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South European Society and Politics

ISSN: 1360-8746 (Print) 1743-9612 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fses20

The Italian during the Crisis: Towards Normalisation?

Filippo Tronconi

To cite this article: Filippo Tronconi (2018) The Italian Five Star Movement during the Crisis: Towards Normalisation?, South European Society and Politics, 23:1, 163-180, DOI: 10.1080/13608746.2018.1428889 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13608746.2018.1428889

Published online: 21 Feb 2018.

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Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=fses20 South European Society and Politics, 2018 VOL. 23, NO. 1, 163–180 https://doi.org/10.1080/13608746.2018.1428889

The Italian Five Star Movement during the Crisis: Towards Normalisation?

Filippo Tronconi

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS The Movimento Cinque Stelle (M5S) represents the most significant Party change; ; occurrence in Italian party politics during the economic crisis that anti-establishment parties; commenced in 2008. Founded in 2005, the party caused a major upset Casaleggio; ; Italian at the 2013 national elections, with a subsequent major impact on the Five Star Movement Italian party system, which is analysed along four dimensions: amount of change; number of relevant competitors; alteration of the political space; and degree of nationalisation. The sudden electoral success, in turn, presented the party with a number of challenges that forced it to adapt its organisational nature. Moreover, the anti-establishment nature of the M5S is questioned by its activities in the legislative arena. As with other outsider parties, this poses the dilemma of being part of the establishment while criticising it. The M5S has thus been forced to redefine its main goals and style of communication in order to adapt to the new institutional environment without losing the palingenetic aspiration of its original message.

The Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S, Five Star Movement) represents the most important innovation in Italian politics probably since Berlusconi’s launch of in 1994. Born as a gathering of followers of the comedian Beppe Grillo—something in between a fan club and a web marketing experiment—it has rapidly grown up, to the point of becoming the most voted Italian party in 2013 and largely reshaping the Italian party system. The experience of the M5S has often been associated with the ‘populist wave’ that has hit Europe in the past decade (most recently: Tarchi 2014; Hobolt & Tilley 2016). Beppe Grillo’s party shares, in fact, a number of features with other populist forces, starting from its anti-establishment appeal. Beyond this, the M5S did not just claim to be a new party (in fact, it refused the label of party tout court), but to be an instrument to achieve a political revolution, where citizens would exercise their power through an extensive use of the as a device of . Its use of the internet for organisational purposes has attracted curiosity among scholars and observers, and equal shares of enthusiasm and scepticism. A few years after M5S’s birth, a difficult process of institutionalisation started, and some of the initial promises have been more or less been explicitly abandoned. Nonetheless, the M5S has kept many original organisational traits, that are worth close examination. This article will review the main turning points of the short (but intense) lifespan of the M5S (section 1). It will then assess the impact the M5S has had on the Italian party system

CONTACT Filippo Tronconi [email protected] © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group 164 F. TRONCONI

(section 2), along a number of dimensions. The article will then turn to the evolution of the organisational structure of this party in its early stages, before 2013 (section 3) and its adaptation to a new institutional environment after the electoral breakthrough (section 4). Finally (section 5), the article will discuss the organisational characteristics of the M5S in 2017. Several models will be introduced as interpretations of the structure of this party, an analysis which will conclude that none of them offers a satisfactory characterisation of the M5S.

