Where the wind blows: Five Star Movement’s populism, direct democracy and ideological flexibility

Abstract

The paper focusses on the online political discourse of the Five Star Movement (5SM) and its strategic adaptability. The main goal of the analysis is to establish how salient several topics are over time in order to test the party’s ideological flexibility. Indeed, 5SM’s post-ideological approach and its emphasis on direct-democratic tools might constitute a winning formula for other populist parties willing to exploit the crisis of the mainstream parties and representation. The paper, through an automated content analysis, tracks the longitudinal evolution of the salience of the topics addressed by 5SM on the party’s blog. This allows us to establish which topics are at the core of the party’s message and which, on the other hand, have been raised strategically over time. Results show that 5SM’s discourse is very flexible and adaptable: it devotes a large space to the importance of direct democracy while flexibly addressing different topics depending on the political and social context.

Love, convenience, or respectability? Understanding the alliances of the Five Star Movement in the European Parliament

“…In other words, the latter can be sacrificed for the benefit of domestic gains in terms of potential votes and offices. Such a high flexibility of the political platform tells us a great deal about the populist nature of the Movement (Manucci & Amsler 2017), and confirms the rather strategic nature of its Euroscepticism (Franzosi et al 2015). Just as in national politics, the M5S deftly tailors its European strategy to meet "citizens' most pressing demands" (Conti and Memoli 2015, 528) and maximise its popularity.…”

“…Conti 2016), the EU issue could be used by the M5S to expand its electoral support. Ideological flexibility characterises the M5S' political discourse, which, as result, can strategically adapt to the evolving socio-political context (Manucci & Amsler 2017). Thus, membership in the EFDD could be part and parcel of the Movement's strategy to address the demand for anti-EU opposition expressed by a growing share of Italian voters.…”

“…Conti and Memoli 2015;Manucci and Amsler, 2017;Passarelli and Tuorto 2016). The bulk of research has focused on domestic politics, with only scattered attention paid to its EU activities.…”

The political origins of transparency reform: insights from the Italian case

“…In the context of the fiscal crisis undermining the legitimacy of political parties that had been running government since 1996, corruption scandals encouraged media to call for a new anticorruption strategy focused not only on repression but also on prevention, with transparency regarded as the best of disinfectants. This call was joined by the Five Star Movement, which kept transparency and corruption as key topics of its broader approach to unmediated popular sovereignty via the implementation of digital tools for direct democracy (Manucci and Amsler, 2018).…”

Populism Put to the Polarisation Test: The 2019–20 Election Cycle in Italy

“…While the definition of the (new) Lega as a right-wing, radical right, authoritarian, nationalist, exclusionary populist party is not called into question (Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser 2017;Albertazzi & McDonnell 2015;Passarelli & Tuorto 2018;Norris & Inglehart 2018), the connotation of the M5S as a specific type of populist actor is more problematic. Over time, M5S has been defined as a 'centre populist' party (Vassallo & Valbruzzi 2018), a 'valence populist' party (Zulianello 2020), a case of 'post-ideological' (Manucci & Amsler 2018;Colloca & Corbetta 2015), 'polyvalent' (Pirro 2018) 'eclectic' (Mosca & Tronconi 2019) and 'techno' (Bickerton & Invernizzi Accetti 2018) populism or, simply, as the expression of 'civic populism' (Lanzone & Woods 2015). Beyond the many different adjectives, though, there is a substantial agreement on the populist nature of the party and on its non-extreme position in the political space.…”