The Many Faces of Populism: Current PerspectivesThe Many Faces of Populism in Italy: The Northern League and BerlusconismDwayne Woods

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THE MANY FACES OF POPULISM

IN ITALY: THE NORTHERN

LEAGUE AND BERLUSCONISM

Dwayne Woods

ABSTRACT

In this chapter, I examine the populism of the Northern League andBerlusconi. I attempt to provide an institutional explanation as towhy Italy, more so than other Western European democracies, hasexperienced such diverse forms of populism. Stated in full, the thesisadvanced is that the rise and persistence populism in Western Europeandemocracies, such as Italy, is an indication of an institutional crisis ofrepresentation.

Starting in the 1980s, Western European democracies have seen the emer-gence of populist movements and parties along with the rise of anti-statusquo discourse (Betz, 1993). While populism has spread across WesternEurope, the populist phenomenon has gained traction in some countriesmore than others. This is particularly the case in Italy (Ignazi, 1996;

The Many Faces of Populism: Current Perspectives

Research in Political Sociology, Volume 22, 27�51

Copyright r 2014 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited

All rights of reproduction in any form reserved

ISSN: 0895-9935/doi:10.1108/S0895-993520140000022000

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Mannheimer, 1991, 1993; Orsina, 2013; Tarchi, 2008; Woods, 1992b). Withthe collapse of the Christian Democratic and Italian Communist parties’hegemony in the early 1990s, the Italian party and political system under-went a significant transformation (Mannheimer, 1991, 1993, 1994). Aninsurgent regional populist movement � the Lombardy League, laterknown as the Northern League � and one of Italy’s riches businessman,Silvio Berlusconi, emerged as pivotal players on the Italian political land-scape in the context of the implosion of the two main pillars of the postwarItalian political representation system. To varying degrees and with differ-ent political objectives, both the Northern League and Berlusconi’s ForzaItalia utilized elements of populism in their strategies for coming to power.Recently, another type of radical populism has emerged in Italy. BeppeGrillo’s Five Star Movement (Cinque Stelle) arrived on the political scenejust before the 2013 national elections and succeeded in getting nearly 25percent of the national vote. Moreover, it was the only political force thatwas able to obtain votes across the different regions in Italy, making it theonly truly national party in the country (Diamanti, 2013). In the 2013election, both the Northern League and Berlusconi’s party suffered declines(Diamanti, 2013).

In this chapter, I examine the populism of the Northern League andBerlusconi. Lanzone provides a detailed exploration of the Five StarMovement in a separate chapter. I attempt to provide an institutionalexplanation as to why Italy, more so than other Western European democ-racies, has experienced such diverse forms of populism. Stated in full, thethesis advanced is that the rise and persistence populism in WesternEuropean democracies such as Italy is an indication of an institutional cri-sis of representation (Kriesi, 2014). A crisis of representation can arisefrom different factors, such as a change in generational loyalties, a drop inpartisan identification, or an exogenous shock to the political system. Inthe case of Italy, the crisis was largely an endogenous one. The postwarparty system that took root in the early 1950s and lasted until the early1990s underwent a gradual and then accelerated decline as its social, ideolo-gical, and institutional links to Italian citizens eroded (Biorcio, 1999;Mannheimer, 1993; Woods, 1992b).

The collapse of the Berlin Wall and the ending of communism inEastern Europe had a direct impact on the Italian Communist Party,forcing it to transform itself into a more typical social democratic politicaland ideological formation. Then, in 1992, the anticorruption operation“Mani Pulite (clean hands),” spearheaded by judges in Milan put theChristian Democrats and the Italian Socialist Party under enormous

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pressure (Lazar, 2013, p. 320). While the immediate cause of the collapse ofthe postwar party system was these exogenous shocks, the endogenousdecline within the context of political representation of the two dominantpillars of the postwar system, the Christian Democrats and the ItalianCommunist Party, had become manifest by the late 1980s (Woods, 1992b).Shin and Agnew (2008, p. 68) provide some data on the secular decline thatthe major parties faced before the external shock of the corruption scandalsto the party system. Their data illustrate that:

Between 1976 and 1992 there had already been significant erosion in electoral

support for the largest parties relative to the rise in popular support for various

“protest” parties such as the League and the Greens and a revived PSI. In 1976 fully

73.1 percent of the vote for the Chamber of Deputies went to DC and the PCI; but

by 1987 this had fallen to 60.9 percent. And in 1992 DC and the two main heirs to

the PCI (PDS and Refounded Communists) accounted for only 51.4 percent of the

vote for the Chamber. So, if Tangentopoli was the defining moment for the final

demise of the old system, the two largest parties had already begun losing their elec-

toral centrality long before. The end of the cold war, the failure of DC to respond

adequately to the demands of its historic constituency of small businesses in the

Northeast, and the relative breakdown of the Communist and Catholic political sub-

cultures (particularly the Catholic one) all seem to have played some role in this loss

of centrality.

In the institutional breach two different forms of populism developed(Tarchi, 2008). Berlusconi created, literally overnight, a political party totake advantage of the vacuum left on the center-right with the collapse in1993 of the long dominant Christian Democratic Party (DC), and UmbertoBossi’s insurgent regionalist movement took advantage of the crisis of theinstitutional status quo to propose a new form of political and social repre-sentation (Ignazi, 1996; Mannheimer, 1994). More recently, the Five StarMovement has seized on the crisis of representation besetting the electoraland party systems dominated by Berlusconi, the Northern League, and theDemocratic Left Party to call for a radical overhaul of the political system.Grillo’s populism is calling for a less elite and party-dominated form ofpolitical representation. It relies heavily on social media and other nontra-ditional types of direct participation to bring about what it claims are moredirect forms of democratic representation.

