Padania: Encyclopedia II - Padania - Political Implications

Padania - Political Implications

When the Northern League decided to push for secession of richer Northern Italy from the rest of the country, the League's leader Umberto Bossi gave the region the name Padania. The new "country" had a flag, a national anthem, a "parliament" in Mantua, and held elections (recognized by no one except the Northern League). La Padania is also the name of the Northern League's party newspaper.

While the boundaries of Padania, in this political meaning, are subject to some disagreement, the term, as used by the Northern League, typically refers to all the regions north of the Appennines plus Liguria, Tuscany, Umbria and Marche. While nobody disputes that Italy comprises different and well-individualized sections, whether or not one should be called Padania and should comprise exactly those regions is a controversial, politically-tainted issue. Whereas most League supporters would expect Padania to include Emilia-Romagna and possibly Tuscany, these regions have a long history of support for left-wing parties, and the League has but a negligible presence there. The Northern League has its strongest electoral base in Lombardy (especially Bossi's native Varese province, where the League originated with the name "Lombard League", echoing a 12th-century alliance of Northern Italian city-states that rose against the Germanic Holy Roman Emperor and defeated him), and in Veneto. Outside of the world of Italian politics, however, sociologists at the University of Newcastle, in Britain, found that the "border" between Padania and the rest of Italy does correspond to a boundary in the population's attitudes on civic issues, and linked the difference to the emergence of the free communes after the first millennium AD, which only took place in Northern and Central Italy (today's Padania as defined by the Northern League). The researchers were not concerned with the political significance of the boundary they found—they were very likely unaware of it. By contrast linguists have seen no reason, so far, to group Padania's regions together.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Political Implications", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki