Compared to the Forza Italia ministers chosen from among Berlusconi’s personal associates, Zaia and his colleagues were far more bound by the politics of their home regions as well as their accountability to party activists. This owed not only to the Lega’s regionalist identity but also the fact that its organisation was based on a mass of territorial branches. This accountability to local cadres – whose sources of funds and institutional weight also rose with breakthroughs in regional and mayoral elections – contrasted with the ‘light’ organisational form pioneered by Berlusconi, in which posts and influence remained under the tight control of the party’s owner-proprietor. Even amid the general volatility of the Second Republic, in which campaign vehicles like Forza Italia did away with ‘dense’ mass-party structures, Bossi’s Lega Nord was built on an organisational model more akin to its 1980s counterparts, sometimes even called a ‘Leninist’ model. Rallied in a force that had arisen in opposition to the First Republic, the leghisti nonetheless carried forth some of the assumptions of the previous era of political engagement. Indeed, already by the time of the 1996 general election the Lega Nord was the oldest party represented in the Italian Parliament.
If the 1990s saw widespread claims in the death of the mass-party form – exemplified by the wider collapse of the First Republic – the Lega Nord’s history instead highlights the merits of this more rooted model, allowing the party to endure even severe defeats. Its mass membership – hitting 112,000 by 1992 – was an impressive countertendency, especially considering that one could not simply sign up as a member of the Lega; rather, one had to earn membership through activism and attendance at meetings. This deep sense of ongoing party commitment, combined with the regionalist identity of which the Lega boasted under Bossi’s leadership, made it quite unlike the media machines with which it clashed each election time. As recent research on Lega membership structures has highlighted,24 its territorial roots are maintained not only through such practices as party gazebos (a way of maintaining direct contact with local populations) but also regular member meetings with elected officials as well as parallel and voluntary organisations representing such groups as women and youth.
As we shall see further on, today’s Lega is less rooted in local branches, or indeed ‘Padanian’ identity, than it was under Bossi’s leadership. From 2011, not long before Bossi was forced from office, to Salvini’s electoral breakthrough in 2018, the party’s number of territorial sections in fact fell by over two-thirds, from 1,451 to 437.25 Yet, through the volatile times of the Second Republic, these deeper structures had rendered the Lega Nord far hardier than its rivals, time and again proving able to renew itself notwithstanding the electoral setbacks that followed each spell in government. The party had not just ridden the ideological wave of ‘Bribesville’, with its revolt against the corrupt party system in Rome, but also, paradoxically, created a vehicle much more similar to the mass parties that Clean Hands had destroyed. This laid both the political and organisational bases for the Lega’s conquest of small towns across northern Italy, a bedrock that survived even Bossi’s own downfall.
The Revolution Eats Its Children
As we have seen, Bossi’s leadership of the Lega Nord was shaped by the tension between its regionalist and national ambitions. Throughout his period of control, and especially after the party’s first spell in national office in 1994, Bossi sought to present himself as a ‘guarantor’ figure, who would protect the interests of members against any corrupting effect that serving in the Rome government might have on ministers. The rise of a layer of leghista ministers, MPs, and European and regional/local representatives created what some activists derided as ‘the party of the blue cars’, supposedly focused on maintaining their own perks. From the very top of the organisational machine, Bossi could, in part at least, sidestep such an accusation. His only ministerial role in Berlusconi’s governments (‘Minister for Devolution’) was a purely propagandistic one, allowing him to keep one foot outside of the central Italian state and claim to represent the leghista base directly rather than the government as a whole. As his election posters put it: ‘further from Rome, closer to you’.
Whereas the Lega’s anti-corruption stance had soon brought Berlusconi’s first government to retreat and then collapse,26 the alliances of the 2000s were more governed by a tacit division of control. Here, Bossi’s party was allowed to lead the broader centre-right alliance in its heartlands in exchange for backing national-level legislation that shielded Berlusconi’s interests. Where, in 1994, the Lega had withdrawn its backing for the Biondi bill in the face of public pressure, over Berlusconi’s subsequent spells in office (2001–6 and then 2008–11), it instead gave its support to the billionaire tycoon’s ad personam legislation. This included backing for the infamous Gasparri bill, which protected Berlusconi’s media empire, or the measures known as Lodo Schifani and Lodo Alfano, to protect ministers from police investigation. When the Constitutional Court threatened to block this latter bill, Bossi said he was prepared to ‘lead the people in arms’ to ‘defend democracy’.27
The contradictions in the Lega’s anti-corruption agenda were not limited to its ties to Berlusconi – rather, they were also reflected in its own internal structures. Already in the Clean Hands years, Bossi had appeared in a dual guise, cheering on the magistrates before being called into the dock himself. But, while Bossi’s admission of illicit funding from the Montedison industrial group had seen him escape with a suspended sentence – sparing the Lega any immediate political fall out – his own opaque control made party funds increasingly inscrutable. When Bossi suffered a stroke in 2004 (forcing him to miss the Pontida rally, which was, in turn, cancelled), he opted not to begin a succession process, but rather to centralise his authority against potential rivals for the leadership. The ‘magic circle’ of party insiders organised by his wife excluded even figures like Interior Minister Maroni and began treating the party as well as its finances like family property. Though Bossi purported to play an executive role in the Lega, allowing him to discipline the ministers in Rome, in fact he was unaccountable to the base.
The end of Berlusconi’s last government in autumn 2011, which again pushed the Lega into opposition, was soon followed by the final explosion of this set-up. On 8 January 2012, Il Secolo XIX newspaper broke the news that Lega Nord treasurer Francesco Belsito, a Bossi appointee, had illicitly drawn on state funds from Cyprus and Tanzania, using the cash to provide personal favours to fellow members of the ‘magic circle’. Three days later, the scandal intensified as Bossi voted to shield from prosecution Nicola Cosentino, an MP from Berlusconi’s party who had been arrested for his alleged ties to the Naples mafia. The combination of internal impropriety and support for Berlusconi finally provoked a revolt in the leghista base, who called on Maroni to take action to reclaim the party. Bossi went on the counteroffensive, cancelling all public meetings involving the former interior minister. Nine days later, a protest against Mario Monti’s centrist government instead became the scene of an open clash between followers of these rival Lega leaders.
Revelations into the Lega’s dubious financial practices followed thick and fast, highlighting the webs of corruption and ties to organised crime that had built up under Bossi’s leadership. Indeed, it was a case starkly reminiscent of those that had felled the parties of the First Republic. The regional government in Lombardy – a key leghista heartland – itself came under investigation for ties to ’Ndrangheta, the Calabrian Mafia, and by early April, the leadership crisis had become unmanageable. As the prosecutors closed in, Bossi was forced to abandon the role he had held for over two decades. Amid a string of resignations, Maroni became new party secretary, promising