“The people” against “the élites”: The political discourse of the Five Star Movement in the Italian Parliament

By Flavio Chiapponi

Introduction

According to a number of scholars, the Five Star Movement (M5S) is the late comer in the family of populist parties now acting in the Italian political system (Corbetta and Gualmini, 2013; Zanatta, 2013; Tarchi, 2015; Tronconi, 2015; Woods and Lanzone, 2015). However, this qualification is not undisputed, as scholars such as Biorcio (2013), Biorcio and Natale (2013), Diamanti (2013), and Ceccarini and Bordignon (2016) have argued that the concept of “populism” is a bit unfit to describe the party, as it does not take into account its “originality” and “complexity”. In their opinion, it is not possible to catch its whole newness by labelling the M5S as “populist”.

Following this thought, many authors have argued that the main source of M5S’s innovative profile lies in its successful attempt to maximize the mobilizing potentialities of the Web and the social networks (Corbetta, 2013; Woods and Lanzone, 2015). Led by the former comedian Beppe Grillo, the Five Star Movement has in Grillo’s blog (www.beppegrillo.com) its main “central office”, which exerts a key role in mobilizing the followers and voters, even offline. Since personalisation and mediatisation of politics have become crucial phenomena in any democratic polity (Blondel et al., 2012; Kriesi et al., 2013; Esser and Strömback, 2014), it was not unexpected that experts paid much more attention to M5S’s web communication or its leader’s political discourse (Cosenza, 2013) than to other communicative resources and media, inside or outside the party. For example, notwithstanding the slow but unchallenged emersion of a (partially) new M5S’s parliamentary leadership, academic literature still lacks any scrutiny of MPs political language and discourse. This is rather surprising, as in 2013 the Movement participated its first national election time and succeeded in electing 109 deputies and 54 senators (25.6% of popular vote at the Chamber of Deputies).

Taking the state of art that I have rapidly summarized as a major premise, the aim of this paper is twofold. First, I am interested in showing why we can properly consider the M5S as a populist party; then, my second interest lies in focusing the political language spoken by M5S’s MPs, when they participate in the parliamentary debate about the vote of confidence to new governments. This means that I will investigate all the speeches that Five Stars MPs delivered at the Chamber of Deputies during the debate, justifying their strong opposition against the governments led by Prime Minister Enrico Letta (2013) and Matteo Renzi (2014). The two points go together, since we expect that parliamentary communication will reflect the main traits of M5S’s populist “mentality” (Tarchi, 2015), especially its ethical exaltation of the people or “the citizens” as well as its denigration of mainstream political élites.

More specifically, I will proceed as follows. In the first section, I discuss some contributions about the political identity of the Five Star Movement: after having highlighted the roots of the disagreement about its populist nature, I argue that the concept of “populism” is actually quite apt as to describe the party. In the second section, I introduce two hypothesises that drive my empirical research on MPs speeches, respectively delivered at the Chamber in 2013 (Enrico Letta’s cabinet) and in 2014 (Matteo Renzi’s cabinet), along with the simplified content analysis methodology that I will adopt. In the third section, I show the main results obtained in both cases. In the fourth section, I scrutiny one speech delivered at the Chamber of Deputies in 2016, against the executive led by Paolo Gentiloni, just to appreciate whether the trends extracted still shape parliamentary M5S’s speeches. Finally, I conclude with some remarks about a rough explanation of our findings.

1. The Five Star Movement as the late comer in Italian populist family

There are authors who maintain that M5S is not (wholly) a populist party, owing to its multifaceted organization and political thought. In my opinion, those scholars are not well equipped enough in order to provide this statement with persuasive empirical data. It seems to me that their argument allows room for a couple of critical objections.

In the first place, among these contributions, some show to be too open to a comprehensive “a priori” orientation, by which scholars prove to believe in a sort of “Italian exceptionalism”: i.e., they incline to affirm that in Italy any political occurrence possess an alleged and irremovable originality. Owing to these characteristics, in Italian politics it would be impossible to apply ordinary analytical tools with the purpose of naming, classifying and accounting for political facts. For example:

«Finally, [from M5S’s description] we can obtain some suggestions, but any conclusive definition. Because this object … slips away, changes its profile as soon as we try to fix it or resume it in a definitive way» (Diamanti, 2013, p. 4).

«The Five Star Movement exhibits some analogies with a number of various political actors and experiences, but it is actually important to grasp those features that make it an original political organization, which is very difficult to copy» (Biorcio, 2013, p. 44). Here, we indeed observe a hypostatization of the original features ascribed to the M5S, much more than an empirical investigation of those characteristics. It is not possible to label the party as populist because it is too much “original”: but we do not have any theoretical or empirical evidence of this qualification.

