matter. If so many Flemish protesters do not believe that their demonstration will lead to any instrumental changes, why do they then protest? Part of the answer can be found if we look at the next type of motivation: collective identity. A stunning 73 percent of the Flemish participants reports to identify strongly and even very strongly with the people present at the demonstration. Figures for the March for Unity are comparable, although slightly lower. This means that a lot of the people present at both demonstrations are there having strong feelings of in- group solidarity, of belongingness to a group of like-minded citizens. Participating in a demonstration for these people becomes a goal in itself: being together with other fellow members of an organization. In a similar vein, we see that a lot of people, both on the Flemish March and the March for Unity report strong emotional feelings (indignation, militancy, concern) towards the demonstrations. This too is an indication that both Flemish and Belgian demonstrators are in the first place there because they first of all want to show something, express their feelings and opinions, rather than effectively change something. The interesting thing is that, although the Flemish March and the March for Unity have diametrically opposing claims, the underlying motivational rationale for both protesting constituencies seems to be much alike.

244

Table 7. Motivations (in %) Flemish March for

March Unity Instrumentality Little success 52 32 Moderate 22 33 Very successful 26 35 Total 100 100 Collective Weak 4 10 identity Moderate 23 27 Strong 73 63 Total 100 100 Emotions Anger 4.6 2.7 (means on a scale Concern 4.9 5.2 of 1 to 7) Fear 2.1 3.5 Sadness 2.4 3.8 Indignation 5.3 4.3 Militancy 6.2 4.7 N 235 221

3.2. COMPARISON 2: CENTRIFUGAL REGIONALISM HAVING AN IMPACT ON SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

Just like for the previous comparison, we will now discuss the “who”, “how” and “why” of several different national demonstrations each time comparing Flemings with Walloons. The division between Flemings and Walloons we make here, however, is imperfect as we only can make a difference in terms of the language they speak. Unlike the previous two demonstrations we cannot make a distinction according to the place where one lives. However, language is probably the best proxy to distinguish between the two regions and the corresponding public, economic and political spheres. The general question we want to address in this section is whether the Flemings and Walloons, walking together in the same demonstration, also share similar features in terms of who they are, how they got to the demonstration, and why they participated. We will compare across three kinds of issues to increase the generalizability of the results: new social movement issues (e.g. antiwar and climate change), old social movement issues (e.g. massive redundancies and purchasing power), and new emotional issues (e.g. random violence). Before we turn to the results, we first present a Table with an overview of the distribution of Flemings and Walloons across the different demonstrations under study.

245

Table 8. Language across five demonstrations (in %) Climate VW Purchasing March Antiwar Total Change Vorst Power for Joe NSM NSM OSM OSM NEM Dutch 67 58 50 62 42 54 French 33 42 50 38 58 46 Total 100 100 100 100 100 100 N 316 189 272 124 437 1338

As Table 8 reveals, there is slight dominance of Dutch-speaking activists at the different national demonstrations we studied, except for the March for Joe (which was about a youngster killed in Brussels Central Station, hence probably mobilizing much in the capital itself) and the union mobilization VW Vorst, where equal proportions of French- speaking and Dutch-speaking activists were present.

Table 9. Socio-demographics (in %) Purcha- Climate VW March Antiwar sing Change Vorst for Joe Power NL FR NL FR NL FR NL FR NL FR Sex % male 61 47 56 58 66 65 64 77 41 43 Age mean 39.4 39.0 39.2 42.8 45.4 45.4 49.9 50.0 43.9 44.5 Education mean 6.9 6.9 7.0 7.1 5.4 5.9 5.8 5.7 6.4 6.2 Occupation Full time 36 32 46 47 74 69 68 66 42 49 Part time 18 12 16 20 10 4 8 6 14 9 Unemployed 6 9 8 9 4 10 7 4 8 8 Retired 15 16 8 11 8 10 7 19 15 15 Husband/ 1 1 2 1 1 2 4 2 6 6 housewife Student 21 28 16 8 2 2 0 0 14 10 Other/missing 3 2 4 4 1 3 6 3 1 3 Total 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 N

Who? First we will discuss some general socio-demographic features of Flemings and Walloons participating in various demonstrations. Generally, the demonstrations we covered are dominantly male, except for the March for Joe where on average slightly more women did participate. Union mobilizations are by far the most masculine ones, which seems logical taking into account the specific mobilization potential unions draw from. Differences between the Dutch-speaking and French-speaking community at these demonstrations are small, except for the Antiwar demonstration where significant more female French-speaking activist were present. In terms of age, education, and

246

occupational status there are no significant differences between the Flemings and Walloons.

How? Looking at how Flemings and Walloons were mobilized for the various demonstrations in our dataset, some more interesting results come up. Like in the first comparison we make a difference between the protest companion during the march, the information channel about the demonstration, and the experience one has with previous mobilizations. In terms of company, one interesting finding is that French-speaking activists are in most demonstrations more likely to show up alone, and far less in company with co-members of an organization. Also in terms of information channels, French-speaking activists were less likely to have heard about the demonstration through organizational channels. An exception is of course the March for Joe where organizations in general are completely absent. But, for the other demonstration, and especially the most organizationally embedded union mobilizations, these figures might indicate that mobilization dynamics in both regions slightly differ from each other. It seems that Walloon activist are less formally and organizationally embedded than Flemish activists. This might also explain why much more Flemings are present than Walloons (see Table 8), as networks and especially formal networks are crucial elements for successful mobilization attempts.

Table 10. Protest company (in %) Purcha- Are you at this Anti- Climate VW March sing demonstration…? war Change Vorst for Joe Power NL FR NL FR NL FR NL FR NL FR Alone 7 28 7 13 4 17 0 13 24 21 With partner and/or family 16 16 13 22 5 13 10 13 46 49 With friends and/or 19 23 17 27 2 6 4 6 24 22 acquaintances With colleagues and/or co- 3 4 6 6 5 21 5 13 3 4 students With fellow members of an 55 29 57 32 84 43 81 55 3 4 organization Total 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 N 211 102 108 79 135 136 77 47 182 252 Note: originally respondents could check multiple answers. Here only the most formal category was used. Thus, if a respondent indicated both ‘partner’ and ‘members’, only the latter category was used.

247

Table 11. Information channel (multiple response) (in %) Purcha- Anti- Climate VW March sing war Change Vorst for Joe Power NL FR NL FR NL FR NL FR NL FR TV, newspapers, radio 21 28 27 29 72 79 61 36 97 94 Family, friends, colleagues 39 40 45 35 31 31 44 21 21 24 Websites, e-mail 65 41 62 63 55 35 68 38 7 10 Posters/flyers, ads 44 40 50 25 33 28 60 23 2 2 Members (magazines) of an 61 39 71 59 74 43 81 83 3 6 organization N 207 100 109 78 134 136 77 47 183 250 Note: Percentages are based on respondents.

Finally, in terms of protest experience we do not find very large differences. We would expect, regarding the previous results, that French-speaking activists are less experienced than Flemings, but this is not the case, on the contrary. In all demonstrations, except for the March for Joe, most activists are very experienced.

Table 12. Protest experience (multiple response) (in %) Purcha- Anti- Climate VW March sing war Change Vorst for Joe Power NL FR NL FR NL FR NL FR NL FR First time 2 4 17 9 13 12 1 9 29 21 2 - 5 times 23 18 32 31 26 28 27 17 44 57 6 - 10 times 18 17 21 19 18 18 33 13 14 10 More than 10 57 61 30 41 43 42 39 61 13 12 times Total 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 N 211 103 108 79 133 137 77 47 182 253

Why? Finally we look at three motivational aspects that might differ for Flemish or Walloon activists. Both Dutch- as well as French speaking activists at new social movement demonstrations (antiwar and climate change), are not very instrumentally motivated: the majority believes that the demonstration will not help in changing something. At the old social movement demonstrations and the March for Joe, people are a bit more optimistic. Flemish activists at the two union mobilizations are the most optimistic, while this is the other way around at the March for Joe. In terms of collective identity, we only have data for three demonstrations. As among the people participating at the Flemish March and the March for Unity (Table 7), we see that most respondents moderately and even strongly identify with the other people present at the demonstration. In-group solidarity is an important motivator for people to participate in massive protest demonstrations. Finally, we have a list of several emotions. Generally, these figures point out that emotions play an important role. There are only limited differences between Dutch-speaking and

248

French-speaking activists. At the new social movement demonstrations Flemish activists seem to be a little more concerned, while French-speaking activists at the two union demonstrations experience a little more fear. In sum, there are no fundamental different patterns to be found in terms of motivations between Flemings and Walloon at various demonstrations.

Table 13. Motivations (in %) Purcha- Anti- Climate VW March sing war Change Vorst for Joe Power NL FR NL FR NL FR NL FR NL FR Instrumentali Little 64 72 53 59 46 47 34 41 42 30 ty success Moderate 26 22 32 25 18 36 29 26 25 31 Very 10 6 15 16 36 17 37 33 33 39 successful Total 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 Collective Weak 5 11 12 21 33 21 identity Moderate 44 49 39 32 45 40 Strong 51 40 49 47 22 39 Total 100 100 100 100 100 100 Emotions Anger 5.2 5.2 3.6 4.1 5.1 5.0 4.5 4.7 4.6 4.8 (means on a 5.6 4.7 6.2 5.4 6.2 6.1 6.3 5.8 5.7 5.6 Concern scale of 1 to 7) Fear 3.2 3.2 3.2 3.7 4.1 5.2 3.3 4.6 3.8 4.6 Sadness 3.7 4.4 3.6 4.2 3.9 5.2 4.6 5.0 5.0 6.3 Indignation 6.0 5.7 5.1 5.2 5.7 5.7 4.0 4.6 5.8 6.0 Militancy 5.0 4.9 5.6 5.7 5.7 5.7 6.1 6.5 4.3 4.9 N 208 100 107 76 131 135 76 46 182 251

4. CONCLUSION

Now let us return to the general question we started this contribution with: do dynamics of centrifugal regionalism have an impact on civil society? If we look at dynamics of centrifugal regionalism as a political movement, what kind of movements do we have and how do they differ from each other? For this question we systematically compared participants at a Flemish March, demanding more autonomy for the Flemish region, with participants at the March for Unity, a more spontaneous movement struggling for more interregional solidarity. Second, we wondered whether dynamics of centrifugal regionalism also had an effect on civil society itself. Therefore we systematically compared Flemish with Walloon activists in various national protest demonstrations. We explored whether the existing regionalization has also led to different mobilization dynamics and protesting constituencies in either the Flemish or the Walloon region.

249

Regarding the first comparison between the Flemish March and the March for Unity, we find important differences. The most compelling difference is probably the organizational embeddedness of the activists: the “Flemish” activists were mobilized via organizations and were also in company of co-members of an organization during the march. They had a lot of protest experience. Participants at the March for Unity on the other hand had no experience at all, were at the march with family and friends, and heard about the demonstration via mass media channels. The Flemish March therefore is very much alike to traditional trade union mobilizations, while the March for Unity has more similarities with the White Marches of 1996 and the March for Joe. In sum, we have two nice examples of, on the one hand, a typical “old” social movement — organized by strong organizations and mobilizing an experienced, male, more homogenous public — and a “new” movement, floating on spontaneous emotions and engagements, benefiting a lot of the mass media attention and with a much smaller organizational backbone. Both events are of course only a snapshot of the efforts and events that are organized by the Flemish Movement and “Belgian” movement (if we can speak indeed of a movement), but it seems that there is along this communitarian cleavage also a clear social distinction between both movements. Regarding the second comparison we generally found little differences between the Dutch-speaking and the French-speaking community. When social movements in Belgium mobilize nation-wide, thus when Flemish and Walloon organizations join forces and take to streets for a common goal or a set of common goals, both the Flemish and Walloon participants in these demonstrations are very much alike: they share similar socio-demographic features and they are motivated by the same motivational dynamics (collective identity, emotions). However, one important difference that was systematically found across the different demonstrations is that French-speaking activists are much less organizationally embedded than their Dutch-speaking counterparts. The results suggest that at the French-speaking side of the language border in Belgium, social movements seem to operate in a less formal and organizational manner than at the Dutch- speaking side. Also French-speaking activists, much more than their Dutch-speaking comrades, seem to join demonstrations alone. All this suggest that mobilization dynamics in Wallonia are indeed slightly different than in Flanders. In terms of mobilization dynamics we thus might speak—cautiously—of two different traditions.

REFERENCES

Downton, J. Jr. and P. Wehr (1997), The Persistent Activist: How Peace Commitment Develops and Survives , Boulder, CO & London , Westview. Favre, P., O. Fillieule and N. Mayer (1997), “La fin d'une étrange lacune de la sociologie des mobilisations. l'étude par sondage des manifestants: fondaments théoriques et solutions techniques”, Revue française de science politique, 47 (1):3-28. Gamson, W. A. (1992), Talking Politics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Klandermans, B. (1997), The Social Psychology of Protest, Oxford, Blackwell Publishers. Klandermans, B. (2004), “The Demand and Supply of Participation: Social-Psychological Correlates of Participation in Social Movements”, in D. Snow, S. A. Soule and H.

250

Kriesi (eds), The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, Oxford, Blackwell Publishers:360-379. McAdam, D. (1986), “Recruitment to High-Risk Activism: The Case of Freedom Summer”, American Journal of Sociology, 92 (1):64-90. Melucci, A. (1988), “Getting Involved. Identity and Mobilization in Social Movements”, in B. Klandermans, H. Kriesi and S. Tarrow (eds), From Structure to Action: Comparing Social Movement Research Across Cultures, Greenwich, JAI Press:329-348. Olson, M. J. (1971), The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. Schussman, A. and S. A. Soule (2005), “Process and Protest: Accounting for Individual Protest Participation”, Social Forces, 84 (2):1083-1108. Snow, D. A., L. A. Zurcher and S. Ekland-Olson (1980), “Social Networks and Social Movements: a Microstructural Approach to Differential Recruitment”, American Sociological Review, 45 (5):787-801. Van Aelst, P. and S. Walgrave (2001), “Who Is that (Wo)man in the Street? From the Normalisation of Protest to the Normalisation of the Protester”, European Journal of Political Research, 39 (4):461-486. Verba, S., K. L. Schlozman and H. Brady (1995) Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics , Cambridge, MA , Harvard University Press. Walgrave, S. and B. Klandermans (2010), “Open and Closed Mobilization Patterns. The Role of Channels and Ties”, in S. Walgrave and D. Rucht (eds), Protest Politics. Demonstrations against the War on Iraq in the US and Western Europe, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press. Walgrave, S. and J. Manssens (2000), “The Making of the White March: the Mass Media as a Mobilizing Alternative to Movement Organisations”, Mobilization: An International Journal, 5 (2):217-239. Walgrave, S., J. Van Laer and J. Verhulst (2008), “‘'Vlaamse’ en ‘Belgische’ betogers onder de loep”, Samenleving en Politiek, 15 (2): 27-35. Walgrave, S. and J. Verhulst (2006), “Towards ‘New Emotional Movements’? A Comparative Exploration into a Specific Movement Type”, Social Movement Studies, 5 (3):275-304. Walgrave, S. and J. Verhulst (2008), Protest Surveying. Testing the Feasibility and Reliability of an Innovative Methodological Approach to Political Protest , University of Antwerp, Media, Movements & Politics research group (M²P). Wilson, J. (1973), Introduction to Social Movements , New York , Basic Books. Zald, M. N. and J. D. McCarthy (1987), Social Movements in an Organizational Society , New Brunswick, NJ , Transaction.

