“The people” against “the élites”: The political discourse of the Five Star Movement in the Italian
Parliament
By Flavio Chiapponi
Introduction
According to a number of scholars, the Five Star Movement (M5S) is the late comer in the
family of populist parties now acting in the Italian political system (Corbetta and Gualmini, 2013;
Zanatta, 2013; Tarchi, 2015; Tronconi, 2015; Woods and Lanzone, 2015). However, this qualification
is not undisputed, as scholars such as Biorcio (2013), Biorcio and Natale (2013), Diamanti (2013), and
Ceccarini and Bordignon (2016) have argued that the concept of “populism” is a bit unfit to describe
the party, as it does not take into account its “originality” and “complexity”. In their opinion, it is
not possible to catch its whole newness by labelling the M5S as “populist”.
Following this thought, many authors have argued that the main source of M5S’s innovative
profile lies in its successful attempt to maximize the mobilizing potentialities of the Web and the
social networks (Corbetta, 2013; Woods and Lanzone, 2015). Led by the former comedian Beppe
Grillo, the Five Star Movement has in Grillo’s blog (www.beppegrillo.com) its main “central office”,
which exerts a key role in mobilizing the followers and voters, even offline. Since personalisation
and mediatisation of politics have become crucial phenomena in any democratic polity (Blondel et
al., 2012; Kriesi et al., 2013; Esser and Strömback, 2014), it was not unexpected that experts paid much
more attention to M5S’s web communication or its leader’s political discourse (Cosenza, 2013) than
to other communicative resources and media, inside or outside the party. For example,
notwithstanding the slow but unchallenged emersion of a (partially) new M5S’s parliamentary
leadership, academic literature still lacks any scrutiny of MPs political language and discourse. This
is rather surprising, as in 2013 the Movement participated its first national election time and
succeeded in electing 109 deputies and 54 senators (25.6% of popular vote at the Chamber of
Deputies).
Taking the state of art that I have rapidly summarized as a major premise, the aim of this
paper is twofold. First, I am interested in showing why we can properly consider the M5S as a
populist party; then, my second interest lies in focusing the political language spoken by M5S’s MPs,
when they participate in the parliamentary debate about the vote of confidence to new governments.
This means that I will investigate all the speeches that Five Stars MPs delivered at the Chamber of
Deputies during the debate, justifying their strong opposition against the governments led by Prime
Minister Enrico Letta (2013) and Matteo Renzi (2014).
The two points go together, since we expect that parliamentary communication will reflect
the main traits of M5S’s populist “mentality” (Tarchi, 2015), especially its ethical exaltation of the
people or “the citizens” as well as its denigration of mainstream political élites.
More specifically, I will proceed as follows. In the first section, I discuss some contributions
about the political identity of the Five Star Movement: after having highlighted the roots of the
disagreement about its populist nature, I argue that the concept of “populism” is actually quite apt
as to describe the party. In the second section, I introduce two hypothesises that drive my empirical
research on MPs speeches, respectively delivered at the Chamber in 2013 (Enrico Letta’s cabinet)
and in 2014 (Matteo Renzi’s cabinet), along with the simplified content analysis methodology that I
will adopt. In the third section, I show the main results obtained in both cases. In the fourth section,
I scrutiny one speech delivered at the Chamber of Deputies in 2016, against the executive led by
Paolo Gentiloni, just to appreciate whether the trends extracted still shape parliamentary M5S’s
speeches. Finally, I conclude with some remarks about a rough explanation of our findings.
1. The Five Star Movement as the late comer in Italian populist family
There are authors who maintain that M5S is not (wholly) a populist party, owing to its
multifaceted organization and political thought. In my opinion, those scholars are not well equipped
enough in order to provide this statement with persuasive empirical data. It seems to me that their
argument allows room for a couple of critical objections.
In the first place, among these contributions, some show to be too open to a comprehensive
“a priori” orientation, by which scholars prove to believe in a sort of “Italian exceptionalism”: i.e.,
they incline to affirm that in Italy any political occurrence possess an alleged and irremovable
originality. Owing to these characteristics, in Italian politics it would be impossible to apply ordinary
analytical tools with the purpose of naming, classifying and accounting for political facts. For
example:
«Finally, [from M5S’s description] we can obtain some suggestions, but any conclusive definition.
Because this object … slips away, changes its profile as soon as we try to fix it or resume it in a
definitive way» (Diamanti, 2013, p. 4).
«The Five Star Movement exhibits some analogies with a number of various political actors and
experiences, but it is actually important to grasp those features that make it an original political
organization, which is very difficult to copy» (Biorcio, 2013, p. 44).
Here, we indeed observe a hypostatization of the original features ascribed to the M5S, much more
than an empirical investigation of those characteristics. It is not possible to label the party as populist
because it is too much “original”: but we do not have any theoretical or empirical evidence of this
qualification.
