Section 3. Politica comparata (Comparative Politics)
Chairs: Giampiero Cama, Liborio Mattina
La sezione accoglie e sollecita proposte di panel incentrate sia sui temi tradizionali della comparazione (classificazione dei regimi politici; processi di democratizzazione; qualità della democrazia; istituzioni politiche comparate; formazione, composizione e attività di governi e parlamenti; partiti e sistemi di partito; culture politiche; élite politiche e leadership) sia su qualsiasi altro tema, motivato dalle trasformazioni e dalle novità in atto, che sia trattato con metodo e in un quadro comparativi. Sarebbero, ad esempio, interessanti proposte riguardanti:
– le recenti evoluzioni dei sistemi autoritari, focalizzandosi non solo sui processi che possono portare alla loro caduta e alla loro eventuale democratizzazione, ma anche loro meccanismi di funzionamento e sui loro equilibri. A tal proposito spiccano tre temi. Quello dei modelli di sviluppo capitalistico che talvolta sono associati ai regimi non democratici (come nel caso della Cina) e che sembrano proporsi, in virtù del loro successo, come una via alla modernizzazione appetibile e alternativa ai sistemi liberal democratici. Quello dei particolari meccanismi di accountability che funzionano nei sistemi autoritari, soprattutto considerando il ruolo e l’efficacia, in tal senso, delle elezioni parzialmente competitive che si svolgono al loro interno. Sarebbero da valutare, ad esempio, i sistemi di “patronage” messi in atto dai rappresentanti locali e parlamentari di molti regimi del Medio Oriente o dell’Asia centrale e orientale o l’impatto delle elezioni presidenziali, o comunque degli organi monocratici, sul policy making e sugli equilibri di potere tra le fazioni interne al regime. Quello, infine, dei movimenti di protesta che ciclicamente caratterizzano la politics anche dei regimi non democratici (l’esempio più recente è rappresentato dal “movimento degli ombrelli” a Hong Kong), considerando sia le modalità attraverso cui tali movimenti si propongono e si organizzano sia le strategie di contenimento e di gestione da parte delle élite al potere;
– le recenti ricadute delle trasformazioni politiche ed economiche che hanno segnato questi ultimi anni sui modelli di leadership delle democrazie. Pensiamo, in particolare a un raffronto che individui somiglianze e differenze tra le fattispecie di populismo che si stanno affermando molti sistemi politici dell’ Europa e del resto del mondo;
– i rapporti tra l’Unione europea e i sistemi politici nazionali, sia in un’ottica di multilevel governance sia in prospettiva intergovernativa;
– gli effetti della crisi economico-finanziaria internazionale, che sembra ridisegnare i rapporti tra economia e politica, tra mercato/i e democrazia, e la stessa mappa geopolitica dei poteri. Opportune, in particolare, sarebbero proposte che guardano comparativamente agli effetti che in ambito europeo tale crisi ha avuto nei rapporti tra istituzioni sovranazionali e democrazie nazionali e, all’interno di quest’ultime, sull’agenda dei governi e sui tradizionali rapporti maggioranza-opposizione;
– un bilancio sugli esiti della “primavera araba”, sia sulla stabilità dei regimi del Nord Africa e del Medio Oriente sia sulla loro possibile evoluzione.
Panel 3.1 The Breakdown of Non Democratic Regimes: In Search of Explanations
During the Third Wave of Democratization (1974-2004) at least 86 countries experienced the crisis and breakdown of autocratic regimes and the opening towards a democratic transition. This phenomenon had a global nature, involving countries located in Southern Europe, Latin America, Eastern Europe, former Soviet Union, Asia and Africa. More recently, the so called Arab Spring led to the breakdown of the most enduring autocracies in Northern Africa. The goal of this panel is to analyze why an autocratic regime falls down. A general and non exhaustive list of causes could include the following: a) the economic trend and relative effects on politics and society; b) crisis within the leadership; c) domestic conflicts, their politicization and the enlargement of political opposition; d) international variables. This panel will welcome paper proposals dealing with one or more of the following topics and perspectives: a theoretical framework explaining the causes of autocratic regimes breakdown; an original and empirical research, even based on one country study; an intra-area as well as a cross-area comparative analysis; a synchronic as well as a diachronic comparison; a research focused on the role played by just one of the aforementioned causes of the autocratic breakdown. Proposals underling the interaction processes among variables, dealing with the breakdown of an autocratic regime, will be particularly welcomed.
