Politics of identity : the mobilizing dynamics of territorial politics in modern Italian society

notion of a ’national’ identity. However, as further investigation will show, this kind of ’weak’ territorial identity is at the same time the Achilles’ heel of the Lega’s mobilization. The present struggle within the Lega over whether to strengthen once again the ’ethnic’ identity as the source of the Lega’s protest or to further weaken it in its endeavor to become a national party reflects this difficulty. Regarding the politically highly significant debate between Bossi and Rocchetta concerning the collective identity of the Lega, in the long run it was unavoidable that the two conceptions came into serious conflict. With the first electoral set-back the diverging position could no longer be reconciled in one political project. Consequently, Rocchetta has come to openly oppose the leadership of Bossi and his political orientation, launching his own, strictly ethnically defined movement Liga Nathion Veneta in September 1994141. 7.4. 6. The Lega as a Social Movement? The Dynamic of Institutionalization and the Drive towards a Mass Party The Lega’s adoption of old and new elements from social movement repertoires poses the problem of how it can be situated within the current debate on the nature of social movements. Clarifying this question, it is necessary to elucidate the extent to which the Lega is a social movement and the extent to which it is a party. With regard to the somewhat questionable clear-cut distinction between a party and a social movement Mario Diani convincingly explains: 1 suggest that the features of the processes 1 have described as a social movement do not exclude under certain and specific conditions the possibility that some political party might feel itself part of a movement and be recognized as such by other actors in the movement and by the general public. The features Diani refers to are the following: a) networks of informal interaction; b) shared beliefs and solidarity; c) collective action on conflictual issues; d) action which displays largely outside the institutional sphere and the routine procedures of social life. (Diani, 1992:15) Before indicating how these characteristics can be identified particularly in the early years of the Lega it is instructive to recall that it represents a critical legitimating resource for this new agent in Italian politics to claim to be radically different from established parties. The Lega’s political identity is based upon this claim. In this respect, the public image of 141 See: ‘Bossi b vivo e vegeto’, in: L’independente. September 5, 1994. * Chapter VII: The Lega; Phase 3: 1990-1992 * 251 being a social movement is, given its ideological stand, a central element in the legitimating discourse of the Lega. Analyzing its nature as a collective actor it is thus important to carefully differentiate between the self-assessment of the Lega and the factual form of political mobilization adopted. The deliberate attempt to describe itself as radically different from party politics should not be uncritically taken as a matter of fact. The features identified by Diani as being critical to social movements are not frequent in Italian parties. In the Italian political situation the distinction between parties and movements is particularly sharp precisely because of some of the features that the Lega criticizes as perversions of Italian politics. In the 1980s in particular the parties traditionally in government almost completely lost their activist base in civil society and obtained the resources they needed directly from the state through subsidies, or from the economy in the form of bribes. This makes activism useless and even dangerous, and promotes a full identification with the state and a rejection of disruptive action forms. The only parties that keep a presence in the social movement sector are leftist parties such as the PDS and the organizations of the New Left. In a highly reduced form they still utilize social movement repertoires to supplement and strengthen their parliamentary strategies. Not having access to significant state resources they can only rely on activism. Hence, they partly fulfill the conditions of interconnection set forth by Diani. The defining criteria features of a social movement listed by Diani were present in the Lega Lombarda particularly in its initial years. The Lega is a social movement in that it has had informal networks, has focused on conflictual issues and has often acted outside institutional spheres. In addition, by looking at the Lega Lombarda as a social movement, it should be noted that the Lega’s objectives at least at the present stage are incompatible with the existing political system. At some stage of its mobilization the Lega explicitly advocated the dissolution of the Italian state. This utopian stand, with its polemics against the party system in general and its protest against the insufficiency of the Italian nation-state in particular accused of not coming up to the needs of the people in Lombardy puts the Lega in a position to call for political and social structures incompatible with contemporary ones. Social movements can be seen as political actors that do not have at their disposal the means by which to gain influence over the decision-making process in the existing political system. Therefore unconventional or disruptive forms of action are often utilized. Regarding this challenge to the boundaries of institutional politics, Offe describes the aspirations of a social movement in a way which reflects the claims of the Lega Lombarda: "The actor makes some 252 * '"’hapter VII: The Lega; Phase 3: 1990-1992 * explicit claims that the means of action can be recognized as legitimate and the ends of action can become binding for the wider community. ” (Offe 1985) With respect to the ’quality’ of the political conflict raised, Lega uses extensively theatrical forms of action to attain a generalized Lombard cultural identity and political statehood. With the help of these forms of action it seeks to express a public protest against the suggested picture of an unacceptable domination by ’corrupt’ parties ignorant of the needs of the region. In its action repertoire the Lega first of all attempted to be symbolically present in civil society, emphasizing its distinct character, contrary to the ’rules of the game’ defined by the traditional parties (taken to be agencies of the centralized state)142. The public manifestations of this regionalist protest movement indicate that the politics distinctive of the Lega cannot be understood as a narrowly defined electoral campaign. It is a mobilization which strives to create a ’we-feeling’ that is an integral part of the mobilizing activities of most social movements143. In its action repertoire the Lega Lombarda refers to a kind of politics extensively performed by other ’new social movements’: expressive action forms, non-clearly defined organizational structures, and irregular (discontinuous) militancy patterns. Even if gradual integration into the existing political system seems very probable at the present the completion of the ’protest circle’144 in the early 1990s the Lega is still more the vehicle of collective protest than a party with a narrowly defined action repertoire and a clear-cut program. Its program was generally considered utopian and is in constant flux. 142 The Final goal of the Lega, that is how far they would like to go with their search for independence, has changed somewhat over time. Recently much emphasis has been put on federalist doctrines, and on the theorization of a ’Europe of regions’. However no formal request to dissolve nation states is put forward. 143 See for this aspect: Melucci (1980). 144 Drawing attention to the dynamic of the institutional sphere should clarify the process of transformation social movements undergo regarding their form and content when successfully challenging the established order. As Offe has pointed out (Offe 1990), there is a mechanism at work in the engagement of non-institutional movement politics which, in the course of its institutionalization, tends to weaken its radical demands and hence to significantly change its political identity. Movement politics is intrinsically transitory in nature. For Offe the phase of integration into the existing institutional framework of the state is the last stage in a sequence of steps toward deradicalization. According to his model the first phase of spontaneous mobilization, taking place in an institutional vacuum, is replaced by one characterized by the formalization of protest behavior (beginning decline of mobilization). The focus of political mobilization changes from rather unorganized direct action to more institutionalized forms in the parliamentary and administrative arena. This development has its own dynamic which leads to an extensive institutionalization allowing the protest actor to gain new alliances and to fortify its organizational capacity. On the other hand, as explained above, the resulting change in its political identity entails the high risk of alienating its activists and members (the German Greens are a prominent example) See for a similar model for analyzing the institutionalization of social movements: Rammstedt (1978). In unanimity with Offe’s framework for him organization and institutionalization are the last two steps in the decline following the peak of a movement’s mobilization. * Chapter VII: The Lega; Phase 3: 1990-1992 253 The example of the campaign against the Martelli law as well as the ’tax strike’ of the Lega indicate however that there is only a limited willingness on the part of the Lega’s followers to actively engage in politics and rule out the suggestions formulated from the ’movement’s leadership’. In the first case of the protest against the new law on immigration the Lega simply had to abandon its campaign when it became clear that they could not collect enough signatures for any further political step. Likewis