Italy has been, for the last couple of decades, not only the sick man of an already not particularly healthy European Union, but also a very interesting laboratory of what kind of politics the future may bring about in other western countries. After all, the universally criticised Silvio Berlusconi was just an anticipation of Donald Trump; meanwhile the Northern League, which at 25 is already Italy’s oldest political party, has been a precursor of the many anti-immigration movements that have been recently flourishing everywhere. Likewise Sunday’s major elections in Italy’s largest cities marked a turning point in Italian politics that may prove to be prophetic for many other countries.
The Five Star Movement (M5S) won a landslide victory against prime minister Matteo Renzi’s Democratic party (PD) in Rome, where the 37-year-old Virginia Raggi has been elected the first female mayor of the capital. It also won the ballot in Turin, where another woman, Chiara Appendino, 31, ousted the sitting mayor Piero Fassino, one of the founders of the PD.
What makes these events so remarkable is that this is the first time that a movement that has rapidly grown out of the radical critique of the “establishment” will have to establish itself in a more stable political organisation, without losing much of the novelty of its own approach. This institutionalisation of a different approach to policymaking will be necessary in order to respond to the challenge of governing two important cities, which will be clearly seen as a test of its mettle for governing the country.
As Alessandro Di Battista, one of the leaders of the M5S, put it, as of today the movement is not just about protest: it will be about translating protest into solving problems that others have failed to do – by bringing a novel approach to politics. The M5S does, in fact, share with other successful movements the capability to address two malaises that are putting at risk the very cohesion of western societies.
Economically, in Italy – like in other European countries or even the USA – the middle class has almost completely missed out on all the opportunities of globalisation and, more particularly, most young people have been left out of the shelter of generous welfare states. Politically, people increasingly feel that their opinions do not matter and the real issue is that the traditional machinery of representative democracies is not capable any longer of responding to expectations that social networks have dramatically changed.
The M5S has responded to these demands in an original way, both in terms of the process of discussing such issues and elaborating their positions online; and the effect, unlike Podemos in Spain or even the Pirates in Germany, is to portray itself as post-ideological and therefore beyond both the left and the right camp.
The recent death of Gianroberto Casaleggio, who was the real mastermind of M5S, and the decision of Beppe Grillo, the comedian-turned-politician and founder of the movement, to distance himself from the party, have both allowed a breed of potential new leaders, such as Raggi and Appendino, to rise.
In the meantime, Matteo Renzi has not found a way to change Italy as much as he promised and this may have created the political void that the movement has filled.
But now the M5S faces its toughest test yet. This is especially true in Rome, a city that simply cannot survive without taking decisions that will hurt part of the constituency that may have supported political change.
However, paradoxically a “populist” movement may have a chance where “established” political parties have miserably failed to make acceptable choices that will involve sacrifices, by engaging people into a broader project of transformation. Italy’s crisis can provide the right conditions for an experiment that may influence even M5S’s competitors in Italy and change the approach to politics elsewhere.