251

BEYOND THE TERRITORY: LOCAL MOBILIZATIONS IN NORTHERN ITALY AGAINST THE HSRL IN VAL DI SUSA AND THE US BASE IN VICENZA

Gianni Piazza

University of Catania, Faculty of Political Science

1. NEW LOCAL MOBILIZATIONS: NIMBY, LULU, NOPE?

In the last two decades, new local mobilizations have emerged in Italy, in the northern part as in the rest of the country. They are promoted by local communities and citizens’ committees (della Porta, 2004) opposing - by means of forms of protest - public works and projects, that they consider damaging for their territories and quality of life (environment, health, security, etc.). These types of mobilizations are usually labeled by media, politicians and part of scientific literature as affected by the “Nimby syndrome” (Not In My Back Yard), that is associated with a conservative behavior and egotistical resistance to social change. They are interpreted as the refusal of few inhabitants to pay the necessary costs (in terms of pollution, security, etc.) to attain public goods (Bobbio, 1999; Buso, 1996): they would not want infrastructures, landfills, incinerators, military bases, etc., in their territory, but would be indifferent if these large-scale public works were made somewhere else; in short, they would say: “let them wherever you want, but not in my house”. In this picture, citizens who protest are accused to counterpoint their selfish, local and particular interest to the general interest and the common good, without proposing alternative solutions. This interpretation of the Nimby syndrome has been contested by activists and other social and political scientists, observing that “Nimbyist discourses tend to place residents in an illegitimate position” (Jobert 1998:73). In fact they prefer to define these phenomena using the acronym LULU to indicate conflicts related to locally unwanted land use (Popper, 1981; Gould et al., 1996). Some of these scholars go beyond framing these local mobilizations as spaces for the exercise of active citizenship, because “their horizon is not always particularistic” (Bobbio, 1999:198); in fact, local committees are seen as groups of citizen workers that defend the quality of life within their community (Gould et al., 1996:4) and appeal to universal values (Williams and Matheny, 1995:183). Empirical research on local conflicts in Italian cities has indeed indicated a complex reality, with citizens’ committees characterized by a diverse capacity or will to present their particular claims within a more comprehensive framework (della Porta, 2004:19).

253

Local groups of citizens that oppose an unwanted use of territory try to overcome the stigmatizing Nimby label (Gordon and Jasper, 1996:159), developing a rhetoric that distances them from accusations of particularism, shifting from a local to a more global discourse. Faced with those who accuse them of protesting for individual interest (rather than the common good) they build a NOPE (Not On the Planet Earth) discourse, affirming not to want disputed works “neither in their own, nor in any other backyard” of the earth, because they consider those infrastructures as damaging the common good (Trom, 1999). Moreover, they often define their protest through a procedural rhetoric that defends their action as opposition to the abuse of power and lack of transparency in public decision-making, as well as the collusive alliance between government and entrepreneurial interests (Gordon and Jasper, 1996). Therefore, many of these conflicts are only seemingly localized and/or environmentalist; large infrastructures, the protesting local populations also consider polluting plants, bases and military installations to be socially and economically harmful and not only for the environment and health; protest actors are not only local inhabitants and, moreover, they intertwine themselves with other non local players, building networks that go beyond territorial dimension and showing propositional and not just reactive capacity. The reach of mobilizations begins extra-local and global in some cases. Thus, these mobilizations originate locally, but then cross other territories and are increasingly intertwined with other similar protests and with Global Justice and No War Movements, claiming alternative solutions and alternative model of development (della Porta and Piazza, 2008a; 2008b). In this sense, they became “trans-territorial” mobilizations (Piazza, 2008; 2009). My contribution will be focused on the two best-known local “trans-territorial” mobilizations in Northern Italy: the protest campaign against the construction of a 57 km tunnel, as a part of TAV ( Treno Alta Velocità – High Speed Rail Line) in Val di Susa, in Piedmont (North-West) close to the border with France; and the mobilization against the extension of the US military base of Camp Ederle to the Dal Molin airport in Vicenza (Veneto, North-East). It is based on the updating of my previous researches regarding No Tav protest (della Porta and Piazza, 2008a; 2008b), and the mobilization in Vicenza (Piazza, 2009). The empirical cases have been reconstructed through the analysis of the daily press, documents and websites produced by the activists as sources. In the following pages, the two Lulu mobilizations will be briefly reported, describing their chronological development, the actors involved, their claims and repertoires of action. Then, after shortly discussing Nimby interpretation and the local and cross-territorial protest networks, my attention will be focused on their framing processes (della Porta and Diani, 2006: chap. 3); these processes are conceived here not only as being important strategic instruments for mobilization, but also as mechanisms of fundamental importance in the construction of the identity of those who protest (della Porta and Piazza, 2008b). In fact, I shall highlight the definition of the identity of protesters and their definition of what is at stake, stressing the emergence of a new conception of territory and local community, very different from that of traditional ethno- regional and local parties and movements.

254

2. NO TAV MOBILIZATION IN VAL DI SUSA

The No Tav protest campaign, is a long lasting mobilization. The protest began when the first information on the decision to build a High Speed Rail Line between Turin, in Piedmont, and Lyon in France, became public. In 1990, concurrently with the foundation of a Committee to promote the project, a Coordination of environmental associations started to criticize it. In fact, the project foresaw the construction of a 57 km tunnel under the between Val di Susa and the border with France, and the ecologist groups were worried about the negative impact on the environment of the valley and the health of the citizens, due to the risks related to soil erosion and the presence of asbestos powder inside the mountain to be drilled. Thus began a very long phase of incubation of the protest, marked by initiatives by the environmental groups Habitat to inform the affected population by organizing weekly meetings involving citizens of Val di Susa, ecologist activists and counter-experts. Almost immediately, the mobilization from below found support in the local institutions - from the mayors of the involved towns to the Comunità Montana (mountain community) of the lower Val di Susa (della Porta and Piazza, 2008b:13-15). It is above all from 2000 that the mobilization grew, in the first place in the valley. From 2003, No Tav committees mobilized the local community, involving all the different social actors present in the valley. If the No Tav actions remained for a long time mainly in the valley and concentrated on the theme of defence of the environment and health, already in 2000 there were consolidated contacts with collective actors mobilized on different themes, as well as with actors external to the valley. First of all, new groups, beyond those of local residents and environmental associations joined together (squatted social centres, rank-and-file unions, farmers’ associations, social forum, etc.), and the protestors became more and more networked. In this process, the theme of the Tav began to intertwine with social themes and, in general, the discourse of protest tended to extend itself. In this phase, the mobilization was also promoted by the local committees, rooted in the territory, even with different characteristics, either those focused on the theme of the high-speed trains, or those more political. At the same time, with the intensification of institutional decisions on the Tav, the activism of the institutional Committee of mayors and the mountain community in turn also intensified. At the beginning of 2005, with the decision of the authorities to carry out the first checks on the territory in spite of the opposition of the mayors and the two mountain communities, a new phase emerges, characterized by a protest which increasingly goes beyond a local dimension. Above all, the violence of the police intervening to evict the occupants at the picket of the checking site, on the 1 st of November, gave a national dimension to the protests in the valley. National press coverage of the event and public attention remained high in that period, characterized by the “militarization” of the valley, on the one hand, and by a series of rail and road blockades by the No Tav, on the other hand. In December, the No Tav protest spread throughout Italy and solidarity demonstrations were held in Milan, Palermo, Naples, Bologna, Venice, Florence and Genoa ( Repubblica , 7-8/12/05). With regard to the demonstration of 17 th of December in Turin (50,000 people), national press wrote that “the change is in the organized participation of the Italian movements”, pointing out also the presence of French mayors opposed to the Tav ( Repubblica , 18/12/05). In fact, even the transnational dimension of 255

the protest was gradually growing in strength: already in February 2008 a delegation of politicians from Val di Susa had participated in a session of the European Parliament denouncing the violation of the European Environmental Directive ( Repubblica , 18/12/04), and then in January 2006 Valsusini committees took part in a No Tav demonstration in Chambéry, France ( Repubblica , 7/1/06). It is in this period, between the end of 2005 and the beginning of 2006, that the No Tav struggle welded together with the campaign against the Bridge on the Messina Straits, forming the No Tav-No Bridge twinning. In fact, in January 2006, there was the participation of No Bridge activist in Val di Susa at the Public Forum “for the Defence and the Life of the Valley”, and of No Tav committees in Messina at the national demonstration against the Bridge. This presence was emphasized by the national and local newspapers, which wrote in their headlines: “in 15,000 against the Bridge and the Tav”, “And in Messina is born the Bridge of No” (Repubblica , 23/1/06). The acute stage of the conflict ended with the partial success of the Tav opponents, the temporary suspension of works in June 2006, and the starting of technical studies and negotiation tables between experts and national government representatives, on the one hand, and counter-experts and local politicians, on the other one (Technical Observatory). The No Tav reclaimed as a victory the removal of building sites in Venaus, but the political solution of the matter was open yet (della Porta and Piazza, 2008b:17- 22). After the electoral victory of the centre-left in April 2006, the new government maintained an ambiguous position, affirming the centrality of the high-speed project while it was seeking an agreement with the local population. This ambiguity reflected the differentiation of positions and attitudes between the two lefts that formed government and majority, the Tav continuing to be a reason for conflict between them during the term of the . In the meanwhile, in summer 2006 No Tav committees, and other committees and networks opposing unwanted land use in other Italian regions, formed the “Patto Nazionale di Solidarietà e Mutuo Soccorso ” (Mutual Aid and National Solidarity Pact), aimed at supporting each other and giving visibility to No Lulu mobilizations. The implementation of the high-speed in Val di Susa remained on the government agenda, although the building sites were not reopened during the two years of the legislature and negotiation tables between governmental representatives and local politicians went on. Nevertheless, the protest campaign continued, even if at low intensity; it was above all promoted by No Tav committees that organized a national demonstration in April 2007, without the radical left parties (Repubblica , 1/4/07), after the high-speed line was put on the new government agenda composed by twelve priorities.1 Subsequently, the proposal to purchase land around the building sites was launched by No Tav committees to Valsusini, with the aim of making the procedures for expropriation more difficult. After the fall of Prodi government, the electoral triumph of the centre-right coalition occurred in April 2008: the new Berlusconi government reaffirmed its intention

1 Notwithstanding their opposition to the TAV, the radical left parties belonging to the Prodi government accepted the implementation of the High Speed Railway in Val di Susa as one of the twelve issues of the new political agenda, after overcoming the government crisis in February 2007 (see par. 3); they preferred to be part of the centre-left government rather than being consistent with their programmes and, for that reason, were no longer accepted in the No Tav demonstrations. 256

to go ahead with Tav implementation and restarted the policy process. In June, the negotiations within the Technical Observatory were concluded with an agreement between government representatives and Val di Susa mayors, allowing the building of the high-speed line; No Tav committees and non institutional groups opposed the agreement, creating a split between local administrations and the other protest actors ( Repubblica , 29-30/6/08). The reopening of the building sites is planned for November 2009 ( Il Sole 24ore , 18/10/09) and the mobilization goes on.

3. NO DAL MOLIN MOBILIZATION IN VICENZA

The protest campaign against the extension of the US base of Camp Ederle to the Dal Molin airport in Vicenza is more recent than the No Tav mobilization. In fact, it started in the second part of 2006, when the 2004 secret agreement between the Berlusconi government and the US Administration, with the consent of the mayor Hullweck (Forza Italia), became public ( Repubblica , 26/10/06). The mobilization was initially promoted by No Dal Molin spontaneous citizens’ committees that were supported by the majority of local population; 2 they asked for a citizen referendum and organized various protest actions. The initial frames of the citizens’ committees were mainly based on the defence of public health and environment, endangered by the increase of air, water, noise pollution and electromagnetic radiation that the extension of the US base, close to the centre of the city, would cause; moreover, they were worried about the negative economic impact of the building works on the inhabitants (Altravicenza, 2007). Anyway, the joining of other actors to the protest networks extended soon the frames to other issues: the right of local population to decide the use of their land, the denial of war, of US and Nato bases and the refusal of the militarization of the territory (No Dal Molin, 2009a). The Vicentini protesters received indeed the active support of peace movement, anarchist and radical antagonist groups, and the social centers of the North-East (ex-Disobedients ); moreover, Cgil union (especially FIOM) 3, radical left parties (PRC – Refoundation Communist Party, PdCI – Italian Communists Party, Greens) became part of the alliance system, participating in the mobilization and asking the Prodi government (to which they belonged) not to allow the expansion of the US base. Therefore, the No Dal Molin mobilization went almost immediately beyond the Nimby logics, because the involved actors were not only local ones, as citizens’ committees, but also groups and associations with universalistic identities (pacifists, environmentalists, unions, antagonistic and radical lefts); and because the frames of protesters extended from local to global, transforming the mobilization from Nimby to Nope with pacifist and antimilitaristic claims. In fact, No Dal Molin do not want military bases either in their own or in any other “backyard”, addressing immediately supranational and national government levels.