As Marco Tarchi has correctly pointed out, the second set of critical observations have to do
with many elements affecting those approaches. Actually, some leave too much room to value
orientations, inhibiting a neutral and scientific understanding of the topic. There are also scholars
who are not clear about the object of their scientific interest (party or leader? or both?). Finally, some
are sceptical about the explanatory power of the concept of “populism” itself – even if the latter has
proved to be a good instrument in order to connote political parties similar to M5S (Tarchi, 2015, p.
335-36).
The theoretical weakness of these positions soon unveils, once that one looks to those
scholars that conceive Beppe Grillo’s party as a populist party.
In his exploratory survey about the Five Star Movement, Corbetta (2013) deals with its
placement along six analytical dimensions (or properties): appeal to the people, enemy’s identity,
leadership, style of communication, “hyper-simplification” of complexity of politics, employ of the
media. From his point of view, the party’s political behaviour reveals all those properties, so it is not
difficult to state that
«This strange political animal can be attributed to populism, not only for its essential appeal
to the people-élite dichotomy and its radical opposition to representative politics, but also for all the
adjunctive and essential characteristics that we have listed and scrutinized» (Corbetta, 2013, 211).
Tarchi affirms that in the case of M5S, we face populism in its “purest form”. He grounds
this statement on a close analysis the party’s and its leader’s political propaganda, speeches and
online posts, thus enucleating some key features. According to Tarchi (2015, 335-356), Five Star
Movement is willing to represent the political needs that the whole people requires and refuses to
locate itself on the right-left continuum, believing that the left-right cleavage is obsolete. Moreover,
it shows a high level in the personalization of leadership and the antagonistic stance towards a
number of élites (the political “caste” and mainstream parties, intellectuals, bureaucracy, lobbies,
banks and so on). Owing to these, and other, characteristics, the populist qualification does properly
apply to M5S.
Even if we turn to classical contributions dealing with populist parties in contemporary
democracies, the populist nature of M5S does not seem to change. In Italian democracy, it appears
to embody a perfect declination of “protest populism”, which mobilizes people against the powerful
élites, no matter if those are “political, administrative, economic or cultural. This anti-elitism is
inseparable from the affirmation of confidence in the people, as the whole ensemble of common
citizens […] this form of populism appears to be a kind of hyper-democracy, which idealizes the
picture of the active citizen and rests sceptical towards the representative system, as the latter would
spoil him from his power” (Taguieff 2003, p. 131).
The breakthrough of Five Star Movement in Italian political system – and its electoral success
between 2009 and 2013 – adheres to the profile of “populist mobilizations”, as described by Mény
and Surel (2000). More specifically, in its populist identity emerges the salience of its peripheral
groups as well as the personalisation of political leadership, which is one of its most important
structural characteristics, along with the “focalization” of a restricted range of issues – yesterday,
above all immigration, now chiefly the polemical attack aimed at the “political caste”.
Once that we have definitively assigned the Five Star Movement to the populist family, we
need to clarify what it means. In other words, what analytical consequences stem from the
qualification of M5S as a populist party? In order to answer effectively to this answer, it is necessary
to provide for a parsimonious definition of “populism”, which also could be successfully applied to
a number of empirical cases. For instance, Cas Mudde defines populism as « an ideology that
considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the
pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the
volonté générale (general will) of the people» (Mudde, 2004, p. 543).
I have proposed a (only slightly) different definition: after a systematic scrutiny of the
literature dealing with various manifestations of populism, I have come to a triadic definition of
populism, as it emerges in a democratic system. Namely, we can define populism as a “mentality”
(Tarchi, 2015) which possesses three main dimensions (Chiapponi, 2014):
a) ethical appeal to the people (i.e., making the people ethically crucial and dignified): for a
populist, “the people” bears an ethical qualification, which makes it the only source of any political
legitimation. It is not so important to state what “the people” means in empirical terms – “nation”,
“class”, “sovereign citizens” or something else. In the populists’ symbolic map, the people occupy
the central place, at least for two reasons. In the first place, the people represents a homogeneous
and unitary actor – and, conversely, pluralism deserves moral criticism, because it jeopardizes
people’s unity. In the second place, this utopian representation of the people supports the populist
political project, aimed at bringing back political power in the hands of the same people;
b) “anti-elitist” attitude, which nourishes populist’s political protest against government and
institutions, pointing at “the establishment” as the focal target. It is noticeable that populist parties
and movements systematically pair the cult of the people with the denunciation and stigmatisation
of all the élites – not only political ones, but also intellectual, economic, bureaucratic élites. Thus,
populist political thought embodies a dichotomous frame: we have a positive pillar (the tribute to
popular will and values) which opposes a negative pillar (the blame of the élites). The few who
monopolize the social and political power are guilty, because they take advantage of their positions
in order to exploit and oppress the good people. Owing to these characters, populism often takes a
“negative” and “reactionary” outlook, as well as it seems to emerge when a deep social, political or
economic crisis affects any political system;
c) antagonism towards the institutions, which means that populists reject, or try to escape
from, the institutional rules and procedures. This happens for two aspects. First, populism
postulates the direct relationship between leader and followers. Sometimes, this connection may
become a charismatic bond – anyway, even when this is not the case, in populist parties and
movements, personalization of leadership is much more important than in other political
organizations. Second, populists do not tolerate the burdens and lengthiness of representative
politics (Taggart, 2004).
