The Five Star Movement’s victories in Italy’s mayoral elections: A major blow for Renzi and the PD**

Italy's Five Start Movement secured victory in mayoral elections in Rome and Turin on 19 June. James L. Newell and Arianna Giovannini interpret the results as a major blow for Italy's Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. Substantial problems now lie ahead for the Italian government, as the PM faces a looming referendum on constitutional reform on which he has staked of his political future.

On 5 and 19 June, Italians went to the polls for local elections with potentially extremely dramatic consequences for the Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi, and the future of Italian politics. Although only about a quarter of the electorate were involved, the elections have created major difficulties for Renzi as he seeks to mobilise support for major constitutional reform which is due to be voted on in a referendum to be held this autumn.

In the second, run-off, ballot, his governing Partito Democratico (PD) lost, among others, the symbolically important municipalities of Turin and Rome where the anti-political Five Star Movement (M5S) scored significant victories beating the PD by 55% to 45% in the former case and by an astonishing 67% to 33% in the latter. In the previous elections in 2013, the PD’s mayoral candidate had won almost double that proportion.

In these two cities, the results tell the story of a revolt against the ‘ancient regime’ of Italian politics, and can be read as the product of a growing sense of rage among the electorate against the establishment and ‘professional politicians’. The fact that the two young women – Virginia Raggi in Rome and Chiara Appendino in Turin – winning the mayoralties have little political experience has been seen as a strength rather than a hindrance for them, giving citizens an opportunity to cast their votes for ‘new faces’ and a fresh start.

This seemed to be especially necessary in the capital where in recent years local government, led by the centre-left, had been tainted by a level of corruption that had left the city in complete disarray. In Turin, another centre-left stronghold, local government certainly worked better than in Rome, but decades of PD administration had coincided with a high level of clientelism, which had marginalised voices from the more radical and locally entrenched left as well as civil society.

By thus seeming to have mismanaged, although in different ways, two key Italian cities, ‘Renzism’ in the eyes of the electorate has turned into what it had promised to change, and it has been punished for this. In popular perceptions, Renzi’s PD has become equated with the Europeanist and financial establishment and with the ‘Caste’ it aimed at eradicating. The paradox is obvious and has wide ranging implications: Matteo Renzi, the ‘scrapper’ whose mission was to get rid of the old and stale political class and bring in a once-in-a-generation political revolution has been himself ‘scrapped’ by the electors in two of the biggest cities in the country.

Whilst it is refreshing to see two young women being elected as mayors of two major cities, Sunday’s vote carries a bitter taste for both the left and the right, showing that the M5S is growing as a credible political alternative, one able successfully to appeal to voters from across the political spectrum – with major implications.

This could be seen in the results relating to the 154 municipalities with over 15,000 inhabitants, accounting for the vast majority of electors called to the polls: in 121 cases, there were run-off ballots because neither of the two best placed candidates on 5 June had won 50% of the vote; and although the Movement made it through to the second round in only twenty of these cases, where it did so, it won in all but one of them. The reason is easy to appreciate. As an anti-political catch-all party able to mobilise significant support, when it finds itself in a straight contest with a competitor of either the centre left or the centre right the M5S will attract the ballots not only of its own habitual voters but also those of the supporters of more or less all the parties opposed to the candidate it is trying to beat.
As such a party, the M5S was able to act as an effective vehicle of protest against Renzi and the governing PD – whose officials had betrayed their awareness of this fact in their insistence, during the campaign, that the vote was very much a local matter from which no particular conclusions for politics at national level could be drawn. And yet these elections seem to have acted as second-order elections, perceived by voters as an opportunity to punish or reward national-level public-office holders, as much as any local elections in the past. Perhaps more so: institutional reform since the early 1990s has enhanced the weight of political actors at sub-national level; the growing use of primaries since then has added to the media attention such elections are able to command. And heightened media salience means heightened political salience.

