Changing political opportunities and the re-invention of the Italian right

The transition to a new party system in Italy in the 1990s was characterised by a shift to a new form of bipolar politics in which a rather heterogeneous collection of political formations—some new and some re-invented—generally grouped themselves around either of the two poles (of centre-left and centre-right) that emerged to dispute the new predominantly majoritarian electoral system adopted in 1993. The voluntary self-location of a number of political parties within the centre-right pole was particularly noteworthy given that the rightwing label had been eschewed by mainstream parties during the course of the post-war republic. Indeed, the political force that dominated the period—the Christian Democratic (DC) party—despite occupying the political space generally occupied by centre-right parties in other advanced Western democracies—defined itself as a centrist party. The right-wing label was, for historical reasons, associated with extremism and anti-democratic sentiment and regarded as a ‘taboo’ in Italian politics. It is noteworthy that the only party that unashamedly adopted the right-wing label was the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI), previously viewed as outside the arc of legitimate constitutional actors, now re-invented as the National Alliance (AN), presenting itself as a democratic party of the right and distancing itself from its fascist antecedents. This re-invented political force sat alongside two new political forces of a more populist bent—Forza Italia and the Lega Nord (Northern League, LN)—as well as conservative offshoots from the former DC, within the centre-right coalition that governed Italy briefly in 1994 and then returned to government in 2001 under Silvio Berlusconi’s leadership. This paper will examine the ideological development of the LN and AN, highlighting divergences and common trends particularly in relation to the various political and electoral strategies and policy frames utilised by them. An analysis of the programmatic documents of these two parties in various distinct phases since the beginning of the 1990s will illustrate the continuous process of ideological re-invention they have undertaken in the quest to carve out distinct political identities and in order to seek out and occupy differing political