As many contributions have been emphasizing since 2012, all these three traits become
recurrent in Five Star Movement’s online and offline propaganda. My purpose is now to verify
whether the same marks are evident also in MPs’ institutional communication.
2. A simplified content analysis methodology
In parliamentary democracies, government must obtain majoritarian support from the
parliament. The latter gives its support to the former by its vote of confidence, thus legitimizing it
to operate. In Italian political system, this institutional process occur as follows. The Prime Minister
(Presidente del Consiglio), to whom the President of the Republic gave the assignment to put together
the cabinet, deliver an official speech to the Chambers, in which he or she states his/her
government’s political agenda. Then it is the turn of MPs to participate, bringing into the debate
their party’s point of view about the Prime Minister’s speech: notably, each orator must respect the
time assigned by the parliamentary rules. After this, the Prime Minister replies to MPs speeches,
asking the Parliament to support the executive with its vote of confidence. Finally, the political
leader of each party represented in the assembly declares what conduct his/her group is going to
take, pro or against the government, thus ending the debate.
Owing to the populist profile of the party, a scrutiny of the Five Star Movement MPs’
speeches delivered at the Chamber of Deputies during the vote of confidence’s debate looks quite
useful, in order to shed light over populist rhetorical weapons in an institutional arena. In fact, the
institutional process just described make the incoming Prime Minister and government rather
vulnerable to populist verbal attacks, as we may expect that populist rhetoric will translate the
populist mentality’s main traits – ethical appeal to the people, anti-élitism, anti-institutionalism –
into words, thus morally acclaiming the good citizens against the bad élites and poor institutions.
Indeed, in front of populist assaults, Italian governments are weak, because in Italian political
system there is no institutional guarantee that the executive gets a popular legitimization by the
polls. Actually, in the so known Second Republic, only 5 governments out of 14 (see table 1,
Appendix) were directly linked to the results of national elections, as concerns leadership as well as
political coalition. This occurs because of the “disjunction” between the constitutional law, which
states that any government receiving a vote of confidence from the Parliament is legitimized to act,
and day-to-day politics. It is easy to predict that populists will sharply criticize any cabinet that has
not been explicitly empowered by popular will. Therefore, in front of populist blame Italian
governments seem somewhat helpless.
Italian executives are particularly unprotected against populists’ argument also because they
articulate an internal criticism of democracy: i.e. they disagree with mainstream political parties and
leaders, as well as political institutions, not because these are democratic, but just because are not
democratic enough. In other words, as Margaret Canovan (1999) put it, populist political discourse
simply mobilizes the “redemptive face” of democracy against its “pragmatic face”. This has two key
consequences. On the one hand, it clearly points out that populist mobilization is always imaginable
in democracy, since there always will be a structural void between the “two faces” of democracy.
On the other hand, as populists act in the name of “real” democracy, for mainstream parties it is
hard to dismiss their claims, as it happened once with anti-system communist or fascist parties. In
sum, the parliamentary debate about the vote of confidence to new governments seems to define a
good ground for populist seeds, in order to deprive the government of political legitimation.
Elaborating on these suggestions, my research has to do with the speeches delivered by the
Five Star Movement’s MPs at the Chamber of Deputies, thus participating the debate about the vote
of confidence asked by the Prime Minister. Therefore, the sample formation seems quite simple:
following these premises, sample contains 21 political speeches, 11 pronounced against the
government led by Enrico Letta, the remnant enunciated against the executive led by Matteo Renzi
(for details, see tables 2 and 3, Appendix).
Let me then introduce the main hypotheses, which are two. 1) Since we have labelled M5S as
a populist party, we expect that MPs’ political discourse will mirror the three main traits of populist
mentality – an ethical appeal to the people, verbal attacks towards élites and institutions; 2) we
expect that those traits will be much more marked when governments lack an explicit popular
legitimation by the polls. From this point of view, it is not too difficult to note that the executive led
by Letta is somewhat more legitimized than Renzi’s cabinet. In fact, Letta’s coalition won the
elections in 2013 and he had to occupy the role of deputy Prime Minister (as Pier Luigi Bersani,
National Secretary of the Democratic Party, was the designate Prime Minister). Because of his feeble
electoral victory, as well as political troubles inside the party, Bersani did not succeed in putting
together a coalition government and gave up. Therefore, Letta received from the Head of State the
assignment to build the new government and finally he was able to, even if he had to accept Silvio
Berlusconi’s party, which lost the national elections, in his governmental coalition. Conversely,
Matteo Renzi was not even a MP when he became Prime Minister. First, he gained the leadership of
the Democratic Party, winning the primaries held in December 2013; then he forced his own
colleague Letta to resign, immediately replacing him in the role of Prime Minister. For these reasons,
we may presume that Five Star Movement MPs will be more likely to express their populist
mentality in the case of Renzi than in the case of Letta.