Chairs: Giampiero Cama
Discussants: Giampiero Cama
The crisis of non-democratic regimes and political risk for foreign investors: A comparative case study on Belarus and Ukraine.
Cecilia Emma Sottilotta (csottilotta@luiss.it)
AbstractRecent events such as the fall of non-democratic regimes in the Middle-East and North Africa (MENA) region, as well as the current developments in Eastern Europe, brought the issue of political stability in authoritarian or ‘hybrid’ institutional settings back to the fore. Scholars and practitioners from both the private and public sector are confronted with theoretical and practical conundrums related to the factors that underpin the resilience of non-democratic regimes, as well as to those that instead may engender their breakdown. This paper aims at exploring such factors through a comparative case study on Belarus and Ukraine. To do so, it relies on an original data source, i.e. political risk ratings for foreign direct investment (FDI) built by export credit agencies to assess the likelihood of abrupt political change in targeted countries. Those ratings will be put in relation with ‘domestic’ explicative variables. The empirical analysis will be complemented with a discussion of relevant ‘international’ variables which may help shed some light on the dynamics of major political crises in non-democratic regimes.
Perché cadono le autocrazie? La dimensione internazionale proattiva
Antonino Castaldo (antonino.castaldo@gmail.com)
AbstractComing soon
L’influenza dei fattori socio-economici nella crisi-trasformazione-crollo dei regimi non democratici della Terza ondata
Luca Germano (luca.germano@uniroma3.it)
AbstractIN COMPLETAMENTO
Il ruolo della statualità nella caduta dei regimi non democratici
Nicoletta Di Sotto (nicodiso@libero.it)
AbstractCOMING SOON
Panel 3.2 I gruppi di interesse in prospettiva comparata
Questo panel incoraggia la presentazione di contributi sui gruppi di interesse attivi in Italia – a livello locale, regionale e nazionale – e nell’ambito dell’Unione Europea, sono benvenuti anche i contributi relativi ad altri sistemi politici.
Lo studio dei gruppi di interesse può essere affrontato con riferimento ai temi della rappresentanza, del policy-making, della democrazia.
• Per il primo aspetto si può partire dai diversi tipi di gruppi di interesse - economici, per una causa, istituzionali – ed esaminare la diversa capacità di ciascuno di essi di entrare nella società politica e rappresentarsi presso le sedi decisionali. Questa tematica è collegata alla questione delle condizioni della mobilitazione dei diversi tipi di gruppi di interesse. L’analisi olsoniana stipula una maggiore facilità di mobilitazione dei gruppi economici rispetto ai gruppi promozionali. Ma molte ricerche in parte la correggono mostrando la vitalità dei gruppi di interesse pubblico. Riguardo a questi ultimi si può constatare la loro inclinazione a rappresentarsi attraverso l’azione piuttosto che attraverso la partecipazione al dibattito politico tradizionale. E ci si può interrogare in base a quale legittimazione essi “parlano a nome” e “agiscono per conto” di constituency ampie, come i consumatori o le generazioni future, esercitando poteri propri grazie ai quali possono avere un impatto significativo sia nella fase di elaborazione che in quella di attuazione delle politiche pubbliche. Il tema della rappresentanza può essere esaminato anche considerando l’evoluzione delle relazioni tra i gruppi e partiti per sottolineare la complementarietà ed intercambiabilità dei due attori nel fornire agli interessi opportunità di essere rappresentati e per riflettere sul dinamismo di una relazione che si caratterizza per la accresciuta autonomia dei gruppi nei confronti dei partiti.
• Sul versante del policy-making, un tema ricorrente in letteratura è il dibattito sullo squilibrio nell’influenza: i grandi interessi economici organizzati sono sempre più influenti dei consumatori, ambientalisti, associazioni non-profit? Oppure l’influenza non è uniformemente sbilanciata ma risulta differenziata a seconda delle arene decisionali considerate? Sempre nell’ambito del policy-making una specifica attenzione può essere dedicata alle modalità con cui i gruppi effettuano il lobbying, se facendo leva esclusivamente su risorse proprie o affidandosi ad agenzie esterne, che sono molto diffuse negli Stati Uniti ma si stanno moltiplicando anche in Europa ed in Italia. Particolarmente interessante può essere anche individuare e classificare le diverse tattiche di lobbying che ciascun gruppo adotta in funzione delle risorse di cui dispone e del tipo di target istituzionale verso il quale le indirizza.
