CONTEMPORARY CENTRIFUGAL
REGIONALISM: COMPARING FLANDERS
AND NORTHERN ITALY
19-20 JUNE 2009
Michel Huysseune
CONTACTFORUM
CONTEMPORARY CENTRIFUGAL
REGIONALISM: COMPARING FLANDERS
AND NORTHERN ITALY
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 Belgi voor Wetenschappen en Kunsten.
Afgezien van het afstemmen van het lettertype en de alineas 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.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contemporary Centrifugal Regionalism: Comparing Flanders and Northern Italy 1
Michel Huysseune
Tragically Modern. Centrifugal Sub-Nationalisms in Belgium, 1830-2009 ... 17
Marnix Beyen
The Territorial-Identitary Side of a Democracy: 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
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 countrys communities. Such centrifugal forms of regionalism also
appear in, e.g., Scotland, 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.
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 countrys 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 neopopulist 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
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 (Flemish and Francophones, northern and southern Italians) are,
contrary to the other cases, of a relatively comparable size.
Within member states of the European Union, 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 postnational 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 (Gmez-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
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 ideology.4 In Italy, the concept of fiscal federalism, defined in
its more radical form as the right for regions to preserve their fiscal income entirely for
themselves, has linked the Legas 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 Socialist Party).
Whether rhetoric adherence to neo-liberalism really corresponds with espousing neoliberal 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 IMFs structural adjustment), secondly that richer
regions need their fiscal means to better guarantee the efficiency of their economy and
the welfare 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 social services
(Anonymous, 1995:14). In both the cases studied here, however, justifications of antiredistributionist 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 Italian Unification (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 Webers 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 19th 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 19th 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, Vlaams Belang (formerly Vlaams Blok) and the Lega Nord.7 Both
parties moreover combine xenophobic viewpoints against immigrants with a negative
vision of the nations Other (Wallonians and southern Italians) and by this means justify
the regions 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. Gmez-Reino Cachafeiro, 2001.
4
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 Flemish community as its goal, known as the
Flemish Movement, originated in the 19th 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, Wallonia and the bilingual region of
Brussels 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 19th and early 20th century, Flanders was economically underdeveloped
8
From its origins, the Flemish movement has insisted on the linguistic unity between
Flanders and the Netherlands, 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 port of Antwerp 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 Frontpartij - Front Party,
later the Vlaams Nationaal Verbond Flemish National Union), originally ideologically
pluralist, was in the 1930s increasingly dominated by extreme right tendencies, and
would be compromised by collaboration with Nazi Germany during Occupation. The
post-war Flemish Nationalist party, the Volksunie (Peoples 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 Flemish government, now emphasizes the
regions 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 nationalism 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 (senate, 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, New Flemish Alliance). 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 regions 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 centreright 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 regions cultural superiority in comparison to
Wallonia. At the same time, Wallonia itself is involved in a process of identityaffirmation (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 selfcentred, 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
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
20th 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.
For an overview of the important debate on this issue at the turn of the 19th and 20th
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 electoral
system), 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 neverending Italian debate on such reforms.
The Legas 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 partys 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 Church, 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
Legas articulation of regional or a presumed Padanian ethnic identity, the partys focus
on the North-South divide has received a much more sympathetic response (although not
up to the level of really endangering the countrys 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 Italys 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 Legas
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 Legas
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 central Italy (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, Lombardy, Veneto, Venezia Giulia and Piedmont
(and in a somewhat lesser measure in the autonomous province of Trento). 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 territorys
defense against outsiders. The institutional reforms the Lega proposes have the same
goal, protecting the population of Padania 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 Legas 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 regions development
(because of the scarcity of labour in this region). The racist discourse of the Lega is
presumed to reflect the interests of the Legas 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 neverending 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.
problematic relation between the Legas 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 regions 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 regions articulation of identity. Sacchettos
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 southern Italy, but focus more on verifying
whether empirical data corroborate the Legas 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. Warmenbols 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
partys 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
Huysseunes 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 & Societ, 2 (1):13-26.
Berta, G. (ed.) (2008), Questione settentrionale, Economia e societ 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 dazione della
Lega Nord, Milano, Il Saggiatore.
Cantillon, B. and V. De Maesschalck (2007), Sociale zekerheid, transferten en
federalisme in Belgi, 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. Lesclusione dei migranti in una societ 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: lidentit difficile, Meridiana, 46:7-16.
Gmez-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 dEtudes Politiques de Grenoble,
France.
Gmez-Reino Cachafeiro, M. (2006), Conclusion: The Future Study of Autonomist and
Regionalist Parties, in L. De Winter, M. Gmez-Reino and P. Lynch (eds),
Autonomist Parties in Europe: Identity Politics and the Revival of the Territorial
Cleavage, Barcelona, Institut de Cincies 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, London, 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
societ 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, 17501914, 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
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 parliament 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 Rformateur 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 Flemish parliament 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 TheWinner-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 nationstates 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.