So no one is under any illusion about the extent to which Renzi has been damaged by these results which, given the context in which they have come about, will have effects on the political class and system well beyond the elections that have generated them. First, they will make it much more difficult for the Prime Minister to keep control of the turbulence within his own party, especially that part of it which is driven by opposition to the new electoral law he has managed to introduce for the Chamber of Deputies. This too is based on the principle of run-off ballots – which, once conceived as a means of excluding the M5S from power, have just been confirmed as offering unrivalled opportunities for the Movement.

Second, they will make it harder for the Prime Minister to win the referendum on which he has staked his political career; for by saying he will resign if the vote goes against him, he has effectively framed it as a plebiscite on a premiership the strength of which the local election results have just served to diminish. And if the referendum is lost, then lost, too, will be the package of constitutional reforms hanging on it. This may be no bad thing; but what is certain is that in such a scenario the democratic crisis currently affecting much of Europe will continue in Italy – either because an opportunity to address it effectively will have actually been lost, or because it will be widely perceived to have been lost.

**This article was originally published on LSE's EUROPP Blog 

IPSG Conference "2013 Italian general elections: Italian politics at the crossroads?"

On Friday 17 January, the Italian Politics Specialist Group organised a 1-day conference focussing on the results of the February 2013 election, and the effects these have had on the Italian Political system. The event attracted scholars and attendees from many UK and Italian universities, as well as members of Italian political parties in the UK, and practitioners.

Prof. Gainfranco Pasquino and Prof. Martin Bull 

The day started off with a great key-note address delivered by Prof. Gianfranco Pasquino. Quoting J.M. Keynes, the presentation opened with a deliberately controversial claim: "general elections are always dismal affairs". Drawing on this, Prof. Pasquino provded the audience with a compelling analysis of the most relevant data concerning the election and post-election scenario. Firstly, he argued that the February '13 election showed that the Italian society is highly fragmented, and the Italian political parties are particularly good at representing such fragmentation. Interestingly, drawing on primary data, he showed the audience that this trend is not a new one -- in fact, very little has changed between 1994 and 2013. Another interesting point raised by Prof. Pasquino concerns the number of new parties in the Italian political system. Between 1994 and 2013 a plethora of new parties have emerged, whilst many other have changed their name and/or structure -- so that, currently, the Northern League is the oldest party in Italy. On the whole, in 1993 the average age of the party system was 38.1, while in 2013 such average has dropped to 6.4. This shows the fragmentation and instability of the Italian political system in the post-tangentopoli era, and led Prof. Pasquino to develop a reflection on what it should take to overcome an instability that seems to be intrinsic to the logics and structures of Italian parties. In this sense, one of the key issues seems to concern what he defined the "partyness of governments", underlining how, especially in recent years, many Ministers do not have purely political expertise, resulting in the creation of governments made of non-party members -- i.e. inexperienced politicians who do not have neither the 'know-how' or the 'know-whom', as Pasquino put it, to deliver. Prof. Pasquino concluded his speech identifying two main consequences of the 2013 election: 1) Italy has now a "government of the Quirinale", which relies (and depends) on President Napolitano; 2) the system remains totally in flux, and is characterised by an unstable government with a PM (Letta) and three extra-parliamentary leaders: Grillo, Berlusconi and Renzi.

Audience & presenters

The day then continued with excellent papers being presented by some of the foremost experts in Italian politics.

The first panel (Political Parties and the Challenges ahead) looked at key topics such as:
1) the election of the new leader of the PD, through a paper presented by Prof. Fulvio Venturino and Dr Natascia Porellato;
2) the way in which the FiveStar MoVement is 'changing' now that it is in office, thanks to a paper co-authored by Dr Fabio Bordigno and Dr Luigi Ceccarini
3) primary elections within the PD, 5SM, and Left, Ecology, Freedom, with a paper co-authored by Marco Valbruzzi and Dr Natascia Porcellato

The second panel (Media & Campaigns) focussed on political communication strategies during the electoral campaign, and focussed on the role of entertainment media (paper by Dr Antonio Ciaglia and Dr Marco Mazzoni) and questions of issue ownership (paper by Dr Antonella Seddone and Dr Giuliano Bobba).