As concerns the methodology, I employ a simplified version of a content analysis technique,
which has proved to be valid in scrutinizing parliamentary speeches (Fedel, 1998; Chiapponi, 2008;
Tiglio, 2010). In this sense, from the text of the speeches it is necessary to extract the political symbols,
i.e. those linguistic expressions embodying a value orientation (positive or negative) towards certain
political objects. The latter, in turn, designate «types of action or models of political system» (Fedel,
1998, p. 63), which the orator promotes or attacks in his speech. The methodology is therefore
qualitative, but the collection of symbols will allow some elementary quantitative calculations, in
order to ground our remarks on an empirical basis.
By what procedure is it possible to collect the political symbols? Talking in a general way,
any speech stems from the rhetorical connection of many words and sentences: then, when we face
a whole text, we need suitable criteria in order to distinguish political symbols from the other parts
of the text. From the point of view of linguistics, this means to look forward to the significant, instead
of the signifier, as the same word may have various meanings, depending on the rhetorical context.
Hence, political symbols are the signifiers, attached to a specific significant (i.e., one or more
linguistic signs) that values, positively or negatively, certain aspects of the political system, from the
point of view of the speaker. To find political symbols, then, it is necessary a double step. First, after
having divided the whole text in minimal units – sentences – it is indispensable to isolate all the
relevant signifiers. Second, we select for our analysis only those signifiers embodying a value
orientation, by which the orator define in a positive (or negative) way certain political objects – it
follows that we must leave aside all the sentences and words that contain only neutral information.
Once that the political symbols have been collected, it is necessary to classify them. For this
purpose, I have employed a classificatory scheme, which provides for four macro-categories of
meaning, along with many sub-categories. The main categories are the following1: “state”, “parties”,
“society” and “international domain”.
The latter specification allow us to refine a bit our hypothesis 1. Indeed, if we expect that
MPs’ political discourses will exhibit a clear populist attitude, this means that we suppose that the
political symbols will drop mainly in three categories out of four. On the one hand, we imagine that
“state” and “parties” might represent the targets of populist mobilization; on the other hand, it might
be probable that all the positive symbols referred to the “people” or to “citizens” are to be found in
the “society” category. In sum: if MPs’ speeches show populist traits, the resultant political symbols
will be mainly concentrated in three categories of the classificatory schema – state, parties and
society.
After having partially re-stated our hypotheses 1, now we are able to afford a synthetic
comment about the main results of the scrutiny.
3. The MPs’ political communication: some comparative remarks
In this section, I focus some of the findings, stemming from the analysis of the sample just
outlined above. Although I will not deal with all the results, my purpose is to provide for a sufficient
empirical base, in order to verify our leading hypothesises. As to move the first step towards this
purpose, a look upon the following table 1 may be helpful:
Table 1. Political symbols in both cases
Analytical categories
STATE
POLITICAL PARTIES
SOCIETY
INTERNATIONAL
DOMAIN
Total
1
Letta government
Renzi government
N.
59
45
21
7
%
44.7
34.1
15.9
5.3
N.
65
96
31
7
%
32.7
48.2
15.6
3.5
132
100.0
199
100
See, for details, table 4, Appendix.
We immediately note a couple of things:
a) political symbols chiefly group in three categories (“state”, “parties” and “society”), while
the remnant category, “international domain”, seems to receive a very scarce attention in Five Star
Movement’s parliamentary discourse;
b) the most frequent political symbols are those connected to the “state” and “parties”, which
together reach an amount of about 80% of the whole collection of data, in both cases.
Hence, M5S’s deputies seem to employ a very similar rhetorical structure in order to make
clear their strong opposition versus the incoming executive, regardless of the leading Prime
Minister. The only difference is that in Letta’s case political symbolism gathers around the state
(44.7%) more than it occurs in the case of his colleague Renzi - when state symbols drop to 32.7%,
but, conversely, political parties’ symbolism becomes heavier (48.2% instead of 34.1%). Despite this
quantitative inversion, our preliminary remarks appear to pave the way for a corroboration of
hypothesis 1, as for both governments the expected three types of political symbols lead the
organization of the meanings in the discourse. However, for the sake to understand whether we are
in front of a populist political rhetoric, we need to disaggregate these results, with a view to scrutiny
the strategical attribution of positive and negative values to political objects, from the orator’s point
of view.