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 18th century) in the Belgian nation,
and the originally narrow-based nationalist commitment which succeeded during the 20th
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 Leuven 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 topdown 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 Catholic party 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 Ghent, for all of their resistance against the
organized Flemish Movement and their loyalty to the Belgian socialist party, 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.
belonging to two different language groups. In the highly decentralized context of the
Ancien rgime, 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 18th century, the attraction of
French as political and cultural language had engendered a Frenchification of the lites 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 15th 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 lites 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 Dutch language, 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
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 Pieter de Coninck, the 14th 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 lites in
Brussels and Flanders, it soon spread to Wallonia itself (Destatte, 1997). Notoriously, the
influential Wallingant writer and politician Jules Destre 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
Destre, 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 19th century folkloric and dialectological tradition, it mainly
focused on the contemporary reality of industrial labour in the central axe between Liege
and Charleroi. 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 20th 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 selfimage, 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
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 antiFlamingantism 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 Namur, but the
political connection between Wallonia and Brussels is guaranteed by the so-called
Communaut Wallonie-Bruxelles. The competence of this Communaut 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 citystate 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.
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aux 19e et 20e sicles, Charleroi, Institut Jules Destre.
Draye, G. (2009), Laboratoria van de natie. Nederlandstalige literaire genootschappen
in Vlaanderen over politiek, literatuur en identiteit 1830-1914, Nijmegen: SUN.
Dubois, S. (2005), Linvention de la Belgique: gense dun tat-nation, 1648-1830,
Bruxelles, Racine.
Elias, H.J. (1970-1971), Geschiedenis van de Vlaamse gedachte, 4 vol., Antwerpen, De
Nederlandsche Boekhandel (2nd ed.).
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Belgische Kamer van Volksvertegenwoordigers: 1830-2002, Brussel, Kamer van
Volksvertegenwoordigers.
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Sdlichen Niederlanden im spten 18. Jahrhundert, Mnster, Waxmann.
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28
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 (technicaleconomic-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 repoliticization 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.
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, United Kingdom, 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
In the sense explained by the theoretical sociological tradition. See Berger and Luckmann, 1966.
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 realism5: 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.
municipal localism rooted in history; the scant civic sense characteristic of Italian identity;
feelings of national belonging and pride based only on history (ancient Rome 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-Fascism
for Italian national identity; the role of socio-economic modernization during the 1960s; Italys
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 welfare state: 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 antiFascist 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 postCommunist 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 Nords 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 Nords 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 Italys 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.
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 politicalorganizational 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 Churchs 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
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.
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 countrys 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 dAosta, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Trentino-Alto Adige, Sicily, and Sardinia.11 This
page in Italian regionalisms 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 separatism, 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 dAosta, 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 dAosta, Alto Adige); their peripheral location
close to sensitive and contested international borders (Valle dAosta, 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 States
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 orders resilience and political-national cohesion by
the countrys 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-States political space. In this sense, the
five special statute regions represent cases of the survival of peripheral identity. Not by chance,
Rokkans 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 Schmitts 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 Rokkans terminology, the five special statute regions are historico-identitary peripheries:
interface peripheries, i.e. territories exposed to crosswise international pressures (Valle dAosta,
Alto Adige, Trieste); 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 PCIs 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 statisticaladministrative 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.
14
Mair (1998) maintains that a freezing of party systems has come about in the democracies since
the 1990s. Mairs 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 countrys 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 dAzione, 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 analysts16,
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 parties17 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 Nords 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; Gmez-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 Legas strong emphasis on the territory-based identitary question
albeit declined in different ways can be explained. The Legas 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
Legas 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 grassroots 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
legislatures (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 Nords recent electoral results (2009 elections for
the European Parliament, regional and local elections of 2010), especially in important regions of
central or red Italy (above all Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany), 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 Legas 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 Libert 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 political party 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 partys politicalelectoral success depends, as we know, on numerous and diverse factors, which cannot be itemized
here. Nevertheless, the characteristics of Legas success suggest that it has also been due to the
movements capacity (organizational, ideological, symbolic) to mobilize resources and political
consensus around the identitary question of the Padanian territories.
The Legas 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 politicalidentitarian 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
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.
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--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, unemployment, 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 regions 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-States 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).
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
authoritarianism (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 nationbased 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 taxes 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.
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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
7.1 PSI
12.7 PSI
14.2 PSI
13.8
PSI
20.7 PSDI
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
29.9
27.1 PCI
34.4 PCI
30.4 PCI
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
32.2
38.7 DC
38.7 DC
38.3 DC
PRI
2.0 PLI
2.9
3.9 PLI
1.3 PLI
1.9 PLI
PSIUP
4.4 PRI
2.9 PRI
3.1 PRI
3.0 PRI
5.1
PSIUP
1.9
89.2 Total
87.2 Total
86.3
Total
92.7 Total
90.5 Total
1987
1992
1994
1996
2001
PCI
26.6 PDS
21.1 DS
16.6
16.1 PDS
20.4 DS
PSI
14.3 RC
5.6 RC
6.0 RC
8.6 RC
5.0
PSDI
2.9 PSI
0.4 PSI
13.6 PSI
2.2 PSI
1.0
Pop-Prodi
DC
34.3 PSDI
2.7 PPI Patto
6.8 Margherita 14.5
PLI
2.1 DC
15.7 CCD/CDU 5.8 CCD/CDU 3.2
29.7 Segni
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 UDC
5.6
La Rosa
La Sinistranel Pugno
2.6 LArcobaleno 3.1
PDCI
2.3 Partito
UDEURSocialista
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
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 Belgiums 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 Pcriaux 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
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 others 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).
