Networked Populisms: The Rise of the Net Parties and the Case of the M5S

• In Event: Critical Perspectives on “the People” and the Popular in Networked Media Cultures

Abstract

Since 2006, the birth year of the Swedish Pirate Party, a number of political formations that promote a networked-based participatory democracy have been bubbling up across the globe. Often inspired by movements of public opinion against political corruption and/or austerity measures, these new “Net Parties” see the Internet as constitutive to both their internal decision-making processes and a new idea of democracy. Although significant differences exist among them, all Net Parties believe that networked cooperation can reshape the relationship between ruler and ruled by allowing lay citizens to become direct protagonists in the democratic process. In other words, traditional parties see the Internet as an additional communication channel to consult their own constituencies whereas the Net Parties see the Internet as a deliberative platform whereby the autonomy of elected representatives can be limited and held in check.
After examining the pressure that the Internet’s disintermediation advocated by these emerging formations puts on representative democracy, in the second part of the paper I turn my attention to the Five Star Movement (M5S), a party that has elected over 160 MPs at the 2013 Italian general elections. While the media have largely focused on the controversial leadership of comedian Beppe Grillo, I focus on the tensions sparked by the definition of the M5S representatives’ role among the MPs, the party base, and the party leadership. Furthermore, the transparency, scope, and function of the online deliberative process have been themselves hotly disputed, along with the software that enable such process. Drawing from Ernesto Laclau’s work on populist reason, the paper concludes with some remarks on the hybrid nature of Italian “techno-populism” where charismatic leadership and participatory democracy seem to either clash or reinforce each other depending on the propositional or oppositional nature of the M5S political line.

Author

• Marco Deseriis, Northeastern U