1968/1989: Social Movements in Italy Reconsidered

This chapter will consider social movements in Italy in relation to two key dates in postwar European history – 1968 and 1989. Through an analysis of the main features of those movements it will focus on the continuities and breaks in the forms of oppositional politics for the period concerned. In broad terms, the argument will be that 1968 ushered in a period of left-inspired movements that were active until the beginning of the 1980s. The decade that followed witnessed a general decline in mobilization and oppositional politics in Italy as in other European countries. But by 1989 a strong current of regionalist and autonomist politics had developed. This, in the case of the Leagues of Northern Italy, had distinct social movement components but these combined with party organization and charismatic leadership to produce an identifiably right-wing populism. ‘1989’ provided an international frame of reference for an oppositional politics with forms in part analogous to those of the previous decade but one that put particularism in the place of universalism and difference in the place of equality.