This book investigates the historical roots of the Italian Republic’s oldest surviving political party, the populist far right Lega (Nord), tracing its origins to post-war Italy. The author examines two main case studies: the Movements for Regional Autonomy (MRAs), the Piedmontese Movement for Regional Autonomy (the MARP) and the Bergamascan Movement for Autonomy (the MAB), both of which formed a first wave of post-war populist regionalism from 1955 until 1960. The regionalist leagues which later emerged in both Piedmont and Lombardy in the 1980s – and which would later form part of the Lega Nord – represented in many ways a revival of the MRAs’ populist regionalist discourse and ideology and, therefore, a second wave of post-war populist regionalism. Despite this, neither the MRAs nor the twenty year gap between these waves of activism have received the attention they deserve. Drawing on a series of archival and secondary sources this book takes an innovative approach which blends concepts and theories from historical sociology and political science. It also provides a nuanced examination of the continuities and discontinuities between the MRAs and the Lega from the 1950s until time of publication. This contributes to debates not only in contemporary Italian history, but also populism and the far right. While rooted in historical approaches, the book’s interdisciplinarity makes it suitable for students and researchers across a variety of subject areas including European history, modern history, and political history.

At a time when far, radical, and extreme-right politics are becoming increasingly mainstream globally – sometimes with deadly consequences – research in these fields is essential to understand the most effective ways to combat these dangerous ideologies. Yet engaging with texts and movements that do physical and verbal violence raises a number of urgent ethical issues. Until recently, this has remained understudied, as scholarship on the far right rarely delves explicitly and critically into the ethics of research. This book seeks to remedy this significant gap in an otherwise extensive and growing literature. Originating from a workshop series in 2020, in which an international group of academics at various career stages shared the ethical challenges and best practices they had developed in their research, this edited collection draws together insights from these ongoing conversations, offering urgent critical reflections on key ethical issues.

This volume focuses on the relationship between the media and European democracy, as important factors of EU legitimacy. The contributors show how the media play a crucial role in making European governance accountable, and how it can act as an intermediate link between citizens and their elected and unelected representatives. The book focuses on widespread levels of Euroscepticism and the contemporary European crisis. The authors present empirical studies which problematize the role of traditional media coverage on EU attitudes. Comparisons are also drawn between traditional and new media in their influence on Euroscepticism. Furthermore, the authors analyse the impact of the internet and social media as new arenas in which Eurosceptic claims and positions can be made visible, as well as being a medium used by political parties and populist movements which contest Europe and its politics and policies. Euroscepticism, Democracy and the Media will be of interest to students and scholars with an interest in European politics, political parties, interest groups, social movements and political sociology.

Since the late 1980s, the Lega Nord has broken the mould of Italian politics. Federalist, secessionist, populist, it has succeeded in mobilizing the entrepreneurial class of Northern Italy in a campaign against the Italian state. In 1996, it launched the idea of Panadia, a separate Northern Italian nation. This proved to be a step too far, but the Lega remains a political force to be reckoned with, and has propelled 'the Northern question' on to the national stage.

Ethnoregionalist parties are an increasingly influential political phenomenon in many Western European countries. Despite this there has been little systematic study of these important political parties. This volume fills the gap with an exploration of the successes and failures experienced by ethnoregionalist parties in post-war Europe. Regionalist Parties in Western Europe looks in detail at the fortunes of twelve regionalist parties in: the Basque country, Corsica, French speaking Belgium, Scotland, Wales, Catalonia, Flanders, Italy, and South Tyrol.

European Memory in Populism explores the links between memory and populism in contemporary Europe. Focusing on circulating ideas of memory, especially European memory, in contemporary populist discourses, the book also analyses populist ideas in sites and practices of remembrance that usually tend to go unnoticed. More broadly, the theoretical heart of the book reflects upon the similarities, differences, and slippages between memory, populism, nationalism, and cultural racism and the ways in which social memory contributes to give substance to various ideas of what constitutes the ‘people’ in populist discourse and beyond. Bringing together a group of political scientists, anthropologists, and cultural and memory studies scholars, the book illuminates the relationship between memory and populism from different angles and in different contexts. The contributors to the volume discuss dominant notions of European heritage that circulate in the public sphere and in political discourse, and consider how the politics of fear relates to such notions of European heritage and identity across and beyond Europe and the European Union. Ultimately, this volume will shed light on how notions of a shared European heritage and memory can be used not only to include and connect Europeans, but also to exclude some of them. Investigating the ways in which nationalist populist forces mobilize the idea of a shared, homogeneous European civilization, European Memory in Populism will be of interest to scholars and students in the fields of European studies, heritage and memory studies, migration studies, anthropology, political science and sociology. Chapters 1, 4, 6, and 10 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No-Derivatives 4.0 license.