2 According to a Demos survey, in December 2006, 61% of Vicentini was against the enlargement of the US base and 84% asked for a citizens’ referendum ( Repubblica , 3/12/06). 3 The Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro is the main Italian union (left- oriented) and FIOM is the section of CGIL composed by workers in the engineering industry. 257

The choice of Prodi government “not to oppose the expansion of US base in Vicenza” ( Repubblica , 16/1/07) led to the escalation of the reaction of No Dal Molin and radical left parties, which came to threaten the coherence of the majority in parliament. In fact, between January and February 2007, the conflict reached its peak both in the streets and in Parliament. On the first side, No Dal Molin diversified their repertoire of protest: they occupied the railway station in Vicenza, set up the permanent picket ( presidio ) before the contested airport and held a sit-in in front of the Parliament; then, they promoted the national march of February 17, involving peacefully through the streets of Vicenza about 200,000 people, among which stood out a large delegation of No Tav committees (Repubblica , 18/2/07). The demonstration marked the definitive exit from the local dimension of No Dal Molin campaign, that acquired an (inter)national extent, becoming a symbol for other No Lulu mobilizations and the movement against the war; the Vicenza protest then linked to these movements and joined in the national networks (Mutual Aid Pact, No War movement). On the institutional side, despite the hard conflict between moderate and radical members of the majority, the radical left parties at the end voted almost compactly the motions presented by the government. The Prodi government was nevertheless defeated twice in the Senate and forced to resign momentarily ( Repubblica , 21/2/07). After the renewal of confidence in the Prodi government by the centre-left majority (including the radical left) and the confirmation of the decision to extend the US base, No Dal Molin mobilization continued with the permanent picket in front of the airport and the participation in the No Tav march in Val di Susa on 1 April ( Repubblica , 1/4/07). The explicit rift between No Dal Molin and the institutional radical left was sanctioned by their participation to the national march against the visit of Bush in Rome, on 9 June; the demonstration was promoted by “No War” movement, social centres and grass-roots unions, in contrast with the rally in Piazza del Popolo, on the same day, organized by radical left parties (Repubblica , 9/6/07). In November, construction works started inside the airport. No Dal Molin protesters organized immediately road blockades and a “European 3 days of actions” ( Repubblica , 14-16/12/07), a series of debates and initiative against the militarization of territories with the participation of activists from across Europe; on 15 December, 80,000 people participated to the final demonstration. In Spring 2008, the defeat of the centre-left parties at the national level was unexpectedly accompanied by the contemporary victory in Vicenza municipal elections of Mayor Variati (PD –Democrat Party), who had always expressed his dissent against the previous government's decision ( Repubblica , 2/5/08). The civic list No Dal Molin, with its 5%, was decisive in the election of the new mayor, and he indeed adhered to juridical appeal against the base, reaffirming the need for a referendum on the subject (Vicenza per il PD 2008). After the electoral victory, Berlusconi’s new government reassured immediately US administration on the enlargement of the base in Vicenza, despite the regional administrative court (TAR) had accepted the appeal of the consumers’ association “Codacons” for a suspension of works; in the meantime, No Dal Molin participated with a large delegation in the demonstration of 1 June in Chiaiano (Naples), in solidarity with the anti-dump protests ( Repubblica , 2/6/08).4 Subsequently,

4 In the Spring 2008, the decision of the National government to build a landfill in the quarries located in the district of Chaiano (Naples) triggered the reaction and the mobilization of the inhabitants, who were worried about public health and the 258

the mobilization radicalized again in Vicenza, in the aftermath of the ruling of the Council of State that revoked the order of the TAR, accepting the government’s appeal; No Dal Molin occupied the tracks of the railway station at the end of a candlelight vigil, and protesters were severely charged by police ( Repubblica , 31/7/08). Finally, the Council of State rejected the referendum called by the municipal authorities for October 5, but the consultation took place anyway, albeit unofficially, showing a clear affirmation of Vicenza citizens against the expansion of the base (Repubblica , 1-6/10/08). No Dal Molin protests are going on in 2009 with various direct actions in February, such as the partial occupation of the civil airport and the road blockades to prevent the entry of trucks into the US base (Repubblica , 1-9/2/09). On 23 April a delegation of No Dal Molin committees was heard by the Committee on Military Construction of the US Congress in Washington, setting out its reasons and denouncing the lack of an environmental permit for the building works (No Dal Molin, 2009a). On 4 July (the Independence Day in US) No Dal Molin claimed the “Independence of Vicenza from US”, promoting a national demonstration with 15,000 participants; during the march, police blocked the road and charged the demonstrators who defended the demonstration with Plexiglass shields ( Repubblica , 5/7/09). In September, mayor Variati publicly stated that “there are no other passable ways of opposing the installation of the base”, asking the government for compensation and, consequently, was accused by No Dal Molin committees to “show the white flag” (No Dal Molin, 2009a). Therefore, governments at different levels continue to answer negatively to the claims coming from local territory. Notwithstanding the change of Administration from Bush to Obama, the Italian and US policy regarding Camp Ederle base is not modified, and the mobilization continues.

4. THE ACTORS: LOCAL AND CROSS-TERRITORIAL NETWORKS

It is easy to perceive from the chronological reconstructions of the two protest campaigns, that a Nimby interpretation does not fit to explain the nature of these conflicts and mobilizations. First, Nimby syndrome is contradicted by the definition the actors themselves provide for their actions; in a document, No Dal Molin committees underline that “Vicenza is not a Nimby movement because it has been able to set local and practical claims back on a general and abstract level: defending our territory we learnt to appreciate the value of land and common goods, refusing the military base we built a peace culture, suffering the impositions we experimented the importance of participation” (No Dal Molin, 2009c:2). This and other statements, in which these movements distances themselves from Nimby syndrome, could be seen as a rhetoric device to gain legitimacy without altering their nature, as many critics argue; nevertheless, the characteristics of these mobilizations show that a Nimby interpretation results from poor knowledge or from ideological bias aimed at the delegitimization of opponents. If Nimby conflicts are local, in the cases studied the reach of the protests involves multiple territorial levels of governance, not only local and regional, but also environment. Local citizens’ committees obtained immediately the solidarity of the other Italian No Lulu movements, especially from No Dal Molin committees. 259

national and international (EU for No Tav, relationships between US and Italian governments for No Dal Molin). Furthermore, according to the Nimby syndrome only local inhabitants should be interested and motivated in the protest because directly damaged by public works, whereas in our mobilizations the networked organization of the conflict includes many non-local actors that should not be affected at all by disputed infrastructures. Local players are obviously crucial for mobilization: the citizens’ committees are always the main actors and represent, with their flexible organizational structure, the new form of political participation for “ordinary” citizens who increasingly mistrust parties. The participation of citizens in the two mobilizations is strongly representative of the local population, as confirmed by empirical research and newspaper reportages; for instance, the No Tav demonstrations are indeed described as characterized by a ”thousand voices” of teachers, housewives, pensioners, workers, and the picketing on the building sites as “an unlikely army composed of entire families, young and old” ( Repubblica , 1/11/05; della Porta and Piazza, 2008b:15-16);5 the same in respect of No Dal Molin protest, supported by tens of thousands of Vicenza citizens, who massively participated in several demonstrations, and voted at the unofficial referendum called by the Town: 95% out of the 25,000 voters. 6 Mayors and local institutions (centre-left administrations) are also involved in the mobilizations, although recently criticized for their compliance and pliability, but other collective actors with universal identities and extra local dimension are included in the protest networks: environmental associations, squatted social centres, grassroots militant unions, pacifist and antimilitarist groups, and radical left parties (although the presence of parties caused tensions and a breakdown during the centre-left Prodi government). Moreover, the local protest networks are linked with the other Lulu mobilizations both in northern and southern Italy. First, No Tav committees made a “North-South twinning” with No Bridge networks that oppose the project of a bridge between Calabria and Sicily, participating with a massive delegation to the national demonstration in Messina, on January 2006; then, in the summer of that year, they both contributed to the formation of the “Mutual Aid and National Solidarity Pact”, aimed at supporting each other and giving visibility to all Lulu conflicts in Italy. The Pact is more a network with a shared identity than a strategic alliance, because participants have a common frame: it is based on the connection between the conception of territory as “common goods” not to commodify, and the demand for participative democracy, as well the assertion of autonomy from governments and parties of “every colour”, including left-wing ones (Patto Nazionale di Solidarietà e Mutuo Soccorso, 2009). Later, also No Dal Molin joined the Pact, as well as many other similar mobilizations. This national network indeed includes currently more than 150 citizens’ committees, networks and associations,

5 Considering that the population of the Val di Susa is about 90,000, 80,000 people participated in the 10 km demonstration from Bussoleno to Seghino on 16 November 2005 (della Porta and Piazza, 2008b:18; Repubblica , 17/1105). 6 Exactly 24,094 citizens of Vicenza out of 84,340 eligible voters (29%) participated in the referendum, and 22,889 voters expressed opposition to the base enlargement (No Dal Molin, 2009a); furthermore, considering the inhabitants of Vicenza are about 100,000, the local rallies were attended from 15,000 to 30,000 people ( Repubblica , 5/7/09; 2/12/06) and the national demonstration by 200,000 participants ( Repubblica , 18/2/07). 260

showing how this type of conflicts is widespread all over the country; if almost half of these Lulu committees (67) are located in northern Italy, the others are more or less proportionally distributed in the remaining part of the country, proving in this way that the phenomenon is not linked to a particular region. Another important North-South solidarity relationship, always within the National Pact, was established in 2008 between No Dal Molin committees and those who oppose the building of a dump in the Chiaiano neighborhood of Naples. The presence of these non local actors and the formation of trans-territorial networks, as constant elements of the protests, are therefore crucial in framing these mobilizations as not affected by Nimby syndrome. In addition, most of these committees and networks participated to demonstrations and events of Global Justice and No War movements.

5. THE IDENTITY: STRUGGLING COMMUNITIES BEYOND THE TERRITORY

A fundamental element for mobilization is the definition of the identity of protesters, who share values and interests: the “us” opposed to the “them” (Gamson, 1988); and, in these cases, the peculiar conception of community and territory. A central theme in the discourse of new local mobilizations regards the territorial scale of the contention. The local dimension is stigmatized by supporters of large-scale public works as egotistical, but those who protest frequently underline a communitarian defence of a limited territory, that is suffering from external aggression. If No Tav identify as a target “all those who want to destroy Val di Susa” (leaflet cit. in della Porta and Piazza, 2008b:59), No Dal Molin in Vicenza claim their independence from what they call the ‘US empire’; in fact, in an appeal of the Permanent Picket, they write: “We want our independency from the US military empire, freeing our land from a new war base” (No Dal Molin, 2009b:1). While this dimension of defence of the community is linked to the identification with the territory, with a stress on its natural, historical, political and cultural particularities (della Porta, 2004), the visions projected of territories by the activists are increasingly open in the mobilizations, and protest actors construct images of ‘open’ and inclusive spaces rather than “closed” courtyard. Previous research underlined that pre-existing identity resources favour mobilization. Above all in Val di Susa, in the definition of local identity the reference to the history of the partisan Resistance against the Nazi occupation is significant. In fact, the partisan past is often evoked, as in the testimonies of the will to “resist” shown by the inhabitants of Val di Susa, giving a sense of continuity to the struggle in the valley and connecting it to shared values. Here the words of an activist: “When we were on the mountains, waiting for they arrive, singing ‘Bella Ciao’ and stopping them, beh yes, in that moment we felt … sons, grandchildren of those who made the Resistance, that has always been strong in this valley. Here there has always been a ‘red thread’ that connects No Tav to Resistance” (interview cit. in della Porta and Piazza, 2008a:87-88). The partisans are recalled in the logo within the No Tav banner; in particular “ the old man with the closed fist has been invented by the committee of Bussoleno and remembers the grandfather who fought in the Resistance and who shouted ‘You will not pass here’” (interview cit. in della Porta and Piazza, 2008b:60). In a similar manner there is a 261

reference to the tradition of social struggles of railway workers: the histories of the railways and of Resistance are intertwined in the description of the fighting spirit of Valsusino people. Differently from Val di Susa, a territory with a tradition of “red sub-culture”, the mobilization in Vicenza, within the “white” (catholic) Veneto region, marks a discontinuity with a past poor of protests and unconventional participation, as the same activists underline in a document: “Vicenza has never been in past years a land of movements… it has been defined the ‘Sacristy of Italy’, characterized by a massive adhesion to the Christian Democrat Party and by an industriousness bias that has often sacrificed politics and sociality. Vicentino movement … comes to terms with this past of political moderation and poor mobilization, but it represents a discontinuity with decades of conformism” (No Dal Molin, 2009c:1). Therefore, the mobilizations lead to a re-definition of the identity of the community. The symbolic construction of community and the formation of identity occur, above all, during the course of protests; the sense of belonging is perceived as built in action, through the participation to the mobilization, rather than ascribed criteria. A No Tav activist indeed says: “We needed an identity and maybe we found it during the struggle, on the idea that the territory is ours: this struggle is strong because it comes from a choice, not because the valley was of our fathers and grandfathers” (interview cit. in della Porta and Piazza, 2008a:89). The identity of “struggling communities” is the result of processes of “cross- fertilization in action”, that is, the transformation of and in the actors – individuals and organizations – involved in the protest networks, that are formed during the course, and as a result of mobilization; it occurs thanks to the presence of multiple membership in various groups, as well as an intense process of “networking” (both formal and informal). No Dal Molin committees call this process “transversality”; in a document they write: “with the term ‘transversality’ we do not simply want to indicate a sum of different identities which strategically ally among them to achieve a common goal, maintaining unchanged their own boundaries and differences. For us ‘transversality’ means breaking the boundaries, building a terrain of dialogue which is able to create a collective growth and cross-fertilization between different practices… It is the reason why we like to define us ‘community’: our acting, in fact, is not ideology-oriented, but toward a daily making which creates common sensitiveness and, consequently, a new culture having, among its main points, the refusal of war, the defence of common goods, the construction of new forms of participation. These three points were not taken for granted when we started our path: it has been a process of collective growth, of reasoning and confrontation which made these issues a common heritage ” (No Dal Molin, 2009c:1). The identification with community is then not exclusive; on the contrary an open and inclusive conception of community emerges through the protest, that is able to integrate different cultures and values, as confirmed in the words of a No Tav activist: “This idea of a territory that has taken people from outside, has led to different cultures, not a pre-structured culture, but a various set … this valley has allowed people who came to live here feel it like its own” (interview cit. in della Porta and Piazza, 2008a:90). The appeal of activists to “ defend territory as a precious common good for everyone and not just for the community that resides in it ” (Assemblea contro le Grandi Opere, 2006), recalls this open image of territories, and sees protesters defend their value of use (“precious common good”) against the value of exchange (“resource to exploit and 262

violate”), emphasized by the promoters of public works and their economic interests. The identification of many residents with the use value of the territory occurs through a process of giving symbolic significance to the conflict; in the course of protest there emerges a positive conception of communitarian identity that recalls universal values, as well as a definition of the conflict that extends from local to global level, with the claim to be defending the “common good” against the particularistic advantages promised by the promoters of projects. The two Lulu movements reject the accusations of Nimbyism advanced by the supporters of public works and instead identify the community as a value, but without making it an objective of exclusive identification, and territory as common resource, that should not be the object of exclusive ownership. Therefore, the conceptions of local “struggling communities” as open and inclusive spaces and of territories as “common goods” for everybody, and not only for the residents, are very far from the traditional images of closed and egotistical community and territory hostile towards outsiders, provided by localistic movements and ethno- regional parties in Northern Italy, above all the Lega Nord. It is no coincidence that this party is not well accepted by protest actors.