• Infine, i gruppi possono essere esaminati per il contributo che danno alla democrazia controllando se favoriscono o scoraggiano la partecipazione all’interno delle diverse organizzazioni, contribuiscono o meno ad attenuare il sistema delle diseguaglianze esistente nella società civile, controllano l’operato dei governanti e denunciano l’abuso di potere o se ne fanno complici.
I possibili contributi allo studio dei gruppi sono dunque numerosi, attendiamo proposte di paper da studiosi giovani e maturi su un oggetto di analisi che in Italia ha finalmente iniziato a ridestare interesse dopo decenni di disattenzione.
Il Panel è promosso dallo Standing group SISP sui Gruppi di Interesse.
Chairs: Luca Germano, Orazio Lanza
Discussants: Orazio Lanza
The other side of the moon. Private donations to Italian political parties and the role of interest groups.
Chiara Fiorelli (chiarafiorelli@gmail.com)
AbstractThe relationship between political parties and interest groups has attracted lot of attention by Italian and international scholars during the post war period and the democratization process but seems to have been neglected in last decades leading empirical research to focus on one of the actors playing in the political game at time. The international literature has provided evidence which fall in the cartelization hypothesis: wide networks of relationships between parties and organized interests with loose connections describe the general pattern of contemporary politics. But a lack of empirical knowledge exists for Italy. In this paper, the relations between these two actors, that shape the way democracy works, is the focus of the analysis by exploring one of the most important area of uncertainty (Panebianco, 1982) for parties: their financing. I have tried to organize a new dataset constructed using the joint statements (Dichiarazioni Congiunte, l.659/81) reported by both parties and candidates at national level concerning their private donations and the donors’ names. In line with the idea that politics costs and parties need more and more money to afford electoral campaigns, the first aim is to explore how the balance between internal and external private donations has changed in time in order to check if the latter have became predominant over the total private revenues. Furthermore, the second aim of this paper is to control the affiliation of donors to some interest groups aiming to provide evidence of changing relations between political actors and interests representatives in four different legislatures selected to guarantee the structural changes (electoral rules) occurred in Italy in the last thirty years. The first results show that a progressive opening-up has occurred in the Italian party system towards different interest representatives but differences emerged between old and new actors as well as between left and right wing parties. Another important evidence is that the amount of money collected by parties and candidates through liberal donations tend to change over time with substantial differences between party central organization and its political representatives.
Le Regioni italiane alla prova del lobbying: convergenze, divergenze, incongruenze
Riccardo Fichera (riccardo.fichera@studium.unict.it), Santo Primavera (santo.prima@hotmail.it)
AbstractPartendo dalla constatazione che, a livello nazionale, i recenti tentativi di legiferazione sul lobbying non hanno ancora prodotto risultati apprezzabili (“regolamentazione-strisciante ad andamento schizofrenico”, cit. P. L. Petrillo, 2011), le Regioni offrono un banco di prova tangibile per testare i risultati e l’efficacia di un inquadramento normativo di una materia così controversa. Sembra, infatti, che gli organi direttivi regionali (e.g. Giunta e Consiglio) abbiano voluto supplire ai ritardi e alle mancanze del legislatore nazionale e abbiano mostrato una maggiore sensibilità ai temi della rappresentanza e della trasparenza, nel loro sforzo di istituzionalizzare il coinvolgimento diretto di interessi legittimi nel processo di decision-making. Questo intento, tuttavia, non sempre ha sortito gli effetti sperati. Anzi, dichiarazioni di principio, tra le più ambiziose e promettenti, sono spesso rimaste lettera morta. Emblematico, a tal proposito, è il caso della Regione Siciliana, il cui Statuto, entrato in vigore ancor prima della Costituzione Repubblicana, già conteneva, all’art. 12 comma 3, la previsione letterale della “partecipazione delle rappresentanze degli interessi professionali e degli organi tecnici regionali”, in seno alle Commissioni dell’ARS nella loro fase consultiva. Questo precetto ed i successivi regolamenti, che hanno precisato il dettato statutario, non hanno mai trovato applicazione. E’ proprio dal caso siciliano che il paper prenderà le mosse, cercando di indagare le cause di questo insuccesso e