The 2018 elections and the M5S-League government
The results of the 2018 parliamentary elections laid bare the ‘narrowness’ of the social alliance supporting the post-2011 governments. While the M5S and the League obtained greater-than-average vote shares among the working class and the unemployed, the PD gathered high levels of support among upper classes (see
Afonso and Bulfone, 2019;
Bulfone and Tassinari, 2021). The dismal performance of the PD (the worst in the party’s history) exposed the deep crisis of legitimation of the ‘neoliberal-progressive Europeanism’ associated in Italy with centre-left political forces (
Cozzolino, 2021: 140–141). At the same time, the success of the M5S and the League vindicated their strategies aimed at re-politicising certain key socio-economic issues, opposing national and supranational technocracies, and denouncing the de-democratisation of European integration (see
Baldini and Giglioli, 2021;
Caiani, 2019). Moreover, the rise of the League clearly showed its ability to capitalise upon the ‘migration crisis’ (often linking immigration with the issues of unemployment and low wages) (
Caiani and Padoan, 2021) and to keep it at the centre of the political agenda, despite a continuous decline in the number of migrant arrivals (
Strazzari and Grandi, 2019). The results also highlighted the existence of a fracture between the North, where entire regions were dominated by the League, and the Centre-South, where the M5S obtained a landslide victory.
Before joining forces to form a government, the M5S and the League were ideologically different in many respects, but shared several common traits. The M5S exhibited a hybrid identity difficult to locate along a right-left axis, and was mainly characterised by its rejection of the Italian political and economic establishment and by its anti-austerity discourse (
Caiani, 2019;
Pirro, 2018). Conversely, the League (formerly Northern League) retained a clear far-right identity. Originally a Northern regionalist party that took part in all centre-right governments in recent history, it managed to repackage itself as a nationalist, anti-establishment force under the leadership of Matteo Salvini (
Albertazzi et al., 2018). On immigration, the positions of the two parties converged in the run-up to the 2018 elections, with the M5S bringing its (initially only sporadic) nativist appeals more to the fore and adopting a more ‘exclusionary’ attitude, thus moving closer to the League’s aggressive anti-migration stance (see
Caiani and Padoan, 2021;
Pirro, 2018). Finally, both parties held strongly Eurosceptic positions, even though they never genuinely questioned EMU membership while in government (
Giugliano, 2020). Against this backdrop, once formed, the M5S-League cabinet led by Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte promised to reverse the direction undertaken by previous governments in economic and social policy, and to adopt a firmer stance to tackle the ‘migration crisis’. The executive, with League’s leader Salvini as interior minister, became soon associated with port closures to NGO rescue vessels and legislation targeting undocumented migrants and asylum seekers (
Strazzari and Grandi, 2019). In parallel, the ‘yellow-green’ government started to focus on those three domains in which the neoliberalisation process had been furthered the most starting from the 1990s: fiscal, pension, and labour market policies.
The draft budget plan presented in 2018 foresaw an increase in the public deficit by proposing the introduction of, among others, a ‘flat tax’ for self-employed and small businesses, a tax amnesty for lower incomes, a pension reform allowing early retirement, and a ‘citizenship income’ (‘
Reddito di Cittadinanza’, RdC) (
Ministero Economia e Finanze, 2018). In contrast to the EU recommendation to produce a budgetary adjustment in structural terms (
Council of the EU, 2018), the plan included nominal deficit/GDP targets of 2.4% in 2019, 2.1% in 2020, and 1.8% in 2021, which would have led to a deterioration of the structural balance (
Ministero Economia e Finanze, 2018). This prompted the EC to threaten the opening of an excessive deficit procedure, before the government eventually backtracked, lowering the targets to 2.04% for 2019, 1.8% for 2020, and 1.5% for 2021
3. While the failure to reverse course in fiscal policy reflected contingent financial market pressures (
Di Quirico, 2021) and more structural impediments to the ‘steering and fiscal capacity’ of the Italian state (
Caterina and Huke, 2021) rather than a simple lack of political will, the
chosen path to reduce the initially-planned deficit reveals elements consistent with a neoliberal logic. Indeed, on the one hand, some of the largest savings came from the scaling down of the originally-foreseen public investments and of the RdC, and, on the other hand, the revenue increases were to accrue almost entirely from ‘safeguard clauses’ in the form of future hikes in the rate of VAT (a notoriously socially-regressive tax) (
Ufficio Parlamentare Bilancio, 2018: 12).