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 19th 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 French
languages 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 1960s: 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 peoples 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 1970s 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 Coff, 2006). Decentralisation was particularly
supported by those parties the Flemish Christian-democrats and the Walloon socialistswho 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 confederation 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 insurance
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 pensions 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 tax matters. However, from a logical point of view a recentralization 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.
Confederations 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
countrys 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-HalleVilvoorde 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 Zaventem 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).
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), En 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), Belgiums 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
62
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 Nazism
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 Italian peninsula organized as the United States of Italy. In the at that time
utopian European Federation, Lombardy-Veneto, being a federal State of the AustriaHungarian 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. Cattaneos 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
64
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--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 Serenissimas 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 municipalitys
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 Popes
and tried to defend it against militarily strong Popes; where the Duchies of Lucca, Parma
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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 dAosta and Liguria) and the old Duchy of Milan
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 dAosta); 3) the red or leftist mind (in EmiliaRomagna, Tuscany, Umbria and the Marches); 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
68
69
Abruzzo; Molise; Campania; Basilicata; Apulia; Calabria. Two islands are considered
two natural federal unities: Sicily and Sardinia.
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 Padua 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
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, Udine, Albona dIstria, Fianona, Gemona, Venzone,
Tolmezzo, San Daniele del Friuli, Monfalcone, Merano, Cadore, Aquileia (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), Sal 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 (15th 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 16th
and 17th 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
18th century, they governed Italian regions after the union of the Italian peninsula
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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 Giuseppe
Garibaldi 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 wellorganized civil society, divided into large unions and not so many (if compared to northeastern 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 Podest, that is, governors coming
from another town and governing with their mercenaries. The main virtue requested of a
Podest was the capability of giving the impression of winning easily any conflict with
internal elites and supporters, and of being neutral vis--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.
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 Italian parliament, 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 Cattaneos
influenced the red belt subculture through three other scholars: the republican and
federalist Arcangelo Ghisleri and the socialists Leonida Bissolati and Filippo Turati.
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 citt) 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 Cattaneos 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 World War I
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 Nords 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
term used, together with other similar terms, in the USA in the 19th 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, 1988:1719). 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 Dellarte 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, Niccol
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 Machiavellis masterwork (Il Principe) it demonstrated its strategy was
equal to the task of defending north-eastern territories. Machiavelli refused the
Serenissimas 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 Machiavellis 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. Vicos 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, Vicos
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, Vincenzo Cuoco theorized that the Jacobin Neapolitan Republic
failed in 1799 because of the fact that Neapolitan revolutionaries had not applied Vicos
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. Alfieris unpolitical
analysis was culturally neutralized when considered as an oddity or a form of dislike of
French people. Rosminis antipolitical analysis would have remained almost fruitless had
it not been represented as a vision complementary to Vicos analysis. In this sense, there
was a revolutionary formulation of Vicos 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 abovedescribed political theories and the practices of Zanardelli, Messedaglia, Lampertico,
Morpurgo, Luzzatti and Trentin. Anthropological Federalism implies the politys
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.
the Po, i.e. three regions (Valle dAosta, 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 dAosta, 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 dAosta, Piedmont,
Lombardy, Trentino-Alto Adige, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Veneto, Liguria, EmiliaRomagna, 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 ideologies 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--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 Nords 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).
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Fraschilli, C. Greco and A. Murari (eds), Giambattista Vico. Metafisica e Metodo,
Milano, Bompiani:57-179.
Vico, G. (2008), Lantichissima 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 societ, Milano, Edizioni di Comunit.
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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
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 19th 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.
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 afterFordist 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 latters
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
3.1.
REGIONAL
RESTRUCTURING
UNEVEN
DEVELOPMENT
AND
STATE
SPATIAL
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 19th century and the first half of the 20th 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 19th century, and continuing
into the 20th 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 19th century and the first decades
of the 20th 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 20th 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 employers 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 (Quvit 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 (ltat Belgoflamand).
Increasing centrifugal pressures on the unitary Belgian state finally gave way to a
wave of state spatial restructuring. The 1st 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, Belgiums 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.
more secure than investments in immaterial assets like those required for nurturing afterFordist 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 Opration Athna (De Batselier, 1991; Institut Jules Destre, 1995). Opration
Athna 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
Athna days and business seminars, published the monthly magazine and gave financial
incentives to small and medium-sized enterprises that participated in the Athna operation.
Wathelet also created the Club Athna 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.
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 afterFordist imaginaries. The weight of the restructuring of the national sectors on the national
governments 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 afterFordist 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 SMEs.
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 Flemishregional scales and the Belgian-national scale. I already explained how the Belgian national
governments 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
governments 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 20th 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 politicalinstitutional 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 employers 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.
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, industry91
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93
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
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 northeastern 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 regions 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.
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
regions 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.
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
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 latters long-standing values and strong sense of local identity,
103
7. CONCLUSION
According to Anastasia and Cor (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 forwardlooking 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 Stateras 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 peoples 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.
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106
107
1. INTRODUCTION
Like nationalism, political programmes that question the existent institutions and nationstates 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 countrys 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 Souths 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
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 countrys 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 countrys North-South
difference and the Souths 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. Putnams 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. Putnams 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 (13th century). He
considers amoral familism as a survival strategy in an authoritarian environment, path
113
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
3.1. 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 regions 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 Italys 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 coreperiphery 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 Europes 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.