Mair (2002) feared that the rise of populism was indicated a systemic cri-sis of political representation across Western Europe. He saw the decline ofparty systems and increased voter volatility as manifestations of the crisis.The decline of political parties entailed the loss of an important intermedi-ary institution between citizens and the state. Kriesi (2014, p. 364) provides

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a summary of Mair’s view on the function of parties in a democraticsystem:

Arguably, political parties are the most important organizations linking voters and their

representatives in established democracies. But parties have a double function: they not

only link civil society to the polity, they also organize and give coherence to the institu-

tions of government. As Peter Mai … observes, their unique contribution to the devel-

opment of modern democracy was that they combined these two crucial roles

(representation and government) into one.

If parties lost their representative function, Mair believed that this “openedthe door for populist protest” (Kriesi, 2014, p. 261). In Mair’s assessment,the decline of traditional parties and the rise of populism was a threat toliberal democracy and political stability.

CRISIS OF REPRESENTATION AND POPULISM

Pappas (2012) provides a useful analytical model to understand the riseand, in some cases, persistence of these types of populism. He argues that“populism obtains when a certain political entrepreneur is able to polarizepolitics by creating a cleavage based on the interaction between ‘the people’versus some establishment, thus forging a mass political movement.” Headds that populism is best analyzed “as a strategic power game aiming totransform potential majorities into real ones by creating novel socialcleavages. … Such an understanding of populism points directly to out-comes, namely, the creation of (populist) parties, or movements, and,further, to their consequences for contemporary liberal democracy” (2012)Populist movements and parties usually rely on recurrent rhetorical claimsin their strategic power games. Understanding the content and objective ofpopulist rhetoric is important because it is integral to core elements thatdefine populism and functions as an empirical basis to distinguish betweentypes and degrees of populism (Jagers & Walgrave, 2007).

Pappas (2012) identifies three mechanisms that are sufficient conditionsin understanding the causal link between crises of representation and popu-lism. The first is politicization of resentment. As Pappas (2012, pp. 8�9)puts it:

Populism rests on widespread social resentment with existing political and party sys-

tems. When the latter fail to meet the needs of the people and deliver the goods

expected from them, there may emerge a powerful culture of disillusionment and

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resentment against the prevailing political order. When resentment is high, established

parties, whether in government or in opposition, are more likely to try containing it lest

it upset existing political alignment patterns. This is not however true for populist par-

ties, which thrive precisely on politicizing resentment and the sense of victimhood that

accompanies it.

The second mechanism is the exploitation of new social or political clea-vages. It is understood as a key step in the way that populist leaders exploitlatent or salient feelings of nonrepresentation. Populist leaders and therhetoric they use are able to do this by identifying a political or socialdivide between “the people” and the people’s enemies. Failure of “true” or“real” representation is presented as the fault of the status quo. This isreflected in a common assertion that populism builds upon, a “we versusthem” Schmittian divide that splits societies into two broad social cate-gories, “the people” and some “establishment” (Pappas, 2012, p. 10). Insome fundamental ways, crises of representation are about resentment(Akkerman, 2003).

The third mechanism is polarization of resentment and feelings of nonre-presentation. Pappas argues that this mechanism is essential for populismto emerge in the form of a party or mass movement (Pappas, 2012, p. 10).Pappas (2012, pp. 10�11) describes the dynamics behind polarization:

It involves pitting the disenchanted and resentful people against the privileged establish-

ment in an antagonism of such a great intensity that it may threaten to tear society

apart. When polarized, societies tend to cluster around opposing poles; as the majority

of the people cleave to one pole or the other, the middle ground of politics gets lost and

the median voter becomes a rare occurrence. Significantly, as Lipset and Rokkan have

explained, such polarized conflicts are not just “over specific gains or losses but over

conceptions of moral right and over the interpretation of history and human destiny.”

The rise and intensity of populist polarization is contextual, and the threemechanisms, to varying degrees, are likely to be present across diverse man-ifestations of populist resentment. In regards to the Italian context, Ruzzaand Fella (2011), for example, have developed a similar analytical model.They argue that:

… the core features of populism consist of a distinct configuration of ideas, styles and

policies. (1) The core ideas present in all populist formations are the predominance of

appeals to the people over the heads of mediating institutions, and anti-establishment

discourse whereby a pure honest people is juxtaposed against a distant, unresponsive,

self-serving or corrupt elite, often channeled through a charismatic leadership (relating

closely to anti-politics, whereby professional politicians and traditional political parties

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are portrayed as corrupt, unrepresentative of the people, “all the same,” “selling the peo-

ple out,” and “only in it for themselves,” and so on); (2) a linguistic style which indicates

the anti-elitist character or appeal of the populist; (3) policies intended to symbolize and

justify dynamics of inclusion and exclusion � the adoption of these policies constituting

a quasi-tribal form of politics, in which a “tribe” is symbolically identified and protected.

Thus, Italy has been beset by recurrent populist dynamics because of a per-sistent crisis of representation. Initially, the crisis stemmed from the declineof the traditional party system. As Ruzza and Fella (2011) put it,

The long-term legacy of Tangentopoli was to further undermine trust in the political

system, a level of trust that was already endemically low, due to the legacy of the pro-

cesses of formation of the Italian state. Anti-political sentiments were thus widely dis-

tributed across the electorate. Italy is positioned on several indicators among the

countries where politicians and political institutions are less trusted, and where political

activity is less understood by the population. For instance, in 2002 only 40 per cent of

Italians trusted their parliament and assigned a score higher than 5 on a 1 to 10 scale �a similar figure emerged in 2004.

However, its current source is the disruptive populism institutionalized bythe Northern League and Berlusconi and recently the Five Star Movement.Both the Northern League and Berlusconi, ironically, continued to employpopulist rhetoric and attacks on the elitist status quo when they were inpower (Albertazzi & McDonnell, 2010).