6. WHAT IS AT STAKE?

The definition of what is at stake in these conflicts – above all in Val di Susa - supersedes the classic dichotomy between environmental defence and economic development, proposing instead an alternative model of progress. These struggles are viewed by participants not only as the defence of environment and the well-being of its citizens, but also as being oriented towards a future model of development radically different from that proposed by the promoters of these public works; this model of economic development is criticized by protesters for being a single model focused on large-scale investments, exclusively concerned with the interests of investors, the logic of profit, the exploitation of common goods for private use and, in the case of Vicenza, also with the interest of Us government and army. In fact, to the accusations of wanting to block “public works”, which are “strategic” for local and global economic development, and for inter/national security, protesters in Val di Susa and in Vicenza respond by presenting these projects not only as damaging from the point of view of environment, public health and security, but also from the point of view of economic progress. If these projects are defined as being ‘cost- free’, because they are presented as externally financed, by private companies or foreign governments, the opponents underline instead the waste of public money, and crucially suggest alternative uses for these resources, like the modernizing of the old railway in Val di Susa and the civil use of the airport in Vicenza. Therefore, these protest campaigns cannot be described as purely reactive in opposing decisions “taken elsewhere”, but also constructive through the specific proposals they advance, which are oriented towards what activists define as an “alternative notion of development, based on the real needs of a territory and its population, on the concern for the common good and the growth of social solidarity” (Assemblea contro le Grandi Opere, 2006), as well as the development of locally rooted economies. This model, really only a rough outline, recalls the theories of “de- development” and “ungrowth” (Latouche, 2007), based on defence of the environment, 263

“good” employment, quality of life in the territory and a critique of consumption, synthesized in the slogan “consume less, consume better”; with an increasingly “radical criticism of the current model of development”, the alternative notion proposed by activist calls for a “low-speed life”, as in another widespread slogan: “Who goes slowly, goes far and safe. We don’t want the high speed train ”. It is thus the conception of general interest which is at the centre of these symbolic conflicts. While the promoters of the projects present them as the pursuit of the general interest of the national (and international) community, the activists reject the accusations of egotism (typical of the Nimby syndrome) and reverse the charges to defend particularistic interests. In fact, protestors propose themselves as the true interpreters of the general interest, while the strategic interests defended by the supporters of “public works” are presented as being the interests of construction cartels and companies, “speculators” and “corrupt” in Val di Susa (della Porta and Piazza, 2008b:69), US government and army in Vicenza. In this vision, national governments and building companies pursuit the political and economic interests of few politicians and businessmen, damaging the interests not only of local populations, but also of the broader national and international community. In fact, protesters consider the model of development and the policies of war, from which the HSRL and the military base stem, harmful for people in general, and not only for the residents who live in the disputed territories. This is not the place for a deepened debate on the notion of general interest and questions as: does an objective definition of general interest exist? Who decides what general interest is? National governments? and the oppositions? and local governments and population? Here it is relevant to underline the symbolic conflict which emerges from these mobilizations, and puts in discussion the same notion of democracy. As a matter of fact, in the course of mobilizations, the stakes of the conflict expand to the meta-frames of democracy, as well as to the right to protest. The development of a meta-discourse on democracy goes beyond the right of local politicians to represent their territories, criticizing the institutions of representative democracy. In fact, the lack of democratic procedure in the allocation of public works is denounced by both No Tav and No Dal Molin activists, as the lack of democracy because of the militarization of the territory. Nevertheless, the demand for democracy is, above all, the demand for another type of democracy, more participative and deliberative, coming “from below”, made by citizens rather than professionals, based on self-government and citizens’ autonomy. The rights of the community to decide their own destiny is claimed in the name of the people. Besides, the frame of violence is utilized in particular by national governments, with the growth of forms of direct action and a symbolic conflict on the right to participate in a democracy emerges around the conception of legality. For protesters, the right to protest is here not only defended as legitimate right, but as ethically central. The theme of public security is instead defined by opponents as being instrumentalized to discredit an opposition which has chosen peaceful forms of protest, because the direct actions are also meant to be non-violent.

264

7. SHORT CONCLUSIONS

In conclusion, the two Lulu mobilizations No Tav and No Dal Molin are not Nimby, but Nope and trans-territorial: they go beyond the territory both as geographical entity and as traditional conception. In this sense, notwithstanding their historical, political and cultural particularities, they do not represent a specific type of local or regional phenomenon linked to northern Italy as the Lega Nord, because they share the same type of actors, identity, frames and repertoires of action with other similar mobilizations in other Italian regions. These protest campaigns indeed are networked with other Lulu movements all over Italy, especially with those in the South. Moreover, the diffusion of these types of mobilizations is not limited to Italy, but is widespread in Europe and in other continents. For instance, regarding the protests against the High Speed Rail Line, they are very frequent in Spain, as confirmed by previous research: “In Spain, the record of conflicts and campaigns related to transport issues is a very long one. In this list special relevance is held by the protests against the new High Speed Train projects, mostly in Catalonia, Valencia, Madrid and Basque Country and the rejection of other infrastructure works such as building new roads and enlarging airports” (Barcena, 2005:123). And concerning the mobilization against military bases, they occur even in the USA, as in the case of the opposition to the expansion of Pinon Canyon base in Colorado (and Vieques in Puerto Rico); similarly to Vicenza a broad-base and transversal opposition coalition has been formed there, beginning “with a Nimby movement which then gradually turns into a movement against the military-industrial complex” (Mangano and Westbrook, 2009:69). Returning to No Tav and No Dal Molin movements, we can briefly summarize that: The evolution from a local to a global definition of the conflict; the elaboration of images that show alternative conceptions of the general interest, the territory as “common good”, and the local communities as open and inclusive; the presentation of these actions of protests as the laboratory for an alternative conception of politics and democracy, as participative and deliberative; all these processes take place in the course of these campaigns. This in fact seems to emerge through the adhesion of different actors to the protest. Committees and local politicians, social centres and trade unions, environmental associations and peace movements, political parties and ordinary citizens, all tend to meet, network and bridge their more specific frames in the course of the protest. Above all, changes in the symbolic construction of identity, the stakes and the motivations for action, link the protest campaigns in Val di Susa and Vicenza between them, with other similar mobilizations all over Italy, and with the Global Justice and No War Movements.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES

Altravicenza (2007), Dossier , on line at: www.altravicenza.it/dossier/dalmolin/doc/20070405comitati01.pdf (Accessed 14 July 2008). Assemblea contro le Grandi Opere (2006), “Grandi Opere? Grandi bidoni!” , Motion - press release, Venezia, 11 June 2006. 265

Barcena, I. (2005), European Governance and Green Social Movements: Transportation and GMO Policies in Spain. Human Ecology Review, 12,(2): 120-132. Bobbio, L. (1999), “Un processo equo per una localizzazione equa”, in L. Bobbio and A. Zeppetella (eds), Perché proprio qui? Grandi opere e opposizioni locali , Milano, Franco Angeli:85-237. Buso, G. (1996), “Resistenze e proteste contro le decisioni del governo locale: i comitati spontanei di cittadini”, in L. Bobbio and F. Ferraresi (eds), Decidere in , Analisi e riflessioni su cento decisioni comunali , Torino, Fondazione Rosselli:126- 141. della Porta, D. (ed.) (2004), Comitati di cittadini e democrazia urbana , Soveria Mannelli, Rubbettino. della Porta, D. and M. Diani (2006), Social Movements: An Introduction , Oxford, Blackwell (2nd edn). della Porta, D. and G. Piazza (2008), Le ragioni del no: le campagne contro la Tav in Val di Susa e il Ponte sullo Stretto , Milano, Feltrinelli. della Porta, D. and G. Piazza (2008b), Voices of the Valley, Voices of the Straits: How Protest Creates Communities , Oxford/New York, Berghahn Books. Gamson, W.A. (1988), “Political Discourse and Collective Action”, International Journal of Social Movements, Conflicts and Changes , 1:219-244. Gordon, C. and J.M. Jasper (1996), “Overcoming the ‘Nimby’ Label: Rhetorical and Organizational Links for Local Protestors”, Research in Social Movements, Conflict and Change , 19:159-181. Gould, K. A., A. Schnaiberg and A.S. Weinberg (1996), Local Environmental Struggles. Citizen Activism in the Treadmill of Production , Cambridge (MA), Cambridge University Press. Jobert, A. (1998), “L’aménagement en politique - ou ce que la syndrome NIMBY nous dit de l’intérêt général”, Politix , 11 (42):67-92. Latouche, S. (2007), Petite traité de la décroissance sereine , Paris, Mille et une nuits. Mangano, A. and S. Westbrook (2009), “La guerra una questione privata”, in L. Sturniolo (ed.), Ponte sullo Stretto e mucche da mungere . Messina/Catania, Edizioni terrelibere.org:59-69. No Dal Molin (2009), Storia del movimento vicentino , on line at: www.nodalmolin.it/spisp.php?article45 (Accessed 10 June 2009). No Dal Molin (2009b), 4 luglio: giornata dell’indipendenza di Vicenza , on line at: www.nodalmolin.it/notizie/notizie_37html (Accessed 2 June 2009) No Dal Molin (2009c), Il Presidio Permanente , on line at: www.nodalmolin.it/spisp.php?page=imprimer&id_article=4 2 (Accessed 13 June 2009) Patto Nazionale di Solidarietà e Mutuo Soccorso (2009), Gli obiettivi , on line at: http://www.pattomutuosoccorso.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&i d=53&Itemid=67 (Accessed 13 June 2009). Piazza, G. (2008), Le sinistre istituzionali e antagoniste nei conflitti locali ‘transterritoriali’ in Italia , Paper presented at the SISP (Società Italiana di Scienza Politica) 22 nd Annual Conference , Pavia, 5-6 September 2008, University of Pavia. Piazza, G. (2009), “Dal locale al globale: le campagne di protesta contro le basi militari in Italia”, in F. Longo, A. Mangano, G. Piazza and P. Saitta, Come i problemi globali

266

diventano locali. Proteste, guerre, migrazioni e deriva securitaria , Messina/Catania, Edizioni terrelibere.org:18-45. Popper, F. J. (1981), Siting LULUs. Planning , 47 (4): 12-15. Trom, D. (1999), “De la réfutation de l’effet NIMBY considérée comme une pratique militante. Notes pour une approche pragmatique de l’activité revendicative”, Revue française de science politique , 49 (1):31-50. Vicenza per il PD (2008), on line at: www.vicenzaperilpd.it/20080804 (Accessed 22 July 2008). Williams, B.A. and A.R. Matheny. (1995), Democracy, Dialogue and Environmental Disputes. The Contested Languages of Social Regulation , New Haven, Yale University Press.

267

CENTRIFUGAL REGIONALISM IN FLANDERS AND NORTHERN ITALY? ELEMENTS FOR A COMPARISON

Michel Huysseune

Vesalius College, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

1. AN OVERVIEW AND A COMPARISON

The comparison this volume offers of the dynamics of centrifugal regionalism in Belgium and Italy reveals a contrasting pattern of similarities and differences. The various contributions certainly confirm that the issue of centrifugal regionalism has a dimension of urgency in Belgium that it clearly lacks in Italy, and also offer elements to explain this difference. Such an explanation is certainly complex and multi-dimensional. Identity is nevertheless an obvious starting-point for a comparison of the two cases, also because together with the institutional context identity appears as a crucial dimension that differentiates Belgium and Italy. Identity-building in Flanders, as Marnix Beyen reminds us in his contribution, is a consolidated process that expresses a long history of political mobilization of a community, a process almost entirely absent in northern Italy until the emergence of regionalist leagues (predecessors of the Lega Nord) in the 1980s. Regional identities have been institutionalized in Belgium, and identification with Flanders has undoubtedly reached a culturally and politically hegemonic position in the region. In northern Italy, on the contrary, mainstream public opinion is clearly not prepared to accept the Padanian identity the Lega proposes. Crucially, as Gaspare Nevola points out, northern Italian elites have not given any support to the Lega’s secessionism or to its ethnic identity construction (although they are prepared to accept the Lega as a partner in regional and national government coalitions and are accommodating towards the Lega’s demand for devolution and fiscal federalism). The Lega has been able to mobilize a constituency in parts of northern Italy, and to give this constituency a collective ethnic identity. The party has, however, by no means been able to transform this party identity in the hegemonic collective identity of northern Italy as a whole, as is the case in Flanders. In his contribution, however, Marc Hooghe warns us against taking this consolidated identity too much for granted. The claim for a united cultural identity is rhetorically affirmed but rarely analyzed. Although the language issue has undoubtedly played an essential role in the process of creation and consolidation of Flemish identity, Hooghe observes that nowadays “language as such is hardly ever used as an argument in

269

favour of a distinct identity.” (Hooghe:158). 1 Present-day claims for cultural identity altogether avoid the romantic nationalist tradition that assumed that culture (literature, music) could express a national essence, not only because such ideas are perceived as outdated but also because a significant part of Flanders’ cultural establishment is very critical towards Flemish identity affirmations. The lack of sympathy for Flemish nationalism in the Netherlands and the difficulty to include Brussels in an exclusively language-based vision also explain for Hooghe the surprisingly limited attention played to language in contemporary constructions of Flemish identity (although language issues do play an important role both in politics and in the perceptions communities have of each other). Language does create a crucial difference between the two cases. Italy constitutes by all means a unified communicative space with one language and a predominantly unitary media system and public sphere. In Belgium, on the contrary, the public sphere is separated according to language communities. As Patrick Stouthuysen and Theo Jans outline, separated public spheres (and the absence or weakness of a common one) play a central role in reinforcing the centrifugal dynamics of the Belgian political system. For them, Belgium confirms John Stuart Mill’s prediction that democracy would only survive in the long run when people speak the same language and by this means are able to form a united public opinion. As a consequence of this separation, Belgium is certainly rife with mutual misunderstanding and reciprocal lack of information, and a common public sphere where both communities dialogue remains indeed very weak - although recent years did witness increasing efforts to (re-)establish such a common sphere. This context certainly explains why even defenders of Belgian unity tend to consider Belgian identity as problematic. In fact, reflections on this issue (e.g. Buelens et al., 2007) intend to re- invent such an identity understood as a vision on the country’s future. The language issue definitely contrasts the two cases studied here, and it is of course revealing that the Lega attempted but utterly failed to bring into existence a “Padanian” language. Public discourse in Italy has for sure never really questioned national identity, and the emergence of the Lega has in fact been parallelled by a revival of interest in Italian national identity, as the contribution of Nevola highlights. He contextualizes this interest within a long-standing national tradition of reflection on the meaning of “nation”, a tradition much weaker in Belgium. The political crises the country has undergone have been parallelled with the articulation of new modes of interpretations of this identity. To the post-war restoration of democracy corresponded a redefinition of the nation as a civic entity, intimately bound with a democratic polity. Nevola observes that the emergence of the Lega Nord and the parallel crisis of the Italian party system have in fact revived public interest in the linkages between national identity and democracy. The rise of the Lega nevertheless also drew renewed attention to regional diversity within Italy, a regularly returning issue on the Italian political and intellectual agenda. The post-war democratic political system has in fact acknowledged this diversity, in a first stage by the creation of five special-statute regions, in a second stage by that of the “ordinary” regions. Giuseppe Gangemi’s contribution links Italian regional diversity to present and past debates on the institutional set-up of Italy. He focuses on the meaning of the term

1 Quotations to contributions to this volume will only refer to the author and the page number. Nor are they included in the bibliography at the end of the conclusion.