As Marco Tarchi has correctly pointed out, the second set of critical observations have to do with many elements affecting those approaches. Actually, some leave too much room to value orientations, inhibiting a neutral and scientific understanding of the topic. There are also scholars who are not clear about the object of their scientific interest (party or leader? or both?). Finally, some are sceptical about the explanatory power of the concept of “populism” itself – even if the latter has proved to be a good instrument in order to connote political parties similar to M5S (Tarchi, 2015, p. 335-36).

The theoretical weakness of these positions soon unveils, once that one looks to those scholars that conceive Beppe Grillo’s party as a populist party.

In his exploratory survey about the Five Star Movement, Corbetta (2013) deals with its placement along six analytical dimensions (or properties): appeal to the people, enemy’s identity, leadership, style of communication, “hyper-simplification” of complexity of politics, employ of the media. From his point of view, the party’s political behaviour reveals all those properties, so it is not difficult to state that

«This strange political animal can be attributed to populism, not only for its essential appeal to the people-élite dichotomy and its radical opposition to representative politics, but also for all the adjunctive and essential characteristics that we have listed and scrutinized» (Corbetta, 2013, 211).

Tarchi affirms that in the case of M5S, we face populism in its “purest form”. He grounds this statement on a close analysis the party’s and its leader’s political propaganda, speeches and online posts, thus enucleating some key features. According to Tarchi (2015, 335-356), Five Star Movement is willing to represent the political needs that the whole people requires and refuses to locate itself on the right-left continuum, believing that the left-right cleavage is obsolete. Moreover, it shows a high level in the personalization of leadership and the antagonistic stance towards a number of élites (the political “caste” and mainstream parties, intellectuals, bureaucracy, lobbies, banks and so on). Owing to these, and other, characteristics, the populist qualification does properly apply to M5S.

Even if we turn to classical contributions dealing with populist parties in contemporary democracies, the populist nature of M5S does not seem to change. In Italian democracy, it appears to embody a perfect declination of “protest populism”, which mobilizes people against the powerful élites, no matter if those are “political, administrative, economic or cultural. This anti-elitism is inseparable from the affirmation of confidence in the people, as the whole ensemble of common citizens […] this form of populism appears to be a kind of hyper-democracy, which idealizes the picture of the active citizen and rests sceptical towards the representative system, as the latter would spoil him from his power” (Taguieff 2003, p. 131).

The breakthrough of Five Star Movement in Italian political system – and its electoral success between 2009 and 2013 – adheres to the profile of “populist mobilizations”, as described by Mény and Surel (2000). More specifically, in its populist identity emerges the salience of its peripheral groups as well as the personalisation of political leadership, which is one of its most important structural characteristics, along with the “focalization” of a restricted range of issues – yesterday, above all immigration, now chiefly the polemical attack aimed at the “political caste”.

Once that we have definitively assigned the Five Star Movement to the populist family, we need to clarify what it means. In other words, what analytical consequences stem from the qualification of M5S as a populist party? In order to answer effectively to this answer, it is necessary to provide for a parsimonious definition of “populism”, which also could be successfully applied to a number of empirical cases. For instance, Cas Mudde defines populism as « an ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people» (Mudde, 2004, p. 543).

I have proposed a (only slightly) different definition: after a systematic scrutiny of the literature dealing with various manifestations of populism, I have come to a triadic definition of populism, as it emerges in a democratic system. Namely, we can define populism as a “mentality” (Tarchi, 2015) which possesses three main dimensions (Chiapponi, 2014):

a) ethical appeal to the people (i.e., making the people ethically crucial and dignified): for a populist, “the people” bears an ethical qualification, which makes it the only source of any political legitimation. It is not so important to state what “the people” means in empirical terms – “nation”, “class”, “sovereign citizens” or something else. In the populists’ symbolic map, the people occupy the central place, at least for two reasons. In the first place, the people represents a homogeneous and unitary actor – and, conversely, pluralism deserves moral criticism, because it jeopardizes people’s unity. In the second place, this utopian representation of the people supports the populist political project, aimed at bringing back political power in the hands of the same people; b) “anti-elitist” attitude, which nourishes populist’s political protest against government and institutions, pointing at “the establishment” as the focal target. It is noticeable that populist parties and movements systematically pair the cult of the people with the denunciation and stigmatisation of all the élites – not only political ones, but also intellectual, economic, bureaucratic élites. Thus, populist political thought embodies a dichotomous frame: we have a positive pillar (the tribute to popular will and values) which opposes a negative pillar (the blame of the élites). The few who monopolize the social and political power are guilty, because they take advantage of their positions in order to exploit and oppress the good people. Owing to these characters, populism often takes a “negative” and “reactionary” outlook, as well as it seems to emerge when a deep social, political or economic crisis affects any political system;

c) antagonism towards the institutions, which means that populists reject, or try to escape from, the institutional rules and procedures. This happens for two aspects. First, populism postulates the direct relationship between leader and followers. Sometimes, this connection may become a charismatic bond – anyway, even when this is not the case, in populist parties and movements, personalization of leadership is much more important than in other political organizations. Second, populists do not tolerate the burdens and lengthiness of representative politics (Taggart, 2004).