Dr Elisa Lello, Prof. Martin Bull and Dr Daniele Albertazzi

The third panel (Key Themes & Open Questions) looked at the way in which younger Italian perceive politic, thanks to a fascinating paper presented by Dr Elisa Lello. Then, Eva Garau presented a paper on the paradox of the rhetoric of immigration in Italy, and finally Prof. Martin Bull and Elisabetta Cassina-Wolff analysed in-depth the main issues surrounding the process of institutional and constitutional reforms in Italy.

The day came to a close with a thought-provoking round-table discussion on the future of Italy, focussing in particular at the short-term and long-term effects of 1) the reformation of Forza Italia: 2) the election of Renzi as the secretary of the PD. Prof. Guglielmo Meardi, Prof. Anna Cento-Bull, Prof. Gianfranco Pasquino and Prof. Martin Bull contributed to the debate with timely reflections.
Some of the main conclusions were: 1) that the reformation of Forza Italia is a way in which Berlusconi is trying to prolong his political life, and to 'mark his territory' -- showing former allies (and potential 'heirs' like Alfano) that he is still in the game. 2) that Renzi on the one hand is possibly one of the last hopes for the Italian left, and yet, quoting Prof. Pasquino he "does not know what he wants, he does not know what he thinks he wants, but he knows that he wants it now".

Round-table panellists.
From left to right:
Prof. Meardi, Prof. Cento-Bull, Dr Albertazzi, Prof. Pasquino and Prof. Bull

1 Day Conference: "2013 ITALIAN GENERAL ELECTION: ITALIAN POLITICS AT THE CROSSROADS?"

The Italian general election of February 2013 can fairly be described as a watershed event, resulting as it did in a political stalemate. With the country more or less divided into three equal segments among which there appeared to be no viable governing combination it was not until the end of April that a government could be formed, and then it was only thanks to the fact that the election’s aftermath coincided with the need to elect a new President of the Republic. The centre-left appeared to have won the election by a wafer-thin margin - but it had no Senate majority and, most importantly, it emerged in front only by virtue of the fact that the haemorrhage in its votes was slightly smaller than the haemorrhage of votes for the centre right. Support for the newly formed Five-star Movement (M5s), at its first general-election outing, exploded dramatically, to make it the largest single party. As a consequence of the outcome, neither of the logics on which government formation had been based in the ‘First’ and ‘Second Republics’, the consensual and the majoritarian respectively, was any longer available. If therefore, the election seemed to mark the end of an era, the one that appeared to be being ushered in pointed in the direction of a highly uncertain future.
Against this background, the University of Birmingham will host a one-day conference on 17 January 2014 focussing on the future of Italian politics after the general election of February 2013. 

You can follow the conference on Twitter using the hashtag #ItalianPolitics

CONFERENCE PROGRAMME (Including links to papers**):

9.30 – 9.40                 Welcome address (Arianna Giovannini)

9.40 – 10.40               Key-note address

                                   Gianfranco Pasquino (John Hopkins University, Bologna, Italy)

10.40 – 12.10             Session 1: Political Parties and the challenges ahead

·       A New Start?The Selection of the fifth Secretary of the Democratic Party – Fulvio Venturino & Natascia Porcellato (University of Cagliari)

·       After theElections: A Test for the Five Star Movement – Fabio Bordignon & Luigi Ceccarini (University of Urbino)

·       The Window onthe Secret Garden of Politics: MPs’ Primary Elections in the Democratic Party, Five Star Movement and Left Ecology Freedom – Marco Valbruzzi (EUI) & Natascia Porcellato (University of Cagliari)  **please note that this paper will be presented in Italian. An English version of the paper will be available to download ahead of the conference. 