270

“federalism”, relatively unproblematic in the Belgian context, much more complex and controversial in the Italian one. He contextualizes the often instrumental use of federalism in Italy within the context of its original emergence and use in political theory, as a concept that discusses and intends to define the fundamentals of political systems. He reminds us that the “term federalism derives from the Latin word “foedus” [which may be] interpreted as a synonym of three different words: 1) covenant; 2) compact; 3) contract” (Gangemi:64), implying three different versions of political obligation. He outlines that the crucial issue is whether “foedus” is regarded as “a political pact regarding the system (the political or institutional system) or a polity (a politically organized social body).” (ibid). The contested and instrumentalized use of the concept in the present Italian debate is rarely related to such theoretical debates, and this absence of theoretical background corresponds with the lack of a coherent and reflexive project of institutional reforms. Gangemi draws attention to a minoritarian but long-standing intellectual and political tradition in Italy that did reflect on this issue. His text hence proposes a rediscovery of a school of thought concerned with matching the unification of Italy with the preservation and extension of local autonomy, against the centralism that characterized the Unification from above imposed by the Savoy dynasty. The territorialization of identity also differentiates the two cases. In Belgium, the political mobilization of the Flemish community has territorialized ethnic identity through the establishment of a language border (1962-1963) and the cycle of institutional reforms that led to the present federal system. In Italy, there is a contrast between the embeddedness of discourses affirming the North-South opposition and the imprecise territorial delimitation of these entities. The Lega’s inability (or unwillingness) to propose fixed borders for northern Italy reflects the problematic nature of regional borders, and more in general the multiplicity of possible divisions of the Italian territory. Gangemi’s contribution draws attention to this multiplicity, and highlights how the “Padanian” nation proposed by the Lega is in fact a novelty that does not correspond with historical attempts to unify territories in northern Italy (the duchy of Milan, the Venetian Republic). He also points out how “Padania” with its explicit reference to the Po river equally does not correspond with its hydrographic definition (the basin of the Po river). It is tempting to explain the present strength of centrifugal tendencies in Belgium and their weakness in Italy by means of the well-embedded presence of regional identities in the former case and their weakness in the latter. In Flanders, Flemish identity without doubt has become hegemonic and institutionalized while, as Beyen outlines, in recent years historians have also re-evaluated its importance in earlier periods, particularly before the rise of militant Flemish nationalism. In northern Italy, the identity the Lega proposes undoubtedly remains a minority option and is only strongly embedded in those territories in northern Italy where the Christian Democrat subculture was previously predominant (without reaching the Christian Democrat level of dominance). Other political actors (but also the Catholic Church, trade unions, and civil society organizations in general) unanimously reject the Lega’s secessionist claim, and the majority of the northern Italian population still displays its attachment to Italy. Some elements, however, clearly problematize this explanation. Prejudices in northern Italy against the South and its conceptualization as poor and backwards have in fact a stronger and historically more rooted tradition than in Belgium. The Lega hence only activated already existent ideas in a context of a political crisis. The specific location of southern Italy, at the geographical border of Europe, has facilitated the display of “Orientalist”

271

stereotypes against the region’s inhabitants that rhetorically exclude them from Europe, an option altogether unavailable in Belgium. Although the issue has played only an intermittent role in the public debate, throughout the northern modernity and southern backwardness have indeed frequently been juxtaposed, corresponding with more widely shared northern prejudices against southern Italians sometimes accompanied by paternalist attitudes towards the South. The continuity of regional stereotyping in Italy contrasts with the important shift it has undergone in Belgium. Historically, the cultural and particularly the language paternalism of the Francophones (based on the alleged cultural superiority of the French language) has been an important trigger-off of Flemish mobilizations, and reminiscences of this paternalism explain why the use of language does remain such a sensitive issue in Belgium. However, the strength of the Flemish economy has resulted in the articulation of a new Flemish paternalism that relates the region’s economic success to Flemish culture and good governance and Wallonia’s economic problems to cultural deficiencies. Taking into account that forms of cultural paternalism can easily trigger of political conflicts even in cases where ethnic antagonism is very moderate (a good example are Slovak reactions against Czech cultural paternalism, see Ruzicka and Stullerova, 2008), and that it indeed played this role in Flanders, it is interesting to notice how weak secessionist tendencies are in Wallonia (and southern Italy). Fear of the negative economic consequences of secession undoubtedly provides an adequate explanation for this weakness. For southern Italy, the anthropologist Dorothy Zinn proposes another interpretation. She highlights how southern Italians frequently interpret their own society in the stereotyped negative terms of privileged outsiders, a process she defines as “ethno-orientalism” (Zinn, 2001:167-187). This interpretation is definitely also relevant for Wallonia. In both cases, a negative or problematic self-image indeed appears as an additional impediment of the emergence of secessionist tendencies. In both regions, however, counter-discourses questioning the values of the stronger community are also articulated. In Wallonia, such discourses develop a regional image of an open, democratic society characterized by social solidarity, in contrast with Flanders, represented as self- interested, with strong xenophobic and anti-democratic tendencies (the latter element refers to the electoral strength of Vlaams Belang). In southern Italy, a small group of intellectuals (discussed in the contribution of Huysseune) proposes a more principled critique of the dogmatic modernism of dominant discourses, and proposes a rediscovery of (not exclusively southern) anti-utilitarian values to deconstruct these discourses. We can certainly not reduce stereotyped images of regions and prejudices to expressions of popular culture , since these images are embedded in elite and academic public discourse especially in the more successful regions . Both in Belgium and in Italy, interpreting and understanding differences between regions are problematic issues, as the contribution of Michel Huysseune highlights. Interpretative problems are certainly not the consequence of a lack of expertise which is in both cases amply present – interpretations of southern Italy dispose in fact of a particularly rich and intellectual sophisticated tradition but this tradition itself is sometimes instrumentalized to confirm existent prejudices. This process is enhanced by the fact that social science research often reflects the socially predominant criteria to judge societies. In the present context territories are classified according to their economic success, but this success is read as expressing a normative hierarchy of territories according to their cultural capacities, since these capacities are considered the primordial reason for their success. This ideological context

272

that dismisses or ignores arguments on the structural constraints of economic growth undoubtedly facilitates a “regionalization of reason” (Cassano, 2009:22) and legitimizes the identity affirmation and centrifugal claims of richer regions. The case of Italy reveals best the ambivalence of identities, since northern prejudices against southerners co-exist schizophrenically but peacefully with affirmations of Italian identity. The dynamics of political and cultural life in Belgium enhance the affirmation of regional rather than national identity, but as a consequence the importance of the attachment to Belgium is easily underestimated. In both countries, empirical research moreover clearly problematizes discourses essentializing regional differences. On the basis of the data of the 2006 European Social Survey, Hooghe’s contribution argues that in the values they profess Walloons and Flemish resemble each other strongly. In their value patterns the Flemish lean somewhat more to the Dutch, and the Francophones to the French, but interregional differences are very small. The similarities are also striking concerning those values that play an important element in the construction of Flemish or Walloon identity. In their location on a left-right scale, in their attitudes towards religion and in their level of ethnocentrism, Flemings and Walloons are rather similar. The same is also the case concerning their level of trust, a good variable to understand economic success. Overall, Hooghe argues, subnationalist claims for essential cultural differences between Flanders and Wallonia, or between Flemings and Francophones, find little empirical support. Roberto Biorcio and Tommaso Vitale do observe some cultural differences between northern and southern Italians. They highlight, however, that these differences are essentially related to different levels of educational attainment and point out the curious paradox that the very electorate of the Lega Nord mobilized against the South at the same time deviates in its value patterns from the northern population and rather resembles the southern one (with which it shares a lower level of educational attainment) in its low level of interpersonal trust, its less liberal attitude towards civil rights and its desire for authority (even stronger in the Lega electorate than in the South). Lega voters distinguish themselves both from the northern and southern population by their support for entrepreneurial freedom, and their opposition to trade unions and redistributive policies. These observations draw attention to a dimension well-acknowledged by social scientists but often neglected in public discourse, that public opinion in these regions is divided and that a regionalist discourse, even when hegemonic, also encounters opposition within these territories. Interestingly enough, both contributions highlight that in neither cases (Flanders and northern Italy) the population has a primary identification with the regional level. In Belgium but not in Italy, however, we may nevertheless observe that the population in Flanders is more attached to the region than that of other regions 2 – in Italy the population of the North interestingly enough identifies itself more with the nation, that of the South identifies itself rather locally (within northern Italy, however, identification with the North, albeit still a minority option, has gradually increased during the last twenty years). In contrast with the rest of the northern population, however, the electorate

2 Research on the 2009 regional elections in Belgium essentially confirms these identification patterns (Deschouwer and Sinardet, 2010). The authors moreover highlight that comparisons with previous data do not show any consistent trend towards a further regionalization of identity.

273

of the Lega Nord opposes local to national identity. The Lega Nord nevertheless has also exercised a broader impact in northern Italy beyond its own electoral constituency, as is revealed by the increased support for autonomy and fiscal federalism in northern Italy. The limits of this impact was, however, revealed in the 2006 referendum on a “federal” constitutional reform introduced by the centre-right and supported by the Lega: even in the North this reform which included increasing competencies for regions was rejected by a majority of the population. The existence and articulation of regional identities thus does not automatically promote centrifugal regionalism. However, while sceptical about the possible centrifugal dynamics of regionalism in the present Italian context, Nevola nevertheless concedes that the existence of a Padanian identity introduces an element of uncertainty in Italian politics. He highlights that in Italy, local and territorial identities are often constructed against the central state, but that this opposition is not translated in a secessionist stance. What regions in Italy miss is, according to him, not so much a cultural identity or a common political culture (both frequently present), but a “political identity, the translation of the collective identity into binding loyalty (‘political obligation’)” (Nevola:45). The weakness of such regional loyalty and a fortiori of political loyalty towards a hypothetical Padanian entity certainly problematize at this stage any secessionist project. Beyen’s contribution offers interesting elements for a re-interpretation of identities, that neither takes them for granted according to the essentialist creed but also does not want to reduce them to constructions produced by an elite of political and cultural entrepreneurs. The debate on the processes that promoted the dissemination of Flemish identity is relatively recent and certainly not yet concluded. An interesting element he highlights is how the Catholic Party’s electoral success in Flanders in the late 19 th and early 20 th century was related to its capacity to represent “an emergent Flemish self-image, built upon traditional and rural values” (Beyen:19). This historical excursion reveals the importance of linkages of identities and ideologies, an important but frequently neglected dimension of contemporary regionalist mobilizations. For the purpose of our comparison, it is particularly interesting to notice that the Lega itself cultivates a similar traditional rural image of northern Italy (Cento Bull, 2003:45-46). 3 As Nevola reminds us, the emergence of the Lega itself resulted from a crisis of the Christian Democrat party and its political subculture in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The Lega displayed its ability to capture and transform the Catholic political subculture predominant in many parts of northern Italy. This transformation of previously existent political subcultures and their ideologies is less prominent in Flanders. The increasing importance of affirmations of regional rather than national identity reflects in the first place the regionalization of the party system and the increasing role of regional authorities. This process has been parallelled by the increasing tendency at least since the 1960s to read political cleavages (including the ones that previously also dominated Belgian history: clerical/anticlerical and capital/labour) in “ethnic” terms (cf. Huyse,

3 This parallel certainly deserves further comparative analysis. Ruralism and tradition certainly would have a different meaning in the late 19 th century and now, and the relation between the Lega and Catholicism has, notwithstanding its present ultra-Catholic stance, frequently been problematic (leading the party even to cultivate for several years an allegedly Padanian “Celtic ” pagan religiosity).