THE RHETORIC OF POPULISM

Populism is a concept that is used widely to describe many different socialand political phenomena (Albertazzi & McDonnell, 2008; Barr, 2009;Canovan, 2004; Wiles, 1969). Social and political leaders who promisebroad social programs are often described as populist along with late-nineteenth century fascist and rural protest movements. While populismmight be invoked to describe disparate social and political movements,Ionescu and Gellner (1969) argue that all forms of populism are “character-ized by an ideological referent to the ‘people’ as a homogenous entity withexclusive positive and permanent values.” Moreover, populism derivesmuch of its core definitional identity from its juxtaposition between “usand them” and “right and wrong.” In addition, many populist movementshave an “other” that threatens some essential quality of the “people”: be itcosmopolitan capitalism, finance elites, corrupt politicians, immigrants, or

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foreign forces. In some instances, populism presents itself as a transversalpolitical ideology that transcends traditional dichotomies such as left andright and workers/owners. Connections between populism as ideology andrepresentation are encapsulated in the claims by populists that theyembody lost authenticity of the true people (Canovan, 1999, 2002; Mudde,2004; Taggart, 1995, 2004; Taguieff, 2007).

At the highest level of abstraction, all populist ideologies share the coreelements identified above. As one moves down the ladder of abstraction,the concept takes on adjectival characteristics that demarcate populisminto different types. As a “thin ideology,” populism gains much of its trac-tion in relationship to the kind of adjectival characteristics that specify itscontent (Stanley, 2008). In this respect, the Northern League is an identity-oriented populist movement (Beirich & Woods, 2000; Cento Bull, 1996). Itis similar to other identity-based political and social movements that placecultural, ethnic, tribal, or national identities at the center of their concep-tion of the people. The thread that runs through all of its rhetorical framesis the idea that there is an authentic identity that needs to be protected.Consequently, its construction of “others” is often about identity issues.Berlusconi’s populism gyrates between Jagers and Walgrave (2007) “thick”and “thin” populism.

POPULISM AND A CRISIS OF REPRESENTATION

IN ITALY

Political parties in Italy achieved a degree of institutional authority withoutcompare in other postwar capitalist societies. After the 1948 elections, theChristian Democratic Party (DC) emerged as the dominant political forcein the country with nearly 50 percent of the popular vote. Although theDC never regained an absolute majority in subsequent elections, the partywas able to govern by forming coalitions at first with the small center-rightparties (Liberals, Republicans, and Social Democrats) in parliament andafter 1963 with the Socialists. In a politically and socially fragmentedsociety, the DC was able to integrate a diverse set of Italian social groupsinto a mass political party by occupying a shifting center position in Italianpolitics against extremes on both the left and the right. The party’s abilityto integrate these groups depended, to a large extent, on its capacity to deli-ver political and ideological services. The DC provided these services byattracting anticommunist voters, by channeling state resources through

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clientelistic ties, by appealing to a growing middle class of the population,and by relying on the mobilization of a core Catholic constituency(Tarrow, 1977). The party was thus able to connect the periphery to thepolitical center through local notables in the South and the cultivation of aCatholic and middle class constituency in the North. Over time, though,the DC was able to maintain its diverse political base only because of itscolonization of governmental agencies and its position as the party of orderin the country. With its influence over nationalized corporations and publicspending, the DC put into place a diffuse, yet effective, distributive system(Woods, 1995).

Control over the legislative and executive processes by political parties,however, is not sufficient in itself to explain the crisis of representation andlegitimacy and the recent rise of regionalist movements. The breakdown inthe links between political parties and social groups is crucial in anybroader structural explanation. The weakening of ties between politicalparties and social groups is the outcome of changes in the economy andsocial values during the 1960s and 1970s. Italy’s economic transformationcreated by the 1970s a new urban middle class that identified less with thetraditional leftist and Catholic subcultural divisions in the country. In thepast, connections between political parties and social groups reinforcedcenter�periphery ties. Bellucci (2007, pp. 57�58) details the nature of theties between parties and partisan social groups:

a social and political cleavage … the result of a sharing of cultural values, an objective

location in the social structure, a membership (or closeness and trust) in secondary

organizations, a territorial base. It was a form of social embeddedness, a closure in dis-

tinctive and separate political sub-cultures and enclaves which Italian mass parties were

able to bring about.

As Garzia (2011, p. 61) highlights, “in the First Italian Republic, the stabi-lity of partisan alignments was especially accentuated by the tight linkbetween primary groups and the main parties of that time.”

Through intermediary associations, political parties were able to remainin relatively close contact with their political supporters. It was oftenthrough these associations that parties were able to mobilize their electo-rate, especially at critical ideological junctures. In the 1948 elections theDC relied heavily on Catholic associations to turnout the vote in its favoragainst the left. Both the Socialists and the Communists turned to theItalian Confederation of Labor for popular support against ChristianDemocratic governments in the 1950s and early 1960s. Additionally, asso-ciations tended to reinforce subcultural identification and divisions in the

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country by sponsoring a broad range of activities directly or indirectly sup-portive of the Christian Democrats or Communists. The erosion of linksbetween Italy’s major political parties and the associational groups stemmedfrom a variety of factors. Nevertheless, by the late 1980s, it was clear thatthe links between the dominant parties and Italian society had weakened(Woods, 1992b). Growing levels of disaffection from the status quo wasmanifested in decline in voters for the main parties and the emergence ofinsurgent protest movements that attacked the status quo. The crisis ofrepresentation resulted in the decline of political system in which the extentof partisan identification was pretty high (Kriesi, 2014; Scoppola, 1997).

