Beppe Grillo S Five Star Movement

In 2009 Beppe Grillo, a well-known Italian comedian, established the Five Star Movement with the aim of sending a handful of citizens to municipal councils to act as the watchdog of a professional political class often perceived as corrupt and self-interested. However, in the Italian general elections of February 2013, despite still largely being considered a small protest movement, the party gained the undisputed role of leading political actor gaining just under 9 million votes and sending 163 Deputies and Senators to the Italian parliament. The birth and rapid rise of the Five Star Movement represents an electoral earthquake with no parallels in Italy and the whole of post-1945 Western Europe and a phenomenon likely to shape the Italian political scene for many years to come. Drawing on an extensive array of data and face-to-face interviews, this volume offers an empirically grounded explanation of the surprising electoral success of the Five Star Movement and presents a realistic picture of this party in its manifold aspects: organisational structure, communication style, linkages with civil society, ideological nature and positioning in the Italian political system.

In 2009 Beppe Grillo, a well know Italian comedian, established the Five Star Movement with the aim of sending a handful of citizens to municipal councils to act as the watchdog of a professional political class often perceived as corrupt and self-interested. However, in the Italian general elections of February 2013, despite still largely being considered a small protest movement, the party gained the undisputed role of leading political actor gaining just under 9 million votes and sending 163 Deputies and Senators to the Italian parliament. The birth and rapid rise of the Five Star Movement represents an electoral earthquake with no parallels in Italy and the whole of post-1945 Western Europe and a phenomenon likely to shape the Italian political scene for decades to come. Drawing on an extensive array of data and face-to-face interviews, this volume offers an empirically grounded explanation of the surprising electoral success of the Five Star Movement and presents a realistic picture of this party in its manifold aspects: organisational structure, communication style, linkages with civil society, ideological nature and positioning in the Italian political system.

This book reflects on the political capacity of citizen users to impact politics, explaining the danger in assuming that mass online participation has unconditionally democratising effects. Focusing on the case of Italy's Five Star Movement, the book argues that Internet participation is naturally unequal and, without normative and strong design efforts, Internet platforms can generate noisy, undemocratic crowds instead of self-reflexive, norm-bounded communities. The depiction of a democratising Internet can be easily exploited by those who manage these platforms to sell crowds as deliberating publics. As the Internet, almost everywhere, turns into the primary medium for political engagement, it also becomes the symbol of what is wrong with politics. Internet users experience unprecedented, instantaneous and personalised access to information and communication and, by comparison, they feel a much stronger level of irrelevance in the existing political system.

Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject Sociology - Political Sociology, Majorities, Minorities, grade: 1,3, Free University of Berlin (Soziologie), language: English, abstract: All eyes on Italy in February 2013 The results of the parliamentary election in Italy in February 2013 have arisen high interest in the media, national and international research: Movimento 5 Stelle (Five Star Movement), with its leader and new player in the political arena Beppe Grillo, has caused an earthquake in Italian politics by running for the first time in the general elections and reaching one third of the electorate. The leader accentuates himself from traditional Italian politics by combining online appearance and offline local mobilization with horizontal “franchise” structures, but applies a top-down-management and decision-making process (Bordignon/Ceccarini 2013: 1). His strategy consists of fueling distrust against the established parties and he gains some kind of admiration, respect and credibility by denying any political affiliation or coalition. With reference to the election’s results that no party or coalition will be able to govern Italy – especially – European leaders raise the question of how the political situation of an “ungovernable Italy” could have happened. One plausible answer is that the success of the Italian protest movement could be just the tip of the iceberg, namely the emerging power of people in Europe fighting against austerity policy of national governments and the European central bank (Teichmann 2013). From grassroots to national policy level people start changing the political agenda by taking actions for their future via mobilization and participation. The advent of the Five Star Movement is just one of the shifts that are taking place in Italy’s political landscape, having in mind the come-back of the radical left in parliament (SEL), an ecologic socialist party in coalition with Pier Luigi Bersani. But nevertheless the M5S is the most striking one in terms of leadership and organizational structure by revealing authoritarian characteristics. Otherwise, in this case populism could offer a new orientation and act as an alternative to the traditional national power block and the budgetary austerity, which the European Union imposes on its indebted members. Further the case of the new protest movement in Italy obviously presents a theoretical problem regarding a common notion of Populism. We cannot determinate right now whether Italy is actually concerned with constructiveminded, positive or else hazardous populism or just with an ineffective outrage of voters who are disenchanted with politics. Albeit it is possible to conjecture how the movement might operate in the future by investigating recent political events in Italy more closely combined with an examination of economic and political diseases of the south European peninsula. Thereby, the leading question is how the political, social and economic circumstances created a fertile ground for the rise of the Five star Movement and how one can possibly classify the political populist articulation: as a danger or corrective to democracy? In order to answer these questions this paper aims to examine to what extent contents, properties and characteristics of the movement can be identified based on recent scientific literature on populism and research findings of Rovira Kaltwasser (2012). Accordingly, the organizational structure, political views and main innovative features of the movement will be analyzed.

