Beyond the Radical Right Straitjacket: A Reply to Andrej Zaslove's Critique of ‘Regionalist Populism and the Lega Nord’
| Date | 01 June 2007 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9256.2007.00289.x |
| Author | Duncan McDonnell |
| Published date | 01 June 2007 |
| Subject Matter | Controversy |
Controversy
Beyond the Radical Right Straitjacket:
A Reply to Andrej Zaslove’s Critique of
‘Regionalist Populism and the Lega
Nord’
Duncan McDonnell
University of Turin
I would like to thank Andrej Zaslove for his critique of my article ‘A Weekend in
Padania: Regionalist Populism and the Lega Nord’ as it offers me a very welcome
opportunity to expand on a number of issues which, in my original piece, I could
only touch on briefly due to lack of space (McDonnell, 2006; Zaslove, 2007). Much
of Zaslove’s commentary discusses his own work on the Lega Nord (Northern
League) as a radical right populist party, so I will limit myself here to responding to
his main points regarding my article and, in the process, will add some further
considerations on the Lega Nord and the different terms we use to classify the party.
Zaslove’s principal criticism of my article was that I disagreed with the use of the
term ‘radical right’ to classify the Lega Nord and argued instead that it is a ‘region-
alist populist’ party. I should point out here that, although Zaslove repeatedly says
that I categorise the Lega as a ‘regional populist party’, in fact, in the title and
throughout the article, I used the term ‘regionalist populist’. As I explained, it is
impossible to understand the Lega from its foundation to the present day without
explicitly highlighting its ‘regionalist’ identity and, whatever U-turns it may have
made (for example, its position on European integration and its alliances with other
parties), the key issue for the party has always been the attainment of some form
of northern autonomy, whether federalism, independence or devolution.
Having outlined the importance of the territorial political reference in understand-
ing the party, the majority of my original piece was devoted to an analysis of the
populism of the Lega. To be clear, I define populism as a discourse which pits a
virtuous, homogeneous people against a set of elites and dangerous ‘others’ who
are together depicted, in a time of (real or perceived) crisis and change, as depriving
‘the people’ of their prosperity, rights, values and sovereignty. Like those of Ernesto
Laclau (2005) and Pierre-André Taguieff (2002), this view deliberately avoids
conceiving of populism in terms of specific social bases, economic programmes,
ideologies and themes. To put it simply, I believe that populism should not be seen
against...
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