In the 1980s the Northern League, then known as the LombardyLeague, arose to combat what it deemed a nonrepresentative and eliteparty system and elite (Biorcio, 1997; Diamanti, 1995; Ruzza & Schmidtke,1993). The initial electoral appeal of the League was rooted in a key devel-opment, the failure of the DC to mediate effectively on behalf of artisansand small businesses in the face of increasing pressure on the political econ-omy of the northeastern Italy from economic liberalization. The Leaguemerged its obsession with the supposed distinct local and regional identityof the North with the economic interest of export-oriented businesses in thearea. Initially, the dominant theme in the League’s populist rhetoric was ananti-Rome and anti-party system message. Nonetheless, underlying itsattack on what it defined as the corrupt Italian party system was its criti-cism that the system did little to protect Northerners from the onslaught ofinternal and external change. In the League’s ideological worldview, changemeant anything that undermined a certain way of life that the League’s lea-der, Umberto Bossi, believed gave the Alpine towns and villages of theNorth their distinct identity (Biorcio, 1997).

THE NORTHERN LEAGUE: REGIONAL POPULISM

In his early speeches, Bossi liked to point out that the League was not aparty but a popular movement that embodied the North’s needs anddemands against a corrupt party system based in Rome (1992, 1993, 1998).He identified the party system as the primary reason for the misallocationof resources and the poor quality of public services. Moreover, he claimedthat the North had been victimized because the bureaucracy drained taxrevenues away from the richer North and redistributed them toward thepoorer South. The League also articulated the sentiment of “us” against

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“them.” This dimension of the League’s ideology focused on three foes: acorrupt elite based in Rome, unfair distribution of the North’s wealth tothe Southern part of Italy, and the threat of immigration.

Depiction of the country’s governing class as a corrupt and inefficient“other” did not take much effort. Long before the Northern League’s elec-toral success in the 1994 elections, Italians held largely negative attitudesregarding politicians. Even though many individuals gained some personalbenefits from the patronage structure of Italian party politics, opinion sur-veys consistently showed a largely cynical and negative public attitudetoward the country’s political elite. What the Northern League accom-plished was to frame the political elite as anti-Northern and interested onlyin exploiting the region’s wealth. Bossi and other League leaders succeededin sharpening the perception of the “us” versus “them” view (Cento Bull &Gilbert, 2001). Rome was presented as the capital of malfeasance while theNorthern city of Milan was presented as the capital of productivity andresponsibility. Milan was invoked as the center of economic activity andresponsibility in contrast to Rome, which was portrayed as the center ofcorruption! (Biorcio, 2010; Woods, 2010).

Typical of the logic of populism, the real interest of the people is under-mined and corrupted by outside political elites and parties who do notshare their values. The League is the only legitimate representative ofthe people because it is not something exterior to them. In other words, theLeague’s asserted that its roots are in the local communities and with thepeople and that it thus rejects the intermediating role of traditional parties.More specifically, the antielitism and anti-status quo manifest itself in theLeague’s populism is a rejection of Italian state institutions. This rejectionentailed both the centralized Italian state apparatus, that is, the bureau-cracy, and its broader establishment ethos embodied by national politicalparties. Bossi (1993) liked to stress that the Northern League had a directrelationship with “the people,” unlike the parties in Rome who only repre-sented themselves.

The other element of the “us” versus “them” dimension was Bossi’s(1992) attack on the redistribution of Northern resources to SouthernItalians. The main reason that the Northern League focused its attack onSouthern Italians is that it required a distinct territorial “other” in order tovalidate its own purported authentic regional identity. What constitutes aNortherner is the fact that he is different from a Southerner. The conten-tion was that Northerners are productive, hardworking, honest, and civic,while Southerners are parasitical and clannish. As the following statementhighlights: “We aim at the transformation of the current, centralized state,

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that is in the hands of the Southern ethnic majority, whose dominant posi-tion is enforced by ‘Roman parties’” (Woods, 2010). In his speeches, Bossirepeatedly speaks of lost community values and identity, and in his auto-biography he points out that this decline of community is what has shapedhis own political philosophy. The League’s ideological appeal, however, isnot based solely on lost community life. Its populist appeal is also tied toBossi’s ability to blame the crisis of Northern community life on outsideelements.

Cento Bull (1996) captures very well the us/them dynamic that underliesthe regional populism of the Northern League and she highlights itsconnection to the League’s xenophobia. As she states (Cento Bull, 1996,p. 176):

Perhaps the time has now come to view trust and social cohesion as part of a dual pro-

cess of inclusion/exclusion. Or, to put it differently, when trust and solidarity are com-

munity based the community becomes racialized: it is another version of Us against the

Other. The Other is whoever does not belong to the community … The outsiders are

not necessarily physically outside of the community as long as they are outside the com-

munity of small manufacturing or related activities. This explains why occupations in

the public sector and in public administration have always been viewed with contempt!

The anti-Southern theme that had characterized the League’s populismin the early to mid-1990s declined afterwards. While there was a continuedemphasis on Northern tax dollars being wasted to subsidize the South, theearlier claims that Northern Italians were somehow ethnically differentfrom their Southern counterparts all but disappeared from the League’srhetoric. The threat to the North’s identity was no longer the South butrather immigrants from mostly non-European countries. The ethno-nationalist discourse of the League is tied to the threat that immigrantspose to the social welfare benefits of Northern Italians. Bossi’s movementhas openly advocated privileged treatment of Northerners ahead of immi-grants and others defined as outsiders when it comes to housing, state jobs,and health service (Woods, 1992a).

By the late 1990s, immigration became the signature issue of theNorthern League. The party’s newspaper, La Padania, became obsessedwith immigrants and the problems they supposedly created in Northerncommunities. Like the newspapers of extreme right-wing movements else-where in Western Europe, the League’s paper never failed to mention acrime committed by an immigrant. Drug trafficking, violent crime, andprostitution centered prominently in the newspapers’ laments regardingthe negative effects of immigration. Gypsies in particular had become a

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favorite subject in the party’s newspaper. They, along with immigrantsfrom Albania and Africa, were accused of provoking a crime wave acrossthe North (Spektorowski, 2003).

