Beyond digital utopianism: civic culture and visions of political participation among Five Star Movement activists

The Five Star Movement (M5S) has commonly been labelled as a populist movement with a cross party-appeal and a critical discourse against the Italian political establishment. Simultaneously, various authors underline the digital utopianism put forward by the M5S and the use of online platforms as a means to make tangible the direct democratic ideals advocated by the movement, both within the Italian political system and as a principle of internal organization. Most of these contributions underline the centrality of reflections about (digital) democracy in the political project of M5S. Despite the overwhelming academic interest about the M5S, field activists - i.e. individuals who have been involved not only on the digital platforms but also physically in campaigning and local activities - have rarely been studied, with some exceptions. More than a decade after the irruption of the M5S in the Italian landscape, and years after the instalment of innovative digital participation tools by the party, what are the visions of political participation advocated by its activists? This is the research question guiding this paper. In this paper, we argue that M5S field activists defend a view of the political participation based on what we could call the development of a “civic culture” (Almond and Verba 1963) or a “civic community” (Putnam, Leonardi, and Nanetti 1994). Rather than defending a permanent direct democracy mediated by technology, most of the activists interviewed support a democratic ideal based on a demanding role for ordinary citizens, who should be highly interested in politics and politically involved not only during elections but also active on a day to day basis in their local arena. This ideal goes hand in hand with a negative vision of the Italian citizen judged as incapable of playing this role for a mix of reasons including the lack of political education, the failures of political parties, the lack of ideals or the permanency of materialist values. Our article also demonstrates how political involvement in the M5S and the disillusion caused by digital tools of political participation within the party shaped their democratic aspirations and transformed their visions, making them warier of direct democracy, of digital tools and of their fellow citizens. As such, the article taps and wants to contribute to the wider literature on democratic aspirations, and on the democratic digitalization of parties and social movements. Methodologically, we rely on thematic discourse analysis of 39 qualitative interviews conducted in 2022 with former or current M5S field activists in two regions where the movement is or has been particularly strong and well implanted electorally: Emilia-Romagna and Campania. The selection of the interviewees diversified the profiles of activists by taking into account their age, gender, level of politicization prior to the movement, political orientation and geographical location.