274

1981). The ideological components of this transformation of interpretative frameworks and more in general of contemporary Flemish (and Francophone) affirmations of identity certainly deserve more research. It is nevertheless clear that the (partial) transformation of socio-political into ethnic identities is characteristic for both cases. While these processes exemplify the constructed nature of ethnic identities, this identity transformation is nevertheless a source of political problems, since ethnic identities tend to be much more intractable than ideological ones (Cento Bull, 2003:52). In Italy, the linkage of this identity with one particular political party probably limits at the same time its appeal, while in Flanders this identity has apparently succeeded in transcending its original political and cultural linkages. Identities by themselves are certainly not a sufficient explanation of centrifugal regionalism, since in both cases they clearly are shifting and sometimes ambivalent, if not schizophrenic. Hooghe therefore emphasizes that “the role of political entrepreneurs, and the availability of a conducive political opportunity structure are much more important in this regard” (Hooghe:169), and Biorcio and Vitale likewise point out to the role of “pertinent actors … structured by cultural and value constraints, by institutions and their respective prescriptive and operational instruments, by environments made up of opportunities and economic interests” (Biorcio and Vitale:172). Several contributors remind us that in Italy the emergence of the Lega Nord is related to the crisis of the Italian party system in the early 1990s. In Belgium, the institutional set-ups definitely appear as a crucial element of the political opportunity structure that explains the strength of centrifugal regionalism. Stouthuysen and Jans outline how the Belgian federal system and the successive reforms of this system generate centrifugal dynamics (almost) entirely absent in Italy. In Belgium, the centrifugal dynamics appear to be an inherent feature of the process of institutional reforms (starting from the late 1970s) that has transformed the unitary Belgian state into a federal state (cf. Swenden et al., 2006). Each new reform has weakened the federal government and reinforced the regional and community authorities. The complex overlap of competencies of the Belgian federal system induces renewed pressure for institutional reforms that would make the system more efficient. Demands for reform almost automatically take the shape of transfers of new competencies to the regional and community level. This process finds its parallel in the dynamics of the Belgian party system, where all parties have been divided along community lines since the 1970s and presently primarily identify with these communities rather than with the nation-state, resulting in the reinforcement of articulations of difference. The gradual weakening of the federal level and the difficulty of federal governance with its complex compromises between communities both make it look more rational to reinforce the regional and community level. Notwithstanding the strength of this centrifugal logic of institutional reforms, Stouthuysen and Jans nevertheless do not necessarily believe that this process will lead to the dissolution of Belgium. Not only does the conundrum of the Brussels region problematize any separation, the three regions in Belgium are condemned to cooperate because they are so inextricably interwoven. The dissolution of Belgium therefore cannot really solve the problems encountered in establishing such cooperation. The problem may, as Karmis and Gagnon (2001:161) suggest, indeed be the lack of a long-term shared vision or real political project on the institutional future of a Belgian state (beyond the separatist or confederal vision in Flanders and the Francophone desire for status quo). They argue that the Belgian political system renders the elaboration and execution of

275

such a long-term vision difficult: because of its electoral system of proportional representation and its procedures of constitutional change, reform are difficult to realize and they hence result from ad hoc compromises rather than from the reflective articulation of a political project. Compared to Belgium, the Italian regional system, installed partly after the Second World War (the Special Statute Regions), partly in 1970 (the other regions), has never displayed the centrifugal tendencies of the Belgian system, as both Nevola and Gangemi highlight. The competencies the regions did acquire have never seriously threatened the centrality of the national government. The party system remains (with the exception of the Lega itself and some other small regionalist parties) without doubt national, with only limited space for articulations of regional specificity. The institutional set-up also plays a role concerning the economic policies of regions, since the Belgian regions have many more competencies than the Italian ones. The division of northern Italy in several regions (sometimes with more extended competencies, as is the case with Trentino, Friuli, Venezia-Giulia and Valle d’Aosta) certainly renders more difficult any elaboration of a collective northern political strategy or economic policy. The institutional set-up in Belgium, whereby regions overlap with ethnic communities and also have broad competences in the cultural field moreover strongly enhances their role as promoters of cultural identity, a role the various subnational authorities in Belgium have not hesitated to play. The more limited competencies of Italian regions certainly put restrictions on interventions in this field, and they moreover promote only their particular regional identity rather than a northern one, and hence the political impact of such policies is of necessity more circumscribed. In addition, national institutions in Italy still can play an important role in promoting Italian identity, and the Italian media and many representatives of the country’s intellectual and cultural establishment actively support this process. The Belgian federal government is unable or unwilling to play a similar role, media are community-bound, and promotions of Belgian identity hence in general rely on mainly private initiatives (with a relatively limited impact). Nevola nevertheless points out that the crisis of the party system in the early 1990s potentially also was a crisis of the nation, since the major parties played a crucial role in integrating citizens into the political system and also into the nation. The increased attention to national identity in the Italian public debate, besides being a response to the Lega’s alternative nation-claim, may hence be related to the need to stabilize and increase the legitimacy of its political system. The contribution of Beyen also draws attention to the role institutions played in the past. Beyen relates the formation of regional political identities to the institutional dynamics of the newly independent Belgian state. He argues that the emergence of the Flemish movement (and later of the anti-Flemish Walloon movement) resulted from the resentment against the centralizing tendencies of the Belgian state in a political and cultural context where such centralism had little legitimacy and moreover was too weak to impose itself on society. His reading of Belgian history hence does attribute an important role to regional identities, but against essentialist readings of these identities he equally points out that the very institutional set-up of the new Belgian state played a crucial role in shaping and politicizing these identities. The importance of history and hence of a longue durée perspective is also relevant for the Italian case: critiques of the centralism of the Italian state are an essential feature of the Lega Nord’s political discourse but these critiques follow (albeit reinterpreting and modifying it) themselves a long-standing tradition. The new Italian state was organised following a highly centralist

276

model. This model lacked the strong liberal input characteristic of the Belgian state and rather copied (albeit with important differences) the French Jacobin-imperial state model (cf. Tarrow, 1977). 4 The need to unify the country and to “make Italians” (as emphasized by the prominent politician Massimo D’Azeglio), combined with the serious problems the state encountered to establish its authority in the South, gave at least at the level of political elites legitimacy to this strongly centralized state structure (and in the long run the state institutions indeed were able to “make Italians”). For a variety of reasons, however, the Italian state has in many ways been a problematic institution, and historians of the Italian state and students of its present political system have related its dysfunctional features to its inefficient centralism. Gangemi points out that the Savoy dynasty governed Italy as a militarily conquered territory and polemically argues that this choice reflected their inability to take into consideration alternative modes of governance. Gangemi’s contribution highlights in fact how the Italian history is also one of missed opportunities for a more appropriate institutional and territorial organization of the country. Both in Belgium and in Italy regionalism is therefore related to the institutional set-up of the country, a reaction to a centralism that could be perceived as problematic or even illegitimate. Since secessionism is only one possible answer to this challenge (institutional reforms of revolutions being possible alternatives, and the former has been practiced both in Belgium and Italy), the reason why it has become a plausible one still needs additional explanation. There is no doubt that both in northern Italy and in Flanders economic arguments provide an important component that explains the success of visions questioning the central state . The ideological climate and the hegemonic position of a neoliberal vision focused on individual responsibility and suspicious of social solidarity undoubtedly provides in both cases legitimacy to the questioning of interregional economic solidarity. However, in both cases articulations of centrifugal regionalism also outline an image of a community within which solidarity may be preserved. In both cases, discourses link the economic success of the region to its cultural identity. As Hooghe points out, “[c] laiming that a different cultural identity is responsible for the observed difference in economic outcomes, strategically is a very clever move.” (Hooghe:160). It allows putting the blame on the economically less successful population (Wallonians), and hence justifies by means of rhetoric of responsibilization abandoning or at the very least diminishing interregional solidarity, and a similar logic equally plays an important role in Italy (see Huysseune 2006; 2008). It is therefore important to understand the logic and the history of (re)articulations of regional economic identities. In contrast with ethnic identities, regional economic identities in Italy (particularly in the form of the North-South juxtaposition) are more consolidated and have stronger historical roots (predating the country’s unification) than in Belgium. The opposition between the modern North and an

4 It should be pointed out that the different institutional set-ups in Belgium and Italy reflected their different political culture. In Belgium, the strongly embedded tradition of self-government and the weakness of an autochthonous absolutist tradition created an ideal environment for a liberal monarchy (supported in its essentials by both liberal and Catholic politicians). Italy’s political culture of the period of Unification (itself a reflection of Piedmont’s pre-unification political culture) was a mixture of absolutism tempered by liberal constitutionalism (a context more favourable to authoritarian and centralist tendencies).

277

allegedly backward and economically underdeveloped South is an essential trope of northern Italian self-identity, while the similar juxtaposition of a rich Flanders and an economically lagging Wallonia is much more recent and dates in fact from the post-War period (while before the opposite vision of a “backward” Flanders, sometimes related to its alleged cultural inferiority, was prevalent). More recently, much of northern Italy has been identified with the economic model of endogenous development based on industrial districts. This model originated in the social sciences, before the emergence of the Lega and hence without any ethnoregionalist connotation. Its emphasis on local social and cultural resources has nevertheless undoubtedly been congenial to the ethnoregionalism of the Lega. Presentations of industrial districts as grass-roots propelled models of development without state support (but also based on community identity and substantially egalitarian) also facilitate the party’s articulation of the juxtaposition of northern grassroots economic dynamism against a state represented as bureaucratic, inefficient and corrupt. Much of the success of the Lega is in particular based on its capacity to politicize the local socio-economic identities within industrial districts: the party offers in fact a political narrative that is perfectly compatible with the local identities characteristic of these districts. As much literature on the Lega points out, such convergence between local identities and the northern narrative of the Lega is a necessary (albeit not sufficient) condition to explain the party’s successes. The party is, however, also under pressure of evolutions within this constituency, and this dimension is highlighted in the contribution of Anna Cento Bull. She focuses on recent evolutions of industrial districts in the regions that are the historical heartland of the party: the Veneto and Lombardy, and the impact of these evolutions on social identities. These districts have undergone two processes: they developed a hierarchic configuration and they internationalized. Delocalization of production for sure offered important benefits for entrepreneurs, in the first place of leading firms but also for smaller entrepreneurs, but at the same time produced growing tensions and stress at home. These tensions express themselves in opposition to foreign competition deemed unfair, and against immigrants who have become an embedded presence in these districts. The immediate outcome of these developments seems to be a reinforcement of the Lega, who gives political expressions to these tensions. The elaboration of an economic identity of Flanders follows an altogether different track than in northern Italy. Although the Flemish movement has a long history of mobilization on behalf of the economic development of the region, the present articulation of this regional economic identity is a recent affair. The contribution of Stijn Oosterlynck focuses precisely on this process, and highlights the conscious intervention of the recently established Flemish regional government in the early 1980s. It is clearly the creation of this institution and its ability to propose and concretize an economic model that sustains the present Flemish identity that proposes the region both as an economical success model and as an example of good governance. Oosterlynck, however, points out that the outcome of this process itself resulted from a number of factors: the structure of the Flemish economy enabled more possibilities for reconversion than that of the other regions, the federal authorities did not have the political leeway to focus on presenting new economic models, and Flanders disposed of an economic elite able and willing to invest in the elaboration of this new economic model. The outcome is an entrepreneurial model of development that also shifted, as Oosterlynck states “the imagination of the role of the state in the economy” (Oosterlynck:91), since it intended to

278

limit the Keynes-inspired state intervention and conceptualized the role of the state to supply-side policies. In both regions, the hegemonic economic model hence limits the role of institutions, but the Flemish regional economic identity is nevertheless much more related to these institutions that function as its flagship. The different economic models do have important consequences on the perception of social and political identities. The intimate relation between economic and social models in the northern Italian industrial districts seems to have as a consequence that economic changes have quite direct and compelling social consequences and, since the Lega has indeed always displayed a strong sensitivity to the social processes within these districts, these consequences also find political expression. However, these districts are experiencing an increasing divorce between their cultural, social and political values and the demands raised by economic globalization. Cento Bull quotes a report of the Fondazione Nord Est that highlights how these social and cultural values “nowadays show some perverse effects which do not go well with the actions necessary […] to face the challenges of internationalization of the markets, globalization, integration of migrants, social cohesion etc. Even more importantly, in some cases these values risk slowing down the new phase of transformation or prevent new opportunities from being identified” (Cento Bull:103). She points out that anxiety and stress within these districts engenders a defensive ethnocentrism that produces “what has been defined as the ‘politics of simulation’, with reference to a politics which practices ‘societal self- deception’ in order to address people’s growing insecurities.” (idem:105). Such immediate relation between economic changes and social identities seems much weaker in Flanders, because of the more institutional and less socially embedded economic identity of the region. The present economic crisis has not yet engendered an important rethinking of the Flemish economic model, and certainly nationalist rhetoric claiming that the Flemish region, not burdened by the Belgian state or transfers to Wallonia, would better be able to tackle the challenges of economic globalization, dominated the 2009 (regional) and 2010 (federal) electoral campaigns. Recent statements of important Flemish politicians on the need for a federalism of solidarity nevertheless could be interpreted as a (at this moment timid) shift of paradigm towards a vision more sensitive to the possible risks of an excessively self-centred vision of Flanders. In Italy, recent literature on its economy and industrial districts does provide a more critical and less idealizing vision on them, as is amply documented in the contribution of Cento Bull (see also Berta, 2008; Perulli and Pichierri, 2010). At the political level, however, the consequence of the present economic crisis, rather than a questioning of the economic model seems to be a demand for more protection of this model. This demand is politically expressed by the Lega’s anti-globalization policies, its defense of protectionist measures against foreign imports (particularly from China), but even more against immigration. The issue of immigration (and reactions against it, in particular expressions of xenophobia) has played an important role in both cases. In Flanders the considerable electoral successes of the extreme right Vlaams Belang party (only recently in decline after a period of constant growth since the late 1980s) suggests linkages between centrifugal regionalism and xenophobia, since this party also sponsors Flemish independence. The Lega Nord’s programme equally includes an anti-immigrant dimension that since the late 1990s has taken more and more a central position in the party’s propaganda. Once again, the xenophobia of the Lega may be related to social relations within industrial districts. Literature on these districts and on the early successes

279

of the Lega (e.g. Cento Bull, 1996) already pointed out how support for the Lega was related to mechanisms of solidarity based on the juxtaposition of locals and outsiders (with the use of dialect as a cultural discriminant). This culture was clearly particular congenial to the Lega’s political message that juxtaposes the virtues of the northern population to the vices of the Italian state and associated the state with the present of immigrants (including those from southern Italy). The contributions of Devi Sacchetto and Anna Cento Bull both point out how many of these districts have increasingly become reliant on immigrant labour. As a rule, this reliance is combined with a rather strict segregation within the labour market that relegates immigrants to the least rewarding unskilled positions, often in a context of extremely exploitative labour conditions. This social and hierarchical differentiation does not easily create solidarity between native and immigrant workers: the latter are accepted as a necessary labour force but their social presence is unwanted, especially in smaller communities. At the local level Lega majors in particular have frequently taken measures meant to discriminate immigrants and exclude them from public sociability. The strongly ethnocentric stance of the Lega and the public visibility of its discriminatory policies are, however, not necessarily representative of northern society as a whole: as Biorcio and Vitale point out, hostility towards outsiders and immigrants is in fact stronger in southern than in northern Italy (with the exception of the strongly ethnocentric electorate of the Lega). Both Sacchetto and Cento Bull link attitudes and social practices in these industrial districts to the immigration policies of local and national authorities. Policies towards immigrants have become increasingly punitive and the Bossi-Fini law of 2002 has made obtaining residence permits conditional on the exercise of a regular job, putting immigrants under pressure to accept any such job regardless of conditions. As Sacchetto points out, the crucial dimension to understand contemporary practices of discrimination regards the transformation of the labour market that has coincided with the emergence of the industrial districts, and in particular the weakening of collective bargaining and the informalization of labour relations. The segmentation of the labour market in these districts puts immigrants at the lowest scale of the labour hierarchy and provides for their subordinate integration. The preferential treatment of locals also finds its expression in social life, where immigrants are frequently confronted with discriminatory practices, for example concerning the access to housing. However much discrimination follows grass- roots processes whereby local networks of social solidarity tend to exclude and discriminate immigrants, Sacchetto also highlights the involvement of Italian media and policy makers (in the first place from the Lega, but also from other parties, including from the centre-left) in this process. These actors have been actively involved in presenting immigrants as a security problem, and have hence contributed to a public discourse in which stereotypes against immigrants abound and discriminatory policies towards them become legitimate. Sacchetto argues that “racist and xenophobic campaigns promoted by politically-controlled institutions and adopted by local politicians, are central to control migrant workers and to deprive them of voice.” (Sacchetto:141). For Sacchetto, these campaigns and discriminatory practices themselves are embedded in a more long-term (not exclusively Italian) history of racial ideology and discrimination, but they may also express (as is frequently the case for the Lega) a more general intolerance towards any form of social deviance and non-conformity. He nevertheless points out that counter-practices and visions of solidarity with immigrants are equally present in Italy, albeit in a minoritarian position with insufficient public visibility.

