Abstract
Abstract: With the rapid diffusion of Social Media, grassroots political organizations are starting to use supportive technologies to avoid party representation. The Pirate Party in Germany and the Five Stars Movement (5SM) in Italy are trying to use the interactive democracy paradigm to renew the institutional framework of political representation from the bottom up. This paper aims to analyse the case of Beppe Grillo and 5SM that - after a successful showing in administrative elections – has been involved - for the first time - in a national election (2013). How the 5SM - as a virtual party without a structured organization – will solve the problems related to its institutionalization and how the “proxy vote” will be used in parliament are the main questions, which scholars are debating. It is a unique occasion to see if this emerging model of a political form will evolve into a democratic rather than a cybercratic organization.
Highlights
Grillo was a TV comedian until 1987, when he became a persona non grata on State TV after drawing people’s attention to the corruption in Bettino Craxi, the Prime Minister’s Socialist Party
When Grillo organised the Vaffa-day in Bologna in September 2007 to rally support for a grass-roots change to legislation consisting of three points the response from politicians was strangely supercilious – viewing him as some kind of “court jester” trying to perform on the serious stage of politics
It’s at this point that we witness the transformation of a generic Internet public into a fandom and into a structured group of activists working on behalf of a political project
Summary
Grillo was a TV comedian until 1987, when he became a persona non grata on State TV after drawing people’s attention to the corruption in Bettino Craxi, the Prime Minister’s Socialist Party Since he has made a living from performing in theatres, from the sale of his books and from his blog. It’s at this point that we witness the transformation of a generic Internet public into a fandom and into a structured group of activists working on behalf of a political project. The 5SM activists appear very radical as regards public administration, the media, the jobs market but much less so when it comes to support for a women’s quota in parliament or the abolition of the legal value of a university degree They refute the idea of leaderism and anti-politics as media simplification and prefer to think of themselves as anti-bad politics (Orazi and Socci, 2008). Much of this success is attributed to Gianroberto Casaleggio, an expert in social network marketing, whose staff organises the MeetUp networks, defines the rules, evaluates candidates and handles local crises
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