As many contributions have been emphasizing since 2012, all these three traits become recurrent in Five Star Movement’s online and offline propaganda. My purpose is now to verify whether the same marks are evident also in MPs’ institutional communication.

2. A simplified content analysis methodology

In parliamentary democracies, government must obtain majoritarian support from the parliament. The latter gives its support to the former by its vote of confidence, thus legitimizing it to operate. In Italian political system, this institutional process occur as follows. The Prime Minister (Presidente del Consiglio), to whom the President of the Republic gave the assignment to put together the cabinet, deliver an official speech to the Chambers, in which he or she states his/her government’s political agenda. Then it is the turn of MPs to participate, bringing into the debate their party’s point of view about the Prime Minister’s speech: notably, each orator must respect the time assigned by the parliamentary rules. After this, the Prime Minister replies to MPs speeches, asking the Parliament to support the executive with its vote of confidence. Finally, the political leader of each party represented in the assembly declares what conduct his/her group is going to take, pro or against the government, thus ending the debate. Owing to the populist profile of the party, a scrutiny of the Five Star Movement MPs’ speeches delivered at the Chamber of Deputies during the vote of confidence’s debate looks quite useful, in order to shed light over populist rhetorical weapons in an institutional arena. In fact, the institutional process just described make the incoming Prime Minister and government rather vulnerable to populist verbal attacks, as we may expect that populist rhetoric will translate the populist mentality’s main traits – ethical appeal to the people, anti-élitism, anti-institutionalism – into words, thus morally acclaiming the good citizens against the bad élites and poor institutions. Indeed, in front of populist assaults, Italian governments are weak, because in Italian political system there is no institutional guarantee that the executive gets a popular legitimization by the polls. Actually, in the so known Second Republic, only 5 governments out of 14 (see table 1, Appendix) were directly linked to the results of national elections, as concerns leadership as well as political coalition. This occurs because of the “disjunction” between the constitutional law, which states that any government receiving a vote of confidence from the Parliament is legitimized to act, and day-to-day politics. It is easy to predict that populists will sharply criticize any cabinet that has not been explicitly empowered by popular will. Therefore, in front of populist blame Italian governments seem somewhat helpless.

Italian executives are particularly unprotected against populists’ argument also because they articulate an internal criticism of democracy: i.e. they disagree with mainstream political parties and leaders, as well as political institutions, not because these are democratic, but just because are not democratic enough. In other words, as Margaret Canovan (1999) put it, populist political discourse simply mobilizes the “redemptive face” of democracy against its “pragmatic face”. This has two key consequences. On the one hand, it clearly points out that populist mobilization is always imaginable in democracy, since there always will be a structural void between the “two faces” of democracy. On the other hand, as populists act in the name of “real” democracy, for mainstream parties it is hard to dismiss their claims, as it happened once with anti-system communist or fascist parties. In sum, the parliamentary debate about the vote of confidence to new governments seems to define a good ground for populist seeds, in order to deprive the government of political legitimation.

Elaborating on these suggestions, my research has to do with the speeches delivered by the Five Star Movement’s MPs at the Chamber of Deputies, thus participating the debate about the vote of confidence asked by the Prime Minister. Therefore, the sample formation seems quite simple: following these premises, sample contains 21 political speeches, 11 pronounced against the government led by Enrico Letta, the remnant enunciated against the executive led by Matteo Renzi (for details, see tables 2 and 3, Appendix). Let me then introduce the main hypotheses, which are two. 1) Since we have labelled M5S as a populist party, we expect that MPs’ political discourse will mirror the three main traits of populist mentality – an ethical appeal to the people, verbal attacks towards élites and institutions; 2) we expect that those traits will be much more marked when governments lack an explicit popular legitimation by the polls. From this point of view, it is not too difficult to note that the executive led by Letta is somewhat more legitimized than Renzi’s cabinet. In fact, Letta’s coalition won the elections in 2013 and he had to occupy the role of deputy Prime Minister (as Pier Luigi Bersani, National Secretary of the Democratic Party, was the designate Prime Minister). Because of his feeble electoral victory, as well as political troubles inside the party, Bersani did not succeed in putting together a coalition government and gave up. Therefore, Letta received from the Head of State the assignment to build the new government and finally he was able to, even if he had to accept Silvio Berlusconi’s party, which lost the national elections, in his governmental coalition. Conversely, Matteo Renzi was not even a MP when he became Prime Minister. First, he gained the leadership of the Democratic Party, winning the primaries held in December 2013; then he forced his own colleague Letta to resign, immediately replacing him in the role of Prime Minister. For these reasons, we may presume that Five Star Movement MPs will be more likely to express their populist mentality in the case of Renzi than in the case of Letta.

