New Rules for National Identity? The Northern League and Political Identity in Contemporary Northern Italy

Abstract

National identities are often seen as the polar opposite of identities associated with other geographical scales of political identity, such as the local or the regional. Under contemporary circumstances, however, including the globalisation of economies and the questioning of the efficacy of existing states, national identity may no longer be best thought of as ‘opposed’ to political identities at other geographical scales. Using the case of the Northern League in Italy, this paper identifies three new ‘rules’ of political-identity formation, the self-conscious invention of political units, the malleability of identities and the multiplicity of identities, that suggest the mutual contingency of different geographical scales in the crafting of political, including national, identities.