perlustrando i canali informali attraverso i quali gli stakeholders esercitano le loro influenze. A comparazione della specificità siciliana, si affiancheranno le analisi dei casi, altrettanto paradigmatici, della Regione Toscana, della Regione Molise e della Regione Abruzzo. Queste regioni, infatti, si sono dotate, seppur con tempi e modalità diverse, di una compiuta disciplina sui gruppi sui di gruppi di pressione. L’interesse per il primo caso deriva dal voler capire, a distanza di più di dieci anni dall’approvazione della L.R. 5/2002, qual è stato l’esito di quello che può essere considerato, a ragion veduta, un esperimento senza precedenti: come sono stati utilizzati gli strumenti messi a disposizione dal testo normativo (i.e. quanti sono, ad oggi, gli iscritti nel Registro dei gruppi di interesse accreditati e come si comportano); quali differenze tra il regime precedente e quello attuale; come è stato influenzato il processo di policy-making in termini di accountability, assessment e compliance. Un analogo studio verrà condotto anche sulla Regione Molise, la cui L.R. 24/2004 riproduce fedelmente, quasi con un copia-incolla, il testo toscano. Un discorso diverso sarà fatto per la Regione Abruzzo, la cui L.R. 61/2010 introduce un nuovo approccio regolativo, non prevedendo l’obbligo di iscrizione in un registro per lobbisti per quanti esercitano tale attività e includendo tra i “decisori pubblici”, destinatari quindi dell’azione di lobbying, anche il presidente di Giunta ed i suoi assessori. Pertanto, oltre a una analisi descrittiva delle esperienze regionali di regolamentazione del lobbying, il paper ambisce a valutare in termini qualitativi e quantitativi l’impatto complessivo di queste leggi nelle dinamiche d’interazione tra decisore pubblico regionale e portatori legittimi d’interessi.
L’industria del lobbying nei paesi europei: una comparazione
Alberto Bitonti (bitonti@american.edu)
AbstractL’industria del lobbying nei paesi europei presenta uno scenario notevolmente variegato, complici le differenze di ogni paese rispetto a sistemi istituzionali, a culture politiche, alle stesse dimensioni nazionali, alla storia così come alle tradizioni filosofiche e civili delle diverse aree del continente.
Questo contributo si colloca nell’ambito di un più vasto progetto di ricerca teso a studiare l’industria del lobbying in tutti i ventotto paesi membri dell’Unione Europea, svolto attraverso interviste in profondità ad altrettanti testimoni privilegiati di ogni paese (lobbisti o accademici esperti della materia), interviste svolte tra 2013 e 2015 (la ricerca è ancora in corso). Obiettivo del presente paper è iniziare a dare conto dei primi risultati della ricerca, provando a tracciare una comparazione sulla base ristretta di alcuni casi ritenuti particolarmente significativi e rappresentativi, consentendo un’analisi più circoscritta ma più approfondita delle principali variabili da prendere in considerazione per studiare un settore, quello dell’industria del lobbying, particolarmente rilevante per comprendere a fondo la natura delle democrazie europee.
Panel 3.3 Comparative European Populism (I)
It has usually been difficult finding a clear and comprehensive definition of populism: an ideology, a political strategy, a political communicative style, a political program, a tool of personalistic leadership?
The world economic crisis has significantly marked European political landscape, producing important changes in well-structured National political systems: unexpected coalitional governments in some countries, collapse of ruling parties in some others, and so on.
Since the rise of new political movements and the significant growth of small parties, on both sides of the political spectrum, the classical categorization of European populism, generally referring to right-wing political forces, has become wider, and closer, for example, to the south American experience.
With the recent emergence of left-wing populist parties, it is now necessary to re-define the field of analysis: a comparative European perspective of populism is still missing, that’s why we are willing to fill this void paying particular attention to empirical facts.
In order to (de- or re-)conceptualize its contemporary evolution, this panel aims at collecting both continental and intercontinental comparative case studies attempting to:
- Redefine populism in contemporary European politics;
- Define a landscape of European euro-skeptical parties;
- Analyze populism as a communication strategy and provided with a peculiar language;
- Investigate populism as a personalization and leadership tool.
Special attention will be given to case studies which, alongside of theoretical reflection, do emphasize concrete empirical contributions.
The working language of this panel is English, but even papers in Italian will be accepted.
