Old and New Social Risks: Labor Market Policy Preferences of the Radical Right Parties. The Case of the Lega

The rise and electoral success of the Radical Right Parties (RRPs) have stimulated a growing body of research on their social policy preferences. However, up to present the relevant literature focused on the policies addressing old social risks, and concentrated almost ex- clusively on the welfare-migration nexus. The article attempts to broaden the perspective, and brings the new social risk literature into the analysis of the RRPs social preferences. By considering the case study of the Lega, the essay investigates the party’s positions on the old labor market policy (OLMP) and the new labor market policy (NLMP). The first part is devoted to reviewing the three main streams in the literature on the RRPs social policy preferences, and discussing the new bi-dimensional space of political contestation in labor market policy. The second part explores the main novelties introduced by the Italian labor market reform – usually referred to as the Jobs Act. Based on the content analysis of parliamentary debates, the last part maps the Lega’s positions on the old and new labor market policies, and attempts to explain them, by referring to its heterogeneous constituency. The empirical analysis shows that by adopting a welfare protectionist posi- tion – which combines a moderate expansion of the OLMP with some retrenchment of the NLMP – the Lega manages to keep very different social groups together.