Anti-Party Parties in Germany and Italy

Protest Movements and Parliamentary Democracy

Andrea De Petris, Thomas Poguntke

• Editore: LUISS University Press
• Anno: 2015
• ISBN:
  9788868560416
• Argomento: Politics & International Relations
• Categoria: Democracy

Populist, extremist or anti-system parties are not new in the European political scene. At various times in contemporary history, Europe has experienced the rise and development of political movements that have made extremism the particular characteristic of both their political message and their modus operandi. A rather unusual phenomenon is instead related to the so-called "anti-party parties", which have become more prominent in several European countries in recent years. This book focuses on two such extremely diverse examples as the Italian and the German case, presenting studies of the anti-party parties in the two systems produced by an experienced group of legal and political science scholars. This approach pursues two goals: on the one hand, to explain the characters, as well as to highlight similarities and differences, of the examples of anti-party parties existing in Italy and Germany, in order to enhance our understanding of this political phenomenon; on the other hand, to explore whether this study can provide useful elements in order to determine whether the "anti-party party"is a model on its own rather than an operative method that all political movements, extremist or mainstream, might adopt at some point in the near future – especially if it should happen to appear successful at the polls. Should the second hypothesis be confirmed, we could be dealing with a widespread "anti-party" state-of-mind very soon. In any case, it seems that the time to start adequate investigation of this phenomenon has finally come.

Programs, Strategies and Goals

of Anti-Party Parties

Programs, Strategies and Electoral Campaigns

of the Five Stars Movement in Italy.

A brand new Party Model

or an "Anti-Party" State of Mind?

Andrea De Petris

introduction

The absolutely unexpected performance of the Five Stars Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle – M5S) was by far the most remarkable event of the 2013 Italian national elections81. Surprised by this astonishing result, media, politicians, political and legal scholars suddenly concentrated their attention on the newcomer within the Italian party system, debating on the reasons for this electoral triumph. Many analyses concentrated on the peculiar character of the party, which systematically attempts to emphasize its alleged differences from all other political movements82. The intention of the M5S, founded by the extremely popular ex-comedian Beppe Grillo in 2009, seems to question the historical structure of the Italian party system under all perspectives: founding documents, programs, communications strategies, political goals. The crisis of the conventional political representation convinced many Italians to consider Grillo’s theoretic approach as the only way to enact valid political purposes, pursuing a radical alternative to traditional parties. Therefore, the M5S seems to have established a brand new “Party form” in the Italian political landscape, made of different communication strategies, innovative statutory documents, original selection procedures of party’s candidates, alternative ideas to be achieved by the party’s representatives in local, regional and national assemblies.

In its first five parts, this contribute intends to summarize a description of all these atypical tactics and plans adopted by Grillo’s movement, with the aim to underscore its eventual effective differences from the “usual” strategies adopted by most of the other Italian parties. Even if, on the one hand, the time seems still too short to evaluate if these strategies will bring any effective results in the next future and the Five Stars Movement will gain a stable position in the Italian party system for the years to come, on the other hand, the growth of the M5S with its pioneering methods rises the question if we are facing a brand new form of political movement, which does not fit in the traditional party classifications, or if we are dealing with a different sort of political phenomenon. Therefore, in its final part this article tries to verify if the M5S can be considered a prototype of a brand new kind of political party, that we could call “Anti-Party Party”, or if its innovative nature is rather made of novel attitudes and strategies, implanted in an already existing type of political movement.

1. a personified (and maybe blogified) party

If there is an element that can be assumed as the main character of the M5S, from its origins on, it is that it has been built, developed and directed by Beppe Grillo as a “personal movement”, with a very deep relationship between the Italian (former) comedian and its political creation. Nevertheless, this relationship evolved in a very different way from the usual “personal parties”, whose leaders mostly build a movement modeled after their own image and ideals, and whose members tend to act as simple acritical followers.

On the one hand, in fact, Grillo and his supporters developed a link of mutual interdependence, since his choices have been often influenced by the positions and requests of the M5S’ members, or by the expectations of the participants to the party’s initiatives. On the other hand, the communication forms adopted by the M5S, mainly based on the messages posted on the Grillo’s extremely popular Blog83, often conditions the agenda of the movement and shapes specific goals and initiatives pursued by the supporters at both local and national level. The mutual influence between the Internet page and the party is so strong that the party statute mentions the Blog (a virtual space) as the official “headquarter” of the movement (a physical, material association)84.

As unique owner of the Blog, Grillo maintains a firm control on the activities of party members and supporters; this allows him to keep a position of undisputed primacy, if compared with the roles held by the rest of the movement85. Nevertheless, two analysts of the M5S observed that this kind of relationship leaves many problems of the so-called “institutionalization of charisma” phenomenon unresolved, meaning a party’s organization where links among leaders, management and supporters tend to be more functional, avoiding risks of anarchy and authoritarianism86. Besides, a recent study denounced omissions, irregularities and abuses allegedly made on the Blog by Grillo and the other co-founder of the M5S, Gianroberto Casaleggio, in order to keep the movement under their firm and absolute control, and to establish a sort of “digital dictatorship” within the party87. Matter of fact is that, so far, no official information has been provided by the M5S leadership about the existence of external third subjects entitled to verify the regular operating of the Blog.