Quvits 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 Legas 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,
Quvits 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. Quvit himself has recently reiterated his narrative of discrimination of
Wallonia (Quvit, 2010) without, however, its original Marxist framework. The relative
indifference towards such research - Quvits 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 states 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 Trigilias 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 Souths 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 Trigilias study. Like Trigilia, Weiss envisions
differentiated regional development as the outcome of state policies. She outlines how the
Italian governments 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 Putnams 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 regions 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
(Quvit, 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 Japan). 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.
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 regions 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 Putnams 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 Chubbs 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 selfperpetuating 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 Souths transition from feudalism to capitalism in the
early 19th 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 19th century on, southern Italian intellectuals like Napoleone
Colajanni have pointed out how the power system in southern Italy was instrumental for
the preservation of the power of the countrys 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 indepth 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 Putnams 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 Chubbs
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 Putnams 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 Italys 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 FlemishFrancophones. 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
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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 Qubcois 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, Qubec 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 Qubcois 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 Qubec 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 Qubcois 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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134
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.
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 dont 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 (Bilzen) 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.
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
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140
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.
plants in South Africa. The approximately 350 Italian workers who moved to South
Africa could well appreciate Snia Viscosas 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 countrys 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 labourpower 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.
Immigration to Italy 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 plants3. 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.
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 21st 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 Goffmans 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
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 Jrg 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
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 ones 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 Leagues 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 dAscolto dellInformazione 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 Leagues 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 dont 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 Gentilinis 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
150
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 wideranging. 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 (Dvell, 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.
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155
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 18th and 19th 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 19th 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 20th 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
nia
ov
e
Sl
Po
la n
d
(F
)
um
Be
lgi
Fr
an
ce
De
nm
ar
k
Ne
th
er
la n
ds
Be
lgi
um
(D
)
Ge
rm
an
y
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
Ge
rm
an
Be
y
lgi
um
(D
Ne
)
th
er
lan
ds
Be
lg
ium
(F
)
De
nm
ar
k
Po
lan
d
Fr
an
ce
Sl
ov
en
ia
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, crossnational, 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
Brussels
Wallonia
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
locality or town
region county
country as a
whole
Europe
world as a whole
165
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
whole
Europe
world as a whole
Total Valid N
Second identification
locality or
town
region or
county
country as a
whole
Europe
world as a
whole
locality or
town
region
county
country as a
whole
Europe
world as a
whole
Total Valid N
Flanders
Brussels
Wallonia
Belgium
40,5
20,9
29,9
35,2
24,3
20,0
15,0
20,9
23,1
27,5
34,7
27,3
5,0
15,3
10,3
7,7
7,0
16,4
10,1
8,9
1082
176
611
1869
18,4
14,7
23,0
19,5
39,9
24,7
25,0
33,7
25,4
30,3
30,1
27,4
11,8
23,1
15,5
14,0
4,4
7,2
6,5
5,3
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
32,0
3,3
3,0
61,7
identification
town
region county
0,0
40,3
12,6
3,8
43,3
country as a
23,1
0,0
18,9
3,8
54,2
whole
Europe
15,7
27,2
28,1
0,0
29,0
world as a
27,1
18,4
13,5
0,0
41,0
whole
167
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), Cultures 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:342361.
169
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 (Cefa 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).
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 lites 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 dAosta, 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
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 Bossis 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 lites), 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. Cefa & 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 (Mny 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 new
party 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-CraftsmenFarmers
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 socalled 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. Berlusconis 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 nonEuropeans) 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 identitymaking 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
Bossis 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 Nords 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 lites (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 lites of the North. The
party has on the contrary always run an explicit polemic against the lites 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).
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 welldefined 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- LegaNorth 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 Legas 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 scale4 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 Bossis party.
