The mass protest movement (five star movement in Italy): innovative practices of civic engagement

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Dnipro National University

The mass protest movement (five star movement in Italy): innovative practices of civic engagement

Mikheichenko M.,

PhD in Political Science, associate professor of the Department of International Relations, Oles Honchar

Abstract

In the article, innovative mechanisms ofcivic engagement and new activities ofpolitical institutional structures are revealed. The example of innovative model ofcivic engagement is given. This model based on analysis of activities of Italian mass protest movement (Five Star Movement). The Five Star Movement in Italy is represented as an effective institutional structure with growing number of members and new innovative approaches to civic engagement mechanisms. It is stated that new practices and mechanisms of civic engagement are connected with E-democracy, direct democracy, social networks and social dialog virtual platforms. The article follows discussion with a focus on using ITfor enhancing civic engagement. This paper presents studies from Italian mass protest movement (Five Star Movement) activities, which exhibit different approaches to the problem of enhancing civic engagement practices, building infrastructures for e-democracy. The projects represent the most ambitious civic engagement projects in Italy yet.

Keywords: e-democracy, direct democracy, civic engagement, social networks, innovative communicative platforms, political activism, political consumerism.

Today Europe and the whole world is living in another reality. Most European countries and their leaders were taken by surprise, unprepared to face the rise of civic engagement decline.

As researcher Stephen Coleman has put it: «The problem faced by contemporary democracy is horribly simple: governments have come to believe that the public don't know how to speak; the public has come to believe that governments don't know how to listen. Faced with apparently `apathetic' citizens, the political class complains about the difficulty of governing in a vacuum. Convinced that the political class is not interested in them, the public is increasingly pursuing a conversation in which politicians are outsiders» [7].

According S. Coleman, the problem of innovative practices of civic engagement is being especially true in situation of low electoral turnout in Europe and decreasing levels of civic engagement have called into question the legitimacy of governments and the stability of democracy in the long term. Against the background of such developments, this research sets out to provide a study of civic engagement mechanisms and practices and analyse the variations in civic engagement in Five Star Movement activities in Italy. Part of this process includes lessons not yet learned from Italian crisis. Therefore, an analysis of the latest innovative practices of civic engagement on the Italian crisis in this article should provide thought for opinion academicians and politicians. In addition, studying innovative practices of civic engagement is especially true for contemporary Ukraine and many countries in transition. In Ukraine, rising the interest to the innovative practices of civic engagement accompanied by the growing number of non-governmental organisations, which propose new ways of civic involvement in political issues at both levels - national and local level. After the events of Euromaidan 2014, the public focus is on new possibilities of informative technologies in constructing virtual platforms for public discussions and meetings deepening democratic practices.

Civic engagement theoretical background based on works of G. A. Almond and S. Verba (The civic culture: Political attitudes and democracy in five nations, 1963-1989). Page (Essentiality for democracy, 1996), Putnam (factor of civil society development, 2000). Bourdieu, Coleman, Scott, Zukin (Part of social capital in the meaning of social bounds development and embeddedness, 1985-2002).

The problem of low level of civic engagement and its' improvement mechanisms was revealed earlier mostly through the prism of neediness of educational projects development in works of J. A. Amadeo, J. Torney-Purta, R. Lehmann, V. Husfeldt and R. Nikolova, W. A. Galston. These significant results shed new light on civic engagement activities usually regarded as `youth educational projects' type of activities and suggest viewing them in the context of a wider array of educational actions in groups of young people.

Civic engagement conceptualization on political matters was gained in works of Jones (Giving and volunteering as forms of social engagement, 2006), Carpini, Cook, Jacobs (Accents on value of political talk as the dimension of civic engagement, 2004). A Civic Engagement reform arose at the beginning of the 21st century after Robert Putnam's provocative book, «Bowling Alone» [17], brought to light changes in civic participation patterns. Putnam argued that despite rapid increases in higher education opportunities that may foster civic engagement, Americans were dropping out of political and organized community life. A number of studies suggested that while more youth are volunteering, fewer are voting or becoming politically engaged. The way of strengthening of civic engagement due to the Internet services was revealed in researches of Norris (2001) [14].

However, it is still the need to analyse the measures and practices of civic engagement improvement process due to virtual communicative platforms and new innovative coordinative practices, which are used by different political institutions. Also this research focus on new systems for membership, new strategies for recruitment and plans for keeping members involved and active.