In 2009 Beppe Grillo, a well-known Italian comedian, established the Five Star Movement with the aim of sending a handful of citizens to municipal councils to act as the watchdog of a professional political class often perceived as corrupt and self-interested. However, in the Italian general elections of February 2013, despite still largely being considered a small protest movement, the party gained the undisputed role of leading political actor gaining just under 9 million votes and sending 163 Deputies and Senators to the Italian parliament. The birth and rapid rise of the Five Star Movement represents an electoral earthquake with no parallels in Italy and the whole of post-1945 Western Europe and a phenomenon likely to shape the Italian political scene for many years to come. Drawing on an extensive array of data and face-to-face interviews, this volume offers an empirically grounded explanation of the surprising electoral success of the Five Star Movement and presents a realistic picture of this party in its manifold aspects: organisational structure, communication style, linkages with civil society, ideological nature and positioning in the Italian political system.

This is a book about a contemporary transformation in democratic politics: the rise of a new political field, techno-populism.

The main area of sustained populist growth in recent decades has been Western Europe, where populist parties have not only endured longer than expected, but have increasingly begun to enter government. Focusing on three high-profile cases in Italy and Switzerland – the Popolo della Libertà (PDL), Lega Nord (LN) and Schweizerische Volkspartei (SVP) – Populists in Power is the first in-depth comparative study to examine whether these parties are indeed doomed to failure in office as many commentators have claimed. Albertazzi and McDonnell’s findings run contrary to much of the received wisdom. Based on extensive original research and fieldwork, they show that populist parties can be built to last, can achieve key policy victories and can survive the experience of government, without losing the support of either the voters or those within their parties. Contributing a new perspective to studies in populist politics, Populists in Power is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as scholars interested in modern government, parties and politics.

A crisp and trenchant dissection of populism today The word 'populism' has come to cover all manner of sins. Yet despite the prevalence of its use, it is often difficult to understand what connects its various supposed expressions. From Syriza to Trump and from Podemos to Brexit, the electoral earthquakes of recent years have often been grouped under this term. But what actually defines 'populism'? Is it an ideology, a form of organisation, or a mentality? Marco Revelli seeks to answer this question by getting to grips with the historical dynamics of so-called 'populist' movements. While in the early days of democracy, populism sought to represent classes and social layers who asserted their political role for the first time, in today's post-democratic climate, it instead expresses the grievances of those who had until recently felt that they were included. Having lost their power, the disinherited embrace not a political alternative to -isms like liberalism or socialism, but a populist mood of discontent. The new populism is the 'formless form' that protest and grievance assume in the era of financialisation, in the era where the atomised masses lack voice or organisation. For Revelli, this new populism the child of an age in which the Left has been hollowed out and lost its capacity to offer an alternative.