Unlike mainstream parties in Italy, Bossi and other League leaders haveasserted that the immigration problem is not one of integration becausecertain cultural differences cannot be overcome. It is not a question ofgetting an Albanian, Senegalese, Muslim, or Chinese immigrant to speakItalian; it was posited that there is a fundamental difference between cul-tural groups that cannot be dissolved. Culture was substituted for the useof the term ethnic or racial. Borrowing heavily from the ideology and lan-guage of La nouvelle droite, the League rejects assertions that it harbors aracist ideology based on inherent racial differences. Bossi claims that he isa racial egalitarian. He does not think one race is better than another; how-ever, he believes that a Senegalese is better off tending to his affairs inSenegal and not in Brescia. In keeping with the logic of La nouvelle droite’sideology, the League claims that Italian identity deserves the same respectas that of Africans or Arabs. Over the last decade, the Northern Leaguehas employed a variety of techniques to convey and reinforce its messageabout identity. Padanian radio and TV networks were launched and theLeague’s newspaper was renamed La Padania. A Northern parliament wasestablished in Mantua. Annual Celtic games were promoted. Beautycontests were held that highlighted the Northern look (Woods, 2010).

On the issue of immigration, the League outflanked all other parties onthe Italian right. While the modal point of the League’s populist ideologyremained “us” versus “them,” the focus on immigration resulted in theparty incorporating a nativist element that anchored the party toward theextreme right. As Ruzza and Fella (2011) noted:

There is also an ethno-populism that pits a homogenous northern Italian people against

the migrant outsider (and most insidiously, the Muslim migrant), who poses a threat to

the identity and cohesion of the community, and also a threat in terms of security and

access to economic wealth and resources. The League’s specific brand of exclusionary

ethno-populism is thus a peripheral ideological element that links its populism to its

right-wing cultural essentialist nativism. While nativism is peripheral in that it is not an

essential element to all populist movements, it can be described as a core element of the

League’s ideology, alongside its populism.

In fact, the nativist element in the League’s populism has come to oversha-dow other dimensions of its populist identity. Islam has risen to the top ofthe League’s list of problems related to immigration. Muslim immigrantsare viewed as a double threat. First, they present a security threat to Italyand other Western countries because of suspected ties to international

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terrorist organizations. Second, they constitute a threat against theChristian identity of Northern Italians.

While the antielite and anti-Rome elements remained, the League’s elec-toral successes in the 2008 elections were due primarily to its articulation ofan anti-immigrant sentiment. The Northern League did unexpectedly well,winning nearly 9 percent of the national vote and capturing more than20 percent of the electorate in many areas throughout Lombardy andVeneto. The party recovered the electoral ground that it had lost in pre-vious national and European elections. Moreover, to the surprise of every-one, the League did well in several cities in the North of Emilia Romagna,especially among the working class. To some extent, the prevalence ofethno-populism of the Northern League arose from the fact that the partycould no longer claim to be an outsider. Once it moved beyond its secessio-nist stance of the mid-1990s, the Northern League became a reliable allywith Berluconi’s center-right party. When the center-right was in power,the Northern League obtained important ministerial positions.

As Zaslove informs us in his study of the League in this period, “Bossiappears to have been well aware of the dangers in becoming a governingparty ….” Bossi sought to characterize the Northern League as an anti-status quo force within the government. Zaslove (2011, p. 162) outlinesBossi’s claims in detail:

He maintained from the outset that the League was different from the other coalition

partners � it was a party of the people. Thus, at party celebrations in Pontida, only

days after forming the government, Bossi declared to his supporters that the League

ministers were faithful representatives of Padania � that they had, in fact, taken their

oaths as Padanians and not as Italians. In his speech, he insisted that just because the

League had become a government party, this did not mean that it had become a tradi-

tional party; it was still a revolutionary force. He explained that the decision to join the

government was made for purely instrumental reasons, because it had become painfully

obvious that the party would not be able to influence government from its position as

an opposition party. The time had come for a revolution, but the revolution would

occur through the instruments of parliamentary politics. He stressed that governing did

not mean abandoning the northern identity or the northern heartland, symbolized by

celebrations at Pontida, Venice and the Po River.

Even though it continued to espouse “strong” anti-Rome and antigovern-ment rhetoric, the fact of the matter remains that the League was part ofthe governing status quo. Thus, the purported immigration threat was theone issue that allowed the League to continue to claim itself as the truerepresentative of the Northern “people.” Furthermore, as Zaslove (2011,p. 162) adds, he justified things by asserting that “the League’s choice to

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govern by pointing out that the party could not stand aside while the Lefttook power and opened the country to uncontrolled immigration, to theliberalization of drugs, to the destruction of the traditional family by pro-posing support for homosexual families ….”

The Northern League can best be characterized as an example of whatJagers and Walgrave (2007) identified as a “thick” populist phenomenon.They defined “thick” elements of populist ideology and rhetorical style bycontrasting it with a “thin” variant. They stated:

We will use the thin definition, only relying on the first element of merely making refer-

ence to the people, as an operational definition. The thick definition comes close to the

classic concept and consists of a combination of the three elements and states that

populism refers to the people, vents anti-establishment ideas and simultaneously

excludes certain population categories. Referring to the people can hardly be considered

a (new) ideology, let alone a political movement. We propose a thin definition of popu-

lism considering it as a political communication style of political actors that refers to the

people. These political actors can be politicians and political parties, but also movement

leaders, interest group representatives and journalists.

