Riding the Populist Web: Contextualizing the Five Star Movement (M5S) in Italy

Abstract

This article focuses on three mechanisms to explain the rise of populist movements across Europe. They are politicization of resentment, exploitation of social cleavages, and polarization of resentment and feelings of non-representation. We conceptualize populism as a strategic power game aiming to transform potential majorities into real ones by creating or reframing social cleavages. Our theoretical model is used to explain the rise of the Five Star Movement (M5S). Beppe Grillo's M5S gained notoriety on the national political scene in Italy just before the 2013 elections and succeeded in getting nearly 25 percent of the overall vote. Moreover, it was the only political force that was able to attract votes across the different regions in Italy, making it the country's only truly national party.

Varieties of Inclusionary Populism? SYRIZA, Podemos and the Five Star Movement

“…But what kind of a movement/party is the one created by Grillo? Currently, there is a general consensus among Italian scholars in considering Grillo's movement as a populist one (among others, Lanzone and Woods 2015). Grillo himself comes to terms with the definition of populism and states quite clearly, in a post (which is the main form of communication of the FSM) that: ‘the FSM is not a rightist nor a leftist phenomenon, it's on the side of the citizens.…”

Varieties of Populism across a Left‐Right Spectrum: The Case of the Front National, the Northern League, Podemos and Five Star Movement

“…New media have the ability to put the power directly in the hands of the people. The M5S's idea of the role of the web 2.0 in enacting bottom‐up deliberative democracy is crucial to the representation of the party as a new type of partisan actor different from all other parties (Lanzone and Woods ). This was exemplified for instance by the launch by the M5S of its ‘Rousseau’ online participatory platform, although, in practice, the platform remains primarily a communication tool for populist voter mobilization, provoking an important debate inside the party (Lanzone ).…”

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.…”