https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3248-0489
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Abstract
Born in 2009, the Five Star Movement (FSM) has been one of the most electorally successful European populist parties since 2013. While its classification as a populist party is unanimously accepted, some have considered it close to left-libertarian positions, others as an anti-immigrant far right party, and still others have simply deemed it as unclassifiable. This article sets out to shed light on this question, using the official documents issued by the party since 2009, posts retrieved from Grillo’s blog during three electoral campaigns, and the opinions of the party’s supporters as expressed in three surveys in 2013, 2014 and 2016. Although displaying a clear anti-establishment identity, in economic terms it presents left-of-centre positions inconsistently mixed with more conservative proposals, while on the issues of citizenship and immigration, it has an elusive positioning, mixing national securitisation and international humanitarianism. The conclusions highlight the eclectic nature of FSM’s populism.
Acknowledgements
We are particularly grateful for useful comments to Piergiorgio Corbetta, Piero Ignazi, Hanspeter Kriesi, Marco Lisi, the two guest editors and three anonymous reviewers. The authors are listed in alphabetical order and contributed equally to this work.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Lorenzo Mosca is Professor of Sociology of Digital Media, Department of Social and Political Sciences, State University of Milan. His research interests lie at the intersection between political communication, political participation and online politics. [lorenzo.mosca1@unimi.it]
Filippo Tronconi is Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Bologna, in the Department of Social and Political Science. Most of his research focuses on territorial politics, political parties, elections and political elites. Since 2019 he has co-edited the Italian Political Science Review. [filippo.tronconi@unibo.it]
Party materials (all links quoted in this article were consulted on 30 June 2018)
Doc. 1 – Blog post – The dream of M5S continues. The Rousseau association is born (25 April 2016)
Doc. 2 – 2013 Elections Manifesto
https://www.slideshare.net/misterno/programma-movimento-5-stelle
Doc. 3 – Blog post – Letter to Italians (6 February 2013)
http://www.ilblogdellestelle.it/2013/02/lettera_agli_italiani.html.
Doc. 4 – Blog post – The third world war is under way (6 February 2013)
http://www.ilblogdellestelle.it/2013/02/la_iii_guerra_mondiale_e_in_corso_0.html.
Doc. 5 – 2018 Elections Manifesto – section on banks
https://www.movimento5stelle.it/programma/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Banche.pdf
Doc. 6 – Blog post – Ferdinando Imposimato in San Giovanni’s square (24 May 2014)
http://www.ilblogdellestelle.it/2014/05/ferdinando_impo.html.
Doc. 7 – Blog post – Elio Lannutti in San Giovanni’s square (24 May 2014)
http://www.ilblogdellestelle.it/2014/05/elio_lannutti_i.html.
Doc. 8 – Blog post – The reform that does not cut the salaries of regional councillors (1 December 2016)
Doc. 9 – Blog post – M5 story: from the internet the movement that is changing Italy (10 February 2013)
http://www.ilblogdellestelle.it/2013/02/m5story_0.html.
Doc. 10 – Draft law on the establishment of citizenship revenue, Senate (29 October 2013)
https://www.senato.it/service/PDF/PDFServer/DF/308596.pdf
Doc. 11 – 2018 Elections Manifesto – section on foreign affairs
https://www.movimento5stelle.it/programma/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Esteri.pdf
Doc. 12 – 2018 Elections Manifesto – section on defence
https://www.movimento5stelle.it/programma/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Difesa.pdf
Doc. 13 – 2018 Elections Manifesto – section on economic development
https://www.movimento5stelle.it/programma/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Sviluppo-economico.pdf
Doc. 14 – Blog post – Word of mouth: the dictatorship of the ECB by Lucio di Gaetano (19 May 2014)
http://www.ilblogdellestelle.it/2014/05/passaparola_la_dittatura_bce_di_lucio_di_gaetano.html.
Doc. 15 – Blog post – #fuoridalleuro: Italy, the dying patient of Europe – The Spectator (30 October 2014)
Doc. 16 – 2014 European Parliament Elections Manifesto – Seven points for Europe
https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/materiali-bg/7punti.pdf
Doc. 17 – Draft law on citizenship, Chamber of Deputies (14 June 2013)
Doc. 18 – Blog post – Press release of the FSM European Parliament delegation (16 November 2017)
https://www.ilblogdellestelle.it/2017/11/lega_traditrice_tutti_i_migranti_economici_in_italia.html
Notes
1 Left-wing populist parties, although less common in Europe than in Latin America, were present before the Great Recession, too. For instance, the German Linke or the Dutch Socialist Party (see March Citation2011).
2 And in Latin America. Argentine Peronism is in fact considered as the archetypal example of ideologically diffuse or eclectic populist party (Roberts Citation2017), a label also providing an accurate description of the initial appeal of Fujimori in Peru (Pop-Eleches Citation2010).
3 Or the PDL (Popolo della Libertà, People of Freedom), as Forza Italia was called between 2008 and 2014.
4 ‘Nord’ (Northern) was dropped from the party name in October 2017, as part of a strategy aiming to expand its electoral base to the southern regions.
5 Ninety-two pages for economic development, 89 for energy, 38 for agriculture, 28 for constitutional affairs, 25 for the environment, 23 for mobility, 20 for telecommunications and the others between 6 and 12 pages.
6 We also consider a third time point (2014 European elections) on the other two dimensions analysed in the following pages. However, since the questions related to the populist attitudes of the voters were not comparable across the three surveys, the 2014 data have been excluded in this section.
7 Since not all the scales were identical in the three surveys, the data presented in this and the following figures have been standardised, so that zero corresponds to the general mean and the standard deviation is equal to one.
8 During the XVIIth legislative term, the FSM Senate group presented a bill on this topic (Doc. 10). According to this proposal (https://www.senato.it/service/PDF/PDFServer/DF/308596.pdf), all people below the poverty threshold (calculated as earning less than six-tenths of the annual median national revenue) should be given a monthly salary of €780. This measure, although referred to as a universal basic income, should actually more properly be referred to as an unemployment benefit.
9 Its saliency increased only in recent years particularly in the aftermath of the ‘Mafia Capital’ scandal (December 2014) and the controversies that emerged in 2017 on the role played by NGOs in the migrants’ rescue operations in the Mediterranean Sea, on a parliamentary bill endorsing ‘Jus soli’, and on the reform of the Dublin Regulation in the EP. Interestingly enough, the FSM repeatedly criticised both centre-left (PD) and centre-right (FI, but also the LN) parties advocating the fairness of ‘common sense’ solutions on the topic, located in between the political correctness (‘buonismo’) of the former and the opposite stance (‘cattivismo’) of the latter.
10 Analysing a wider set of issues, Colloca and Corbetta (Citation2015) find the same ‘centrist’ positioning, leading to the conclusion that the FSM is better understood as a post-ideological party.
11 After the 2018 elections, the FSM started negotiations in view of a coalition government with both the LN and the PD, once again confirming the ambivalent nature of its ideological positioning.