Fostering and Exporting a Modern Mass Party: Agency and Structure in Salvini’s League

The Lega Nord (LN - Northern League) underwent a profound process of ideological transformation since 2013, by replacing its historical regionalist populism with a new populist radical right outlook which aims to speak to the whole country. However, very little is known about how such transformation impacted on its organizational model, particularly the mass-party features that characterized it under its founding leader, Umberto Bossi. This article finds that the party’s ideological transformation resulted in a division of labour between two Leagues. The LN was turned into a disempowered ‘bad company’, charged with the task of paying the debts of the old party, while its structures, resources and personnel were poured into a new state-wide organization called League for Salvini Premier. This new League has sought to protect the mass party-type organizational set-up and practices that the LN had consolidated in its historical strongholds, and also attempted to export its key features to Southern Italy. Similarly to Bossi’s LN, Salvini’s League presents a complex and centralized organizational structure, relying on mechanisms of value-infusion and on the socialization of its activists and members. However, while the new League fosters and maintains the key features of the mass party in the historical strongholds of the LN, albeit in a ‘modern way’, only time will tell if the organizational imperatives of activism, loyalty, and hierarchy will support party development across the whole country.