From the to electoral success The history of the M5S and its founder Beppe Grillo is by now well known, having received much attention from scholars in recent years (e.g., Bordignon & Ceccarini 2013; Corbetta & Gualmini 2013; Biorcio & Natale 2013; Tronconi 2015a; Ceccarini & Bordignon 2016). For this reason, it will be sufficient here to draw attention to the main turning points that have affected the party since the opening of the blog beppegrillo.it in January 2005. The 2005–2009 period can be considered as an incubation phase of the movement, which began following a first meeting between Beppe Grillo and after a theatre performance. Casaleggio was described by the press as one of the leading Italian web marketing experts at the time. He was ahead of his time in understanding the potential of the web for politics, imagining scenarios of democratic and social palingenesis related to the spread of the internet.1 Since 2005, Casaleggio Associati (the company he founded) has been responsible for managing Grillo’s blog, and it was probably Casaleggio who suggested the use of the social platform meetup.com to launch a network of ‘friends of Beppe Grillo’. These were intended to be advocates of the ideas that the comedian was spreading in his theatre shows, particularly on environmental issues and the delegitimisation of the (political, economic and media) establishment. It was a winning intuition. Beginning in July 2005, the first ‘meetups’ started and within a few months dozens of local groups got using the social network. By 2013 they numbered more than a thousand (Lanzone & Tronconi 2015). From its very first steps, therefore, the movement created by Grillo and Casaleggio followed a double organisational path: online and offline. From the theatre, where Grillo continued to hold his performances and where he had built a devoted audience over the years, the communication moved to the blog and from here, through meetup.com, back to the territory with the emergence of local circles. The organisational baptism for many local groups was then represented by the V-days (V is for vaffanculo, Italian for ‘fuck off’, generally addressed to Italian politicians). These were rallies taking place in many Italian squares in 2007 (when Beppe Grillo was present in front of an enthusiastic crowd at Piazza Maggiore in ) and again in 2008 and 2013. The official aim was collecting signatures for citizens’ initiative laws on issues that were relevant to Grillo and his followers; however, the V-days were also driven by identity-building goals—to give visibility to the rising movement, launch its rallying cries and show the total consonance between the leader and his people. The initiatives were relaunched by the blog beppegrillo.it and social media, but paradoxically the traditional media, newspapers and television, were primarily responsible for amplifying their resonance, following a common pattern of interaction between the leaders of populist movements and the media networks. The former were in search of easy visibility through controversial initiatives and an eccentric and provocative language, and the latter wanted to give prominence to new ‘characters’, spectacular events and scandals that would arouse SOUTH EUROPEAN SOCIETY AND POLITICS 165 public attention and indignation (Mazzoleni 2008). The success of the V-days induced Grillo and Casaleggio to take the decisive step of participating in elections. At the beginning, this was no more than some civic lists in the municipal elections of 2008: the ‘Friends of Beppe Grillo’ lists appeared in dozens of municipalities and got modest but encouraging results that led for the first time to the election of some representatives in municipal councils. In October 2009, the M5S was officially launched and its symbol and manifesto were publicly presented. The years 2009–2013 were a period of organisational consolidation as well as expansion of a network of activists, involving thousands of people across the country. The first electoral successes were also being registered in these years: in 2010, the M5S participated in the regional elections, achieving significant results in and especially in Emilia-Romagna (seven per cent of the votes and two candidates elected in the regional council). With the 2012 local elections, even the most sceptical of critics had to recognise that the movement had gained national political relevance, thanks to nine per cent of the votes obtained on average in the 100 municipalities where its own lists were presented (Pinto & Vignati 2012), and above all thanks to the victory in the city of , where for the first time the mayorship in a large city was won. In October of that same year the Sicilian regional elections, where it ranked the first party, confirmed the M5S’s competitiveness. In the meantime, at the national level the picture had changed. In November 2011, the Berlusconi-led government resigned and a new technical government led by Mario Monti, an economics professor and former European Commissioner, took office (Giannetti 2013). All the major mainstream parties (the , Berlusconi’s People of Freedom and of the Centre) supported Monti in parliament, while there was evident approval from the European institutions in . For an anti-establishment party such as the M5S, the situation could not have been more favourable: the government was the irrefutable demonstration that the differences between all the major political forces were just formal, and that all parties were aligned and subordinate to the directives of the European institutions and to the disastrous economic recipes that the latter had imposed on the member states. The M5S results in the national elections of February 2013 (more than 25 per cent of the votes in the Chamber of Deputies, 109 deputies and 54 senators elected) constituted the most successful election debut for a political party not just in the history of the Italian Republic but in post-war Europe. For the M5S this completed a glorious founding period at the same time as opening a new and exciting, but also uncertain, phase. Soon after the elections, differences emerged within the parliamentary groups, leading to numerous conflicts and expulsions (21 deputies and 19 senators as of May 2017, about a quarter of the initial parliamentary intake) and to the need for the two founders to impose strict discipline. In April 2016 the death of Gianroberto Casaleggio, who had long been ill, was perhaps the most difficult challenge for what was still a very young organisation. Beside Grillo, the role of shadow leader of the organisational structure now passed to the son of Casaleggio, Davide, who took charge of Casaleggio Associati, and therefore of the blog and IT infrastructures. It was a sort of transfer based on inheritance right, which surprisingly contradicted the principle of pure organisational horizontality on which the party had always claimed to be founded. 166 F. TRONCONI

