Italy:old and new territorial claims

The Italian State, since the beginning of its making, has seen deep divisions with regard to both national identity and regional inequalities and disparities. To these divisions, the Italian State initially responded with a statist and centralized model, and starting from the second post-war period, with a model that has progressively operated both in terms of identity recognition and territorial self-governance. These two divisions are the key dimensions of the nationalist experiences, both in their sub-state forms and in the full condition of national independence recognition. The link between the territorial dimension and identity is the basis of nationalist aspirations, tending to constitute a territorial self-governing polity legitimized by a cultural identity. The sub-state nationalist parties and movements do not have a homogeneous ideological inspiration and among them differences similar to those found in state political systems can be seen. There are significant thrusts, both in the direction of a profound transformation in the way of conceiving of the national claim and in the opposite direction toward the revival of the traditional nationalist model. The question of sub-state nationalism in Italy assumes some peculiar characteristics because, relative to the traditional forms of these nationalisms, territorial fractures have existed – as in many other states – since the birth of the Italian nation state, and in recent decades new sub-state nationalist movements were born on the edge of these cleavages. Needless to say, the Scottish Referendum and the dynamics of the Catalan independence movement gave a renewed strength in recent years to a secessionist discourse – which, however, is rooted in quite a long and significant tradition of clashes against the nation-state. Although some sub-state nationalist groups are seeking apparently new declinations of the nationalist claim, the majority move according with the traditional sub-nationalist ideology claiming a segmentation of the state (i.e., toward the acquisition of more or less extensive power) that reflects by this way the same model of state-nationalism.