One of the main ‘promises’ that populist parties seek to deliver is to bring politics closer to the ‘people’. While the literature focused mainly on the relationship between voters and those parties, less attention has been given to the role of members’ priorities in shaping parties’ legislative activity. In this paper, we focus on a paradigmatic technopopulist case, the Italian Five Star Movement (FSM): one of the founding trademarks of the party was the involvement of the members in the party activities via a digital platform. FSM’s digital platform included participative digital law-making features, which matched member priorities and élite policymaking. We built an original dataset which comprises the law-making activities of members and parliamentarians from 2013 to 2019. We analysed 2000 law proposals and found that FSM elected representatives’ agenda, albeit partly diverging from that of members, still changed in the direction of member priorities through time.

A digital principal? Substantive representation in the case of the Italian Five Star Movement / Mosca, Lorenzo; Vittori, Davide. - In: EUROPEAN SOCIETIES. - ISSN 1469-8307. - (2022), pp. 1-30. [10.1080/14616696.2022.2144638]

A digital principal? Substantive representation in the case of the Italian Five Star Movement

Lorenzo Mosca;
2022-01-01

Abstract

One of the main ‘promises’ that populist parties seek to deliver is to bring politics closer to the ‘people’. While the literature focused mainly on the relationship between voters and those parties, less attention has been given to the role of members’ priorities in shaping parties’ legislative activity. In this paper, we focus on a paradigmatic technopopulist case, the Italian Five Star Movement (FSM): one of the founding trademarks of the party was the involvement of the members in the party activities via a digital platform. FSM’s digital platform included participative digital law-making features, which matched member priorities and élite policymaking. We built an original dataset which comprises the law-making activities of members and parliamentarians from 2013 to 2019. We analysed 2000 law proposals and found that FSM elected representatives’ agenda, albeit partly diverging from that of members, still changed in the direction of member priorities through time.
2022
A digital principal? Substantive representation in the case of the Italian Five Star Movement / Mosca, Lorenzo; Vittori, Davide. - In: EUROPEAN SOCIETIES. - ISSN 1469-8307. - (2022), pp. 1-30. [10.1080/14616696.2022.2144638]
File in questo prodotto:
Non ci sono file associati a questo prodotto.

I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.

Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11381/2957895
Citazioni
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.pmc??? ND
  • Scopus 1
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.isi??? 0
social impact