"Five stars” in the political sky of Italy

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of abbreviations

1 Introduction: All eyes on Italy in February 2013

2 Populism - Lack of agreement and uncertain status in recent literature

3 The Five Star Movement as new (populist) player in the political arena
3.1 The Party’s leader and career
3.2 Agenda and Program
3.3 Organizational model and voters’ participation
3.4 The fertile (non)political ground for the ascension of the "Five stars"
3.5 General elections 24th /25th February 2013

4 Conclusion

5 References

List of abbreviations

M5S Movimento 5 Stelle (5 Star Movement)

LN Lega Nord (Northern League: regionalist right party)

PD Partito Democratico (Democratic Party: center-left)

PDL Popolo della Libertá (The People of Freedom: center-right party)

SEL Sinistra Ecologia Libertà (Left Ecology Freedom: democratic socialist party)

1. Introduction: All eyes on Italy in February 2013

The results of the parliamentary election in Italy in February 2013 have arisen high interest in the media, national and international research: Movimento 5 Stelle (Five Star Movement), with its leader and new player in the political arena Beppe Grillo, has caused an earthquake in Italian politics by running for the first time in the general elections and reaching one third of the electorate. The leader accentuates himself from traditional Italian politics by combining online appearance and offline local mobilization with horizontal “franchise” structures, but applies a top-down-management and decision-making process (Bordignon/Ceccarini 2013: 1). His strategy consists of fueling distrust against the established parties and he gains some kind of admiration, respect and credibility by denying any political affiliation or coalition.

With reference to the election’s results that no party or coalition will be able to govern Italy - especially - European leaders raise the question of how the political situation of an “ungovernable Italy” could have happened. One plausible answer is that the success of the Italian protest movement could be just the tip of the iceberg, namely the emerging power of people in Europe fighting against austerity policy of national governments and the European central bank (Teichmann 2013). From grassroots to national policy level people start changing the political agenda by taking actions for their future via mobilization and participation. The advent of the Five Star Movement is just one of the shifts that are taking place in Italy’s political landscape, having in mind the come-back of the radical left in parliament (SEL), an ecologic socialist party in coalition with Pier Luigi Bersani. But nevertheless the M5S is the most striking one in terms of leadership and organizational structure by revealing authoritarian characteristics. Otherwise, in this case populism could offer a new orientation and act as an alternative to the traditional national power block and the budgetary austerity, which the European Union imposes on its indebted members. Further the case of the new protest movement in Italy obviously presents a theoretical problem regarding a common notion of Populism.

We cannot determinate right now whether Italy is actually concerned with constructive- minded, positive or else hazardous populism or just with an ineffective outrage of voters who are disenchanted with politics. Albeit it is possible to conjecture how the movement might operate in the future by investigating recent political events in Italy more closely combined with an examination of economic and political diseases of the south European peninsula. Thereby, the leading question is how the political, social and economic circumstances created a fertile ground for the rise of the Five star Movement and how one can possibly classify the political populist articulation: as a danger or corrective to democracy? In order to answer these questions this paper aims to examine to what extent contents, properties and characteristics of the movement can be identified based on recent scientific literature on populism and research findings of Rovira Kaltwasser (2012). Accordingly, the organizational structure, political views and main innovative features of the movement will be analyzed.

2. Populism - Lack of agreement and uncertain status in recent literature

Many scientists have illustrated that populism is emerging widespread in Europe with various figures among the left and right scale occurring in different forms of mobilization (Jones 2007, Taggart 2006). But political scholars struggle to find a common notion for populism in a sense of a conceptual definition which could overcome regional isolations as well as ideological and normative influences. By opposing two main approaches, the liberal democracy and radical democracy approach, that both incorporate biases and generalizations, Rovira Kaltwasser (2012) investigates different categories of populism in order to establish a more fruitful and ambivalent definition of the phenomenon.

Thus liberal democracy theories tend to see populism as pathology, which often occurs in times of crises linked to challenges like economic change, mass immigration or modernization. Those developments facilitate the emergence of populist leaders due to electorates who might have lost their orientation and reconsider their preferences (Taggart 2002: 69). With this in mind the liberal democracy notion of populism is referring to a malfunction of the democratic rule as it becomes distinct with the example of the European Union: Firstly, the European Union is facing various difficulties in legitimizing their complex structures of policy making based on elite agreements assuming the ‘permissive consensus’ of the mass (ibidem: 269). Secondly, European right-wing populist parties (p. ex. Golden Dawn in Greece) might attract voters as the so called “loser of globalization” since they perceive a decrease of their status-quo. Liberal economic reforms might have reduced the social security benefit leading to a pathologic relationship between demos and the political class and fostering a breeding ground for populism (Rovira Kaltwasser 2012: 188). However, due to the assumption of “the existence of a dividing line between ‘the people’ and ‘the elites’”(ibidem) this negative comprehension of populism might overlook the fact of a positive mobilization of the populus.

