The Five Star Movement: purely a matter of protest? The rise of a new party between political discontent and reasoned voting

The success of the Italian party Five Star Movement (M5S) has been broadly attributed to its ability to occupy the space of radical protest against “old politics”. Due to the party’s criticism, its charismatic leadership, and its aggressive electoral campaigns, the M5S has been labeled as a populist. The unexpected result of 2013 election raises crucial theoretical questions: To what extent does the M5S electorate reflect the characteristics of a protest vote? To what extent was it also a vote driven by values, by individual evaluations on a specific political issue? The first part of the article aims to investigate the extent of negative political feelings among M5S’ voters. To disentangle the meaning and impact of protest, we distinguish two dimensions: the “system discontent” and the “élite discontent,” referring to both general and focalized images, sentiments toward and the representation of political institutions, voter power, and government performances. In the second part, we bring to the analysis a further explanation based on the theory of issue voting. The goal is to measure whether voters have chosen M5S purely because of their political resentment or also given that they shared a similar position on a number of crucial policies emphasized in the electoral campaign.

L'articolo analizza le ragioni il successo elettorale del Movimento 5 stelle in Italia focalizzando l'attenzione sulla relazione tra voto e protesta. Nello specifico, all'interno del lavoro si scompone la dimensione della protesta nelle due componenti di system discontent ed elite discontent allo scopo di verificare quale è l'oggetto principale della critica da parte dell'elettorato (il sistema istituzionale o le performance dei partiti di governo). Nella seconda parte l'articolo analizza i temi della campagna elettorale mostrando in quali circostanze valutazioni specifiche su questioni ritenute salienti dall'elettorato si intrecciano con la critica genera alla politica favorendo il voto per il M5s.