As concerns the methodology, I employ a simplified version of a content analysis technique, which has proved to be valid in scrutinizing parliamentary speeches (Fedel, 1998; Chiapponi, 2008; Tiglio, 2010). In this sense, from the text of the speeches it is necessary to extract the political symbols, i.e. those linguistic expressions embodying a value orientation (positive or negative) towards certain political objects. The latter, in turn, designate «types of action or models of political system» (Fedel, 1998, p. 63), which the orator promotes or attacks in his speech. The methodology is therefore qualitative, but the collection of symbols will allow some elementary quantitative calculations, in order to ground our remarks on an empirical basis.

By what procedure is it possible to collect the political symbols? Talking in a general way, any speech stems from the rhetorical connection of many words and sentences: then, when we face a whole text, we need suitable criteria in order to distinguish political symbols from the other parts of the text. From the point of view of linguistics, this means to look forward to the significant, instead of the signifier, as the same word may have various meanings, depending on the rhetorical context. Hence, political symbols are the signifiers, attached to a specific significant (i.e., one or more linguistic signs) that values, positively or negatively, certain aspects of the political system, from the point of view of the speaker. To find political symbols, then, it is necessary a double step. First, after having divided the whole text in minimal units – sentences – it is indispensable to isolate all the relevant signifiers. Second, we select for our analysis only those signifiers embodying a value orientation, by which the orator define in a positive (or negative) way certain political objects – it follows that we must leave aside all the sentences and words that contain only neutral information.

Once that the political symbols have been collected, it is necessary to classify them. For this purpose, I have employed a classificatory scheme, which provides for four macro-categories of meaning, along with many sub-categories. The main categories are the following1: “state”, “parties”, “society” and “international domain”.

The latter specification allow us to refine a bit our hypothesis 1. Indeed, if we expect that MPs’ political discourses will exhibit a clear populist attitude, this means that we suppose that the political symbols will drop mainly in three categories out of four. On the one hand, we imagine that “state” and “parties” might represent the targets of populist mobilization; on the other hand, it might be probable that all the positive symbols referred to the “people” or to “citizens” are to be found in the “society” category. In sum: if MPs’ speeches show populist traits, the resultant political symbols will be mainly concentrated in three categories of the classificatory schema – state, parties and society.

After having partially re-stated our hypotheses 1, now we are able to afford a synthetic comment about the main results of the scrutiny.

3. The MPs’ political communication: some comparative remarks

In this section, I focus some of the findings, stemming from the analysis of the sample just outlined above. Although I will not deal with all the results, my purpose is to provide for a sufficient empirical base, in order to verify our leading hypothesises. As to move the first step towards this purpose, a look upon the following table 1 may be helpful:

Table 1. Political symbols in both cases

Analytical categories Letta government Renzi government

N. % N. % STATE 59 44.7 65 32.7 POLITICAL PARTIES 45 34.1 96 48.2 SOCIETY 21 15.9 31 15.6 INTERNATIONAL 7 5.3 7 3.5 DOMAIN Total 132 100.0 199 100

1 See, for details, table 4, Appendix. We immediately note a couple of things:

a) political symbols chiefly group in three categories (“state”, “parties” and “society”), while the remnant category, “international domain”, seems to receive a very scarce attention in Five Star Movement’s parliamentary discourse;

b) the most frequent political symbols are those connected to the “state” and “parties”, which together reach an amount of about 80% of the whole collection of data, in both cases.

Hence, M5S’s deputies seem to employ a very similar rhetorical structure in order to make clear their strong opposition versus the incoming executive, regardless of the leading Prime Minister. The only difference is that in Letta’s case political symbolism gathers around the state (44.7%) more than it occurs in the case of his colleague Renzi - when state symbols drop to 32.7%, but, conversely, political parties’ symbolism becomes heavier (48.2% instead of 34.1%). Despite this quantitative inversion, our preliminary remarks appear to pave the way for a corroboration of hypothesis 1, as for both governments the expected three types of political symbols lead the organization of the meanings in the discourse. However, for the sake to understand whether we are in front of a populist political rhetoric, we need to disaggregate these results, with a view to scrutiny the strategical attribution of positive and negative values to political objects, from the orator’s point of view.