Chairs: Roberto De Rosa, Dario Quattromani
Discussants: Sara Gentile
European And American Populism: A Comparative Analysis
Antonello Canzano (a.canzano@unich.it)
AbstractThe paper deals with a comparative analysis of the populist phenomenon and its formations both in Europe and in the Americas. From a purely theoretical point of view, European populism, more than other populisms, and I do refer in particular to the North American case, offers an accentuation of the concepts of demophilia and demagoguery in an ambiguous connection, thus forming an explosive antidemocratic and antiproceduralist mixture, considering that the evolution of Western and American political systems were particularly characterized by universal proceduralisms, which many existing bodies escape the legitimacy and popular control. Moreover, the analysis of the North American populism will take into account certain unique features clearly distinguishing it from the European one, such as the centripetal and libertarian tendency. A qualitatively and quantitatively different kind of populism is the Latin American one, that will mainly be studied here in its actual and more significant expression, the so-called "indigenization" of politics.
XXI century Europopulism from Theory to Practice: on the cases of Front national, M5S and Ukip
Nicola Genga (nicola.genga@uniroma1.it)
AbstractSince the growing tendency of referring to populism in the media environment, a clear comprehension of the matter is definitely required, particularly in a scientific environment. This need has become even more urgent in the aftermath of the 2014 EP elections, in which Euro-sceptical political players obtained a considerable success in some relevant member states. A preliminary attempt of clarification on a theoretical level is here proposed in order to outline a possible typology of today European populism, with some remarks on the notion of euroscepticism. A deeper focus is provided on case studies pertaining to three major European countries: France, United Kingdom, and Italy. Both the French Front National and the United Kingdom Independence Party obtained the relative majority of the vote at the last European parliamentary elections. Meanwhile, the M5S performed with a still satisfactory 21%. All of them display a thick populist dimension in their political discourse and have strong personalized leaderships. An overall comparison of their main features is here taken into account with the purpose of formulating some hypothesis about the relationship between populist actors and their respective political systems in contemporary democracy
Jobbik on the way to become a people’s party?
Fanni Mandák (mandak.fanni@uni-nke.hu)
AbstractThe real breakthrough for the Hungarian radical right party Jobbik Movement for a Better Hungary came with the European Parliament elections in 2009. The extent of its success was outstanding, no other extreme party has managed to achieve 15 percent having less than 1 percent two-three years before. Among the radical parties which ran for the 2009 European Parliament elections, none (except the Dutch Freedom Party) exceeded the votes for Jobbik.
In this article I have the ambition to explain the reasons of this success in 2009 and the development of the party in the following years. I suppose that the motives of its continuous success are compact and therefore there is a definite requirement to apply a multidisciplinary approach at the research, furthermore it is needed to examine not only the Jobbik but also the other parties of the Hungarian political systems, especially the other radical right forces.
In my work I analyse in details the Jobbik’s ideological profile, its evaluation and institutional structure by interviews with party leaders and the content-analysis of its political programmes of the last more than ten years. I would like to present whether the initial firm and ideological rhetoric has modified and whether there has been a change of the emphasis on certain public policy areas and issues and whether there is a shift toward becoming a people’s party.
In addition I study the party’s electoral results in a regional division and comparing its national results with the other leading parties of the country to show its dynamic headway in the last years.
Euro-Scepticism And Party Systems. Europe As A New Party Cleavage? Preliminary Evidences From France And Greece.
Noemi Trino (ntrino@luiss.it)
AbstractThe concept of Europeanization is related to the effects of European integration on its member states at both national and European level political institutions (Ladrech 2011). The paper aims to contribute to identify a landscape of European Eurosceptic parties, based on populist mobilization, by considering Europe integration process as a potential cleavage in domestic/national party systems In this framework, a renewed concept of cleavage is proposed in the light of contemporary party systems’ transformation and the hypothesis of Europe as a new party cleavage is tested in its relationship with the previous structuration of national party systems (Bartolini 2005; Hooghe and Marks 2009). In particular, the hypothesis is verified through the analysis of the Eurosceptic parties’ phenomenon, a “disparate grouping, unified in its populist politics” (Taggart 1997), whose development from the peripheral areas of party systems has been consolidating at the very centre of political arenas, even in Countries with traditionally "Europhile" political systems, all along the left-right continuum. In the case of the French National Front, competition seems to have been structured along the traditional territorial cleavage - State Territorial Defenders/ European Integration. In the case of Greece, the rise of political platforms, such us the leftwing Syriza, built around the opposition to Brussels' bureaucracy and its economic practices – according to the functional cleavage between Winners/Losers of Economic integration - (Hloušek, 2010, Bartolini 2000, 2005) is deeply intertwined with a transitional phase, characterised by destructuration of the previous party system and the economic crisis.Thanks to the theoretical framework offered by the cleavage theory, the paper shows that EU seems to have a growing impact on the structuring of national political arenas in terms of birth and development of Euro-sceptic populist parties, whose platforms and patterns of competition are closely related to traditional alignments within parties systems.
