Candidate Selection, Personalization and Different Logics of Centralization in New Southern European Populism: The Cases of Podemos and the M5S

Abstract

In this article, we focus on the candidate selection processes of Podemos in Spain and the Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S – Five Star Movement) in Italy, processes which are related to intra-party democracy. With a mixed-methods approach (including novel data from the expert survey PoPES, 31 semi-structured interviews with party representatives and militants, and analysis of party documents, statutes and leader speeches) and a comparative perspective, we explore candidate selection in the context of the broader organizational party structures over time. We find that: (1) Podemos functions like a typical centralized party, whereas M5S is a deviant case with strong and centralized control over party organization but decentralized mechanisms for candidate selection; (2) both these logics of centralization of power undermine the parties’ democratic credentials but have different consequences in terms of cohesion (expulsions/departures in M5S and splintering in Podemos); and (3) in both cases, the parties’ organizational culture and symbolic tools legitimate their top-down features.

The Three Faces of Populism in Power: Polity, Policies and Politics

“…Similar findings emerge in those studies which look at the changes in populism, in the move from the margins to the mainstream, from an organizational and communicational point of view (such as further personalization and concentration of power: Caiani et al 2021).…”

Digitalization in Candidate Selection. Support and Resistance Within Established Political Parties in Germany

“…Most of the research on the digitalization of parties so far has focused on native digital parties and, therefore, often leftwing populist parties (Caiani et al, 2021;Gerbaudo, 2021). Our results show that this specific focus probably leads to overestimating digitalization's potential for parties.…”

“…They have, however, been attracting attention from the academic literature in recent years, specifically through a multiplication of case-studies or small-scale comparisons, which highlighted the fact that not all parties and party systems were equally eager nor equipped to handle digitalization (Thuermer et al, 2016;Bennett et al, 2017;Lisi, 2019) and showed how dependent on party context the general results were. Most studies on parties digitalization were also analyzing new and populist parties (Mikola, 2017;Lanzone and Rombi, 2018;Caiani et al, 2021), which have been arguably keener in embracing this trend than established parties and have tended to equate this push toward more direct and inclusive democracy as the only path toward more democracy in general. The conclusion of this research is somewhat ambiguous.…”

Internal democracy in populist right parties: the process of party policy development in the Alternative for Germany

“…However, we should pay special attention to the dynamic interactions between the party in public office and rank-and-file members. Caiani et al (2021) have recently suggested that seemingly democratic internal processes in M5S and Podemos may enhance the influence of party elite in public office over key decisions in policy-making and candidate selection. Thus, the current study on the AfD has its limitations as it has not explored whether and how the party in public office may use the rhetoric and practices of grassroots democratic deliberation to gain autonomy in decision-making and possibly dominate the party on the ground.…”