From its inception and throughout its evolution, the Northern League hastended to embody all three of the core elements that Jagers and Walgrave(2007) argue define a populist style and others coin as ideology. Althoughthe mix and emphasis of the three elements have waxed and waned depend-ing on the political context and objective of the party, they have beenremained present. Like other radical right populist parties, the NorthernLeague has drawn on the “thick” elements of the populist ideology to seizeupon the supposed crisis of representation that robbed “real” Italians ofany true voice in the political realm. In a nutshell, as Zaslove (2011, p. 197)put it,

Radical right populist ideology focuses on a matrix of three themes: nativist national-

ism, which leads to fear of the encroachment of the other (usually the immigrant); sup-

port for an authentic civil society based on the affirmation of local culture, values, and

morality (authoritarian themes); and support for a populist political economy. These

three areas lead to a focus on exclusion, protection of local, regional, or national cul-

tures, an anti-bureaucratic discourse (directed at both the state and European Union),

and opposition to established political parties.

The radical right “thick” populism of the Northern League contrast some-what with the “thinner” variant of populism that Berlusconi has made pro-minent in Italian politics. With his rapid ascension onto the political scenein 1994, Berlusconi developed a type of personalized populism that drewon some of the core elements of populism but largely for tactical purposes.

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Berlusconi took advantage of the crisis of representation of the postwarparty system that he profited from economically to offer Italians a newform of political representation (Orsina, 2010; Stille, 2007; Viroli, 2010).

POPULISM AND THE PERSONALIZED PARTY

According to Kriesi (2014, p. 364), “a central characteristic of populism isto provide a direct linkage between the people and a charismatic leader (ora political organization).” The leader is viewed as not belonging to the sta-tus quo and to have a special connection with the people. Typically, this ispresented as the populist leader having a type of direct, unmediated accessto the people’s grievances, needs, and interests and the ability to act as thespokesperson of the vox populi. The charismatic leader often offers a newform of political, social, and economic representation. Crises of representa-tion present opportunities for this type of populist breakthrough. SilvioBerlusconi took advantage of the break in the postwar system of social andpolitical representation to construct a new center-right political formationdirectly dependent on his personality and financial resources (Lazar, 2006;Paolucci, 2008; Poli, 2001; Raniolo, 2006). Berlusconi used populist rheto-ric and elements of populist ideology to gain ascendancy over a center-rightconstituency whose traditional point of ideological reference and politicalrepresentation had disappeared. Berlusconi and the political party he cre-ated, Forza Italia, reconstructed a new center-right ideology; however, theydid so by employing populism as a way to bring together the fragmentedbase of the former Christian Democratic and Socialist parties (Montanelli& Cervi, 2012). The rhetoric of populism allowed Berlusconi to polarize thepolitical landscape. He did this “by stigmatizing his enemies � judges,communists, intellectuals” (Lazar, 2013, p. 328) Such polarization createdan “us” versus “them” divide, allowing Berlusconi to claim that attacks onhim where attacks on his supporters since he was fighting their battlesagainst an entrenched institutional elite.

Prior to announcing his entry into politics at the end of January 1994,he had no direct party political or representational experience. Almost lit-erally overnight, Berlusconi established himself as a national politicalfigure and created a new political party, Forza Italia, to compete in 1994elections. Relying on his marketing firm and employees from his marketingand media businesses, Berlusconi launched a new political party as if hewas introducing a new detergent to the public. Ruzza and Fella (2009,

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p. 143) describe Berlusconi’s extensive use of his businesses in the 1994election:

Forza Italia’s election campaign in 1994 was run by Publitalia with a key role being

played by its head, Marcello dell’Utri. The selection of candidates for the election was

also conditioned by the impact such candidates could have on the nascent party’s media

communications. The preferred candidates were young up-and-coming professionals

and political outsiders. They received candidate kits with useful hints on how to handle

the media and how to present themselves to both the media and the public at large and

were obliged to attend courses run by Publitalia on how to communicate on TV.

Publitalia was responsible for the headhunting and selection of candidates, and for pro-

viding them with training in campaigning skills. Training involved TV and public rela-

tions (PR) skills as well as advice on what to wear. During the election campaign,

Publitalia managers continued to work as regional co-ordinators. Some became part of

the national structure (eight were elected as deputies) although most returned to work

normally for Finivest/Publitalia after the election.

Also, he relied on his soccer club networks to quickly establish a presencethroughout Italy. More importantly, he was able to take advantage of hiscontrol of much of Italy’s private television media to introduce his brand.

With the collapse of the DC, Berlusconi recognized that a significantrepresentational gap existed on the center-right. While the ItalianCommunist Party had also been shaken with the end of the cold war, it didnot disappear entirely. The Party underwent a transformation toward amoderate kind of social democratic party. In other words, there was novacuum on the left as there was on the right. With the combination of arepresentational vacuum for voters on the center-right, Berlusconi’s mar-keting and media resources, and the clever use of certain populist messages,Berlusconi was able to make himself and his “thin” style of populism thecentral factor of Italian politics for over two decades.

From his first experience as a candidate in the general election on March27, 1994, after which he became prime minister, until November 12, 2011when his coalition government was replaced by Mario Monti’s technocraticgovernment, Berlusconi had either been prime minister or leader of theopposition. In other words, he has dominated the Italian political processwhile in or out of office. The extant literature on Berlusconi’s politicalparty demonstrates that it was a personalized instrument that had practi-cally no organizational or ideological autonomy independent of its creator(Barisione, 2006; Ginsborg, 2003; Ginsborg & Asquer, 2011; Lazar, 2013;McDonnell, 2013; Stille, 2007). Its sole purpose was to serve as a vehiclefor its leader to win and stay in power. Thus, the identity of the party and

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Berlusconi are intertwined. In this respect, the appeal to voters was notbased on any detailed program or ideology, but rather on the personalcharisma of the leader/candidate, who was seen as indispensable to theresolution of the country’s problems (Edwards, 2005; Ruzza & Fella, 2009;Garzia, 2011).