Starting with a comment about the cabinet led by Enrico Letta, table 2 shows the resulting
disaggregated distribution:
Table 2. Political symbols’ distribution and values, Letta government
Categories
N.
Positive evaluations (+)
Negative evaluations (-)
STATE
59
n.
33
%
55.9
n.
26
%
44.1
POLITICAL PARTIES
45
16
35.6
29
64.4
SOCIETY
21
12
57.1
9
42.9
INTERNATIONAL
DOMAIN.
TOTAL
7
1
14.3
6
85.7
132
62
47.0
70
53.0
What can we say about these findings? Negative entries are more than positive ones. This is
quite normal in populist political thought and language, owing to its “negativity” (Taggart, 2000):
many times, populists do not exactly know who they are, but they know very well who they are not.
However, here the whole distribution seems somewhat balanced – or, more balanced that one would
expect from a populist party (as positive evaluations are 47.0% of all political symbols). True, in each
category the distribution of political symbols appears to be much less symmetrical; anyway, in the
“state” class, positive symbols are even more than negative ones (almost 56%) and, at a glance, this
hardly can be associated to the populist mind. Conversely, the other results look to fit better the
populist mentality, as political parties’ symbolism touches the highest level in negativity (almost
65% of negative symbols) and in the meantime society is very positively defined (57.1%). Before
trying to account for these results, it might be useful to complete our overview, deepening a bit our
investigation, with the aim to shed light on the political objects, which have been positively (or
negatively) evaluated in Five Star Movement’s parliamentary speeches.
Here, it is obviously not possible to enumerate all these items; but it is quite easy to explicit
the corresponding sub-categories of symbols that receive much attention, for any of the main
category. Table 3 displays these findings:
Table 3. Main political symbols for Letta government
Categories
STATE
PARTIES
SOCIETY
First two subcategories
n.
% of the
category
Prevailing
evaluations
1) Modalities of employing political power
17
28.8%
Negative
2) Institutional leaders’ qualities
10
16.9%
None (=)
1) Political Strategies
13
28.9%
Positive
2) Rules of the political game
9
20.0%
Negative
1) Community’s qualities
9
42.8%
Negative
2) Community
5
23.8%
Positive
It is not surprising that M5S MPs attack how government employs political power, but it’s
rather unexpected that they do not share a negative image of institutional leaders, as well as it is
quite unpredictable that in a Five Star Movement’s political speech would prevail a positive
definition of political strategies. While the symbols of society seem more congruent with a populist
stance, as the negative description of the community means the identification with unemployed,
poor and alienated citizens.
Anyway, how we can assemble these partially counterintuitive results in a comprehensive
elucidation of parliamentary discourse of M5S? Does the latter is compatible with the populist
mentality of the party? In the view of giving an empirical grounded answer to these questions, we
have to proceed carefully. Let me start by saying that evaluation can operate by two main strategies
in the discourse: on the one hand, orator can directly evaluate, positively or negatively, the object of
his interest, and this is the simpler strategy. On the other hand, there is a slightly more complex
strategy, which proceeds by the juxtaposition of positive and negative elements, so that the negative
(positive) quality of a discursive unit stems from its comparison/linkage to a positive (negative)
textual one. Our findings seem to confirm that, in the case of M5S’s parliamentary discourse against
Prime Minister Letta, populists incline to employ the second strategy much more than the simpler
one. In their speech, for example, it is common to find sentences positively symbolizing a political
strategy or a modality of action; then, the systematic replication of these items reinforce the negative
definition of diametrically opposed strategies or modalities of action.
Consequently, populist traits here are a bit “blurred”, because deputies choose to adopt a
more indirect strategy of (negative) evaluation of political objects. In fact, frequently they exhibit a
positive definition of a situation (how things must be or must proceed), then followed by the
negative description of things as they indeed are. This happens mostly in the case of state symbolism,
where the negative definition of the modalities of employing the political power matches with the
positive affirmation of the value of the Constitution – whose rule have been neglected by “the caste”.
For example: «Minister Cancellieri, we are happy that a woman as you are is now Minister for the
Justice […] We are here to suggest you governmental actions, to show you paths that … cannot
overlook the Constitution. Our constitution protects the judiciary’s autonomy, a law commitment
that has to be literally observed, sweeping away the absurd conflict between judiciary and politics
… which started decades ago, when Berlusconi became a politician» (speech by Alessandro Di
Battista).
With some corrections, then, we can corroborate hypothesis 1: M5S exhibits a populist
rhetorical construction of its parliamentary discourse in the case of Letta’s government. What about
Renzi’s executive? It is necessary to start, as usual, from the distribution of political symbols in each
category (see table 4, below):
Table 4. Political symbols’ distribution and values, Renzi government
Categories
N.