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- LegaNorth Centre South Lega
right
left
NR
South Nord
The Federal Reform of the State is a:
very important problem
26,2 29,4
17,5
26,8 66,0
33,4
21,0
28,5
2,6
36,6
quite important 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
dont 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 Libert; 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
184
5.000.000
4.500.000
Number of Immigrants inItaly
4.000.000
3.500.000
3.000.000
Immigrants
2.500.000
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, Bossis 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- LegaNorth 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
10,0
5,8 26,1
18,7
15,3
13,7
foreigners
11,5 16,5
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
2001
The First or the Second Priority:
Crime
41,2
55,0
40,0
Immigration
16,5
15,2
18,5
2006
Issues Considered "Very Important":
Crime
71,3
75,6
76,7
Immigration
59,7
54,3
65,4
2008
Problems Spontaneously Proposed as the Most Important:
Security, Crime, Public
Order
15,7
13,8
16,6
Immigration
6,9
7,3
8,0
12,8
8,7
30,0
35,1
16,2
30,6
12,7
45,8
26,1
68,7
59,9
48,8
48,2
77,0
76,2
16,8
6,5
12,4
2,2
25,5
9,2
TAB. 6B. Most Prominent Perceived Social Problems in Italian Northern Regions by
Occupation (%)
ALL
OCCUPATION
EmploSelfManagers
yees
employed Workers
1996
The First or the Second Priority:
Immigration
16,8
14,1
11,5
12,3
2001
The First or the Second Priority:
Crime
41,2
38,4
36,4
41,5
Immigration
16,5
20,1
16,7
20,1
2006
Issues Considered "Very Important":
Crime
71,3
65,2
64,2
73,3
Immigration
59,7
54,2
57,5
62,1
2008
Problems Spontaneously Proposed as the Most Important:
Security, Crime,
Public Order
15,7
10,8
14,3
22,1
Immigration
6,9
2,7
4,8
10,3
187
LEGA
VOTERS
Others
Not Employed
16,8
25,7
15,9
30,0
37,1
18,1
30,3
8,7
44,8
14,8
45,8
26,1
70,8
63,9
63,0
53,7
75,6
60,2
77,0
76,2
14,9
8,5
20,0
4,0
16,0
7,4
25,5
9,2
TAB. 7. Opinions on Immigrants and their Rights (2006 and 2008) (%)
GEOGRAFIC
VOTE IN NORTHERN
ALL ZONE
REGIONS
2006
Immigrants are dangerous
for our culture and identity
Immigrants are a threat to
employment
It ought to be forbidden to
gypsies to settle down in
our town
Regular immigrants should
have the right to vote in
administrative elections in
the town where they live
It is right to permit to
Muslims to built some
Mosques in Italian Country
2008
Immigrants are dangerous
for our culture
Immigrants are a threat for
employment
It is right to permit to
Muslims to built some
Mosques in Italian Country
Sources: Itanes 2006, 2008
Centreleft
OtherNR
NorthSouth
LegaNord
67,7
34,6
51,5
-4,3
27,7
66,1
57,9
31,4
42,8
-15,5
21,9
78,1
91,5
88,1
69,9
76,0
-0,1
13,5
70,3
62,0
23,5
53,9
75,4
55,1
-1,6
-36,9
31,7
45,4
32,0
18,7
24,1
44,3
26,3
-0,3
-13,0
38,3
39,0
33,7
39,9
57,5
55,4
19,7
40,1
-0,9
18,5
41,6
38,2
36,3
49,0
52,1
50,6
16,9
43,8
-10,8
13,9
36,1
34,1
38,1
37,7
13,0
24,0
57,0
28,0
-3,6
-21,1
North
Centre
South
Lega
52,6
51,4
49,4
55,7
79,1
50,1
44,2
46,8
59,7
78,8
78,0
81,7
62,9
60,4
34,4
Centreright
DIFFERENCE
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 Legas
political action concerns, in fact, the coherence between the instances promoted by the
party leadership and the priorities of administrative action of the Legas 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) (%)
ALL
EDUCATIONAL QUALIFICATION
None/
Junior
Primary
High
High
Universchool
School
School sity
LEGA
VOTERS
2006
Immigrants are dangerous for our
culture and identity
Immigrants are a threat to
employment
It ought to be forbidden to gypsies
to settle down in our town
Regular immigrants should have the
right to vote in administrative
elections in the town where they live
It is right to permit to Muslims to
build Mosques in Italy
51,4
67,7
56,3
43,9
20,8
79,1
44,2
55,7
49,6
38,0
17,3
66,1
78,0
86,3
78,2
74,0
73,6
91,5
60,4
61,3
56,9
60,9
71,4
23,5
31,7
17,3
26,3
38,9
60,8
18,7
39,0
55,2
41,0
32,6
17,9
57,5
38,2
54,4
40,8
31,1
15,7
52,1
34,1
18,3
31,6
40,6
56,4
13,0
2008
Immigrants are dangerous for our
culture
Immigrants are a threat to
employment
It is right to permit to Muslims to
build Mosques in Italy
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) (%)
ALL
Managers
OCCUPATION
Emplo- Self-em- Woryee
ployed
kers Others
LEGA
VOTERS
Not Employed
2006
Immigrants are
dangerous for our
culture and identity
Immigrants are a
threat to employment
It ought to be forbidden to gypsies to
settle down in our
town
Regular immigrants
should have the right
to vote in administrative elections in the
town where they live
It is right to permit to
Muslims to build
Mosques in Italy
51,4
32,8
40,4
56,3
51,1
44,0
57,8
79,1
44,2
26,3
33,2
46,0
52,2
47,8
47,8
66,1
78,0
80,4
78,1
71,3
76,6
84,0
79,0
91,5
60,4
55,1
61,4
51,7
54,8
76,0
63,3
23,5
31,7
52,2
41,0
36,0
31,0
39,6
24,7
18,7
39,0
24,7
29,8
35,3
44,9
37,0
42,2
57,5
38,2
16,9
31,8
25,0
49,0
44,4
40,4
52,1
34,1
44,2
41,1
26,5
31,8
48,1
31,8
13,0
2008
Immigrants are
dangerous for our
culture
Immigrants are a
threat to employment
It It is right to permit
to Muslims to build
Mosques in Italy
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.
