The Five Star Movement in government: A rebel at the wheel?

In the last decade, new kinds of European populist parties and movements deeply dissatisfied with representative democracy and characterized by a left wing, right wing or “eclectic” attitude have succeeded in entering the higher political institutions, not only within the parliament but also within the cabinet as major or junior coalition partners. In particular, since 2018 Italy has experienced three different governments where the eclectic and anti-party Five Star Movement has played a major role as coalition partner first of the radical right wing populist League (2018-2019) and then of the mainstream center left Democratic Party (2019-2021). In addition to this, at present the Five Star Movement is a coalition partner of the current Draghi Government. Such a scenario offers the right tools to investigate to what extent the anti-system Five Star Movement has remained faithful to its original principles and populist attitude or if it has itself been a “victim” of the influence of other parties and the institutional environment in which it has played, especially since 2018. In particular, according to this research based on the ideological definition of populism and on a new “revised” model of the inclusionary exclusionary framework to classify populist parties, the eclectic character and strong internal horizontal democracy of the Five Star Movement play a crucial role in order to answer this question. Taking into consideration the years 2017- 2020 the present investigation will first conduct a qualitative analysis of the Five Star Movement in order to depict its profile, goals and organizational structure and how this might have changed over time. Second, we will make use of quantitative and qualitative content analysis on parliamentary speeches and press conference statements in order to measure the degree of populism of the Five Star Movement and how this might have changed over time. Third, in order to dig into the Five Star Movement’s world and find out if it still reflects the original anti-system principles and if it is still based on a strong internal horizontal democracy, this study collected 33 semi-structured interviews with Five Star Movement representatives at the national, regional and local level in 2021. To be noted that this research can also rely on 20 interviews with Five Star representatives collected in 2017 with the same questionnaire. As a source of data, we will address public sources such as public statements, official manifestos, parliamentary speeches and semi structured interviews. The importance of this research is threefold. First, it will contribute to understanding if populists in power necessarily need to tone down their anti-system character in order to survive. Second, the eclectic Five Star Movement represents a case in point of populists in power because of its features as a post ideological actor and because it has already experienced two government coalitions with two completely different political players. Third, this study introduces novelties within the study of populism because it proposes a new way to operationalize the ideological approach and because through its interviews it shows what populists think of populism.