2. a “non-association” with a “non-statute”

One of the peculiar characters of the M5S is its systematic refuse to adopt definitions and lexicon in use by traditional parties. Therefore, the movement presents itself in front of the public opinion as a “Non-Association” based on a “Non-Statute” (Constitution Charter), claims not to be a political party and refuses to adopt “normal” founding documents. Besides – as already mentioned – the movement does not have a system of local venues, nor a material organization structure on the national level. However, the decision of Grillo and the other co-founders of the movement to call its basic charter “Non-Statute”88 is already a clear sign of their wish to underline a radical diversity between the M5S and the rest of the Italian political parties.

The differences between the “Non-Statute” and correspondent documents of other parties do not concern only its name, but also its structure. Just to give a few examples, the Silvio Berlusconi’s Popolo della Libertà (PdL), which on November 16th, 2013 readopted its original name Forza Italia (FI), has a statute89 made of 52 articles divided in 7 sections plus final provisions, and amounts to 8,064 words; the Partito Democratico (PD) statute90 counts 47 articles distributed in 9 sections, for a total of 11,944 words; the Nuovo Centro Destra (NCD), which split from the PdL in 2013, approved its statute91 on April 13th, 2014: the document counts 31 articles and 6,921 words. The M5S “Non-Statute”, instead, counts only 7 articles and 597 words, what makes it by far the shortest political party Charter in Italian history.

In its first article, the “Non-Statute” declares the special nature of the movement, which is officially defined as a “Non-Association”. In order to clarify what this should mean, the article explains that the M5S should be considered as a “vehicle of discussion and consultation” originated on the already mentioned Grillo’s Blog www.beppegrillo.it. Therefore, according to this definition, the Five Stars Movement sees itself as an instrument for the diffusion of topics and matters contained in Grillo’s Blog among the public opinion, rather than as a typical political movement, whose goals and strategies usually consist in gaining people’s support and political representation in the public institutions. Art. 1 of the “Non-Statute” shows a further relevant difference with other political parties, when it states that the location of the M5S corresponds to the web address www.beppegrillo.it: this transforms what used to be a physical place for traditional movements to a virtual site available only on the World Wide Web. In order to further clarify the exclusively virtual dimension of the movement, Art. 1 ends with the indication of a specific E-mail ([email protected]) as the only officially recognized instrument for communications with the party: no telephone numbers or postal addresses are provided. It is quite evident that such an approach aims to confer the M5S a completely different status from all other political movements in Italy, as well as to categorically refuse all those typical tools and operating modes usually adopted by its competitors. At the same time, Art. 1 makes clear that it is not possible to find the M5S anywhere in real space: local, regional or national venues do not exist, “material” traditional meetings or interviews with party’s staff, directive boards, presidents or similar cannot take place. According to Art. 1, the only place where the communication with the party is possible is the Internet – a fact that deeply changes the perception of the movement by citizens and media.

Art. 2, which deals with party’s temporal expectations, specifies that, being “a non-association”, the movement does not have a predetermined duration.

Art. 3 continues to emphasize the uniqueness of the movement as it affirms that the name of the “5 Stars Movement” results to be connected to a trademark registered on behalf of Beppe Grillo, who is therefore “the sole owner of the right to use” it. In other words, the only person legally entitled to use the name of the party, formally handled as a commercial brand, is Beppe Grillo: without his consent, nobody else – not even party’s members, staff or representatives in public institutions – is allowed to make any use of it. The party’s name ends therefore to be regarded as a commercial brand, and is officially assimilated to a private company, whose only owner is a single physical person. It seems easy to predict that such a concept for a party’s name risks to arise heavy conflicts with the public function that a political movement is expected to perform when it is created.

Art. 4 declares the M5S’s “scope and goal”. In its first part, the article recalls the already mentioned Blog www.beppegrillo.it as the privileged platform whose services will serve as basis for the party’s activities. Besides, the experiences gathered by so-called “Meetup” groups92, public actions and demonstrations promoted by the Blog, as well as by the so-called “Certified Civic Lists”93, should also inspire the Five Stars Movement in its future political efforts. All these knowledge, practices, involvements and skills represent the starting point for the selection of individuals aiming not only at running as party’s candidates for local, regional, national and European elections, but also at supporting and promoting party’s campaigns. Therefore, there is a clear intention to establish a tight connection between “virtual” goals and initiatives endorsed in Grillo’s Blog on the one hand, and “real” actions and programs implemented by the M5S on the other hand. The key tool for this effort, as declared in Art. 4, is the Internet, which is recognized as the central instrument “in the process of consultation, deliberation, decision and choice for the movement itself”. According to the “Non-Statute”, the Web is therefore the special background where the virtual connects with the material dimension of the movement, featuring it as a unique pattern in the Italian political landscape.

Should this not be a sufficient attempt to make of the M5S an extraordinary example of political movement, Art. 4 goes on affirming that it “is not a political party nor does it have the goal of becoming one in the future”: a nearly dogmatic declaration, which surely risks to result puzzling to the most. Indeed, it is not very understandable how an organization evidently created in order to gain political consent, to select candidates and to run for elections should refuse to exist as a political party. The explanation is given in the remaining part of Art. 4, where it is clarified that the effective goal pursued...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Foreword
• Preface and acknowledgments
• Parliamentary Elections in Italy and Germany: Results and Implications
• The Legal Framework of Party Systems Compared
• Programs, Strategies and Goals of Anti-Party Parties
• Anti-Party Sentiment and the Evolution of the Party System
• Round Table