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
GEOGRAFIC ZONE
VOTE IN NORTHERN
REGIONS
All
69,8
51,9
38,3
North
72,1
53,3
38,0
Centre
77,9
59,3
44,6
South
63,7
47,1
35,8
Lega
83,3
70,0
45,8
Centreright
75,6
57,5
45,6
43,4
41,8
34,6
47,5
45,2
36,4
47,7
47,0
39,5
37,2
35,8
30,5
47,4
39,5
29,8
49,4
40,8
34,1
DIFFERENCE
Centreleft
69,9
50,8
32,0
OtherNR
65,5
43,9
34,3
NorthSouth
8,4
6,2
2,2
LegaNord
11,2
16,7
7,8
48,4
54,7
42,5
41,7
32,8
28,8
10,3
9,4
5,9
-0,1
-5,7
-6,6
LEGA
VOTERS
OCCUPATION
72,1
53,3
38,0
Managers
72,0
64,3
40,6
Employee
70,7
46,8
29,4
SelfEmployed
73,6
55,7
43,6
Workers
69,8
49,3
36,6
Others
68,7
41,4
42,0
Not
Employed
73,3
56,3
40,5
83,3
70,0
45,8
47,5
45,2
36,4
58,7
62,9
53,0
50,4
52,6
38,9
61,4
41,3
29,5
46,7
41,2
30,1
52,3
49,8
43,9
42,5
41,2
35,8
47,4
39,5
29,8
192
DIFFERENCE
North
Centre
South
Lega
Centreright
Centreleft
OtherNR
NorthSouth
LegaNord
17,8
20,3
19,2
13,8
13,7
18,8
30,6
15,2
6,5
-6,6
79,3
76,6
77,6
83,6
84,2
79,3
64,7
82,1
-7,0
7,6
66,1
70,6
70,0
58,0
65,8
56,8
88,1
66,2
12,6
-4,8
34,3
34,9
39,5
30,8
38,4
29,8
25,2
43,0
28,8
41,8
28,0
45,8
61,4
14,4
32,2
32,4
14,3
-12,2
-10,7
11,0
75,7
74,7
74,3
77,8
93,2
90,0
56,7
75,4
-3,1
18,5
42,2
39,1
37,0
49,0
56,1
50,8
24,2
42,9
-9,9
17,0
41,1
42,6
42,8
42,0
40,2
44,8
39,5
42,0
62,3
68,4
59,4
67,5
27,1
21,6
40,7
38,1
3,3
0,0
19,5
26,4
31,9
34,1
28,0
31,1
37,0
36,2
30,6
34,9
3,0
2,9
79,0
76,8
84,6
78,7
59,7
70,1
81,0
80,9
-1,9
-17,1
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
Universchool
School School sity
Interpersonal Trust
You can trust most of the other people
You ought to be cautious in dealing
with the people
Individual Rights
Extend rights of married couples to
couples who decide to have a stable
relationship without marrying
Extend rights of married couples also
to homosexual couples
Abortion has to be restricted
Demand of Authority
Today in Italy we need a strong leader
Death penalty for worst crimes
Neo-Liberalism
Enterprises ought to have more
freedom to hire and fire
Unions' power is too high
Government ought to intervene less in
economy
Income divide between rich and poor
has to decrease
20,3
14,1
17,4
24,9
32,9
13,7
76,6
83,4
79,4
72,9
61,4
84,2
70,6
61,8
72,0
72,3
75,7
65,8
39,5
30,8
14,5
44,4
43,5
29,6
42,6
26,0
57,1
25,0
28,8
41,8
74,7
39,1
78,8
51,2
77,7
41,9
72,6
34,3
59,3
17,3
93,2
56,1
42,8
42,0
36,9
42,4
44,4
40,0
44,3
44,2
41,4
41,8
62,3
68,4
34,1
28,2
34,3
37,4
35,0
37,0
76,8
81,4
80,3
73,8
62,5
59,7
194
TAB. 12B. Opinions and Social Attitudes in Italian Northern Regions by Occupation (2006)
(%)
LEGA
ALL
OCCUPATION
VOTERS
Mana- Emplo- Self-emWorNot Emgers
yee
ployed
kers Others ployed
Interpersonal Trust
You can trust most of
the other people
You ought to be
cautious in dealing
with the people
Individual Rights
Extend rights of
married couples to
couples who decide
to have a stable
relationship without
marrying
Extend rights of
married couples also
to homosexual
couples
Abortion has to be
restricted
Demand of
Authority
Today in Italy we
need a strong leader
Death penalty for
worst crimes
Neo-Liberalism
Enterprises ought to
have more freedom to
hire and fire
Unions' power is too
high
Government ought to
intervene less in
economy
Income divide
between rich and
poor has to decrease
20,3
23,4
23,3
16,2
16,7
18,5
20,4
13,7
76,6
70,1
73,6
77,9
80,3
81,5
77,0
84,2
70,6
76,6
75,6
75,0
77,8
77,8
66,1
65,8
39,5
46,8
54,3
48,5
48,5
51,9
30,3
28,8
30,8
20,8
21,7
22,1
28,3
29,6
36,2
41,8
74,7
66,2
74,4
75,0
80,8
85,2
73,3
93,2
39,1
29,9
28,3
47,3
50,9
44,3
39,4
56,1
42,8
59,7
35,7
61,8
39,4
59,3
41,8
62,3
42,0
58,9
36,4
63,8
38,2
23,7
40,9
68,4
34,1
37,7
33,7
45,6
35,4
29,6
32,2
37,0
76,8
65,4
72,4
74,3
81,0
56,1
79,7
59,7
of people that voted for the Lega Nord, we find some discordant features compared to the
project. A large majority of the partys electorate naturally supports federalism and
devolution. However, the partys 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. Bossis 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.
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199
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; Dlmer 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 1980s, 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.