280

Policies towards immigrants are undoubtedly different in Belgium, starting from its liberal legislation on naturalization. While some Flemish parties share with Vlaams Belang its antagonism towards the Belgian state, Flemish mainstream parties have systematically refused to cooperate with this party because of its xenophobia and its more or less overt neo-Nazi sympathies, and they equally have expressed their hostility towards racism. Xenophobia is certainly present in Flanders (albeit not stronger that in Wallonia), and all research confirms that the electoral successes of Vlaams Belang are related to its anti-immigrant programme. The impact of the successes of this party on Flemish politics is, however, far from straightforward, as the contribution of Patrick Loobuyck and Dirk Jacobs highlights. Presumably because of the pressure of Vlaams Belang, Flemish parties are admittedly tougher than Francophone ones on the issues of asylum and regularization of illegal immigrants. The policies of the Flemish government towards immigrants in the region follow, however, a more complex logic, and the contrast with the French community is particularly interesting. The latter follows, rather in line with the French tradition, an assimilationist policy towards immigrants. Flemish policies, on the contrary, include a strong multicultural component, based on the recognition of ethno-cultural groups, their language and culture. As Loobuyck and Jacobs highlight, the Flemish policy frame clearly incorporates the experience of the Flemish history of cultural emancipation, and hence assumes that the preservation of other cultures is equally valid, hence giving legitimacy to multiculturalism. They point out that Flemish nationalism has, besides its radical right expressions, a strong democratic component that accepts and fosters liberal-democratic values, including multiculturalism. However, the Flemish policy frame also includes an assimilationist component. Because of the crucial place of the language component in the history of the Flemish movement, ensuring that immigrants speak Dutch has always been an important policy concern, but recently Flemish policies pay more importance to “citizenization”. The recent imposition of compulsory citizenization courses for immigrants and asylum seekers is based on the assumption that they can only become Flemish citizen if they are able to speak Dutch and “agree with the ‘Flemish’ values of pluralism, democracy, the rule of law, freedom, equality, solidarity, respect and citizenship” (Loobuyck and Jacobs:135). Recent policies definitely include a stronger assimilationist component – also expressed in the recent ban on headscarves in Flemish official schools – but at the same time preserve many elements of the previous multiculturalist policies. In general, even when the cultural identity of minorities is deemed important, Flemish policies certainly give precedence to Flemish culture, hence promoting inegalitarian multiculturalism. The case of Flanders nevertheless problematizes any automatic linkage between centrifugal regionalism and xenophobic tendencies. It is, however, unclear whether the Flemish policy framework is more successful than the Francophone one of assimilation, since in both communities the situation of allochtones in terms of social equality (education, employment) leaves much to be desired. On the social and cultural dynamics that enable the emergence of xenophobic policies, the contributions of Lien Warmenbol and Martina Avanza shed light from a different perspective. They both analyze the meso-level, Warmenbol different neighbourhoods in Antwerp (the most important electoral stronghold of the Vlaams Belang), Avanza the community of “Padanist” activists of the Lega. In both cases, the success of these parties is clearly related to the decline of the mass party model and hence

281

their weakening territorial presence. Warmenbol relates the electoral results of Vlaams Belang in districts to political participation and the links between parties and the local population. She emphasizes in particular a supply side explanation, the presence of the Vlaams Belang party in neighbourhoods where traditional parties have increasingly become invisible (especially in local contexts with a tradition of clientelism and patronage). Vlaams Belang hence channels new mobilizations, essentially around local issues, although some of them (e.g. around mosques) clearly are also related to the ideological agenda of the party. The party’s success in capturing local consensus is inversely proportional to the presence of other parties: where these remain locally active consensus for the Vlaams Belang diminishes, sometimes drastically. Although the presence and grass-roots activity of political parties certainly is not the only explanation of political success (Vlaams Belang obtained important results even in contexts where it is hardly present), her contribution certainly demonstrates the limits of interpretations that understand voters in modern democracies as rational individuals making choices on the basis of personal interests and outside any social context. Many commentators in Italy have equally pointed out how the emergence of the Lega parallels the disappearance of traditional mass parties, in the first place the Christian democrats. The regions where the Lega is most strongly embedded and where its activists are most present are also those where other parties, in particular those of the left, have traditionally been weaker and now are all but invisible. The contribution of Martina Avanza on Lega Nord activists and in particular on the group of militants devoted to the Padanian nation-building project, however, also offers other interesting insights. It highlights the well-embedded grass-roots presence of the party in many northern communities, but also the limits of the party’s reach. Its capacity to generate political militancy is not matched in the social field: the party’s attempts to create unions or organizations representing specific interest groups have in general been unsuccessful. It also shows that the tension within the Lega between its nation-building rhetoric and its participation in the institutions of the Italian government is parallelled by a separation between militants involved in the institutions and those engaged in the Padanian nation- building project (the so-called “Padanists”). The latter constitute in fact a community of activists often critical of the party’s politics (in particular its alliance with Berlusconi). Avanza’s contribution shows how this community devotes itself to a long-term project of nation-building (a project in which the xenophobic compönent is very strong). They are involved in the “Padanian” institutions the party has set up to simulate an independent state (e.g. the Padanian parliament) and participate to the celebrations of Padanian nationhood. In their day-to-day activities, they intend to promote Padanian identity through a variety of sectorial organizations. Avanza highlights how this world of Padanists, in promoting an identity purported to represent the whole of northern Italy in practice is strongly self-referential. Although the Padanist community is not a sect whose members cut off ties with their social environment, its activists clearly concentrate their engagement within this community at the detriment of non-partisan forms of participation in local community life. This Padanian community allows its members important possibilities of self-realization and sometimes also of social promotion (albeit strictly within the context of the party itself). The relative isolation and self-referentiality of Padanian activists nevertheless appear as symbolic of the marginality of the Padanian nation-building project, notwithstanding the party’s electoral successes.

282

Warmenbol and Avanza certainly reveal the social embeddedness of the activists of Vlaams Belang and the Lega Nord but also that the party’s successes are contingent, partly dependent on the limited presence of other parties. The Vlaams Belang constructs its grass-roots presence essentially through local issues, which are not necessarily strongly ideological but do include problems related to the presence of immigrants. The Lega activists certainly propose a right-wing vision of society in which hostility towards immigrants plays an important role. While in both cases, antipolitical attitudes and xenophobic attitudes are undoubtedly present and characterize these parties’ constituency, the measure in which the social embeddedness of these parties also reflects a broader adherence to their secessionist project is less straightforward. Warmenbol’s contribution suggests that the issue is not of primary importance for the Vlaams Belang constituency. Avanza suggests that the nation-building dimension of the Lega Nord indeed finds militant support, but remains an essentially internal project with a limited impact on society at large (and in fact separates these activists from society at large but even from the more institutional party activities). The limits of the impact of these parties raise the question of the possible impact of alternative projects, and of political mobilizations that counter the vision of these parties (and in a broader context, the agenda of centrifugal regionalism). The contributions of Jeroen Van Laer and Gianni Piazza focus on such mobilizations, but each from a different perspective. Van Laer’s contribution centres upon the analysis of demonstrations, and proposes an overview of the regional background of participants, their reasons to participate and the social embedding of participation (individual, through networks or organizations). He firstly analyzes a pro-Belgium demonstration (on November 18 th , 2007). This mobilization reached a relatively important number of people (35,000 participants). The outcome of this demonstration gives a mixed message: it shows that the issue of Belgian unity does mobilize people, and that such a mobilization may be successful even without the support of political parties or organized civil society (the demonstration largely resulted from initiatives of private citizens). However, the mobilization was clearly more successful in attracting Francophones than Flemish since the latter were drastically underrepresented in the demonstration. The largely unorganized participation also implies that the political continuity of such events tends to be limited and the organizers of this initiative have indeed not been able to translate it into anything resembling a consistent social movement. Flemish nationalist mobilizations are, on the contrary, expressions of an organized and well-structured movement. The electoral impact of Flemish nationalism contrasts, however, with its limited capacity for more active forms of mobilizations since demonstrations of the Flemish movement tend to attract limited participation (essentially of activists), certainly in comparison with the pro- Belgium demonstration. Looking at demonstrations unrelated to nationalism, Van Laer observes that those organized by social movements (trade unions, NGO’s) generally are characterized by a more or less proportional participation from the two language groups. The federalization of Belgium has admittedly also led to the creation of regional civil society organizations (trade unions remain national), but established patterns of cooperation and collective mobilization do exist. The demonstration he studies that was organized around a largely spontaneous “New Emotional Movement” with little involvement of organized social movements in the first place involved locals, but nevertheless also attracted participants from both language communities. The author does point out, however, that the regions

283

seem to have different traditions of participation, which in Flanders seems to be more organized and in Wallonia more individual. All in all, these demonstrations suggests that at the level of social movements and participatory politics a common Belgian public sphere continues to be present, notwithstanding some differences in traditions of mobilization . The contribution of Gianni Piazza looks at political mobilizations from a different perspective, focusing on two examples of local mobilizations in northern Italy that strongly diverge from the Lega model, the No Tav in Val di Susa and the No Dal Molin in Vicenza. Both mobilizations focus strongly on local issues, but produce a different version of localism than the Lega does. This may be related to the strategy of the promoters of these mobilizations to frame them in universalist terms (a vision of development and common goods respectful of the territory), as a response to accusations of defending narrow self-interest (the “Nimby syndrome”). Both movements certainly intend to extend their struggle beyond the strictly local, by stimulating participation from non-locals (e.g. in solidarity demonstrations), or by establishing national networks of local mobilization, linking northern and southern experiences in this field and promoting solidarity between northern and southern Italy. These movements hence combine local concerns and the establishment of broader networks of support that are extended even beyond the country’s borders, through contacts with activists from other countries, and propose an ideology of interlocal and interregional solidarity. The presence and practice of such mobilizations certainly counters the logic of centrifugal regionalism. The successes of these movements in establishing networks of solidarity contrast, however, with their failure to influence official politics since all political parties (with the partial exception of some of their local representatives, and of the green and radical left parties, presently not represented in parliament) actively oppose both mobilizations. This certainly contrasts with the impact of mobilizations the Lega promotes, e.g. against mosques or against the presence of Roma in local communities: these mobilizations are much more limited in scope and degree of participation but they do have an impact upon policy decisions. Piazza’s contribution provides several elements to understand why the mobilizations he discusses are different from those promoted by the Lega. In the case of the No Tav, local political traditions with strong references to the Resistance and with a strong left-wing component definitely played a role: participants there have tended to frame their actions in terms of these traditions and have reconstructed the identity of their valley within this tradition, congenial to ideologies of solidarity and precluding narrow localism. The mobilization in Vicenza, a town with a solid Christian-democrat tradition more congenial to the Lega, could not rely on such cultural resources, and frames itself in fact explicitly in rupture with a tradition of political passivity. As such, it is a relatively rare example of a non-leghist social movement in that part of Italy where this party otherwise tends to be hegemonic. Piazza highlights that the specific forms of both these mobilizations, with a large scale and continuous local participation leads to a conflictual relations with political parties in general, since the participants of these mobilizations question the monopoly of political parties and of local administrators to represent them. Concerning the Lega in particular, it is easy to imagine that a broad, pluralist and participative movement is not congenial for this party with its highly centralized structure and authoritarian internal culture.

284

2. A PROVISIONAL CONCLUSION

A provisional conclusion of this comparison of two cases of centrifugal regionalism certainly suggests that identity is a necessary but not sufficient component for its emergence. A credible identity discourse definitely appears as a necessary precondition for any questioning of the allegiance to the national state. The example of the Lega moreover reveals that identity discourses may also be articulated with some measure of success in cases where the “objective” elements of such an identity (language, religion …) are weak or absent, confirming that identities are constructed and contingent. In both cases national and regional identities have moreover undergone important evolutions through their history. More in general, such identity discourses have constantly interacted with broader worldviews and ideologies. This is particularly clear in the case of Italy: the contribution of Nevola outlines how debates on Italian identity have at the same time been debates on the norms and values of a political community. The affirmation of centrifugal regionalism in the two cases studied here undoubtedly has an ideological component in which economic ideas play a crucial role: the hegemonic neoliberal vision contributes to legitimize such discourses, since it justifies rejections of solidarity. In each case, however, we find a blend of this ideology with more communitarian ideas. The cases studied reveal in fact how identity discourses provide a linkage between ideologies and a specific territory, itself associated with a particular community. Stouthuysen and Jans remind us that the solidarity of the welfare state is intrinsically related to national identification, and the primordial role public discourse in Belgium attributes to identifications at the level of communities and regions hence undermines the legitimacy of transregional welfare transfers. In Italy, the Lega’s nation-building project undoubtedly has the same goal in mind and derives part of its legitimacy from a pre-existent tradition criticizing public policies in the South. In both cases, an alternative regional community is proposed, the Lega’s community of producers, the Flemish regional vision of a competitive community. These articulations of regional identity provide the image of a community able to compete in the global economy, but equally highlight that this position expresses the community’s endogenous virtues. Within the national context, they (implicitly or explicitly) attribute their territorial community a superior status, because of the presence of these endogenous virtues. Such discourses that implicitly affirm the region’s superiority are not only articulated towards the outsiders of the territory, but also towards the outsiders within it, immigrants (although the understanding of the place of immigrants in the community and the vision on policies towards immigrants definitely strongly differentiate the two cases). In both cases, this worldview refers to the broader context of globalization and affirms itself at the same time as a project that reflects European values, even in the case of the Lega and its professed (Huysseune, 2010). These two articulations of centrifugal regionalism reflect at the national level the inherent tension between competition and cooperation in the EU model and – although at this stage it is too early to evaluate the impact of newly developing modes of EU economic governance – may exemplify the problematic place of solidarity in the European project. Justifications of centrifugal regionalism in the two richer regions studied in this volume implicitly or explicitly apply a worldview in which the economic success of a community needs to be rewarded because it expresses its moral excellence, and the