The impact of the M5S on the party system The impact of the M5S on the Italian party system change can hardly be overestimated. The mere fact that in 2013 the M5S, participating in its first ever national election, became the most voted party is indicative of its sudden and significant effect on the equilibria of Italian politics. The qualitative and quantitative nature of party system change caused by the M5S can be traced along four distinct, but related, indicators and how they change after the 2013 elections. The first indicator is the total amount of change, as signalled by the level of volatility, that is an aggregate measure of change in the electorate’s party preference between two consecutive elections (Pedersen 1979; see also Regalia 2018). This can also be considered as a rough measure of the strength of linkage between parties and their voters, as strong party attachments should lead to low levels of volatility; on the contrary, high volatility is an indicator of the presence of a remarkable share of voters who are available to change their choice from one election to the next (Bartolini & Mair 1990). The emergence and electoral success of a new party brings, by definition, an increase in volatility, and signals a declining loyalty of voters to existing parties. What is surprising in the 2013 Italian elections is the amount of volatility. With a value of 36.7, these elections are among the most volatile of the entire post-war Europe.2 The average volatility of Italian elections was 13.5 in the 1946–2013 period, and values above 20 can be found only in 24 out of 336 elections held in Western Europe in the 1945–2015 period (Chiaramonte & Emanuele 2017, p. 379) A slightly higher value was reached in the 1994 Italian elections, after the earthquake of Tangentopoli, the disappearance of the Italian and the Christian Democrats, the birth of Forza Italia and the introduction of a new mixed-member electoral system (Table 1), replacing one based on proportional representation. Electoral volatility is certainly an indicator of the availability of voters to change their party preference from one election to the next, but it is not necessarily an indicator of party system change. If many voters switch their preferences between established parties they are likely to produce an alternation in government, that is a change within the system, but not a change of the system. A better indicator to catch this phenomenon is the specific component of volatility induced by flow of voters towards new parties. Such a component has been labelled ‘volatility by regeneration’ (Chiaramonte & Emanuele 2017). Table 1 also provides this information, and it confirms the extraordinary nature of the 2013 elections, displaying the highest value of all 1945–2015 Western European elections. It is barely necessary to underline that such high value is almost entirely due to the result of the M5S.3 The second indicator is the number of relevant competitors (parties or party alliances) (Sartori 1976). The extraordinary level of change in voting behaviour in 2013 was translated into a new format of the party system. After 20 years of failed attempts of ‘third forces’ to break the dominance of the two main coalitions, in 2013 four political actors (whether individual parties or coalitions of parties) obtained seats. More interestingly, three of them, the centre-left led by the Democratic Party, the centre-right led by and the Movimento 5 Stelle, had almost equal electoral strengths. Indeed, the sum of seats of the two main coalitions dropped from 99.8 per cent of 2006 to 74.6 per cent of 2013 (the index of bipolarism is reported in Table 1, columns 3 and 4), notwithstanding the generous bonus awarded by the 2005 electoral system to the most voted coalition. In terms of votes this trend is even more evident (from 99.1 to 58.3). This resulted in a clear change in the SOUTH EUROPEAN SOCIETY AND POLITICS 167 0.76 0.81 0.85 0.87 0.84 0.87 nationalisation score) nationalisation Index of vote nationalisation (Standardised party (Standardised nationalisation Index system of vote 80.5 85.4 89.2 99.1 84.4 58.3 Index of bipolarism (seats) 91.9 89.8 97.6 99.8 93.8 74.6 ). data ( www.elezionistorico.interno.it Minister official electoral nterior Index of bipolarism (votes) 6.4 3.5 0.0 1.0 ); for details on the index of vote of vote details on the index & Emanuele ( 2017 ); for see C hiaramonte regeneration, by of volatility and the index of volatility details on the index For eputies. 15.9 18.7 Volatility by regeneration by Volatility 8.2 39.3 12.3 20.4 11.3 36.7 Total volatility Total ndicators of party 1994–2013. ndicators change, system uthor’s elaboration on Emanuele ( 2015a ; 2015b ) and I elaboration uthor’s nationalisation (s P S N S), see Bochsler ( 2010 ) and Emanuele 2015b ). nationalisation Table 1. I Table the C hamber of D to refer A ll values N otes: Source: A Source: 1994 1996 2001 2006 2008 2013 168 F. TRONCONI structure of competition, from bipolar to tripolar, that was confirmed in the following local and regional elections (Tronconi 2015b). The transformation of the format of political competition had consequences for the formation of government. Specifically, the refusal of the M5S to take part in any coalition agreement, notwithstanding the initial attempt of the Democratic Party in that direction, ‘forced’ the Democrats and Berlusconi’s People of Freedom jointly to support a sort of grand coalition government, thus replicating the joint support for the technocratic Monti government of the previous legislative term. The third indicator concerns the political space of party competition which can change if the saliency of existing dimensions of competition changes or if new dimensions emerge. An alteration of the political space is not necessarily linked to the level of volatility or the number of parties, even though it has been shown empirically that a correlation exists between the emergence of new parties and a redefinition of the political space through the emergence of new salient issues cross-cutting existing political alignments (Hug 2001). In the Italian case, the M5S has had a decisive influence in the politicising of the European issue (Giannetti, Pedrazzani & Pinto 2017). The 2013 elections took place in the midst of European financial crisis, and the scope of authority of the was at the centre of political discourse, following the implementation of a number of austerity policies under the Monti government. While the mainstream parties (Democratic Party, People of Freedom, and Monti’s new-born party, Scelta Civica) could not target for criticism the austerity policies they had supported until then, the M5S was in a position to advance an anti-austerity and anti- political discourse, that until then had been supported only by the and the radical left (Conti & De Giorgi 2011). Since then, the M5S has made the issue of limiting the power of European technocrats a crucial dimension of its anti-elitist approach, and has openly questioned ’s participation in the Euro, promoting (but failing to achieve) a on it. The fourth indicator concerns changes in the geography of voting behaviour in the direction either of more nationalisation or less nationalisation of politics, and analysing the heterogeneity of the distribution of votes of each party across the country (Caramani 2004). At the aggregate level, the territorial distribution of votes of each party can be interpreted as the degree of nationalisation of the party system (see Table 1, last column). If all the main parties have an evenly distributed vote across the country, the index increases; if large parties emerge with a strong territorial concentration of the vote the index decreases. Italy has a long tradition of territorial differentiation of political behaviour, dating back to the pre-fascist period and surviving through the whole republican period, even after the breakdown of the party system at the beginning of the 1990s (Diamanti 2009). More than just differences in voting behaviour, such territorial specificities were characterised as ‘subcultures’, defined as areas with distinct political and cultural identities, specific socioeconomic contexts and rich networks of associations with clear political reference points. Table 2 shows the disaggregated values since the mid-1990s. The fluctuations in the degree of nationalisation are strongly influenced by the electoral results of the Lega Nord, given its territorial rootedness, but also by the traditional presence of leftist strongholds in the central regions, as demonstrated by the low level of nationalisation of the Democrats and predecessors. Forza Italia and the People of Freedom have comparatively higher values. Interestingly, the M5S displays the highest score, which is even more surprising for a new-born party. With 25.6 per cent of the vote nationally, the M5S gets less than 20 per cent only in one region (, 19.6 per cent), if one excludes the Alpine regions of Valle d’Aosta and -Alto Adige. Of the SOUTH EUROPEAN SOCIETY AND POLITICS 169

Table 2. Nationalisation of vote for the main Italian parties, 1994–2013.

Standardised party system nationalisation Average percentage of votes score Lega Nord 6.6 0.426 Forza Italia (1994–2006) 23.7 0.888 Alleanza Nazionale (1994–2006) 13.4 0.824 Popolo della Libertà (2008–2013) 29.4 0.897 Unione di Centro 4.6 0.836 PDS/DS (1994–2006) 19.3 0.809 PPI/La Margherita (1994–2001) 10.8 0.898 Ulivo/PD (2006–2013) 29.9 0.895 Scelta Civica (2013) 8.3 0.874 Movimento 5 Stelle (2013) 25.6 0.912 Italy — 0.821 Source: Author’s elaboration on Emanuele (2015a, 2015b) and Interior Minister official electoral data (www.elezionistorico. interno.it).

