| Popis: |
The question about the ‘real’ nature of the Lega Nord (LN – the Northern Legue) has always triggered disputes among international scholars. The LN has actually been classified according to two major criteria: (a) systemic and (b) territorial. The systemic interpretation of the party has emphasized its ideological component of right-wing extremism (Eatwell and Mudde 2004), or right-wing radicalism (Minkenberg 1998; Norris 2005) on issues such as immigration, law and order and on the authoritarian traits of the party members’ personality. The regionalist interpretation takes into account the peculiar territorial roots of the LN and its ‘obsession’ with its heartland (Taggart 2000), the so-called Padania. A further label – a sort of cross-assessment of the style and the means used by the party to exploit its most popular issues – refers to the populist nature of the LN (Betz 1994; Tarchi 2003) and to a general anti (political)-establishment character shared by a substantial number of European parties (Schedler 1996). In this chapter, we will try to define the LN’s nature through: (1) a description of the historical evolution of the party since its first appearance in the late 1970s; (2) an investigation of the evolution of the party’s political platform, with particular attention to the elements that contributed to its electoral success: federalism, immigration, law and order and the European Union; and (3) an analysis of attitudes shown by LN’s voters on a number of issues in the last available post-electoral survey, carried out by the ITANES research group in 2006. Our conclusion will then be that the LN is best understood as a multifaceted party, where elements of localism and regionalism are present alongside traits of populism and characters common to other European far-right parties, especially as far as immigration policy is concerned. On the contrary, we believe that laying a claim to describe this party by referring to only one of these definitions, inevitably leads to a weak and partial understanding. |