Starting with a comment about the cabinet led by Enrico Letta, table 2 shows the resulting disaggregated distribution:

Table 2. Political symbols’ distribution and values, Letta government Categories N. Positive evaluations (+) Negative evaluations (-)

n. % n. % STATE 59 33 55.9 26 44.1

POLITICAL PARTIES 45 16 35.6 29 64.4

SOCIETY 21 12 57.1 9 42.9

INTERNATIONAL 7 1 14.3 6 85.7 DOMAIN. TOTAL 132 62 47.0 70 53.0

What can we say about these findings? Negative entries are more than positive ones. This is quite normal in populist political thought and language, owing to its “negativity” (Taggart, 2000): many times, populists do not exactly know who they are, but they know very well who they are not. However, here the whole distribution seems somewhat balanced – or, more balanced that one would expect from a populist party (as positive evaluations are 47.0% of all political symbols). True, in each category the distribution of political symbols appears to be much less symmetrical; anyway, in the “state” class, positive symbols are even more than negative ones (almost 56%) and, at a glance, this hardly can be associated to the populist mind. Conversely, the other results look to fit better the populist mentality, as political parties’ symbolism touches the highest level in negativity (almost 65% of negative symbols) and in the meantime society is very positively defined (57.1%). Before trying to account for these results, it might be useful to complete our overview, deepening a bit our investigation, with the aim to shed light on the political objects, which have been positively (or negatively) evaluated in Five Star Movement’s parliamentary speeches.

Here, it is obviously not possible to enumerate all these items; but it is quite easy to explicit the corresponding sub-categories of symbols that receive much attention, for any of the main category. Table 3 displays these findings:

Table 3. Main political symbols for Letta government

Categories First two subcategories n. % of the Prevailing category evaluations

1) Modalities of employing political power 17 28.8% Negative STATE 2) Institutional leaders’ qualities 10 16.9% None (=) 1) Political Strategies 13 28.9% Positive PARTIES 2) Rules of the political game 9 20.0% Negative 1) Community’s qualities 9 42.8% Negative SOCIETY 2) Community 5 23.8% Positive

It is not surprising that M5S MPs attack how government employs political power, but it’s rather unexpected that they do not share a negative image of institutional leaders, as well as it is quite unpredictable that in a Five Star Movement’s political speech would prevail a positive definition of political strategies. While the symbols of society seem more congruent with a populist stance, as the negative description of the community means the identification with unemployed, poor and alienated citizens.

Anyway, how we can assemble these partially counterintuitive results in a comprehensive elucidation of parliamentary discourse of M5S? Does the latter is compatible with the populist mentality of the party? In the view of giving an empirical grounded answer to these questions, we have to proceed carefully. Let me start by saying that evaluation can operate by two main strategies in the discourse: on the one hand, orator can directly evaluate, positively or negatively, the object of his interest, and this is the simpler strategy. On the other hand, there is a slightly more complex strategy, which proceeds by the juxtaposition of positive and negative elements, so that the negative (positive) quality of a discursive unit stems from its comparison/linkage to a positive (negative) textual one. Our findings seem to confirm that, in the case of M5S’s parliamentary discourse against Prime Minister Letta, populists incline to employ the second strategy much more than the simpler one. In their speech, for example, it is common to find sentences positively symbolizing a political strategy or a modality of action; then, the systematic replication of these items reinforce the negative definition of diametrically opposed strategies or modalities of action.

Consequently, populist traits here are a bit “blurred”, because deputies choose to adopt a more indirect strategy of (negative) evaluation of political objects. In fact, frequently they exhibit a positive definition of a situation (how things must be or must proceed), then followed by the negative description of things as they indeed are. This happens mostly in the case of state symbolism, where the negative definition of the modalities of employing the political power matches with the positive affirmation of the value of the Constitution – whose rule have been neglected by “the caste”. For example: «Minister Cancellieri, we are happy that a woman as you are is now Minister for the Justice […] We are here to suggest you governmental actions, to show you paths that … cannot overlook the Constitution. Our constitution protects the judiciary’s autonomy, a law commitment that has to be literally observed, sweeping away the absurd conflict between judiciary and politics … which started decades ago, when Berlusconi became a politician» (speech by Alessandro Di Battista).