11 regions where the M5S was the most voted party, four are located in the North (Piedmont, , Friuli-Venezia Giulia, ), one in the ‘Red belt’ (), three in the Centre (, , ) and three in the south (, , ). The M5S goes beyond any territorial interpretation of the vote—starting with the location of its headquarters in the blogsphere.4 It really is a party without territory.

The M5S in its early incarnation: grassroots organisation and leadership The original M5S statute was useful, at least as a declaration of intent, to understand what this organisation was not, or did not want to be (a party), rather than to understand what it actually was. Article 4 stated that the 5 Star Movement ‘is not a political party nor is it intended to become one in the future’ and gave to ‘the totality of the users of the internet the role of government and leadership which is normally attributed to a few’. It was also stated that the movement’s symbol ‘is registered on behalf of Beppe Grillo, the sole owner of the rights to use it’ (art. 3).5 The claim that it was not a party, just as it was preparing to field its own activists as candidates in local and national political institutions, appeared to be more a useful slogan in an anti-politics period than a faithful representation of reality. The M5S emerged from the ‘call to arms’ of its leader Beppe Grillo, answered on the ground by citizens who, at least initially, organised themselves through the meetup.com platform. These two poles of the organisation, the blog and the groups of activists mobilised on the ground, corresponded to the two organisational sides that, in more traditional contexts, are identified with the party in central office and the party on the ground (Katz & Mair 1993; 2002). No party in public office existed so far, except in the few municipalities where initially the M5S secured the first electoral breakthroughs. The party in central office had eccentric features compared to traditional political organisations. Essentially Beppe Grillo and Gianroberto Casaleggio were the recognised leaders. Under their guidance, some unspecified staff worked as blog managers and developed the database of subscribers and lists authorised to use the party symbol during electoral competitions. In the opinion of all local activists interviewed between 2012 and 2013 (Passarelli, Tronconi & Tuorto 2013; Lanzone & Tronconi 2015), the independence of local organisations from the centre was total. On the occasion of municipal elections it was at this level that decisions were taken regarding the choice of the mayoral candidate and the candidates for the city council. The same was true for the 170 F. TRONCONI electoral manifestoes, which usually prioritised environmental issues, urban regeneration, administrative transparency and ethical issues in politics. These decisions were taken by the activists’ assembly, which was the only recognised decision-making body at a local level. The intervention of the party in central office on local groups’ domestic issues was virtually absent—in fact, in some cases activists complained about the lack of assistance on specific issues, even when requested—except in extraordinary cases. However, intervention from the party in central office on local groups was immediate when someone began to gain media visibility, and even more so if they tried to exploit such visibility to question the authority of the two party leaders and claim greater internal democracy. In such cases, a blunt post on the blog was sufficient to expel the dissenters with no appeal. Thus, the original party was characterised by the existence of two distinct levels with well-defined tasks, and few connections between the two. The party in central office was responsible for managing the image and political direction at a national level, as well as granting the use of the logo to the lists in local elections, while the party on the ground was left to make organisational arrangements and decisions at the local levels, including the adaptation of the manifesto to the needs of individual municipalities. To which organisational model does a party with such characteristics match? The stratarchical party proposed by Kenneth Carty (2004) seems to be a valid reference point. Carty suggests that parties respond to the difficulty of mobilising their constituency, the party on the ground, by adopting a more flexible organisational structure than the hierarchical one typical of mass parties. The stratarchical party brings into politics an organisational model known in business as a franchise system. This makes the reciprocal autonomy between the national headquarters and local branches its own qualifying point. Typically, the division of labour assigns to the centre tasks such as brand management, marketing strategy, support in finance and training for peripheral personnel, whereas the peripheral units have the task of ‘spreading the product’ on the ground, adapting it to local variations (Carty 2004, p. 10), organising election campaigns or identifying the most relevant points for each local area in the manifesto’s general lines. As long as this division of labour is respected, intrusion into each other’s spheres of autonomy is minimal. The ownership of the party’s symbol attributed to Beppe Grillo in the non-statute and the existence of a centrally written electoral programme, along with the total organisational autonomy of local units, seems to reflect well the characteristics of this model.