Positive evaluations (+)
Negative evaluations (-)
STATE
65
n.
13
%
20.0
n.
52
%
80.0
POLITICAL PARTIES
96
34
35.4
62
64.6
SOCIETY
31
20
64.5
11
35.5
INTERNATIONAL DOMAIN
7
3
42.9
4
57.1
199
70
35.2
129
64.8
TOTAL
Well, in this case the results are quite impressive: indeed, populist lines appear to emerge
clearly. Accordingly, let me make only some quick remarks, as everything in the table seems to
unveil the populist mentality: the striking majority of negative symbols (64.8%), which becomes
even much more remarkable in the case of state symbolism (80%). On the other side, stands the
highly positive definition of society, which essentially means “people” or “citizens”.
Actually, here we observe the attempt to mobilize the resentment of the many against the
few who governs – this happens in an institutional frame. From this viewpoint, it quite interesting
that Five Star Movement’s MPs give the impression to maintain a sort of political language adequate
to mobilize people in political meetings or in mass demonstrations when talking in Parliament,
facing the incoming government and their colleagues MPs.
Just to refine a bit this rough account, we shall look to the main political symbols that
deputies chose in order to structure their rhetorical attacks to Mr Renzi and his executive (table 5):
Table 5. Main political symbols for Renzi government
Categories
STATE
PARTIES
SOCIETY
First two sub-categories
n.
1) Institutional leaders’ qualities
31
% of the
category
47.7%
Prevailing
value
Negative
2) Modalities of employing political power
12
18.5%
Negative
1) Parties’ properties
24
25.0%
Negative
2) Parties’ qualities
19
19.8%
Negative
1) Community
16
51.6%
Positive
2) Social forces
6
19.4%
Negative
It is rather noteworthy to examine the last column. Here, negativity is a fundamental trait of
political discourse. The only positive symbol has to do with political community (mainly, “Italian
citizens”), all the other entries are negative – it means, for example, that more than 65% of state
symbolism appears in the discourse only to indicate bad institutional leadership and power
practices. Hence, political parties’ properties and qualities – evidently, except for M5S’s courage and
honesty – figure the favourite targets of Five Star Movement’s parliamentary speeches. Hence, the
negative light falls also upon some social forces (lobbies and banks), more frequently than we saw
in the case of Letta’s government.
Taking into account the rhetorical construction of political symbols, conceivably here
prevails a simpler and more direct evaluation strategy than that we have seen at work in Letta’s
case. Check, for example, the following words: «Indeed, you don’t show any respect for our
institutions, because here you, President Renzi, are simply a squatter, since you entered the
government thanks to a plot, a coup, as it usually happened in our First Republic, stabbing in the
back your companion. You are not legitimized by any popular election» (speech by Andrea Colletti).
As normally occurs in populist mobilizations, orators are blaming Renzi for lacking popular
legitimation, but also for having betrayed his party’s colleague Letta, forcing him to resign, just for
the sake of taking his seat.
This leads us to confirm that not only the political symbolism extracted from parliamentary
discourse confirms hypothesis 1, but also hypothesis 2: M5S’s political communication at the
Chamber of Deputies seems to be much more “populist” in the case of Renzi’s cabinet than in the
case of Letta’s one. Indeed, populist traits emerge clearly and there’s not much room left for an
alternative account: Renzi government exhibits a weaker linkage with the polls than Letta executive.
This seems to exert an influence in strengthening the populist characteristics of the parliamentary
communication.
We can obtain other confirmations of this quick reading, once that we try a rough
operationalization of the “anti-institutionalist” trait, which is part of the populist mind. As we
already know, populists reject institutional procedures and structures, as they wish to establish a
direct (even virtual) contact between leader and followers. We can imagine, then, that political
personalization not only plays an essential role in displaying populism, but also in shaping populist
political language. For example, in our findings many verbal attacks have to do with “qualities of
institutional leaders” or “qualities of political parties’ leaders”. In sum, it seems that populists
bypass the institutional frame in order to hit directly the person of the Minister or the Prime Minister
or the political rival. Now, from our survey it is possible to get a kind of “personalization index”,
which is not a “real” statistical index, but simply express how many political symbols, for each
category, evaluate (positively or negatively) a personal item, instead of a structural/institutional
one2 (personal qualities, essentially). This is only a raw measure, but the results are encouraging, in
order to corroborate hypothesises 1 and 2:
Table “Personalization” in MPs speeches
“Personalization”
(state symbols)
“Personalization”
(parties’ symbols)
Letta
(% on category)
25.4
Prevailing evaluation
Prevailing evaluation
+
Renzi
(% on category)
50.8
31.1
-
38.5
-
-
The simple calculus is the following: for the symbols of state and parties, it is necessary to divide the total
amount of symbols that focus personal elements for the total number of symbols contained in the whole
category.