Panel 3.3 Comparative European Populism (II)
It has usually been difficult finding a clear and comprehensive definition of populism: an ideology, a political strategy, a political communicative style, a political program, a tool of personalistic leadership?
The world economic crisis has significantly marked European political landscape, producing important changes in well-structured National political systems: unexpected coalitional governments in some countries, collapse of ruling parties in some others, and so on.
Since the rise of new political movements and the significant growth of small parties, on both sides of the political spectrum, the classical categorization of European populism, generally referring to right-wing political forces, has become wider, and closer, for example, to the south American experience.
With the recent emergence of left-wing populist parties, it is now necessary to re-define the field of analysis: a comparative European perspective of populism is still missing, that’s why we are willing to fill this void paying particular attention to empirical facts.
In order to (de- or re-)conceptualize its contemporary evolution, this panel aims at collecting both continental and intercontinental comparative case studies attempting to:
- Redefine populism in contemporary European politics;
- Define a landscape of European euro-skeptical parties;
- Analyze populism as a communication strategy and provided with a peculiar language;
- Investigate populism as a personalization and leadership tool.
Special attention will be given to case studies which, alongside of theoretical reflection, do emphasize concrete empirical contributions.
The working language of this panel is English, but even papers in Italian will be accepted.
Chairs: Roberto De Rosa, Dario Quattromani
Discussants: Oreste Massari
From the ground to the central office through the web: the political path of Five Stars’s parliamentarian.
Francesco Capria (capriafrancesco@virgilio.it)
AbstractAs a result of the Italian general elections held on 24-25 February 2013, 161 candidates of the Five Stars Movement lists entered the national Parliament. As for the young political formation led by Grillo, it was their first time ever. Many of them were new to politics: they did not hold any public office or have a previous militancy in political parties. They were elected by online voting of the Five Stars Movement’s members and "catapulted" directly inside the Parliament. However, their experiences of participation and activism within the local groups reduced the risk for the online voters to elect unknown people or “infiltrates” by other parties. Once elected, how did the Five Stars Movement candidates operate within the Parliament? What is their relationship with Grillo and the party at the central level? But before that, what is the relationship between themselves (the elected ones)? And, finally, how do they interact with the local groups? I will try to give answer to these questions throughout this paper, moving from both the literature on populism and on political parties or movements born under the influence of participation "from below" in other European countries: in particular, the elements of similarity and difference between them and the Five Stars Movement will be considered, in their common destiny towards institutionalization.
New populist parties in Europe: right-wing, left-wing, or parties without an ideology? The case of the Five Star Movement.
Cristina Cremonesi (cristina.cremonesi02@ateneopv.it)
AbstractThe interest of social sciences for populism has grown hand in hand with the increasing success of populist parties in different regions of the world. Nevertheless, some aspects of this complex phenomenon remain unclear; since populism is a slippery and chameleonic concept, there is no agreement about its theoretical definition (populism has been conceived respectively as thin ideology, a communication style, and as a political strategy) and about the methods to analyse its empirical manifestations. Consequently, while many parties are labelled as populist, it is still not clear what are their distinctive characteristics. The appearance in Europe of new kinds of populist parties, that not only seem to cover the complete political spectrum but also to take distance from it by not embracing any ideology, makes the definition and measurement of populism even more complicated. It also arises the question whether populism could be defined as a thin-ideology even when it is not linked to any other ‘thicker set of ideas’. Therefore, to consider the ideological positioning of the emerging populist parties seems to be particularly relevant. This research assesses this issue by studying the direct communication of Beppe Grillo during the 2013 Italian electoral campaign, and it aims to be the starting point for a broader comparative study about the communication of different populist leaders and the evolution over time of their ideological positioning. The study opens with a theoretical reflection on the concept of populism and on the rise of new kinds of populist parties all over Europe. Successively it focuses on the methodological instruments needed for the understanding of the nature of these new populist parties; in this regard, an original codebook for the measurement of both the elements of populism and the ideological positions of the parties is presented. Finally, an empirical application of this codebook is shown: the communication displayed by the (commonly labelled as populist) Five Star Movement and its leader Beppe Grillo on different platforms (party’s web site, social media, electoral rallies and party manifestoes) is analysed and compared with that of Pier Luigi Bersani and the Democratic Party (commonly considered not populist). By means of this analysis, it will be understood to what extent the Five Star Movement’s communication is populist as well as which elements of populism are the most underlined. Furthermore, it will be revealed the ideological positioning of the Five Star Movement both on the left-right political continuum and on the GAL-TAN dimension. Finally, the most relevant similarities and differences in the communication of Beppe Grillo and Pierluigi Bersani and in their use of the different communication channels will be highlighted and interpreted.