In the area of pensions, the change initially advocated by the League would have allowed workers to retire upon attaining a sum of age and contribution years equal to 100 (‘
Quota 100’) ‘without penalisations’ in monetary terms (
Lega, 2018: 5). However, the final version (law 26/2019, art. 14) set a minimum threshold of 62 years of age and 38 years of contributions (i.e. giving up the possibility of choosing different combinations of age and contribution years) and, most importantly, was designed only as an ‘experimental’ measure lasting until 2021. In addition, while no explicit penalisations were introduced, the method of calculating the benefit was left unchanged,
de facto penalising workers who decide to retire earlier (see simulations in
Ufficio Parlamentare Bilancio, 2019). In sum, despite the rhetoric accompanying its introduction,
Quota 100 only
temporarily cushioned the effects of the 2011 Monti-Fornero reform, while avoiding fundamentally altering the system (
Branco et al., 2019).
More contradictory developments occurred in the field of the labour market. One of the first acts of the Conte government was the adoption of the so-called ‘
Decreto dignità’ (‘Dignity decree’) (law 96/2018), which revised some of the provisions of the Jobs Act by marginally restricting the use of temporary contracts and by increasing the thresholds for compensation for unfairly dismissed employees. Nevertheless, the decree by no means affected ‘the core of the Jobs Act – namely, the reduction of employment protection for open-ended workers’ (
Branco et al., 2019: 221).
Another key policy implemented in this domain was represented by the RdC, a flagship measure of the M5S. Although its name suggests a form of guaranteed basic income, the RdC could be more adequately described as a means-tested UB for low-income households and as an active labour market policy (ALMP) (
Stamati, 2020). Stringent economic criteria are set for accessing the benefit, a monthly transfer of a variable amount (up to 780 euros) depending on the household’s wealth, income, and composition (law 26/2019, art. 2–3). Importantly, obtention of the RdC depends upon the fulfilment of a residency criterion, which makes the benefit available only to Italian citizens and to foreigners who resided in the country for at least 10 years (the last two consecutively) (art. 2.1), thereby severely restricting access for migrants.
Furthermore, as an ALMP, the RdC is expressly aimed at favouring the reinsertion of the beneficiaries in the labour market and is linked to tight conditionalities (art. 4). The recipients are required to confirm their immediate availability to work and to sign a ‘Pact for work’, which includes an obligation to accept job offers that becomes increasingly strict over time. Indeed, the UB is lost following three rejected job offers whose minimum salary is set to only 858 euros per month (10% more than the maximum benefit amount), with the third and last offered position potentially located
anywhere in the national territory. Hence, the workfarist logic underpinning the RdC makes it ‘[fall] in line with the unemployment insurance reforms of recent decades’ (
Stamati, 2020: 260), even exacerbating their most disciplining and commodifying features. The ensemble of these conditionalities has been termed by the government itself as ‘
norme anti-divano’ (‘anti-sofa rules’), as their rationale is to ensure that ‘nobody can stay on the couch’ while receiving the benefit (
Governo Italiano, 2019). The social content of these rules reflects a narrative typical of neoliberal workfarist policies, which tend to stigmatise the poor and the unemployed as individually responsible for their condition and fundamentally non-motivated to work, while also framing the problem of unemployment exclusively in terms of ‘employability’ of the workforce (see
MacLeavy, 2016;
Peck and Theodore, 2000).
The peculiar experiment of anti-establishment and far-right forces in power is best understood against the backdrop of the post-2011 developments, which laid bare the limitations of austerity-based strategies in building sufficiently large and lasting class alliances. Thus, while essentially maintaining the core (neoliberalising) labour market policies of the past, a little additional fiscal room was deployed for measures intended for social groups that had been marginalised during the crisis, namely self-employed and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) mainly located in the North (flat tax and tax amnesty)
4, precarious classes in the South (RdC)
5, and older (male) workers (
Quota 100)
6. Moreover, the anti-migration and welfare chauvinist posturing should be viewed as serving the purpose of attracting support from sections of the working class and the petty bourgeoisie by pitting them against the ‘Other’, while hiding an unwillingness to challenge structural socio-economic inequalities. At the same time, welfare chauvinism continued to foster a workfarist logic premised upon the distinction between people ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ of the (supposedly scarce) resources available for social protection, albeit in its nativist variant prioritising Italians as the ‘deserving poor’
7.