With some corrections, then, we can corroborate hypothesis 1: M5S exhibits a populist rhetorical construction of its parliamentary discourse in the case of Letta’s government. What about Renzi’s executive? It is necessary to start, as usual, from the distribution of political symbols in each category (see table 4, below):

Table 4. Political symbols’ distribution and values, Renzi government Categories N. Positive evaluations (+) Negative evaluations (-)

n. % n. % STATE 65 13 20.0 52 80.0

POLITICAL PARTIES 96 34 35.4 62 64.6

SOCIETY 31 20 64.5 11 35.5

INTERNATIONAL DOMAIN 7 3 42.9 4 57.1

TOTAL 199 70 35.2 129 64.8

Well, in this case the results are quite impressive: indeed, populist lines appear to emerge clearly. Accordingly, let me make only some quick remarks, as everything in the table seems to unveil the populist mentality: the striking majority of negative symbols (64.8%), which becomes even much more remarkable in the case of state symbolism (80%). On the other side, stands the highly positive definition of society, which essentially means “people” or “citizens”.

Actually, here we observe the attempt to mobilize the resentment of the many against the few who governs – this happens in an institutional frame. From this viewpoint, it quite interesting that Five Star Movement’s MPs give the impression to maintain a sort of political language adequate to mobilize people in political meetings or in mass demonstrations when talking in Parliament, facing the incoming government and their colleagues MPs.

Just to refine a bit this rough account, we shall look to the main political symbols that deputies chose in order to structure their rhetorical attacks to Mr Renzi and his executive (table 5):

Table 5. Main political symbols for Renzi government

Categories First two sub-categories n. % of the Prevailing category value 1) Institutional leaders’ qualities 31 47.7% Negative STATE 2) Modalities of employing political power 12 18.5% Negative 1) Parties’ properties 24 25.0% Negative PARTIES 2) Parties’ qualities 19 19.8% Negative 1) Community 16 51.6% Positive SOCIETY 2) Social forces 6 19.4% Negative

It is rather noteworthy to examine the last column. Here, negativity is a fundamental trait of political discourse. The only positive symbol has to do with political community (mainly, “Italian citizens”), all the other entries are negative – it means, for example, that more than 65% of state symbolism appears in the discourse only to indicate bad institutional leadership and power practices. Hence, political parties’ properties and qualities – evidently, except for M5S’s courage and honesty – figure the favourite targets of Five Star Movement’s parliamentary speeches. Hence, the negative light falls also upon some social forces (lobbies and banks), more frequently than we saw in the case of Letta’s government.

Taking into account the rhetorical construction of political symbols, conceivably here prevails a simpler and more direct evaluation strategy than that we have seen at work in Letta’s case. Check, for example, the following words: «Indeed, you don’t show any respect for our institutions, because here you, President Renzi, are simply a squatter, since you entered the government thanks to a plot, a coup, as it usually happened in our First Republic, stabbing in the back your companion. You are not legitimized by any popular election» (speech by Andrea Colletti).

As normally occurs in populist mobilizations, orators are blaming Renzi for lacking popular legitimation, but also for having betrayed his party’s colleague Letta, forcing him to resign, just for the sake of taking his seat.

This leads us to confirm that not only the political symbolism extracted from parliamentary discourse confirms hypothesis 1, but also hypothesis 2: M5S’s political communication at the Chamber of Deputies seems to be much more “populist” in the case of Renzi’s cabinet than in the case of Letta’s one. Indeed, populist traits emerge clearly and there’s not much room left for an alternative account: Renzi government exhibits a weaker linkage with the polls than Letta executive. This seems to exert an influence in strengthening the populist characteristics of the parliamentary communication.

We can obtain other confirmations of this quick reading, once that we try a rough operationalization of the “anti-institutionalist” trait, which is part of the populist mind. As we already know, populists reject institutional procedures and structures, as they wish to establish a direct (even virtual) contact between leader and followers. We can imagine, then, that political personalization not only plays an essential role in displaying populism, but also in shaping populist political language. For example, in our findings many verbal attacks have to do with “qualities of institutional leaders” or “qualities of political parties’ leaders”. In sum, it seems that populists bypass the institutional frame in order to hit directly the person of the Minister or the Prime Minister or the political rival. Now, from our survey it is possible to get a kind of “personalization index”, which is not a “real” statistical index, but simply express how many political symbols, for each category, evaluate (positively or negatively) a personal item, instead of a structural/institutional one2 (personal qualities, essentially). This is only a raw measure, but the results are encouraging, in order to corroborate hypothesises 1 and 2:

Table “Personalization” in MPs speeches Letta Prevailing evaluation Renzi Prevailing evaluation (% on category) (% on category) “Personalization” 25.4 + 50.8 - (state symbols) “Personalization” 31.1 - 38.5 - (parties’ symbols)

2 The simple calculus is the following: for the symbols of state and parties, it is necessary to divide the total amount of symbols that focus personal elements for the total number of symbols contained in the whole category.