After 2013: new challenges and centralisation of power The unprecedented electoral success of February 2013 allowed the M5S to bring into parliament 163 representatives (109 deputies and 54 senators). To these, 17 Members of the (MEPs) were added the following year. Even at local and regional levels, the influence of the M5S increased: in 2017, the party could count on 100 regional councillors (from all regions except Calabria and Sardinia) and 32 mayors, including elected in Parma in 2012, Filippo Nogarin (Livorno in 2014), ( in 2016) and ( in 2016). Municipal councillors, by 2017, numbered over a thousand. Thus, alongside the party in central office and the party on the ground, there was at this point a substantial party in public office (Table 3). The party’s entry into representative institutions at all levels of government inevitably changed its internal balance and introduced three new challenges. First, the rapid recruitment of a political class that was numerically impressive posed the risk of attracting careerists not SOUTH EUROPEAN SOCIETY AND POLITICS 171 ct. s: 91 asaleggio s (15 from Jan. s (15 from . C December 2016 December egional urin); 100 R egional members (26 O 2016) councillors; 33 mayors 33 mayors councillors; (including R ome and T M P councillors; 35 senators; deputies, 17 ME P 2017) platform launched platform June 2016: M5S wins in R ome municipal elections 135,023 registered 135,023 registered 1878 Municipal Grillo / D A pril 2016: Rousseau s asaleggio asaleggio . ); ( www.senato.it ); Senato ( www.camera.it amera s: 99 deputies, 39 s: 99 deputies, December 2014 December members (12 Jun. 2014) councillors; 9 mayors 9 mayors councillors; 55 (including L ivorno); councillors; R egional M P 17 ME P senators; irectors board board D irectors (‘ D irettorio’) (11/2014–9/2016) participation in elections European 87,656 registered 87,656 registered 1122 Municipal Grillo / G. C May 2014: First 2014: First May fter that date a change in the configuration of the site made it of the site a change in the configuration date fter that s: 106 asaleggio December 2013 December registered members registered (19 Jun. 2013) councillors; 6 mayors; 6 mayors; councillors; 42 R egional M P councillors; 50 senators deputies, participation in electionsgeneral ronconi ( 2015 ); www.beppegrillo.it ronconi 1217 meetups; 48,292 324 Municipal Grillo / G. C February 2013: First 2013: First February T arma); 19 asaleggio December 2012 December ec. 2012) ec. registered members (6 registered D councillors; 4 mayors 4 mayors councillors; (including P councillors R egional online consultation (on (on online consultation candidacies for general upcoming elections) ecember 2012: First 2012: First ecember 560 meetups; 31,612 213 Municipal Grillo / G. C D ); C ( http://amministratori.interno.it/index.html ocali e R egionali arty & L anzone on the ground: fficial he number of registered members is made available on occasion of some (not all) of the online votes on the blog beppegrillo. of some (not all) the online votes on occasion members is made available he number of registered T asaleggio December 2009 December launch of the party ctober 2009: O 178 meetups 15 Municipal councillors Grillo / G. C O mministratori L degli A mministratori A nagrafe nterno, – asaleggio asaleggio December 2005 December the blog beppegrillo.it July 2005: L aunch of meetups 35 meetups Grillo / G. C January 2005: Birth of ). P ( http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/full-list.html arliament he organisational evolution of the Movimento 5 Stelle. of the Movimento evolution he organisational arty dell’ I in public office: Ministero he data refer to the last available figures of each year. of each figures the last available to refer he data T impossible to track the number of groups affiliated to Beppe Grillo. to Beppe Grillo. affiliated the number of groups track impossible to it. European P European arty on the ground arty in public office arty office in central P ). A ( www.meetup.com website the official meetup 2013 through been collected until on the number of meetups have D ata N otes: P P Table 3. T Table P Source: otable events of the year N otable events 172 F. TRONCONI interested in the party’s values, and thus diminishing its internal cohesion, all the more so in a party that refused, as a matter of principle, to adhere to structured ideologies. Unless the party is ruled by a charismatic leader, this phase typically sees the rise of more or less organised factions, with groups of members trying to assert their respective ideological visions and priorities, or even just reflecting different competing personalities.6 Second, for anti-establishment parties, entering representative institutions and government is always a particularly delicate moment, because there is a risk of ‘normalising’ their image, assimilating it to the logic and behaviour of the elite they contest and from which they claim to be different. This is also true in media relations (Mazzoleni 2008). In the insurgent phase, prior to electoral success, anti-establishment parties enjoy considerable attention from the media, which help to publicise their unconventional mottos, the colourful—if not offensive— language and the innovative and controversial themes introduced in their debates. Conversely, when they enter representative assemblies or the government, the media begin to emphasise the gap between the fierce critiques that anti-establishment parties used in relation to the party system when they were outsiders, and the meagreness of their political once inside the institutions. The media, furthermore, are particularly keen on any scandal affecting the political staff of such parties, precisely because these parties have made their success on the back of standing as bastions of honesty in a putatively corrupt political system. Third, the presence of a nationally important political class (parliamentarians, but also mayors of large cities) poses an objective challenge to the party’s extra-parliamentary leadership for the political relevance and the media visibility it obtains (Katz & Mair 2002). The M5S responded to these three challenges through a series of organisational innovations and communication strategies, both within and beyond the party, which will now be articulated in turn. With this aim in mind, the following sub-sections will refer to secondary literature and press reports, but also documents made available from the party itself (the statute, the code of conduct), an analysis of the blog beppegrillo.it and the Rousseau online platform, as well as data on the party’s elected representatives available from the websites of the Ministry of the Interior, the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate.

Recruitment of political personnel The main goal of the party in central office was to limit the freedom of action of the elected candidates and thus the formation of factions. The first moves in this direction were the primary elections (or parlamentarie) of December 2012, an online vote to identify candidates for upcoming political elections and their location on the closed lists of the Italian electoral system. This procedure (also used for the European Parliament in 2014) was mainly aimed at defending the party from possible infiltrations and careerists. Participation was restricted to those who had enrolled in the blog by 30 September 2012. Moreover, the pool of possible candidates for the upcoming general elections was limited to non-elected candidates of previous local elections (Mosca, Vaccari & Valeriani 2015, pp. 135–136). This prevented the M5S from being overwhelmed with membership applications and candidacy requests solely for securing a seat in parliament. At the same time, it increased the likelihood that the profile of the candidates, and therefore of the future elected representatives, was close to that of the earlier activists, who had agreed to be included in the electoral lists in the party’s first (albeit hesitant) electoral venture. This profile was orientated more to of its own constituency and to some extent related to local political experiences (Farinelli & Massetti 2015). SOUTH EUROPEAN SOCIETY AND POLITICS 173

