Employing primary sources and interviews with protagonists of the rebellion of the Italian North, this book explores the invention of the Padanian nation and the construction of identity politics in Northern Italy. It reveals for the first time the connection between the ethnic wave in European party politics in the 1970s and the rise of a new radical right nationalism in the 1990s. The author highlights the way in which the discourse of national minorities was instrumental in the rise of a new political agenda that links territory, identity and cultural rights to create new boundaries of exclusion. In addition to clarifying the connection between the new nationalism and racism by demonstrating how cultural distinctiveness is constructed in contemporary European politics, this unique book also explores the dynamics of new party mobilization and the symbolic resources of nationalist rhetoric. This book presents for the first time data on political participation - both party elites and members - and the real dimension of the party organization.

This book focuses on the politics of national identity in Italy. Only a unified country for just over 150 years, Italian national identity is perhaps more contingent than longer established nations such as France or the UK. The book investigates when, how and why the discussions about national identity and about immigration became entwined in public discourse within Italy. In particular it looks at the most influential voices in the debate on immigration and identity, namely Italian intellectuals, the Catholic Church, the Northern League and the Left. The methodological approach is based on a systematic discourse analysis of official documents, interviews, statements and speeches by representatives of the political actors involved. In the process, the author demonstrates that a 'normalisation' of intolerance towards foreigners has become institutionalised at the heart of the Italian state. This work will be of particular interest to students of Italian Politics, Nationalism and Comparative Politics.

This book is the first full-length study available in English to trace the extraordinary history of the Italian Northern Leagues during the 1980s and 1990s. At a time when the postwar First Republic entered a crisis amid corruption scandals, the Leagues acted as one of the main protest actors and grew at an unprecedented rate. Drawing on electoral and survey data, existing research, eyewitness accounts of protest events and interviews with activists and leaders, this book provides the definitive account of the movement. Damian Tambini analyses why the movement was so successful in mobilising support, and focuses on its most novel aspect: its use of nationalism. The new regionalist movements in Northern Italy, which were unified into the Northern League in 1990, had a huge influence on Italian politics during the period. Written for scholars interested in nationalism, ethnicity and citizenship; and for specialists in European Studies, Italian and ethnic studies, Nationalism in Italian Politics draws on the best Italian and international research to thoroughly analyse the movement, and update classic studies of nationalism in the age of media spectacle.

This book investigates the narrative of nationhood during the Italian Risorgimento and its ability to reach a new and wider audience. In Italy, an extraordinary emotional excitement pervaded the struggle for national independence, suffusing the speeches and actions of patriots. This book shows how this ardour borrowed the tones, figures and spectacular nature of the melodramatic imagination feeding the theatre and literature of the time, and how it could resonate with a largely uneducated audience. An important contribution to the new historiography on the Italian Risorgimento and on nineteenth-century nationalism in Europe, it offers a fresh perspective on the public sphere during the Risorgimento, focusing on the transnational links between political mobilisation and the growth of new media and burgeoning mass culture.