As we can see, “state personalization” is much more frequent in the case of Renzi’s government (also more negatively evaluated); the same happens in the case of political parties’ personalization, as the entries increase, showing the same trend. Therefore, also the personal attacks extracted from the distribution appear to confirm our expectations: parliamentary speeches do show populist traits and their expression is more visible in Renzi’s case.

Before concluding with some final observations, let me turn for a while to the latest Italian government, which obtained the vote of confidence after Renzi’s fall, in December 2016, which is that led by Paolo Gentiloni.

4. Some notes on Gentiloni’s government

In December 2016, Five Star Movement did not participate in the parliamentary debate about the vote of confidence to the executive led by Paolo Gentiloni, who substituted Renzi after his resignation3. Except for the Prime Minister and some light correction, Gentiloni’s cabinet was very similar to that before led by Matteo Renzi. This is the main reason why Five Star Movement chose to express its radical protest by its nonparticipation in the debate. At the Chamber of Deputies, indeed, there was only a speech delivered by a M5S’s orator: Giulia Grillo spoke for her political group, in order to justify her party’s behaviour and its strong opposition to the incoming government.

It is not very significant to scrutiny her discourse as we have done for the others, as here we have not a comparable number of symbols. Therefore, this operation may be useful, as we may look to the results as a rough indicator about the consolidation of the rhetorical aspects that we have already seen.

In other words, a quick overview of political symbolism extracted from one single speech, even if we cannot infer any valid generalization, therefore might be helpful, in order to appreciate the ongoing rhetorical expression of the populist mentality in an institutional frame.

3 Renzi resigned owing to the popular rejection, at a national referendum, of the constitutional reforms that he and his government wanted to implement – essentially, the transition towards a mono-cameral Parliament thanks to the restriction of Senate’s powers.

Table 4. Political symbols’ distribution and values, Gentiloni government Categories N. Positive evaluations (+) Negative evaluations (-)

n. % n. % STATE 22 7 31.8 15 68.2

POLITICAL PARTIES 10 3 30.0 7 70.0

SOCIETY 11 11 100,0 0 -

INTERNATIONAL 0 - - - - DOMAIN. TOTAL 43 21 48.8 22 51.2

It is not necessary to deepen further our scrutiny. Again, negativity seems to be a structural property of populist discourse in Parliament. Actually, negative evaluations are absolutely prevailing: i.e., the definition of the targets of M5S’s political attacks constitutes the main part of the speech. On the other hand, looking to “society” category, we observe a clear polarization of political symbols: here the category exactly overlaps with a sub-category, as all the 11 symbols convey “the community”, the “people”, or “the citizens” as significant. These results seem to allow a careful interpretation, in the sense of the reinforcement of the populist traits already observed for both Letta and Renzi governments.

Hence, it seems that M5S’s parliamentary communication proceeds to shape along populist lines: we have only one speech, but there still appears to be a dichotomizing logic at work. In other words, in this discourse again we observe the linguistic representation of the struggle between the “system” and “the people”. Both dimensions reach high levels: in fact, as Gentiloni’s executive is quite similar to Renzi’s one, it attracts the same blame from populists in Parliament. In fact, also in this case the lack of popular legitimation is a major topic in the speech: «Mr President, you don’t have showed any kind of respect for our citizens … you don’t have listened to any voices that claimed against your idea of government, so that you are here with the same persons seating in the executive».

This is not a surprising outcome: as Harold Lasswell used to say, in many cases content analysis produces the “specification of the obvious”. Hence, the results are valuable in order to reaffirm the need for an empirical grounded concept of “populism”.

5. Final remarks

In this paper, my purpose was only to roughly show how populist communication in Parliament have been structuring in the case of Five Star Movement. As we have seen, populist symbolism tends to gather around two poles. The positive symbolism has in the citizens their main object. In this structuring pillar, it is possible to distinguish the “ethical appeal to the people” or “the redemptive face” of democracy (Canovan, 1999), which systematically feed populist mobilization. From this viewpoint, it is noteworthy that Five Star Movement MPs do not dismiss or reduce this symbolism, even when they act in an institutional arena.

Conversely, the negative pillar lies in the symbolization of the institutional and political élites. Participating in the debate about the vote of confidence, for M5S’s MPs does not make a difference to attack the government or the political parties, even opposition’s parties. All these actors together are “la casta” (the caste), i.e. the political united élite which oppress the people.

This simple rhetorical structure, though quite rigid, exhibits a kind of modulation or adjustment, owing to some extra-linguistic elements. The principal lies in the more or less intense lack of popular legitimation, as we have stated in our hypothesises 1 and 2. Our findings seem to confirm that the more government lacks popular investiture at the polls, the more it becomes an easy target for populist attacks.

