From the Movement to the Party. The «Five Star» Evolution

• In Event: Italy at the Crossroads

Abstract

2017 and 2018 are important years in the short history of the Italian Five star Movement (M5s), both from the symbolic and the substantial point of view. This gives the opportunity to think over the Five star Movement and to take stock of this political actor which challenges the Italian representative democracy. In fact, direct democracy is enhanced and citizens’ discontent and the anti-political sentiment fed by M5s’ rhetoric. The key question to respond through the paper shall be as follows: what is, nowadays, this peculiar political actor within the national political system and in the frame of the European polity?
In this regard, time is an important variable: local Elections were held on 2017 and General Elections are scheduled for the 4th of March 2018. Those are two important stages in the recent trajectory of the Five star Movement.
Municipal Elections, held in June 2017, marked the end of the first cycle of the M5s as a governing actor at local level, started in 2012 with success in the Northern city of Parma. But they also rule important and big cities like Rome and Turin since 2016. Together with the results gained at the Regional elections in Sicily, in November 2017, they showed the on-going consolidation of this movement-party in the politics at local level, but also its enduring problems in both on the ground and internally.
Moreover, 2017 is an important year also from the party leadership perspective, since it witnessed, in September, the selection of Luigi Di Maio as candidate for prime minister in the 2018 General Elections. The young vice-president of the Camera dei deputati (the Italian Parliament’s Lower chamber) embodies the slow, controversial, and largely incomplete shift from an anti-system movement to a (would-be) ruling party.
Furthermore, It should also be taken into account the already metioned General Elections, that will be held earlier 2018. Those elections take to an end not just the parliamentary term, but, they will also close another important chapter for the Five star Movement: its first time and period in public office.
Thus, 2017 e 2018 can be seen as an important step of this movement-party in the roadmap to the form of political party organization gradually leaving the movement structure.
Indeed, over this period many features have been changed within the Five star organisation. It has deeply renovated some of its structural elements and rules: for example a new web platform (named Rousseau) for implementing deliberative democracy between militants and the leadership was implemented. A new organisational chart, a new associative statute (and structures), a new ethical code of the party was issued during the last few days of the 2017. Moreover, its language toned-down throughout the electoral campaign and the policy contents proposed tried to reconcile with a “government style” embodied by Luigi Di Maio. Its political culture has changed if compared with the beginning stage of the Five star, that is before entering the corridors of power.
It means that this organization, over the latest years, has been pursuing a deep change, which has transformed the Five star of the beginning. In this framework, the paper aim to discuss how and in which direction the Five Star project is going and what “model” of party is approaching.
This political actor is placed into the European populist wave and its success is largely due to its ability to combine elements of both left-wing and right-wing populism. But, it has also brought into play the innovative and post-modern use of tools like the web platform (and ideology) in politics and, in the meantime, the capability of being present in the traditional places like in the public squares. Five star movement is a sort of hybrid entity that offers also the idea that the direct democracy can be used in order to re-democratise from below established democracies in crisis.
This political actor outlines its complex route towards institutionalisation, within a scenario where also (representative) democracy is changing but is also challenged by populist political actors. However, in the meanwhile, populist party, like the Five star, are also changing within this frame, becoming progressively more “normal” and then more integrated in that system they wanted to «open like a can of tuna!», to mention Beppe Grillo, leader and founder of the Five star Movement.

Authors

• Luigi Ceccarini, University of Urbino "Carlo Bo"

• Fabio Bordignon, University of Urbino Carlo Bo