Clearly, Forza Italia was founded in order to bring Berlusconi to power.In fact, nearly all of the campaign posters that Forza Italia employed in itsvarious electoral initiatives had Berlusconi as the center of attention. Boththe posters and Berlusconi’s own television stations presented him in therole of the savior. In this role Berlusconi evoked populist rhetoric to casthimself as the person who was best positioned to defend “the people.” Heliked to say that he did not enter politics for himself but to defend Italiansagainst the left and the state that wanted to over-tax and underservethem. Broadly speaking, Berlusconi blended elements of populism into ageneric neoliberal ideology in which promises of low taxes, reductionin the bureaucracy and red tape, and visceral anticommunism figuredprominently.

Berlusconi consistently tapped into his entrepreneurial background andpersonal success to communicate to voters that he had nothing financiallyto gain from entering into politics (Calise, 2000; Ginsborg, 2003;Ginsborg & Asquer, 2011; Orsina, 2013). He was there to protect theirinterests. In particular, his neoliberalism was structured to appeal theself-employed, small and large business owners, and those sections of themiddle class employed in these sectors. However, the populist elementcarried the neoliberal ideology a step further in that Berlusconi assertedthat he wanted an Italy in which somebody from any social class couldsucceed. His task was to get the obstacles to their own entrepreneurialefforts out of the way. Even though the base of Forza Italia was not theworking class, he exploited the populist idea of transcending social classcleavages.

The key populist element in Berlusconi’s communication and politicalstyle was to portray himself as a political outsider. He started Forza Italiawith this appeal and he maintained it over the two decades in which hedominated the Italian political scene. He used this outsider status in twonotable ways. First, he liked to point out that he is not a career politicianand thus presents himself in opposition to the career politicians. Second, ithas allowed him to present himself as a victim during election campaignsand when he has been under attack, by pointing out that his enemies areagainst him because he’s not one of them. Ruzza and Fella (2009, p. 150)

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highlight a key populist element that undergirds Berlusconi’s personaliza-tion of the political:

Berlusconi’s political style in many ways reflects a classic populist approach, casting

himself as a political outsider, speaking the language and thinking the thoughts of the

common man and representing the interests of the latter against a self-serving political

elite made up of “professional politicians.”

Furthermore, Berlusconi’s populism relies on a direct appeal to the Italianpeople. The direct appeal reflects a central element of the logic and ideol-ogy of populism. It is grounded in the notion that the people have certaincharacteristics that the elite lacks, such as common sense and wisdom.Plain and even crude language is a typical populist trope � speaking thelanguage of the ordinary man on the street rather than the jargon of thepolitical elite.

Like the Northern League, Berlusconi’s populism has its “us” versus“them” nodal point. While the “enemy” varies a bit in Berlusconi’s dis-course between a self-serving political elite and a left with a tainted past,his most constant target has been Communism and the Italian CommunistParty. He uses his demonization of communism and the former ItalianCommunist Party to attack the center-left opposition in general. As Mudde(2004, p. 544) notes, this is consistent with populism presenting aManichean outlook in which there are only friends and foes (Mudde, 2004,p. 544). Berlusconi has particularly utilized this Manichean outlook to taintItalian judges who have opened up a myriad of judicial inquiries into cor-ruption by Berlusconi when he was a businessman and while in office(Ruzza & Fella, 2011, p. 155).

The rise of Berlusconi’s personalized style of populism was directly tiedto the crisis of political representation that grew out of the collapse of theDC. Forza Italia was created to fill the void left when Italy’s dominantcenter-right party disappeared. As a political entrepreneur, Berlusconi withthe creation of Forza Italia came to occupy much of the center-right spaceof the DC. He introduced a populist form of direct representationlargely unmediated by institutions. Although he needed an institutionalapparatus � Forza Italia � to come to power, Berlusconi has ensured thatidentification was never with the party but with him. He is the one whoclaims to represent the interest of the “Italian people.” Berlusconi himselfis constantly on display. Lazar (2013, p. 329) points out that Berlusconiclaims “that his mandate derives not only from his institutional role, butalso from his charisma.” His charismatic appeal derives from ability toget elected. Charisma and populist rhetoric intertwine “in terms of a

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‘syndrome,’ a ‘style’ (Peter Wiles), or a response to the difficulties of repre-sentation” (Lazar, 2013, p. 329).

Berlusconi has played and continues to ride this disaffection with politics(Campus, 2006). In Italy, it is called antipolitics; this expression, however,carries numerous ambiguities, as it fails to specify whether the hostility isdirected toward politics as they are currently organized, or all politics.Indeed, the crisis of representation is particularly strong in Italy, as shownby decreasing voter turnout, declining membership in political parties andpolls that show the negative perception of parties. The gap between repre-sentatives and represented, and the lack of legitimacy of the institutions areparticularly widespread in Italy. The public shows indifference or expressesits distrust, rejection, or hatred of the political class. As Ruzza and Fella(2009) and others have argued (Lazar, 2013; Orsina, 2013), Berlusconi’spersonalized populism was not devoid of ideological content.

In fact, it could be argued that populism as a thin ideology has allowedBerlusconi to fold traditional ideological elements that used to anchor thecenter-right in Italy into his personalized style of populism. Lazar (2013,pp. 328�329) argues that Berlusconi “created a sort of hegemony of valuesand references, which he combined notwithstanding the contradictionsamong them: economic liberalism and protectionism, Europe and the affir-mation of national pride, tradition, including reference to the importanceof the family and the Catholic religion, and modernity, including liberti-nage and exploitation of women’s body.” The “thin” ideological para-meters of populism allowed Berlusconi to construct a kind of center-rightcatch-all ideological house, in which “small traders, artisans, entrepreneurs,highly skilled professionals, frightened Southerners, poorly educated voters,practicing Catholics, middle aged and elder housewives” could feel at home(Lazar, 2013, p. 329).