A second requirement for candidates in the M5S’s primaries was signing up to the ‘Code of Conduct’.7 Written by Grillo and Casaleggio, this document, replicated in subsequent years for the European Parliament and Rome’s municipal council, would legitimise the numerous expulsions of dissident parliamentarians. While some points seemed largely symbolic (e.g., ‘Members of Parliament will have to refuse the title of “honourable” and opt instead for “citizen”’) others were aimed at reducing the media exposure of future parliamentarians (‘Avoid participation in TV talk shows’) and still others were designed to locate control of parliamentary activities in the hands of the party in central office: the rotation of the parliamentary group leadership positions and the establishment of a ‘communications staff’ in each of the two chambers, which had ‘the task of liaising with the M5S national website and the blog of Beppe Grillo’ and was defined by Grillo himself (and before by Grillo and Casaleggio) ‘in terms of organisation, tools and choice of members’. This key position guaranteed the connection between the party in central office and the party in public office and it is, by statute, directly dependent on the party leader. The relationship between party in central office and party in public office was marked, over the years, by many contrasts, all resolved in favour of the former. By mid-2017, the expelled parliamentarians, by means of a post on the blog, numbered 40 (21 deputies, 19 per cent of the parliamentary group, and 19 senators, 35 per cent of the group), a clear indicator that internal pluralism is hardly tolerated. More complicated are relations with mayors, especially those of big cities. Here the M5S’s credibility as a future governing power is at stake. Moreover, the municipal electoral system ensures mayors a direct form of legitimacy from the voters that Members of Parliament do not enjoy. In this light, the political fortunes of the mayor of Parma Federico Pizzarotti are very telling. In 2012 he surprisingly won the municipal elections, thus becoming the first Five Star mayor of a big city. During 2016 and notwithstanding generally positive assessments of the work he was doing, he was removed from the Movement after lengthy public disputes with Grillo and other influential MPs. In June 2017 Pizzarotti was re-elected as an independent (34.8 per cent of the vote in the first ballot, 57.9 per cent in the runoff), while the official candidate of the M5S was only able to obtain 3.2 per cent of the vote. The Movement could disown its mayor, but this came at the cost of virtually disappearing from the city political landscape. Even at the European level, the nature of the relationship between parliamentarians and the party leadership was made clear by Grillo when, in January 2017, he announced via the blog a sudden and surprising change of direction: the abandonment of the Eurosceptic parliamentary group Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy to join the most Euro- enthusiastic parliamentary group, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe. The Liberals refused to accept the M5S, but some M5S MEPs complained that they had never been consulted about the decision and hence two of them abandoned the parliamentary group.

Style of communication and repertoire of action New political parties’ entry into representative institutions and government is always a critical moment (Pedersen 1982), all the more so for populist or anti-establishment parties, because of the risk of ‘normalisation’. Populist parties are by their very nature more suitable to represent the anger of citizens disappointed by politics than to taking on the many responsibilities inherent in representative and government processes (Mair 2009). The party 174 F. TRONCONI has to adapt to new codes of conduct and communication styles, but it must do so without losing its original spirit, that of the mockery of the establishment and protest against the casta (‘class’). This explains the need, in the new institutional environment, to persist with ‘over-the-top’ language and behaviour more typical of protest movements than elected representatives, which often appears to be aimed at attracting the attention of the media rather than that of representatives of other parties. For example, in September 2013 some M5S MPs occupied the roof of the Montecitorio Palace (the location of the Chamber of Deputies) as a protest against the constitutional reform proposal advanced by the Democratic Party. This copied a form of mobilisation sometimes adopted by workers at risk of losing their jobs or non-tenured researchers in universities who wanted to raise public awareness about their working conditions. In December of the same year, some M5S deputies occupied the government benches in the Chamber of Deputies in protest against an international agreement that provided for the construction of a gas pipeline from Albania through the Adriatic Sea to the Puglian coast (Mosca 2015, p. 167). The history of the Italian Republic does not, of course, lack for clamorous protests and rowdy parliamentary sessions. What is different from the past, however, is the frequency and systematic nature of such unconventional repertoires in traditional institutional settings. Bordignon & Ceccarini (2015, p. 468), counted some 30 such episodes by M5S deputies in the first two years of the 2013 legislative term, based on an analysis of the digital archives of the newspapers and . They were not occasional episodes, but a precise strategy to avoid the risk of M5S assimilation into the party system and to keep the media’s attention focused on the party’s unbending opposition to other parties and the party system as a whole.

Leadership and activists online participation The third challenge was the possibility that influential personalities would emerge within the party in public office, making themselves alternatives to the leadership of the founders Grillo and Casaleggio. This risk was heightened following the premature death of Gianroberto Casaleggio in April 2016. In November 2014, a ‘directorate’ of five parliamentarians was announced on the blog and confirmed on the same day by the vote of the members. This was the first explicit break with the principle of complete horizontality in the organisation of the party—obviously excluding the position of the two founders. More structurally, the aim was that of creating a core leadership group that went beyond the two founders and included the most influential MPs. However, it is clear that this enlargement did not result from a bottom–up but rather a top–down process of co-optation. The five members of the directorate were chosen by Grillo and Casaleggio on the basis of trust, and the decision could obviously be revoked at any time. And so it happened. Less than two years later, in September 2016, Grillo himself (Gianroberto Casaleggio had passed away a few months earlier) announced, at a public event in Palermo, that the directorate was dissolved, while issuing new rules of procedure which redefined the organisational map of the party. The new regulations established the figure of the ‘political leader’ (capo politico) of the party, who was obviously Beppe Grillo (although his name did not appear in the regulation), the members’ assembly, the organs of the board of arbitrators and the appeal committee, with the power to decide on disciplinary measures, albeit always subject to the possible overturn by Grillo. The management of all online voting operations, SOUTH EUROPEAN SOCIETY AND POLITICS 175 as well as all other matters concerning registrations and possible expulsions, was referred to the ‘website manager’, the web marketing company Casaleggio Associati, now headed by Gianroberto’s son, Davide. This company continued to be the heart of the organisational apparatus. In short, the new regulations formalised the role already outlined at the origin of the movement: the ‘political leader’ centralised to himself supreme power, or at least the power to appeal to members. Casaleggio Associati had the task of implementing the decisions thus taken. A few months before the adoption of the new regulations, in April 2016, the online participation platform called Rousseau was launched. This was another crucial step in defining the organisational map of the M5S, this time by defining the role and prerogatives of the party on the ground, and its linkage with the party in public office. The platform allowed the Movement’s members to vote on nominations and topics submitted to the activists,8 but also to interact directly with elected representatives at regional, national and European levels. In special sections it was possible to comment on the bills proposed to representative assemblies and to present for the attention of the elected members issues to be brought to parliament. In the intentions of its creators, this allowed a direct and continuous interaction between the militants and their ‘spokespersons’ in the decision-making arenas. The concrete effects were, however, modest, both for the way in which Rousseau was designed9 and because a proper discussion on technical issues requires specific knowledge that normally only belongs to the insiders or those who can count on the support of dedicated staff. The result was that the Rousseau platform mostly offered a showcase for the legislative initiatives of the M5S MPs, followed by a disorderly list of low-quality and largely ignored comments. In any case, parliamentary bills, and particularly those coming from the opposition, have a largely symbolic function because they are rarely scheduled for discussion. The result was that the activists’ contribution to the parliamentary activity through the online platform was close to zero. As a consequence, this experiment in is largely a symbolic achievement despite M5S’s claim of an unprecedented attempt to engage the people in the life of public institutions.10