Regarding this, populism could also take a significant role in terms of a constituent power by redefining and adjusting prevalent legal norms. Authors who are taking up positive positions are biased towards theories of radical democracy (ibidem: 189 f). Accordingly, Populism could be attributed with positive power strengthens political representation and is considered as “the purest form of democracy” (Tännsjö 1992, quoted in Rovira Kaltwasser 2012: 189). The theoretical framework of radical democracy is based on the analysis of Laclau and Mouffe¹, who deem social antagonisms and the construction of hegemony as crucial parts for radical democratic politics as opposed to support from public debate and deliberative procedures (Mouffe 2000: 6 f). Laclau (2005) derives positive attributes of populism regarding the emergence of a particular type of discourse, which is able to create links between different demands, fighting together against the institutional power. Based on this normative ideal of how radical democracy should work the negative role the leader in a populist project might assume is not seriously taken into consideration (Rovira Kaltwasser 2012: 192).

Since the impact of populism on society is often speculated and driven by the two normative standpoints described above, Rovira Kaltwasser suggests redressing this normative bias by applying a minimal approach of populisms. In this respect, populism is neither romanticized nor declared as democratic pathology, but may represent a threat or a corrective for democracy - depending on the specific case. But if the phenomenon of populism is ambivalent, how can we distinguish demagogy from a chance for direct representation of the people? In reference to the concept of Robert Dahl (1971) a democratic corrective is given since the people who do not feel represented by the establishment get the chance to change the political agenda (Rovira Kaltwasser 2012: 185). Accordingly, - like Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser (2012) concluded their findings of eight case studies in Europe and Latin America - populism in opposition mainly could have a positive effect on the quality of democracy since it creates a power vis-à-vis the institutionalized parties in government (Mudde/Rovira Kaltwasser 2012: 209).

Reading the rise of the Five Star Movement in Italy through this theoretical lens may help to interpret the changing nature of national politics and the clash between a new power bloc and the established parties against the backdrop of austerity policy. For that purpose it is necessary to have an empirical insight into Grillo’s and the party’s career outside and on the stage of politics as well on its policy goals more in detail.

3. The Five Star Movement as new (populist) player in the political arena

3.1 Party’s leader and career

Beppe Grillo became already famous in the 1970s and 1980s as comedian, television presenter and actor of Italy's public television network RAI (Bordignon/Ceccarini 2013: 1). He reached high audience ratings by criticizing the political establishment and entertaining political satire, but finally went too far by describing the socialist in government as thieves in 1986. That is why he was dismissed from RAI and made the polemic decision not to appear on television any more. Henceforth he mainly worked in theatres focusing on indignations of political and economical scandals in Italy (ibidem: 3). In the past 20 years he has assembled a large fan base, which induced him to start his official blog www.beppegrillo.it in 2005. The website’s intention to create a platform for policy debating and exchanging ideas was an immediate success and became the most important political forum in Italy (Turner 2012: 2) and ninth most influential blog worldwide ranked by the The Observer in 2008 (Bordignon/Ceccarini 2013: 3). The great public support merged into build ups of local grassroots groups, namely meetup-groups, to promote local campaigning which anyone interested could attend (Turner 2012: 3).

The second phase of the movement’s history is represented by the initiative “Parlamento Pulito” (Clean Parliament) in 2007: Almost one million protested in Bologna on the V-Day to say “Vaffanculo”² to the corrupt political class. By collecting signatures the demonstration aimed to ban previously convicted candidates in the Italian parliament and to introduce a two- term limit for all members of parliament and a preference voting for single candidates into the old electoral system. Despite the success of that action the V-Day did not achieve great media reporting and public recognition due restrictions and control of the public media. For that reason a second V-Day in 2008 took place in Turin claiming the freedom of press. A movement was born online and as well on the streets by continuing this political movement locally with a civic list of “Beppe Grillo’s Friends” running for local elections in 2008 (Turner 2012: 2 f). The leader would not run in the general election, declaring he himself was against the constitution (Bordignon/Ceccarini 2013: 4).

Anyhow during the last couple of years the movement boomed in electoral politics. In the years 2008 and 2009 the first members of local councils were elected and in October 2009 the Movimento 5 Stelle logo was officially published, registered and owned by Beppe Grillo.

[...]

¹ Inter alia: Laclau, Ernesto/Mouffe, Chantal (1985): Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, London/New York, Mouffe, Chantal (1992): Dimensions of Radical Democracy: Pluralism, Citizenship, Community, London/New York, Laclau, Ernesto (2005): On Populist Reason, London.

² Italian swearword to say “Fuck-off”