"Five stars” in the political sky of Italy

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