Movement party, personal party, business firm party: an elusive organisational model As discussed above, on the eve of the 2013 elections the M5S could be described, with a margin of approximation, as a stratarchical party. What kind of party is it today at the end of a legislative term that witnessed its entry into parliament, the assumption of government responsibility in some major Italian cities and some significant internal organisational changes? Some authors (Ceccarini & Bordignon 2016, p. 156) have described the M5S as a movement party. In the definition of the proponent of this label (Kitschelt 2006, p. 280), ‘movement parties are coalitions of political activists who emanate from social movements and try to apply the organisational and strategic practices of social movements in the arena of party competition’. He also notes that movement parties ‘may be led by a charismatic leader with a patrimonial staff and personal following over which s/he exercises unconditional control. At the other extreme, movement parties may attempt to realise grassroots democratic, participatory coordination among activists’. The M5S combines these two elements: on the one hand the vertical control of the organisation by Grillo and Casaleggio and the repression 176 F. TRONCONI of internal dissidence; on the other, the attempt, however symbolic and with however little success, activists being given a decision-making role through the Rousseau online platform. Moreover, as we have seen, parliamentary activity is combined with a repertoire of action typical of protest movements. However, the M5S has never been a movement as such, if by this term we mean ‘dense informal networks of collective actors involved in conflictual relations with clearly identified opponents, who share a distinct collective identity, using mainly protests as their modus operandi’ (Della Porta & Diani 2006, pp. 20–21). From the very beginning, the movement created by Grillo and Casaleggio had in its two leaders not only an idealistic but also an organisational reference point; it had precise rules of inclusion and exclusion of militants, a political manifesto and a statute. It was, in other words, a formal organisation, where protest was at best one of its modi operandi, but not the main one. Finally, shortly after its birth it established a fundamental goal of entering institutions by recruiting candidates and participating in elections at all levels with its own symbol, something that specifically identifies political parties and distinguishes them from social movements. The label of personal party has also sometimes been associated with the M5S, especially by detractors, due to the ownership of the electoral symbol attributed to Grillo and the frequent recourse by the latter to the expulsion weapon against internal dissidents. The label ‘personal party’ was proposed by Calise (2000) and then defined by McDonnell (2013, p. 222) based on four criteria: (1) the party’s expected lifespan is seen (not only by commentators, but also by party representatives and members) as dependent on the political lifespan of its founder-leader; (2) organisation at local level is neither constantly manifest nor permanent; (3) there is an extremely strong concentration of formal and/or informal power in the hands of the founder-leader; (4) the party’s image and campaign strategies (in both first- and second-order elections) are centred on the founder-leader. The M5S, however, does not fully meet these criteria, not only because the founder-leaders are two (Grillo and Casaleggio), but also because their role within the organisation does not reflect that of other emblematic cases of this kind of party. Only the third criterion can be surely identified in the M5S organisation. It is questionable if the survival of the M5S is perceived as inextricably linked to that of its leader. An organisation at the local level has existed from the start, though with some peculiar features. Electoral campaigns, especially at a subnational level, are often organised independently of Grillo and without his assiduous participation. When the emphasis is instead placed on the role of Casaleggio Associati, the M5S is described as a business firm party. According to Hopkin & Paolucci (1999) this model, which has its main reference in Forza Italia, is characterised by the continuous confusion and overlap between the organisation of the party and that of the business firm of which the party is a direct emanation (in the case of Forza Italia, ’s Fininvest). If, therefore, the personal party is the direct emanation of the leader, the business firm party is the direct emanation of the enterprise and its ramifications. Even in this case, however, the representation captures only some aspects of the organisational reality of the M5S. Casaleggio Associati, which is not comparable to Fininvest in size and influence on the Italian economic and political system, is nonetheless certainly a nerve centre of the organisation of the M5S. But the party cannot be reduced to the corporate organisation. On the ground there is a network of activists who are not a direct emanation of the company. They are rather groups that emerge bottom–up and enjoy substantial autonomy from the centre, provided they do not go beyond the boundaries of local politics. In addition, if the organisation of the party SOUTH EUROPEAN SOCIETY AND POLITICS 177 depends heavily on Casaleggio Associati, which controls some vital functions, the company also depends on the activists who provide the recruitment pool for political personnel and who above all constitute the source of legitimacy for a party that aims to revolutionise politics by putting it into the hands of ordinary citizens.