The aim of the article is to reveal new innovative practices and political institutions development in direction of civic engagement improvement on example of Italian mass protest movement (Five Star Movement) activities.

Main objectives of the study concluded next issues:

to reveal long-term challenges to democratic political institutions development which are connected with issues of low level of public awareness about political decision-making process and low level of public political participation etc.;

to examine the ability of the Five Star Movement in Italy to shape the public agenda;

to show new possibilities for civic engagement improvement on the example of Five Star Movement activities;

to emphasize the leading role of Internet platforms in civic engagement improvement;

to show the effectiveness of Internet social networks, such as Meetup (was settled by the leader of Five Star Movement), to communicate and coordinate local meetings, to form political agenda;

to reveal new tendencies in new political institutions development and abilities to face with a low level of political participation.

The idea of using new informative technologies in civic engagement activities comes from the USA. Howard Dean had already adopted coordination of activists through meetups in 2003 during the campaign for the primaries of the Democratic Party of the United States. According to the new tendencies, non-governmental political institutions are now the real driving forces of civic engagement improvement process. The example of Italian Five Star Movement proved the ability to enhance civic engagement and rising public awareness as to the actual political issues. On 16 July 2005 in Italy, Beppe Grillo offered supporters of the proposals submitted to his blog to adopt social networks, such as Meetup, to communicate and coordinate local meetings.

The first attempts of Five Star Movement to rise the number of supporters of the movement are connected with virtual activities in Internet social platforms. It was called «Friends of Beppe Grillo» [19]. The idea of those activities according to the same Grillo, to «have fun, get together and share ideas and proposals for a better world, starting from one's own city. And discuss and develop, if you believe, my posts» [19].

We identify classes exhibiting distinct patterns of political mobility and show how membership changes over time on example of Italian Five Star Movement development.

So, important things to know about political civic engagement and keeping active citizens:

the more different types of people you have in your group/ organisation, the more representative it is of your target community. This will ensure greater community support for your group/ organisation;

members bring skills and experience that they can use to benefit the organisation;

more members mean that you can do more work as an organisation;

the more members you have in your group/organisation the more different ideas and opinions are expressed and discussed, this will lead to better decisions being taken [9, p. 217].

According to the first criteria within the Meetup Grillo creates thematic working groups on topics including «technology and innovation», «press-communication», «ethical consumerism», «currency study», «no incinerators» [10]. From these experiences we could say that these measures led to greater community support for Five Star Movement in 2005.

The second, third and the forth criteria of distinct political civic engagement and keeping active citizens revealed by the next patterns. The Five Star Movement bases its principles on direct democracy as an evolution of representative democracy. The idea is that citizens will no longer delegate their power to parties, considered old and corrupted intermediates between the State and themselves that serve the interests of lobby groups and financial powers. They will succeed only by creating a collective intelligence made possible by the Internet. On three occasions: 17-th of December in Turin, 26-th of March in Piacenza and 16 to 18-th of June in Sorrento - the representatives of the «Friends of Beppe Grillo» meetup held national meetings in the presence of Grillo. In these circumstances, proposals mostly regarding environmental issues were discussed, such as the replacement of polluting incinerators with systems applying mechanical- biological waste treatment [10].

During the fourth national meeting held in Genoa on 3-d of February 2007, Beppe Grillo announced his desire to provide local Meetup activists an autonomous space within the shows of his tour.

On 14-th of July 2007, the representatives of some civic lists participating in local elections the previous spring met in Parma to establish a national coordination between «associations, movements, organizations and civic lists practicing, promoting and experimenting direct and participatory democracy», and share a document of intent that, amongst its main objectives, included the establishment of proposal and repeal referendums, the direct election of the Ombudsman, the institution of participatory budgeting, a «bound» mandate for public administrators and open primaries.

The movement's political discourse often refers to the Internet as a solution to many social, economic, and environmental problems.

Professor Piero Ignazi, a political scientist from the University of Bologna said: «They may not have clear views on many issues ... but their advantage is that they are not ideological, they are pragmatists» [19].

We could not agree with the words of researcher of Ake Greenland from Umea University «as most e-democracy projects are still at the experimental or at least embryonic stage, it is hard to and any project with flourishing participation and radically changed citizen decision maker relations. This should not be surprising - projects aiming at changing an established tradition will face resistance. And even if they are pursued effectively, measurable results take a long time to show» [19].