12.15 – 13.15              Session 2: Campaigns & Media

·      Agenda’sDynamics in the Mainstream Media During the 2013 Electoral Campaign – Giuliano Bobba & Antonella Seddone (University of Turin)

·      New Forms of Media Partisanship? The 2013 Electoral Campaign from the Perspective of Entertainment Media – Marco Mazzoni (University of Perugia) & Antonio Ciaglia (SUM, Florence)

 14.30 – 16.30              Session 3: Key Themes & Open Questions

·      Do YoungerItalians Prefer ‘Technocratic’ Politics? An Interpretation of Young People’s Voting Behaviour – Elisa Lello (University of Urbino)

·      The Paradox ofthe Rhetoric on Immigration in Italy. From 2013 Electoral Manifestos to Lampedusa, via Kyenge – Eva Garau (University of Cagliari)

·      ‘Eye of theStorm’: the Italian 2013 Elections and Institutional Reform – Martin Bull (University of Salford)

·      Letta’sGovernment and Constitutional Reforms – Elisabetta Cassina Wolff (University of Oslo)

17.00 – 18.00              Round Table Discussion (Moderated by Daniele Albertazzi)

Gianfranco Pasquino (John Hopkins University, Bologna); Anna Cento Bull (University of Bath); Gugliemo Meardi (Warwick University); Martin Bull (University of Salford)

18.00 – 18.15              Concluding Reflections

                                    James L. Newell (University of Salford)

**   Please note that all the papers are works in progress, and should not be quoted for any purpose without the authors' permission.             

2013 Italian General Election – Italian Politics at a Crossroads?

 

One-day conference, 17 January 2014, University of Birmingham

Organised with the support of the Political Studies Association, the PSA’s Italian Politics Specialist Group and the Department of Modern Languages, University of Birmingham

Registrations are now open for the conference "2013 Italian General Election: Italian Politics at the Crossroads?".

 .
Attendance to the event is free of charge and refreshments will be provided.

However, places are limited and participants need to register online by Tuesday 10 December. 

Details of the conference, including the programme for the day and the online registration form, can be found at this link.

For further information about the event, please contact: ipsg.conference@gmail.com

On Italy's streets, Five Star still twinkles

by Duncan McDonnell (EUI)

(This article was originally published at The Conversation. Read the original article.)

Emergency over. Nothing to see here folks. Move on. That was more or less the message on Tuesday morning from Italy’s main newspapers. They were talking about the supposedly poor results of the Movimento Cinque Stelle (M5S – Five Star Movement) in a round of local elections held on Sunday and Monday. An article in the main financial daily Il Sole 24Ore was typical, referring to Beppe Grillo’s “flop” and claiming that the M5S’s performance bolstered Enrico Letta’s new coalition government of his centre-left Partito Democratico (PD – Democratic Party) and Silvio Berlusconi’s Popolo della Libertà (PDL – People of Freedom).

In my last column, I wrote about how the abdication by mainstream political parties in favour of technocratic governments damages those same parties and leaves the door open for outsiders promising to restore responsive government to the people. Italy is a case in point. At the February general election, the M5S stunned observers by taking 26% of the vote, the best debut result in post-war Italian history (barring, obviously, the first set of elections). When the PDL and PD respectively abandoned government and opposition to support Mario Monti’s technocratic administration in November 2011, the M5S had been loitering around at under 5% in the polls.

Less than 18 months later, it found itself with 162 MPs (all of them novices) and over 8.6 million votes. The PD, widely expected to triumph easily, lost over three million voters compared to the 2008 general election. The PDL lost over six million. Although the PD’s centre-left coalition just about came first, it secured less than 30% overall and was unable to form a government. And so the PD leaders, like so many before them, climbed into bed beside Berlusconi. This in turn has left the M5S as the largest opposition force in parliament and better-placed than ever to point the finger at the PD and PDL as being essentially the same.

