Challenging the mainstream in times of crisis: evidence from legislative speeches in Italy (2013–2018)

This article examines whether and how the Eurosceptic stance of the populist Five Star Movement (M5S) has evolved since the party entered the Italian parliament and whether it has influenced the positions of mainstream parties. We combine the spatial approach to party competition with a quantitative text analysis of legislative speeches to analyse the EU domain of the Italian policy space during the 17th legislature (2013–2018). Our results suggest that this domain consists of two main dimensions: an economic dimension and an immigration dimension. The estimates of parties’ position shifts along these dimensions support the moderation hypothesis of challenger parties but not the contagion effect on mainstream parties. Overall, our findings contribute to both the literature on the complexity of policy domains such as the EU and the literature on legislative speeches as a tool for capturing the dynamics of party competition between elections.