Nevertheless, civic engagement actions caused by massive public impact. Public participation in groups or organizations is known to have a massive impact on communities. As the example of effective e-democracy project and civic engagement practices could be considered Italian Five Star Movement project. Their influence and impact visible in situation of cooperation of European parliamentary candidates, in order to go in this direction, chose its Italian and European parliamentary candidates through online voting by registered members of Beppe Grillo's Blog. Through an application called «Rousseau» reachable on the web, the registered users of M5S discuss, approve or reject legislative proposals (submitted then in the Parliament by the M5S group). For example, the M5S electoral law was shaped through a series of online voting, like the name of the M5S candidate for President of the Republic. The choice to support the abolition of a law against immigrants was taken online by members of the M5S even if the final decision was against the opinion of Grillo and Casaleggio [19]. The partnership with the UK Independence Party was also decided by online voting, although the given options for the choice of European Parliament group for M5S were limited to: Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD), European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and «Stay independent» (Non-Inscrits) [19].

Canadian researcher Martin Turcotte has shown that younger people are interested in politics though virtual platform. Many young Canadians are politically and civically engaged in different ways. «Youth aged 20 to 24 are among the most engaged of all in political activities such as signing petitions...» [18].

The father of the Five Star Movement Beppe Grillo used different practices to attract youth to his virtual platform. Beppe Grillo, a comedian turned politician as usual makes posts on his blog. However, after the Brexit he called an online referendum. Grillo even has long called for a referendum on Italy's membership of the euro currency. It must be stated that Grillo uses clear and strong messages for enhancing civic engagement. On his blog articulated such messages: «direct democracy, transparency, freedom and honesty». «With our vote we can make a difference and influence the result of many important decisions to counter the European establishment», Grillo added [19].

M5S - a Eurosceptic and populist party that has a good chance of winning Italy's next election.

Vincenzo Scarpetta, a senior policy analyst at the thinktank «Open Europe» emphasized that «The challenge for the Five Star Movement is to show they are a credible alternative and Rome is of course their biggest test. Even with all the caveats - these are investigations for now - all these events taken together give the impression of lack of experience and amateurism, the inability to pick the right people to help you as part of your cabinet» [10].

The momentum M5S gained from that win could be diminished by the chaos that has engulfed Raggi's administration in Rome, prompting questions about the party's ability to govern even as it is pushing for Italy's president to call early elections.

All in all the Five Star Movement continue to enhance civic engagement due to virtual platform «The M5S blog». The number of followers now more than two million people [10]. We could not disagree with Stephan Coleman that «Citizens are no longer content with the role of just being passive spectators. As the phenomenal popularity of reality TV has shown, people want to be (literally) in the picture and to have their judgements respected» [10].

In other words the results of this research suggest that the national context matters and that governments, politicians, democratic forces can and do shape the nature and levels of civic engagement. The lower voter turnout among younger individuals promises to be a topic of interest and concern in the coming years.

Conclusion

Firstly, every representative democracy must recruit qualified individuals to serve in public offices and channel their ambitions in socially productive ways.

Secondly, civic engagement can take many forms -- from individual volunteerism, community engagement efforts (virtual Internet platforms), organizational involvement and government work such as electoral participation. These engagements may include directly addressing a problem through personal work, community based, or worked through the institutions of representative democracy. Many individuals feel a sense personal responsibility to actively engage as a sense of obligation to their community. In focus of scientific researches is the problem of youth civic engagement.

Thirdly, the Five Star Movement in Italy demonstrates the ability to maintain strong ties with voters through Internet. For the short period of time Italian populist party headed by Beppe Grillo caused by rising the rates of the civic engagement. Rising the rates of this party accompanied by the rising rates of the civic engagement among Italian community. The success of Beppe Grillo more visible due to strong communication process and feedbacks from voters. New high innovative technologies give new opportunities for articulating the positions of key political actors, distribution their messages to the public. It is also true that forming the space of trust and political engagement leads to development of e-democracy. Furthermore, information technology applied to enhance public participation in democratic processes. E-democracy projects are usually found at local levels of government, but there are also efforts at national level.

In addition, the issue of how e-democracy infrastructures should be designed in Ukraine is the important problem for next consideration.

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