Yet, to read Italy’s columnists and listen to those on a wide variety of the country’s awful current affairs shows this week, one would think that the M5S bubble has already burst. Why? Well, in the very limited set of local elections this weekend, the M5S did nothing like as well as it had in February. Most notably, in Rome – the only one of Italy’s major cities to vote – the relatively unknown M5S candidate for mayor trailed in a distant third with 12.8%. A far cry, Italy’s media gleefully pointed out, from the 27.3% of the vote gained by the M5S in the same city at the general election. Grillo and his movement, so the logic now goes, are on the wane.

Not really. In reality, the media reaction is a mixture of analytical illiteracy and wishful thinking. Let’s take these in order. Firstly, comparing general and local elections as though they were the same is – to put not too fine a point on it – just dumb. In personalised contests for directly-elected mayors, it is entirely normal that a new political force whose local candidates do not have a high profile akin to those of longer-standing parties will be penalised. If we factor in that some of those who voted for the M5S in February made up their minds at the last minute and cannot be considered firm supporters, while others either don’t vote in local elections or decide on the basis of the candidate, then these local results seem less dramatic. Indeed, if you had said to most commentators a year ago that the M5S candidate would get a double digit result in a city like Rome in 2013, they would have laughed.

In fact, the key statistic from these elections was not the M5S result, but the turnout, which fell across the country. In Rome, it declined from 74% to 53%. The PDL sitting mayor in the city saw his number of votes drop by over 400,000. The PD’s candidate, although placing first, got 374,000 votes less than his predecessor in 2008. Italians, who have traditionally voted in greater numbers than most other citizens in Europe, are increasingly choosing not to do so. Disillusioned with the political offer, they are voting with their feet.

Secondly, since most of the Italian media have long held the view that Grillo and the M5S are little other than irresponsible and anti-democratic rabble-rousers, these results have given them something to grab onto. Their hope seems to be that, if they say “it’s falling apart” loud enough, it might come true. Of course, this is not entirely implausible. As I’ve already written here, the M5S is to some extent a victim of its own success. It would be no easy task for any new party to handle the organisational difficulties which such a swift rise brings. And this is even more so for a movement like the M5S which lacks a national central office and the co-ordinating vertical and horizontal structures of normal parties.

However, despite the media noise, the overall outlook for the M5S remains good. I spent most of last week in the north east of Italy, talking to elected representatives and local activists of the movement for a new research project. They are well aware of the difficulties they face. They know that transforming so rapidly from a grassroots organisation with no elected representatives into one of the country’s principal political forces poses massive challenges. And they know they need to join the dots between the different levels of an evolving movement and find better ways of communicating. Nonetheless, they are convinced that the PD and PDL have far bigger troubles.

They are right. Confidence in Letta’s administration is at 45% after its first month in office – the lowest of any new Italian government in the past 20 years. Meantime, the PD elites continue to do what they have always done best: fight among themselves in public over a range of issues from which reforms they should support to who should lead the party. As for the PDL, it continues to show no signs of being anything other than a personal party, still utterly dominated by Berlusconi and unlikely to last beyond his political lifespan. Both the PD and PDL thus have very serious question marks over their long-term futures. And, if they can look beyond rejoicing at the M5S results, they’ll see that just as in the general election, at the local elections they both lost another large chunk of voters compared to last time around. This week, they may be fiddling in Rome. But their parties continue to burn. 

Beppe Grillo

MoVimento 5 Stelle -- analysis of a political 'phenomenon'

In many respects, the Five Star Movement (M5S) has emerged as one of the most interesting new political players in the February 2013 Italian general election -- catalysing a vast number of votes and, once in office, refusing to collaborate with any other established political party in the formation of a new government.

Being a fairly recent political formation, the rise and success of the M5S is extremely interesting for political and social scientists. The Italian journal Comunicazione Politica has dedicated its April issue to the M5S, where some of the foremost Italian political analysts offer an interpretation of the roots of the movement, the reasons at the basis of its success, its communication styles, and the key questions of leadership, structure and organisation.

The volume can be accessed at the following link:

Grillo and the 5 Star Movement. Analysis of a political 'phenomenon'.