2
As we can see, “state personalization” is much more frequent in the case of Renzi’s
government (also more negatively evaluated); the same happens in the case of political parties’
personalization, as the entries increase, showing the same trend. Therefore, also the personal attacks
extracted from the distribution appear to confirm our expectations: parliamentary speeches do show
populist traits and their expression is more visible in Renzi’s case.
Before concluding with some final observations, let me turn for a while to the latest Italian
government, which obtained the vote of confidence after Renzi’s fall, in December 2016, which is
that led by Paolo Gentiloni.
4. Some notes on Gentiloni’s government
In December 2016, Five Star Movement did not participate in the parliamentary debate about
the vote of confidence to the executive led by Paolo Gentiloni, who substituted Renzi after his
resignation3. Except for the Prime Minister and some light correction, Gentiloni’s cabinet was very
similar to that before led by Matteo Renzi. This is the main reason why Five Star Movement chose
to express its radical protest by its nonparticipation in the debate. At the Chamber of Deputies,
indeed, there was only a speech delivered by a M5S’s orator: Giulia Grillo spoke for her political
group, in order to justify her party’s behaviour and its strong opposition to the incoming
government.
It is not very significant to scrutiny her discourse as we have done for the others, as here we
have not a comparable number of symbols. Therefore, this operation may be useful, as we may look
to the results as a rough indicator about the consolidation of the rhetorical aspects that we have
already seen.
In other words, a quick overview of political symbolism extracted from one single speech,
even if we cannot infer any valid generalization, therefore might be helpful, in order to appreciate
the ongoing rhetorical expression of the populist mentality in an institutional frame.
3
Renzi resigned owing to the popular rejection, at a national referendum, of the constitutional reforms that he and his
government wanted to implement – essentially, the transition towards a mono-cameral Parliament thanks to the
restriction of Senate’s powers.
Table 4. Political symbols’ distribution and values, Gentiloni government
Categories
N.
Positive evaluations (+)
Negative evaluations (-)
STATE
22
n.
7
%
31.8
n.
15
%
68.2
POLITICAL PARTIES
10
3
30.0
7
70.0
SOCIETY
11
11
100,0
0
-
INTERNATIONAL
DOMAIN.
TOTAL
0
-
-
-
-
43
21
48.8
22
51.2
It is not necessary to deepen further our scrutiny. Again, negativity seems to be a structural
property of populist discourse in Parliament. Actually, negative evaluations are absolutely
prevailing: i.e., the definition of the targets of M5S’s political attacks constitutes the main part of the
speech. On the other hand, looking to “society” category, we observe a clear polarization of political
symbols: here the category exactly overlaps with a sub-category, as all the 11 symbols convey “the
community”, the “people”, or “the citizens” as significant. These results seem to allow a careful
interpretation, in the sense of the reinforcement of the populist traits already observed for both Letta
and Renzi governments.
Hence, it seems that M5S’s parliamentary communication proceeds to shape along populist
lines: we have only one speech, but there still appears to be a dichotomizing logic at work. In other
words, in this discourse again we observe the linguistic representation of the struggle between the
“system” and “the people”. Both dimensions reach high levels: in fact, as Gentiloni’s executive is
quite similar to Renzi’s one, it attracts the same blame from populists in Parliament. In fact, also in
this case the lack of popular legitimation is a major topic in the speech: «Mr President, you don’t
have showed any kind of respect for our citizens … you don’t have listened to any voices that
claimed against your idea of government, so that you are here with the same persons seating in the
executive».
This is not a surprising outcome: as Harold Lasswell used to say, in many cases content
analysis produces the “specification of the obvious”. Hence, the results are valuable in order to
reaffirm the need for an empirical grounded concept of “populism”.
5. Final remarks
In this paper, my purpose was only to roughly show how populist communication in
Parliament have been structuring in the case of Five Star Movement. As we have seen, populist
symbolism tends to gather around two poles. The positive symbolism has in the citizens their main
object. In this structuring pillar, it is possible to distinguish the “ethical appeal to the people” or “the
redemptive face” of democracy (Canovan, 1999), which systematically feed populist mobilization.
From this viewpoint, it is noteworthy that Five Star Movement MPs do not dismiss or reduce this
symbolism, even when they act in an institutional arena.
Conversely, the negative pillar lies in the symbolization of the institutional and political
élites. Participating in the debate about the vote of confidence, for M5S’s MPs does not make a
difference to attack the government or the political parties, even opposition’s parties. All these actors
together are “la casta” (the caste), i.e. the political united élite which oppress the people.
This simple rhetorical structure, though quite rigid, exhibits a kind of modulation or
adjustment, owing to some extra-linguistic elements. The principal lies in the more or less intense
lack of popular legitimation, as we have stated in our hypothesises 1 and 2. Our findings seem to
confirm that the more government lacks popular investiture at the polls, the more it becomes an easy
target for populist attacks.
