The Shape of Water: The Constituency Communication of the Lega in Power

The Lega was the first populist party to achieve any kind of electoral success in Italy since the days of ‘qualunquismo’, which had until then represented the ideal-type of right-wing populism. In 2013, the party acquired a new leader and a revised ideological platform. Matteo Salvini, the new secretary of the Lega, sought to reposition his party as one with a nation-wide appeal without completely abandoning its territorial and federalist vocation. This change required the identification of new EU-framed issues and an obsessive focus on security and immigration, which moved the party to a position that was identified by using the neologism, ‘sovereignitist’. In this chapter, the salient aspects of Lega MPs’ communication are highlighted, showing that it remains firmly anchored to the values of territorial identity and tradition without really becoming a national discourse.