285

opposition to transfers thus becomes normatively justified. Such a worldview undoubtedly has ethnocentric features, albeit public discourse in richer regions, particularly in Flanders but even in the case of the Lega Nord (cf. Huysseune, 2008), tends to assume a rhetoric of benevolent paternalism towards less affluent regions. They affirm the necessity of the Other community to undergo a process of cultural change to acquire the virtues of the more successful community (and they tend to interpret the abandonment of regional transfers as a means to responsibilize the less affluent regions). The view on immigrants within the community varies from the xenophobia of the Lega Nord (not necessarily representative of northern Italy, notwithstanding its clear impact on official politics) or the Vlaams Belang to Flemish official multiculturalism (itself nevertheless also characterized by a rhetoric of benevolent paternalism). Striking in both cases is how within the public debate only very limited attention is paid to the problematic features of such a discourse. Firstly, the linkage between economic success and a particular community is rarely questioned, even by spokespersons and intellectuals of the poorer regions. The worldview that classifies territories according to their economic performance, and that assumes that this performance unproblematically expresses the merits of the community of this territory, is clearly hegemonic. As Oosterlynck states, what is lacking in such a perspective “is a political economy perspective on how regions are imagined and institutionalized” (Oosterlynck:84). He argues that regions are on the contrary “a concrete spatialization of social relations and involves political agency” (idem:85), including the political dynamics that have contributed to the degree of success of particular territories. A second issue that appears only marginally in the discussion is the possible impact of the abolition of redistributive policies on the poorer region: majority opinion in the more affluent region simply seems to take it for granted that these policies will have a thaumaturgic impact on the less affluent ones (a vision that certainly finds little empirical support). Spokespersons of the latter regions contest this opinion but for a number of historical reasons (real or presumed practices of mismanagement) seem at the same time embarrassed to reaffirm the legitimacy of transfers since they also defend claims to regional responsibility and economic self-reliance. A final taboo in the public debate seems to be the problematic consequences of a competitive model of society, especially in Flanders. This is less the case in northern Italy, where journalist, novel writers and a number of social scientists have already a tradition of discussing the problematic features of its model of diffuse industrialization (Huysseune, 2006:133-138), and Cento Bull’s contribution highlights the increasing importance of such debates in recent years. A comparison of the two cases thus reveals that, notwithstanding the historical and present differences of identity articulations, in their present form they are both characterized by a worldview that links economic excellence to cultural identity. The political impact of this worldview seems determined by a number of strongly case- specific contingencies (but ultimately with some similarities). Institutions are definitely an important variable that mediates the effects of identity discourses. In Belgium, the mechanisms that promote centrifugal regionalism are in the first place institutional and political: the series of reforms that have transformed the country from a unitary to a federal state, the perpetual pressure for new reforms, and the almost exclusively community-based party system. These dynamics, more than the tradition of Flemish nationalism, play a predominant role in explaining centrifugal tendencies in Belgium. However, it would be difficult to ignore the role of that tradition, since it played a major

286

role in the articulation of a Flemish identity, in the delimitation of the Flemish territory, and in providing a cultural environment (in particular within the media) in which the Flemish identity was constantly reaffirmed. As Stouthuysen and Jans nevertheless point out, these institutional reforms do not only result from Flemish pressure, since Walloon desire for economic self-government equally contributed to the transformation of the Belgian state from the 1970s on. The present institutional set-up of the country is in a certain sense contingent, “the unexpected outcome of a political battle between parties each having quite diverging objectives” (Stouthuysen and Jans:55). Institutions are less prominently present in explanations of centrifugal regionalism in northern Italy. In the background, the Italian state nevertheless plays an important role since it is its policies deemed authoritarian, exceedingly centralist or incompetent and corrupt that serve as an important legitimization for secession. However, centrifugal regionalism is almost exclusively related to the emergence of a new political actor, the Lega Nord. Biorcio and Vitale point out that this phenomenon can best be analyzed through a constructive approach that relates “the subjective political initiative of the Lega with the conditions and replies of the political, economic and social world” (Biorcio and Vitale:172). The emergence of centrifugal regionalist tendencies in northern Italy does appear as an event that has strong roots in processes of economic, social and cultural changes in peripheral northern Italy, seemingly largely outside the world of political, economic and cultural elites that were then captured by a new political entrepreneur. However, this emergence itself is related to the particular context of a major crisis of the existent party-system, and the increasing incapacity of a central political actor, the Christian Democrat party, to act as the representative of the interests of the actors concerned. The impact of the Lega on the institutional set-up of the Italian state nevertheless remains more limited since this set-up, while allowing the participation of the Lega to regional and national governments, does not have the centrifugal systemic dynamics characteristic of the Belgian state. If anything, it seems to have been able to absorb much of the centrifugal dynamics that the emergence of this party engendered. However, the possibility of the introduction of fiscal federalism in a context of economic crisis and political instability might eventually reinforce until now weak centrifugal dynamics. Politicians and intellectuals from southern Italy (but not only) have in fact frequently voiced their concern about the centrifugal effects that the introduction of fiscal federalism would engender. It is tempting to contrast an essentially institutionally-driven and elite-supported Flemish centrifugal regionalism to its grass-roots driven equivalent in northern Italy. This vision would, however, neglect the institutional dimension of the Italian case, including the emergence of the Lega as an expression of social groups previously integrated in the political system – a process that expressed their hostile reaction towards a state increasingly unable to sustain the local economy. An exclusive focus on the grass-roots dimension of the Lega also misses an important point, namely how elites in northern Italy have constantly interacted with this movements and have given support to a number of important demands of the Lega, like fiscal federalism. On the other hand, this contrast equally underestimates grass-roots processes in Flanders, namely antipolitical sentiments that were instrumentalized by Vlaams Belang. In both cases, the diminished capacity of traditional parties to provide political and social integration (itself reflecting their diminished grass-roots presence, a process that gained momentum in both countries from the 1980s on) certainly seems an important trigger-off of such tendencies.

287

In the two cases of centrifugal regionalism studied in this volume its emergence is certainly not self-evident. Interpretations of centrifugal regionalism as a natural phenomenon and of the success of parties questioning the nation-state as the expression of a silent majority not represented anymore by traditional parties definitely are inadequate and in fact contradicted by empirical data as both the contributions of Hooghe and Biorcio and Vitale confirm. In the northern Italian case, centrifugal regionalism is strongly related to the emergence of one party that has been able to create a solid constituency and influence the Italian political agenda. However, until now it has clearly not succeeded in making this identity hegemonic, and the data of Biorcio and Vitale suggest that the party’s constituency rather forms a regional subculture with a worldview strongly different from the rest of the northern Italian population, although several of its programmatic proposals like fiscal federalism do attract much broader support. Flanders undoubtedly differs from northern Italy by the hegemonic position Flemish identity has acquired and the well-institutionalized existence of a separate Flemish public sphere. Even in Flanders, however, this hegemony is in some aspects problematic and bereft with contradictions, as is for example revealed in the relative low weight that the Flemish electorate attributes to regional identity while at the same time giving strong support to political parties proposing secession or at the very least drastic institutional reforms and an equally drastic re-dimensioning of national redistributive mechanisms. The contradictory elements in these data certainly point out that we have not yet reached a full understanding of the political, social and cultural dynamics that have engendered centrifugal regionalism. Belgian research is strong in discussing and analyzing the consequences of institutional reforms, while in Italy discussions on federalism often are superficial and instrumental, as Gangemi in particular points out (and the strong focus on political leadership in the Italian public debate since the 1990s would provide an explanation for this limited attention). Italy on the contrary has, concerning northern Italy, a strong tradition of research at the meso-level, and we definitively have a better idea how its appeal is embedded in local society. Such a research approach is admittedly facilitated by a number of contingencies. Centrifugal regionalism is essentially the programme of one party, and therefore easier to circumscribe and research, and it is related to the easily identifiable and well-researched industrial districts in northern Italy. The insights of this literature definitely suggest that research at the meso-level would be an appropriate instrument in Flanders/Belgium (the research of Lien Warmenbol in this volume is an example of such an approach). At the same time, researchers in Italy have recently taken a more critical stance towards research with an exclusive focus on an economic model with limited interest in the (sometimes deleterious) social consequences this model may have engendered. In addition, we may also notice that the focus on these districts tends to obscure the rest of northern Italy, including the support the Lega receives there. Avanza’s chapter offers in fact a contribution in an alternative direction. She outlines how the Lega works as a channel for social and cultural promotion for socially marginalized persons, a dimension well worth further research. A last difference is that Italian authors, also because the emergence of the Lega coincided with a major crisis of the Italian party system, tend to emphasize more than in Belgium the antipolitical dimension that is present in centrifugal regionalism (cf. Gangemi, 2008). Several Italian contributions to this volume outline the democratic ambiguity of centrifugal regionalism (Nevola), relate it to a democratic malaise (again Nevola), and outline how the Lega Nord proposes “politics of simulation” which

288

“practices ‘societal self-deception’ in order to address people’s growing insecurities” (Cento Bull:105). Belgian commentators tend to interpret centrifugal regionalism more as a crisis of institutions rather than of politics (antipolitics being rather related with the xenophobia of Vlaams Belang or the populism of the Lijst De Decker). Only Beyen, quoting the Indian political scientist Sunil Khilnani, refers to “the self-devouring capacities of modern democratic politics” and outlines that by “democratizing without thoroughly investing in the process of nation-building, the Belgian state undermined its own basis” (Beyen:23). A final question concerns the broader relevance of these cases. This volume essentially focuses on the national dimension, but as outlined in the introduction it would definitely be relevant to Europeanize our interpretation of them, especially since the present economic crisis coincides with the multiplication of cases of centrifugal regionalism. At first sight, the many contingencies that explain in both cases the rise of centrifugal regionalism definitely suggest that many of the observations drawn from these contributions are unlikely to be all valid in other European cases. The cases of Scotland and Catalonia, for example, crucially differ by their quite different politico-ideological context, in which the articulation of centrifugal regionalism frequently deploys a leftist language (while in Flanders and northern Italy the opposite is clearly the case). The presence in both cases of economic arguments that follow a similar anti-redistributionist logic nevertheless raises the question of the exact meaning and importance of these ideological differences (and their linkage with the European level). If we apply the finding that institutions play an important role to explain the opportunity structure in which centrifugal regionalism emerges (and both Scotland and Catalonia for sure offer elements that would confirm such an interpretation), then we are indeed confronted with a broader process that problematizes existent institutions. This may not necessarily be a “crisis of the nation-state” (cf. Hont, 1994), also because movements supporting centrifugal regionalism themselves propose models of nation-states, but definitely one of existent institutional set-ups, be they “national” or “European”.

REFERENCES

Berta, G. (ed.) 2008. Questione settentrionale, Economia e società in trasformazione , Milano, Feltrinelli. Buelens, G., J. Goossens and D. Van Reybrouck (eds) (2007), Waar België voor staat. Een toekomstvisie , Antwerpen/Amsterdam, Meulenhoff/Manteau. Cassano, F. (2009), Tre modi di vedere il Sud . Bologna, Il Mulino. Cento Bull, A. (1996), “Ethnicity, Racism and the Northern League”, in C. Levy (ed.), Italian Regionalism. History, Identity and Politics, Oxford/Washington DC, Berg:171-187. Cento Bull, A. (2003), “Collective identities: From the Politics of Inclusion to the Politics of Ethnicity and Difference”, Global Review of Ethnopolitics , 2 (3-4): 41-54. Deschouwer, K. and D. Sinardet (2010), “Identiteiten, communautaire standpunten en stemgedrag”, in K. Deschouwer, P. Delwit, M. Hooghe and S. Walgrave (eds), D e stemmen van het volk. Een analyse van het kiesgedrag in Vlaanderen en Wallonië op 7 juni 2009 , Brussel, VUBPress:75-97.

289

Gangemi, G. (2008), Italian Politics as a Long Run Question: ‘Bad Civil Societies’ or ‘Bad Elites’? , Universität Giessen, Justus-Liebig-Institut für Politikwissenschaft, Occasional Paper 2. Hont, I. (1994). “The Permanent Crisis of a Divided Mankind: ‘Contemporary Crisis of the Nation State’ in Historical Perspective”, Political Studies , 42 (Contemporary Crisis of the Nation State?):166-231. Huyse, L. (1981), “Political Conflicts in Bicultural Belgium”, in A. Lijphart (ed.), Conflict and Coexistence in Belgium: the Dynamics of a Culturally Divided Society , Berkeley, Institute of International Studies, University of California:107-126. Huysseune, M. (2006), Modernity and Secession. The Social Sciences and the Political Discourse of the Lega Nord in Italy , Oxford, Berghahn. Huysseune, M. (2008), “Come interpretare l'Altro. Il Mezzogiorno nel discorso della Lega Nord”, Meridiana , 63:173-192. Huysseune, M. (2010), “A Eurosceptic Vision in a Europhile country: The Case of the Lega Nord ”, Modern Italy, 15 (1):63-75. Karmis, D. and A.-G. Gagnon (2001), “Federalism, Federation and Collective Identities in Canada and Belgium: Different Routes, Similar Fragmentation”, in: A.-G. Gagnon and J. Tully, Multinational Democracies , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press:137-175. Keating, M., J. Laughlin and K. Deschouwer (2003), Culture, Institutions and Economic Development. A Study of Eight European Regions . Cheltenham (UK)/ Northampton (MA/USA), Edward Elgar. Perulli, P. and A. Pichierri (eds) (2010), La crisi italiana nel mondo globale. Economia e società del Nord , Torino, Einaudi. Ruzicka, J. and K. Stullerova 2008. “From the Second Best Option to Dissolution: Instrumentality and Identity in Czechoslovak Federalism”, in E. Kavalski and M. Zolkos (eds), Defunct Federalisms. Critical Perspectives on Federalist Failure , Aldershot, Ashgate:129-143. Swenden, W., M. Brans and L. De Winter (2006), “The Politics of Belgium: Institutions and Policy under Bipolar and Centrifugal Federalism”, West European Politics , 29 (5):863-873. Tarrow, S. (1977), Between Center and Periphery. Grassroots Politicians in Italy and France , New Haven/London, Yale University Press. Zinn, D. L. (2001), La raccomandazione. Clientelismo vecchio e nuovo , Roma, Donzelli.

290