October
12th,
2018
A paper written with Riccardo Ladini. You can find it here.
In 2018 national elections, the Lega, an Italian xenophobic right-wing party, has dramatically increased its consensus in the ‘red belt’, the central part of the country traditionally ruled by center-left parties. Pundits have argued that this performance can be attributed to the effect of the new leadership of Matteo Salvini, who shifted the ideological location of the party (that now aims at being a national right-wing party), combined with the drop in preferences of Forza Italia, the ally/competitor in the right-wing ideological spectrum. This paper aims at providing new insights in the explanation of these electoral outcomes, by hypothesizing that geographical trajectories of diffusion of the party are correlated with the presence of geographically clustered post-fascist minorities present in the region since the First Republic age. By employing official figures at the municipality level, the paper analyses the relationship between the percentages of votes for the MSI (the most relevant post-fascist force during the First Republic) in 1976 and the Lega Nord in the 2006-2018 period. Consistent with our hypothesis, the post-fascist inheritance is significantly correlated with the local prevalence for the Lega Nord in 2018, after the change in the political discourse and leadership of the party. Empirical analyses provide evidence of our expectations, even when controlling for unemployment rate and percentage of immigrants. </div>
In 2018 national elections, the Lega, an Italian xenophobic right-wing party, has dramatically increased its consensus in the ‘red belt’, the central part of the country traditionally ruled by center-left parties. Pundits have argued that this performance can be attributed to the effect of the new leadership of Matteo Salvini, who shifted the ideological location of the party (that now aims at being a national right-wing party), combined with the drop in preferences of Forza Italia, the ally/competitor in the right-wing ideological spectrum. This paper aims at providing new insights in the explanation of these electoral outcomes, by hypothesizing that geographical trajectories of diffusion of the party are correlated with the presence of geographically clustered post-fascist minorities present in the region since the First Republic age. By employing official figures at the municipality level, the paper analyses the relationship between the percentages of votes for the MSI (the most relevant post-fascist force during the First Republic) in 1976 and the Lega Nord in the 2006-2018 period. Consistent with our hypothesis, the post-fascist inheritance is significantly correlated with the local prevalence for the Lega Nord in 2018, after the change in the political discourse and leadership of the party. Empirical analyses provide evidence of our expectations, even when controlling for unemployment rate and percentage of immigrants. </div>