Conclusion The party conceived by Grillo and Casaleggio between 2005 and 2009 was and remains an original political project. It has shaken Italian politics to a surprising degree, imposing its agenda and rallying cries on issues such as political professionalism and recruitment, funding and transparency. It has changed the rules of political communication through an innovative use of the internet. It has built an organisation from scratch, made of thousands of activists throughout the country, and convinced millions of voters to choose its symbol on the ballot paper at national, regional and local elections. It has shaped a new party system format and ‘forced’ the mainstream parties to cooperate with each other in the national government, given the M5S’s refusal to participate in coalition bargaining. It rules in cities such as Turin and Rome. At the same time, these remarkable successes have transformed the M5S itself. The party has by now lost some of its original characteristics and aspirations of radical renovation of the political process. From an organisational point of view, none of the labels associated with it can fully capture it. Nor can the indulgent self-description be accepted of a totally horizontal movement guided by the collective intelligence of the internet and inspired by the principles of direct democracy. Both in its genetic phase and the difficult period of institutionalisation, the M5S has sought to balance competing demands between: the autonomy of local groups on the one hand and national leadership control over political choices and strategies on the other; the participation of activists through the internet on the one hand and a (not even particularly well-disguised) manipulation of that participation on the other; open recruitment channels on the one hand and an unquestionable and undisputed leadership on the other. However contradictory they may seem to be, these features have allowed the M5S to survive and expand its presence and electoral support across the 2013–2018 legislative term, at the same time as maintaining a reasonable degree of internal coherence. This result cannot be taken for granted, and was achieved at the cost of ‘normalising’ (to some extent at least) the party, giving up the utopian promises of radical renewal of political participation and representation. The unprecedented electoral success of the M5S and its persistence must be explained as the result of concurrent factors. An environmental and anti-globalist appeal, together with Grillo’s communication skills, were important to attract the initial attention and expectations of a (mainly leftist) sector of the Italian electorate. They were interested in politics, informed and willing to participate, but kept at a distance by delegitimised, unattractive mainstream parties. This potential pool of voters had to be mobilised and kept together in a coherent political project. Here is where the innovative organisational aspects of the M5S have come into play in a decisive manner, for the M5S skilfully mixes old and new features: a charismatic authoritarian leadership and the bottom–up mobilisation of activists; original tools of political marketing (the blog, social networks) and a widespread territorial presence (the local assemblies, Grillo’s rallies in the Piazza). All this enabled the creation of a sense of community and enthusiastic participation that old parties could only hope for. 178 F. TRONCONI

At the same time, discipline was baldly enforced, in order to avoid the risks of factionalism. At a later stage, the expansion of the M5S’s electorate was then fostered by its ability to monopolise the theme of protest against the establishment at a time when political elites reached their lowest level of popularity, in the midst of an unprecedented economic crisis that left too many social groups impoverished and scared. The consolidation of the M5S as a leading actor of Italian politics is not inevitable, and will involve a careful adaptation to the parliamentary and, possibly, governmental institutional settings. This will probably require a further evolution in the party’s internal organisation, including a redefinition of Grillo’s leadership. It will also require a consolidation of its electoral appeal to voters on a defined and coherent set of issues, beyond that of anti-establishment protest. Until now, the party’s leadership has been able to meet such challenges, in spite of the scepticism of many observers, and voters have been very tolerant of the shortcomings and contradictions of the political project. There is no guarantee, though, that this tolerance or the favourable conditions that have facilitated its rise will last forever.

Notes 1. The two videos in which Casaleggio Associati explain their vision of the internet and how the internet will influence future society have unmistakable titles: Prometeus: The Media Revolution and Gaia, the future of politics. Both dating back to the beginning of the twenty-first century, they are still readily available on Youtube. 2. Only the Spanish elections of 1980, with the first success of the socialists, the Greek elections of 2012, in the midst of the financial crisis, and the Italian elections of 1994 have higher values: data from Emanuele (2015a). 3. The other new parties in 2013 elections were Mario Monti’s Scelta Civica (8.3 per cent of the votes) and Fare per fermare il declino (1.1 per cent). 4. According to the statute of the Movement, the headquarters are located in the website www. movimento5stelle.it, and previously in the blog www.beppegrillo.it. 5. The non-statute has undergone several changes over time since the original version of 2009. In particular, at the beginning of 2016, the ‘home’ was moved from the blog beppegrillo.it to the website www.movmento5stelle.it, where the blog is now hosted, and the reference to Beppe Grillo as proprietor and owner of the movement’s electoral symbol disappeared. 6. For the distinction between ‘careerists’ and ‘believers’ within political parties and the role of the charismatic leader in the institutionalisation of parties, see Panebianco (1988). 7. Codice Di Comportamento Eletti MoVimento 5 Stelle in Parlamento, available at http://www. beppegrillo.it/movimento/codice_comportamento_parlamentare.php. 8. It is worth pointing out that activists cannot propose any matter to vote on. The prerogative of deciding what to vote on and when belongs exclusively to Grillo. 9. For example, the platform allows exchanges between representatives and activists, but not among the activists themselves, so interaction is only vertical, unlike what happens in systems based on liquid feedback, designed to allow the deepening of themes through different stages of discussion among users. 10. On direct and participatory democracy as peculiar traits of the Movement’s political culture, see also Pasquino (2018).

Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author. SOUTH EUROPEAN SOCIETY AND POLITICS 179

Notes on contributor Filippo Tronconi is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Bologna, Department of Social and Political Sciences. His research interests cover the territorial aspects of political competition, party politics, political elites and legislative behaviour. He has recently edited Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement: Organisation, Communication and Ideology (Ashgate, 2015).

ORCID Filippo Tronconi http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4529-5968

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