However, the blurry rhetoric that we have observed in the case of Letta may also depends on intervening variables – for example, the unsteady oratory exhibited by the newly elected Five Star Movement’s MPs in their first participation in a parliamentary debate.

Surely, there is still need to develop further analysis of populist parliamentary discourse in Italian Parliament. The introductory research that I have tried to present certainly needs to be refined. From this viewpoint, the adoption of a comparative perspective represents an imperative need, if we want to acquire further knowledge about populist communication in an institutional frame. Here, my only attempt was to reaffirm that any linkage between an abstract concept (populism) and its presumed empirical expressions has to ground on an empirical basis.

Appendix

Table 1. Italian governments, 1994-2016

Governments Popular legitimation Berlusconi I Yes Dini No Prodi I Yes D’Alema I No D’Alema II No Amato II No Berlusconi II Yes Berlusconi III No Prodi II Yes Berlusconi IV Yes Monti No Letta Yes/No Renzi No Gentiloni No

Table 2. The speeches selected for analysis (Letta Government)

MP (orator) Main topics

Andrea Colletti Political alliance between the Democratic Party (centre-left) and Forza Italia (Berlusconi’s own party, centre-right) Alessandro Di Battista Law and order

Fabiana Dadone Denigration of the Minister of the Interior

Dalila Nesci Economics – fiscal compact – European Union

Tiziana Ciprini Employment policies

Emanuela Corda Denigration of the Minister of Transport – Support for local social movements against railroads (No Tav)

Carla Ruocco Denigration of the Minister of Health – health policies

Alberto Zolezzi Pale support for the Minister for the Environment – environmental policies

Chiara Di Benedetto Education, scientific research and cultural public policies

Angelo Tofalo Blaming left and right parties – public and security policies

Riccardo Nuti Explanation of Five Star Movement political opposition

Table 3. Speeches selected for anaylsis (Renzi Government)

MP (orator) Main topics

Carlo Sibilia Denigration of the Prime Minister – Quarrel with the President of the Chamber – Economics – Blaming the EU

Andrea Colletti Denigration of the Prime Minister – Respect for the popular will Mirko Busto Denigration of the Prime Minister

Alessio Mattia Villarosa Economic policies – denigration of the Prime Minister

Simone Valente Denigration of the Prime Minister – Public education policies

Manlio Di Stefano European Union – fiscal compact – denigration of the Prime Minister Giulia Sarti Denigration of the Prime Minister – Law and order policies – Denigration of the Minister of Justice Roberto Fico Denigration of the Prime Minister – attacking the political alliance between left and right parties – need for change Giuseppe Brescia Denigration of the Prime Minister – European Union – Excessive government by decree Federico D’Incà Explanation of Five Star Movement political opposition

Table 4. The classificatory scheme

A) SYMBOLS OF STATE

1) Origin 2) State (global definition) 3) Qualities of the state 4) Source of political power

I) general source(s)

II) specific source(s) 5) Structure of political power

I) spatial structure

II) functional structure 6) State’s branches’ qualities 7) Institutional leaders’ qualities

I) personal qualities

II) role qualities

III) leadership styles 8) Modalities of employing political power

I) generic modalities

II) policies’ modalities (not procedural)

III) procedural modalities 9) Purposes/consequences of political decisions

B) SYMBOLS OF POLITICAL PARTIES

1) Rules of the political game 2) Party system (as a whole) 3) Parties’ qualities

I) qualities connected to one party

II) qualities connected to the whole governmental coalition (or opposition) 4) Parties’ properties

I) properties related to the source of parties’ political power

II) Rules of the competition inside the parties 5) Political ideologies 6) Parties’ strategies

I) electoral strategies

II) strategies inside the institutions

III) social strategies (linkages between parties and society) 7) Party leaders’ qualities C) SYMBOLS OF SOCIETY

1) Community 2) Community’s qualities 3) Social regime

I) global definitions

II) rules of the social game 4) Social forces 5) Social forces’ qualities 6) Social forces’ properties

I) properties related to the source(s) of social power

II) Internal rules of the game or organization 7) Social ideologies 8) Social action’s strategies

I) Strategies connected to production/acquisition of social resources

II) Strategies of cooperation/conflict between social actors

III) Strategies finalised to confer/withdraw political support 9) Qualities of social forces’ leadership D) SYMBOLS OF INTERNATIONAL DOMAIN

1) Rules of international political game 2) World politics’ structure 3) International domain’s political actors 4) International domain’s strategies 5) Purposes/consequences related to the international domain

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