However, as Lazar (2013) recognized, despite the relative political suc-cess of Berlusconi, his populist endeavor remains fragile:

In this way, he brought together heterogeneous categories of voters …. The ongoing

disintegration of this social bloc, however, attests to its fragility. If Berlusconism consti-

tutes a real system of domination, it is not as perfect and well functioning as most of

his opponents claim it is. It shows an inherent weakness, as it is closely dependent on

the personality of its promoter, who proved to be disappointing and failed to keep its

countless promises, especially with regard to the country’s economy.

In some respects, it could be argued that the populism of both theNorthern League and Berlusconi promised much but ultimately deliveredvery little (Albertazzi & McDonnell, 2005, 2010). The Northern League

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struggled to maintain an ethno-regionalist populist identity while in powerwith a center-right coalition under Berlusconi’s leadership. Unlike in the1994�1996 period in which the Northern League attacked first Berlusconiand the then right National Alliance Party, despite being part of a coali-tion, Bossi’s political formation became Berlusconi’s staunchest supporterin 2001 and then again in the 2008 elections (Biorcio, 2000). UnderBerlusconi’s leadership the center-right regained power against the left inthese two elections with the Northern League as a key junior partner ingovernment. In 2007, Forza Italia merged with the neo-Fascist Nationalalliance to create the People of Freedom Party (PDL).

In this broad center-right coalition, the previous radical demands of theNorthern League � for an independent Padania or the creation of autono-mous macro-regions and the transfer of most taxation and other adminis-trative responsibilities to local and regional authorities � went nowhere. Infact, even on the signature populist issue of immigration that the Leaguehad made its own, Bossi moved away from the more radical populist claimsmade before the 2001 election. After coming to power, he, along with Fini,pushed through a bill to legalize undocumented workers in Italy. The 2002Bossi�Fini law resulted in the legalization of about 700,000 immigrantsand regularized more immigrants than ever before in Italy. Bossi justifiedthe law by claiming that its purpose of the law was to create a context inwhich immigrants could work in Italy and then return home. He rejectedthe notion that such a large-scale regularization of immigrants meant thatthey were in the country to stay (Woods, 2010, pp. 212�213).

CONCLUSION

The central thesis developed throughout this chapter is that the rise andpersistence of different kinds of populism in Italy is a manifestation of acrisis of representation (Taggart, 2002). The variety and duration of popu-lism in Italy suggest that the crisis of representation was more intense therethan elsewhere in Western Europe but the fact that populism has emergedacross Western Europe indicates that the crisis is more general. The prevail-ing question in the extant literature on populism in Italy and elsewhere iswhether or not the crisis of representation is something that is inherent todemocracy. Cas Mudde and others have reflected on exactly what dimen-sions of democratic representation are prone to “bouts” of populism.Mudde (2004, p. 560) argues “that both the populist masses and the

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populist elites support ‘true’ representation. In other words, they rejectneither representation per se, nor the lack of social representation. Whatthey oppose is being represented by an ‘alien’ elite, whose policies do notreflect their own wishes and concerns.”

In this respect, the crisis of representation is not about “representativedemocracy” but according to Mudde and Kaltwasser (2012, p. 17):

Rather than representative democracy, populism is inherently hostile to the idea and

institutions of liberal democracy or constitutional democracy. Despite all democratic

rhetoric, liberal democracy is a complex compromise of popular democracy and liberal

elitism, which is therefore only partly democratic. As Margaret Canovan has brilliantly

argued, populism is a biting critique of the democratic limitations within liberal democ-

racies. In its extremist interpretation of majoritarian democracy, it rejects all limitations

on the expression of the general will, most notably the constitutional protection of

minorities and the independence (from politics, and therefore from democratic control)

of key state institutions (e.g. the judiciary, the central bank).

Another way of putting it, is that populism is about whose interests (mate-rial, identity, social) are represented. Populism is best seen as an inherentstruggle within liberal democracies over representation (Meny & Surel,2002; Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2012, p. 17).

As this chapter has shown, however, populism has not resolved the crisisof representation in Italy. Once in power, the Northern League andBerlusconi continued to rely on populist claims to shore up their legiti-macy. Berlusconi relied on the purported threat from judges and commu-nists, while the Northern League increasingly focused on immigration asthe real threat to the “real Italians.” The rapid success of the Five StarMovement in the 2013 elections was due, in part, to Grillo’s ability to por-tray the Northern League and Berlusconi as part of a nondemocratic andnonrepresentative elite. Thus, after nearly two decades since the end ofthe First Republic, the crisis of representation that catapulted an ethno-regionalist and a highly personalized populism to the forefront of Italianpolitics, the system of democratic representation in the country remainsfragile. As Lazar (2013, p. 332) argues, the Italian case should be seen in alarger comparative perspective. The eruption and persistence of populism isnot limited to Italy (Croci & Lucarelli, 2010). In many ways, Italy hasserved as an indicator of things that have emerged in other WesternEuropean democracies. Lazar (2013, p. 332) observes:

This, in turn, provides an additional argument to contradict the thesis of the Italian

anomaly. Starting with the foundation of the Republic of Italy, the country has taken a

particular path to invent a democracy, which was paved with tensions and

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contradictions, but was also far from being archaic or politically backward. Probably,

as it had not yet completed its institutions and practices and was not yet fully

entrenched, and despite its considerable progress, it was one of the first to be shaken

before shocks were recorded elsewhere.

As the non-European chapters in this edited volume show, the crisis ofrepresentation and the tension between populism and political institutionsis not limited to Italy or Western Europe. Examining what he heuristicallylabeled “democratic careening,” Slater (2013, p. 731) explored the underly-ing dynamic “between populist and oligarchic modes of politics,” with theobjective of understanding cases other than Western Europe that haveexperienced the eruption of populism. Thus, Lazar is correct in his observa-tion that the variation and persistence of populism in Italy should be seenas a bell-weather of crisis of the representation that maybe inherent todemocratic, and even nondemocratic, regimes.

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