However, the blurry rhetoric that we have observed in the case of Letta may also depends
on intervening variables – for example, the unsteady oratory exhibited by the newly elected Five
Star Movement’s MPs in their first participation in a parliamentary debate.
Surely, there is still need to develop further analysis of populist parliamentary discourse in
Italian Parliament. The introductory research that I have tried to present certainly needs to be
refined. From this viewpoint, the adoption of a comparative perspective represents an imperative
need, if we want to acquire further knowledge about populist communication in an institutional
frame. Here, my only attempt was to reaffirm that any linkage between an abstract concept
(populism) and its presumed empirical expressions has to ground on an empirical basis.
Appendix
Table 1. Italian governments, 1994-2016
Governments
Berlusconi I
Dini
Prodi I
D’Alema I
D’Alema II
Amato II
Berlusconi II
Berlusconi III
Prodi II
Berlusconi IV
Monti
Letta
Renzi
Gentiloni
Popular legitimation
Yes
No
Yes
No
No
No
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
No
Yes/No
No
No
Table 2. The speeches selected for analysis (Letta Government)
MP (orator)
Andrea Colletti
Main topics
Alessandro Di Battista
Political alliance between the Democratic Party (centre-left)
and Forza Italia (Berlusconi’s own party, centre-right)
Law and order
Fabiana Dadone
Denigration of the Minister of the Interior
Dalila Nesci
Economics – fiscal compact – European Union
Tiziana Ciprini
Employment policies
Emanuela Corda
Denigration of the Minister of Transport – Support for local
social movements against railroads (No Tav)
Carla Ruocco
Denigration of the Minister of Health – health policies
Alberto Zolezzi
Pale support for the Minister for the Environment –
environmental policies
Chiara Di Benedetto
Education, scientific research and cultural public policies
Angelo Tofalo
Blaming left and right parties – public and security policies
Riccardo Nuti
Explanation of Five Star Movement political opposition
Table 3. Speeches selected for anaylsis (Renzi Government)
MP (orator)
Main topics
Carlo Sibilia
Denigration of the Prime Minister – Quarrel with the President
of the Chamber – Economics – Blaming the EU
Andrea Colletti
Mirko Busto
Denigration of the Prime Minister – Respect for the popular
will
Denigration of the Prime Minister
Alessio Mattia Villarosa
Economic policies – denigration of the Prime Minister
Simone Valente
Denigration of the Prime Minister – Public education policies
Manlio Di Stefano
European Union – fiscal compact – denigration of the Prime
Minister
Denigration of the Prime Minister – Law and order policies –
Denigration of the Minister of Justice
Denigration of the Prime Minister – attacking the political
alliance between left and right parties – need for change
Denigration of the Prime Minister – European Union –
Excessive government by decree
Explanation of Five Star Movement political opposition
Giulia Sarti
Roberto Fico
Giuseppe Brescia
Federico D’Incà
Table 4. The classificatory scheme
A) SYMBOLS OF STATE
1) Origin
2) State (global definition)
3) Qualities of the state
4) Source of political power
I) general source(s)
II) specific source(s)
5) Structure of political power
I) spatial structure
II) functional structure
6) State’s branches’ qualities
7) Institutional leaders’ qualities
I) personal qualities
II) role qualities
III) leadership styles
8) Modalities of employing political power
I) generic modalities
II) policies’ modalities (not procedural)
III) procedural modalities
9) Purposes/consequences of political decisions
B) SYMBOLS OF POLITICAL PARTIES
1) Rules of the political game
2) Party system (as a whole)
3) Parties’ qualities
I) qualities connected to one party
II) qualities connected to the whole governmental coalition (or opposition)
4) Parties’ properties
I) properties related to the source of parties’ political power
II) Rules of the competition inside the parties
5) Political ideologies
6) Parties’ strategies
I) electoral strategies
II) strategies inside the institutions
III) social strategies (linkages between parties and society)
7) Party leaders’ qualities
C) SYMBOLS OF SOCIETY
1) Community
2) Community’s qualities
3) Social regime
I) global definitions
II) rules of the social game
4) Social forces
5) Social forces’ qualities
6) Social forces’ properties
I) properties related to the source(s) of social power
II) Internal rules of the game or organization
7) Social ideologies
8) Social action’s strategies
I) Strategies connected to production/acquisition of social resources
II) Strategies of cooperation/conflict between social actors
III) Strategies finalised to confer/withdraw political support
9) Qualities of social forces’ leadership
D) SYMBOLS OF INTERNATIONAL DOMAIN
1) Rules of international political game
2) World politics’ structure
3) International domain’s political actors
4) International domain’s strategies
5) Purposes/consequences related to the international domain
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