Right-Wing Nationalism Vs. Left-Wing Solidarism? A Comparative Look At Four (Successful) Electoral Campaigns For The European Parliament Elections 2014
Roberto De Rosa (derosa@unitus.it), Dario Quattromani (dario.quattromani@uniroma3.it)
AbstractThe main literature on populism has been defining it as: a "thin-centered ideology" (M. Freeden), a discursive style and a political strategy. In each of these three approaches it is essential its use of the political communication, since the latter has a crucial role in modern democracies, not only creating a space of relationship and exchange among government actors and citizens, but assuming, in times of electoral campaign, performing values with which populism - both as a discursive style and a political strategy - plays its cards wisely. The recent European elections represented an important crossroad for the supranational electoral experience, whose importance, compared to past experiences, has to be found in the attempt to suggest the creation of a European public space. One of the factors that produced this change of perspective (at least in communication strategies’ terms) can be considered the evolution of the concept of Euroscepticism; if in the past this concept described positions of rejection of the European Union as a supranational entity, currently, under the same definition we may include critical positions to the policies developed by the EU, but not the rejection of the idea of a united Europe. To avoid stretching of the concept it is therefore considered more appropriate to speak of Euroscepticisms with a plural definition, in order to have a better understanding of the different communication strategies implemented. The mixture of populist discursive styles and contingent communicative strategies, linked with the actual climate of permanent electoral campaign, does outline a framework in which populist positions in several European countries are much more clear. A first question to which we will try to answer is whether, and to what extent, the electoral campaign for the 2014 European Parliament has been driven by factors related to the economic crisis and therefore connected with typical populist themes (Meny, Surel) linked to a communication style dominated by the "negative" and a dialectic of confrontation (us and them), or whether, and to what extent, the personal/individual factors related to the leaderships of these populist formations had an impact on their electoral success. In this context, the focus of this paper will be the four victorious electoral campaigns for the 2014 European Parliament of the National Front in France, the United Kingdom Independence Party in the UK, of the Democratic Party in Italy and of SYRIZA in Greece. Despite different ideological matrixes and the distant position on the left-right continuum, these four political formations are the sources of many of the criticisms towards the current EU policies, as communicated in recent years (those only nationally - FN and UKIP - but with a communitarian echo, and those exposing themselves in search of a supranational consensus - SYRIZA and PD) and strategically used, then, as a leitmotif of their electoral campaigns. The ultimate goal of this work is, therefore, outlining the features, the discursive styles and the various communication strategies adopted by FN, UKIP, PD and SYRIZA, each of them containing various amounts of populism, Euroscepticism and anti-politics, but none of them provided with real anti-Europeanism.
Not a traditional party nor a traditional populist movement: The Five Stars Movement attempt to reconceptualise political participation
Cristiano Gianolla (cgianolla@ces.uc.pt)
AbstractThe increasing dissatisfaction expressed by citizens towards political elites is a weakness of democratic representation instrumentally polarised by populist movements to build their void signifier (Laclau). The Five Stars Movement (M5S) in Italy has something in common with, but provides a political alternative both to, traditional parties and to traditional populisms of the right and the new populisms of the left. The positive electoral results and the following institutionalisation of the ‘movement’ increases its ‘party’ dimension. The combination of participation from grassroots with a centralised communication strategy provides a hybrid populist-participatory identity. The appeal to a renewed concept of ‘active’ people without a fully functional and inclusive system of participation and decision-making, brings the M5S to the fore of innovation and criticism. This paper aims at exploring the M5S from a critical stance analysing data collected during six month of ethnographic research