Overall, the experience of the M5S-League government illustrates that, despite their rhetoric, anti-establishment and far-right forces can advance an agenda that is fully compatible with neoliberalism, and even intensify some neoliberal traits in certain areas (in this case, ALMPs). Moreover, it also highlights that Euroscepticism and rejection of the EU fiscal rules are not necessarily conducive to a wholesale repudiation of the neoliberal tenets underpinning the policies promoted by the EU economic governance. In this context, the (limited and provisional) loosening of budgetary discipline, as well as nativist and anti-migration discourses and practices, can be effectively re-tooled by these parties to further advance neoliberal projects while, at the same time, enlarging the social base in their support.
The far-right League against neoliberalisation?
After merely one year in government, and thanks to its leader’s tenure as interior minister, the League had been able to hegemonise the executive’s action and public discourse around themes linked to migration and national sovereignty (
Pucciarelli, 2019). In particular, despite the ‘yellow-green’ government’s acquiescence to the EU budgetary rules, Salvini’s assertiveness in pursuing a harsh anti-migration strategy (including frequent skirmishes with EU institutions and other European governments over the management of migrant arrivals) (see
Strazzari and Grandi, 2019) considerably boosted the League’s credentials as the main challenger of the European ‘status quo’, leading to its landslide victory in the May 2019 EP elections (
Chiaramonte et al., 2020). In the meantime, Salvini’s ascendance cemented the League’s ambitions to forge a pan-European far-right front in order to change the EU ‘from within’ (
Financial Times, 2019), an attempt that would eventually fall flat due to internal divisions and the failure to win a majority in the EP. Nonetheless, the League still tried to exploit its electoral success nationally by pulling the plug on the (increasingly unstable) governing coalition in the hope of gaining a majority in snap elections, before being unexpectedly outmanoeuvred by the M5S and the PD, which went on to form a new government. Despite this episode, the League’s enduring prominence in Italian (and European) politics (as also demonstrated by its more recent participation in a 'national unity' government) makes it all the more relevant to investigate whether its political project represents a break with the neoliberalising tendencies of the past.
The League’s regionalist precursor, the Northern League, was portrayed as epitomising a ‘far-right neoliberalism’ (
Worth, 2019, ch. 3), since it strongly advocated tax reduction for self-employed persons, shopkeepers, and businesses (especially SMEs and artisans in the North), as well as less state bureaucracy and the end of ‘
assistenzialismo’ (welfare dependency) in the South (see
Betz, 1993). The current version of the party retains most of these traits, even though the regionalist attitude has been dismissed in favour of a more markedly nationalist and nativist agenda. This brings to the fore a critical (if not openly hostile) stance towards the EU and the euro, multinational corporations, globalisation, and ‘cultural homogenisation’ (see
Albertazzi et al., 2018;
Perri, 2019). The near-complete absence of a politically-relevant left-wing force (as well as the shift to the centre of the Italian Communist Party’s heir, the PD) allowed Salvini’s League to have free reign in attracting workers’ support in the Centre-North by calling for more protectionism in the face of delocalisation and deindustrialisation (
Pucciarelli, 2019). In addition, in 2019, the League managed to expand its support base in the South, where popular classes voted
en masse for the M5S just one year earlier
8. The fragmentation and the variety of social groups that this party aspires to represent translate into an apparent inconsistency of the League’s project of societal transformation. Nonetheless, neoliberalising policies can be seen as forming the core of the League’s project, while other measures seem to be in a subordinate position. Analysing the party manifesto for the 2018 elections, a few examples illustrate this point.