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; Mny 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 (Blss 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. Coff 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; Coff, 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
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 demandside 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, Dequeeckers 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 Flemishnationalistic 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 sanitaire4
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 municipalitys 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
(Nicola, 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 liberal party (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.
you remember, think of me. I am not like that. Maybe I am not a good
politician, but I dont 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.Arepresentatives5 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 dont 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 exitpoll indicate that this is almost totally thanks to the support in Deurne-South, where the
party has its own doctors 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 doctors 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
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 dont 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 dont 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 cant go around that,
issues are being discussed. So it could well be that there are VB-members
among them, we cant rule that out. And even when there are no VBmembers, 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 VBcommittee. 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 VBmembers, 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
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, its
participation that people want. When there are plans for the rearrangement
of a street, they are clarified to the neighbourhoods 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 dont think of yourself, because you
dont 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 partys councillors. They often refer to VBs methods, like the
opening of their community centre. Most of them recognize its success, but dont 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
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 1990s.
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 rights 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 VBs 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.
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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;
Gmez-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 people1,
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
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 partys
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 leftwing 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 Leagues 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 Leagues 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
partys 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 Hirschmanns categories (Hirschmann, 1970), voice was
never an option in this organization, as expulsing anyone opposing the partys
founding father, and indisputable leader, Umberto Bossis directions is common
2
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 memberships 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 Borghezio5, 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
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, Andrea7 (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, Archimde, 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
10
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 National Front has been able to utilize associations to
increase its membership and create an advocacy platform. According to Valrie
Lafont, few are those who enter the party directly, especially among the youth,
without going through an initiation process provided by National Fronts 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
partys 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 Padanias
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 partys 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, lets 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
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
dont 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 partys 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.
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
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?
Robertos indifference to Antonellas 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 Robertos 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 couldnt start doing
conferences if I wanted to. Mariella, yes, she even wrote a book. Shes 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, 1989:139199). 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 fieldwork15 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 Parliaments 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 (18th 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 parliaments 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 partys youth sector (25 years at the time of the interview),
has been offered a journalist job at the partys 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 Igors 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 activists 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 cultures 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 partys 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
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 Italys 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. Lidentit du permanent socialiste, du militant professionnel au
salari encart, in M. Surdez, M. Voegtli and B. Voutat (eds), Identifiersidentifier, Lausanne, Antipodes:203-224.
Anonymous (1999), Perch nasce lAssociazionismo ?, Lega Nord, s.l.
Avanza, M. (2002), Les purs et durs de Padanie. Ethnographie du militantisme
nationaliste la Ligue du Nord, Italie (1999-2002), thse pour le doctorat en
sociologie de lEcole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales de Paris.
Biorcio, R. (1997), La Padania promessa. La storia, le idee e la logica dazione della
Lega Nord, Milano, Il Saggiatore.
Biorcio, R. (2003), Sociologia politica. Partiti, movimenti sociali e participazione,
Bologna, Il Mulino.
Bruneau, I. (2004), La Confdration paysanne et le mouvement
altermondialisation. Linternational comme enjeu syndical, Politix, 17 (68):111134.
Ceccanti, S. (1993), Nessuna falcidia : i giovani, le donne e lelettorato 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 tre militant ? Sociologie des cultures
partisanes et des (ds)engagements. Les jeunes militants dAlleanza Nazionale,
Lega Nord et Forza Italia face au pouvoir, thse pour le doctorat en sciences
politiques, Universit 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 dellItalia
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233
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 19th 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 McCarthys (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
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
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.
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 clearcut 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.
Name
Movement
type
Time
NSM
NSM
OSM
OSM
NEM
15 Dec
23 Apr
6 May 2007 18 Nov 2007 19 Mar 8 Dec 2007 2 Dec 2006
2006
2007
2006
Rode
Brussels Brussels Brussels
Brussels
Brussels
Brussels
Place
More
Interregional Against
Against
Against
Against
Against
Aim
autonomy for solidarity occupaglobal
restructuinflation
random
Flemish
tion Iraq warming
ring VW
and
violence +
region
and climate car factory lowering
in memochange
purchasing riam Joe
power
Van
Holsbeeck
1,500
35,000
5,000
3,000
15,000
20,000
80,000
# participants
# questionnaires
554
515
915
548
878
398
1018
Distributed
235
221
316
189
270
126
437
Completed
42
43
34
34
31
32
43
Response rate
(%)
Note: NSM = New Social Movement; OSM = Old Social Movement; NEM = New
Emotional Movement
238
239
This section is based on previous work that can be found in Walgrave, Van Laer and
Verhulst, 2008.
240
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
243
244
Instrumentality
Total
Collective
identity
Total
Anger
Emotions
(means on a scale Concern
of 1 to 7)
Fear
Sadness
Indignation
Militancy
N
March for
Unity
32
33
35
100
10
23
73
100
4.6
4.9
2.1
2.4
5.3
6.2
235
27
63
100
2.7
5.2
3.5
3.8
4.3
4.7
221
245
Dutch
French
Total
N
Total
54
46
100
1338
NL
PurchaMarch
sing
for Joe
Power
FR NL FR NL FR NL FR NL FR
61
39.4
6.9
36
18
6
15
47
56
58
66
65
64
77
41
43
39.0 39.2 42.8 45.4 45.4 49.9 50.0 43.9 44.5
6.9 7.0 7.1 5.4 5.9 5.8 5.7 6.4 6.2
32
46
47
74
69
68
66
42
49
12
16
20
10
4
8
6
14
9
9
8
9
4
10
7
4
8
8
16
8
11
8
10
7
19
15
15
Climate
Change
Antiwar
Sex
Age
Education
Occupation
Other/missing
Total
N
% male
mean
mean
Full time
Part time
Unemployed
Retired
Husband/
housewife
Student
VW
Vorst
21
3
100
28
2
100
16
4
100
8
4
100
2
1
100
2
3
100
0
6
100
0
3
100
14
1
100
10
3
100
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 %)
Are you at this
demonstration?