First, the lynchpin of the League’s economic programme is the ‘flat tax’, an income tax system applying a unique rate (15%) to all taxpayers regardless of their income (
Lega, 2018: 3). The ‘flat tax’ is promoted alongside forms of tax amnesty (some of them already realised while in government), which clearly signals the negative connotation assumed by taxation in the League’s discourse and practice (
Perri, 2019). Second, a suggestion to set a nationwide minimum wage can be found alongside proposals to reduce the tax wedge in favour of employers, increase wages ‘on a meritocratic basis’, decentralise collective bargaining, and reintroduce ‘vouchers’ following their suppression under the Gentiloni government (
Lega, 2018: 11–13). Thus, in line with the interests of the Northern firms, which remain the core of the League’s social base (
Perri, 2019), the continuation of the labour market policies which resulted in workforce precarisation and weakening of organised labour appears as pivotal in the far-right project. Apart from the measures included in the manifesto, the League’s actions during its experience in power are particularly indicative of this aspect. For instance, all attempts to reverse the Jobs Act and reinstate Article 18 of the Workers’ Rights Statute found the League as their staunchest opponent, since this ‘would [have gone] against the interests of business owners and shopkeepers’ (
Afonso and Bulfone, 2019: 250). Furthermore, in the summer of 2019, the League rejected a proposal by the M5S to introduce a statutory minimum wage, on the grounds that priority was to be given to the ‘flat tax’ (
ANSA, 2019). This clearly illustrates that, within the alliance the far right seeks to build, the interests of workers are effectively subordinated to the interests of capital.
Finally, observations regarding the League’s Euroscepticism seem to confirm the fundamentally neoliberal logic of its agenda. To begin with, although the 2018 programme calls for a renegotiation of all EU treaties and the end of the common currency, the EU is mostly criticised from a neoliberal standpoint as a ‘tentacular bureaucratic structure’ hampering ‘the real potential of the EU Internal Market’ (
Lega, 2018: 9–10; see also
Worth, 2019, ch. 3). Moreover, a paragraph emphasising the need to sustain internal demand and promising public investments in the South is curiously included in the same section advocating reforms of the European governance (
Lega, 2018: 9). This is a further indication that workers and popular classes (particularly in the
Mezzogiorno) remain in a subaltern position in the class alliance, since every concession made to them is ultimately subject to the outcome of negotiations with EU partners somewhere in the future.
More recent interventions by the League’s leader Salvini in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis also confirm the pre-eminence of the interests of Northern firms. Salvini advocated a ‘
liberal revolution’ centred on the ‘flat tax’ and tax amnesties, alongside less public controls on the construction sector (
Sole24Ore, 2020, emphasis added). In addition, his criticism of ‘the internationalisation of production’ was effectively re-tooled in order to plead for the creation of an ‘attractive environment’ to relocate manufacturing at home through lower taxes and less stringent tax avoidance rules for businesses (
Salvini, 2020)
9. Furthermore, as reiterated in public declarations until recently (
Adnkronos, 2020), exit from the Eurozone still remains off the table and this stance has not been altered by the onset of the Covid-19 crisis. This position is again fully in line with the interests of those Northern firms that continue to be integrated with the Central European manufacturing value chain and that regard ‘Italexit’ as a risky gamble (
Palombarini, 2020).
Overall, the rise of the League seems to be premised on the attempt to build a reactionary social alliance that brings together sections of capital representing (both export-oriented and less internationalised) small and medium-sized businesses, and, in a subordinate position, petty bourgeois strata and part of the working and popular classes. The project of societal transformation advanced by the League can thus be labelled as ‘nation-based neoliberalisation’. This maintains a core of neoliberalising policies, while simultaneously rejecting international elements of the neoliberal order (e.g. the EU regulatory regime) and promising protection against ‘external threats’, mainly epitomised by the EU bureaucracy, foreign governments, multinational corporations, and migrants. However, it is important to note that the international dimension of neoliberalism is rejected only
selectively10. The example of the defence of the EU Single Market suggests that the League does not seem to question the economic integrationist logic outright, but only those specific elements that are perceived as hindering Italian firms’ potential to compete internationally.
While a detailed comparison with other European far-right parties is beyond the scope of this article, this analysis highlights the peculiarity of the League’s project. Indeed, this appears to give considerably more emphasis to neoliberal deepening in certain areas (e.g. taxation and labour market) and less to social protection compared to the one promoted by far-right parties in Eastern Europe, particularly in Poland (see
Stubbs and Lendvai-Bainton, 2020;
Toplišek, 2020). In this respect, the League’s strategy seems to be more akin to the one espoused by
Fides in Hungary (
Fabry, 2019) and by Northern European radical-right parties, as, for instance,
Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in Germany (
Havertz, 2019), with the significant difference that the Italian far right rejects the budgetary discipline advocated by these forces, given also the limits of austerity politics in the current Italian context.