Alone
With partner and/or family
With friends and/or
acquaintances
With colleagues and/or costudents
With fellow members of an
organization
PurchaMarch
sing
for Joe
Power
NL FR NL FR NL FR NL FR NL FR
Antiwar
Climate
Change
VW
Vorst
7
16
28
16
7
13
13
22
4
5
17
13
0
10
13
13
24
46
21
49
19
23
17
27
24
22
21
13
55
29
57
32
84
43
81
55
100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
Total
211 102 108 79 135 136 77 47 182 252
N
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
March
for Joe
NL FR
97
21
7
2
94
24
10
2
183 250
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 %)
PurchaAnti- Climate
VW
March
sing
war
Change Vorst
for Joe
Power
NL FR NL FR NL FR NL FR NL FR
2
4
17 9
13 12 1
9
29 21
First time
23
18
32
31
26
28
27
17
44 57
2 - 5 times
18 17 21 19 18 18 33 13 14 10
6 - 10 times
More than 10
times
Total
N
57
61
30
41
43
42
39
61
13
12
100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
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
Instrumentali Little
success
ty
Moderate
Very
successful
Total
Collective
Weak
identity
Moderate
Strong
Total
Anger
Emotions
(means on a
Concern
scale
of 1 to 7)
Fear
Sadness
Indignation
Militancy
N
Climate
Change
VW
Vorst
64
72
53
59
46
47
34
41
42
30
26
22
32
25
18
36
29
26
25
31
10
15
16
36
17
37
33
33
39
100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
5
11
12
44 49
51 40
100 100
5.2 5.2 3.6
5.6 4.7 6.2
3.2
3.7
6.0
5.0
208
3.2
4.4
5.7
4.9
100
3.2
3.6
5.1
5.6
107
21
33
21
4.1
5.4
39 32
49 47
100 100
5.1 5.0 4.5
6.2 6.1 6.3
4.7
5.8
45 40
22 39
100 100
4.6 4.8
5.7 5.6
3.7
4.2
5.2
5.7
76
4.1
3.9
5.7
5.7
131
4.6
5.0
4.6
6.5
46
3.8
5.0
5.8
4.3
182
5.2
5.2
5.7
5.7
135
3.3
4.6
4.0
6.1
76
4.6
6.3
6.0
4.9
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 Dutchspeaking 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 speakcautiouslyof 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 trange lacune de la sociologie
des mobilisations. l'tude par sondage des manifestants: fondaments thoriques et
solutions techniques, Revue franaise 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
251
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 Velocit 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 ethnoregional and local parties and movements.
254
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 Chambry, 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:1722). 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 legislature. 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 Solidariet 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.
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 (leftoriented) and FIOM is the section of CGIL composed by workers in the engineering
industry.
257
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 governments 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.
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 Solidariet 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:
TERRITORY
STRUGGLING
COMMUNITIES
BEYOND
THE
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 crossfertilization 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 ethnoregional 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 costfree, 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 dedevelopment and ungrowth (Latouche, 2007), based on defence of the environment,
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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
267
269
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 Legas 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. Gangemis
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 Legas 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
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stereotypes against the regions 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 history of Italy 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 regions economic success to Flemish
culture and good governance and Wallonias 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 selfinterested, 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
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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.
Beyens 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 Partys electoral success in Flanders in the late
19th and early 20th 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 19th 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
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 DAzeglio), 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.
Gangemis 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
countrys 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). Italys political culture of the period of Unification (itself a
reflection of Piedmonts pre-unification political culture) was a mixture of absolutism
tempered by liberal constitutionalism (a context more favourable to authoritarian and
centralist tendencies).
277
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 selfdeception in order to address peoples 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 Legas 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 Nords programme equally includes an anti-immigrant
dimension that since the late 1990s has taken more and more a central position in the
partys 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 Legas 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 grassroots 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
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 partys 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 partys reach. Its capacity to generate political
militancy is not matched in the social field: the partys 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 nationbuilding project (the so-called Padanists). The latter constitute in fact a community of
activists often critical of the partys politics (in particular its alliance with Berlusconi).
Avanzas contribution shows how this community devotes itself to a long-term project of
nation-building (a project in which the xenophobic compnent 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 partys electoral successes.
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Warmenbol and Avanza certainly reveal the social embeddedness of the activists
of Vlaams Belang and the Lega Nord but also that the partys 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. Warmenbols
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 Laers 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 18th, 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 proBelgium demonstration.
Looking at demonstrations unrelated to nationalism, Van Laer observes that those
organized by social movements (trade unions, NGOs) 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
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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 Legas
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 Legas 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 communitys 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 regions 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 Euroscepticism (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
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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 partys 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. Avanzas 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
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