Italy’s month-long effort to form a new government after the March 4 election is indicative of the current state of the political system in Italy and also in Europe in general. Not long ago, we saw the extreme complexity and intricacy of the process whereby a ruling coalition was formed in Germany, a leading EU nation, and before that in a number of other countries. With the emergence of new parties nurtured by civil protests in the 2010s, the old institutional system of checks and balances in parliaments often proves ineffective.
Either it degenerates into the banal “old hands versus newcomers” dynamic camouflaged by the impressive and politically correct appellation of “broad coalition” (we saw this in Germany, and in Italy, too, under the old parliament), or a stalemate is created with mutual recriminations (as was the case in Italy during March and April), or a more subtle system develops where the “rebels” are allowed to assume power but very soon, under the pressure of the circumstances (and Brussels), revert to the old mainstream policy (as in Greece with Alexis Tsipras’s Syriza government). A separate case in point is where the “new is beaten by the new,” as in France a year ago, when a new (or rather “counter-new”) political movement led by Emmanuel Macron emerged. The old system, showing flexibility and the ability for a rapid transformation, has triumphantly remained in power.
Does this mean that the new political forces (and broad civic protest as a whole) find no place for themselves within the existing EU institutional matrix? Does this mean that protest is only for the streets and for letting off steam? Is there a critical mass that will propel public displeasure towards a change of political course?
Let us analyze the Italian example in this context. A clear-cut two-party system took shape in Italy during the 1990s and 2000s. Although, understandably, there were more parties than two, all of them, as a rule, worked together to form two main coalitions – the center-right (with a sufficient rhetoric air of non-conformism) and center-left (that has practically given up the traditional left-wing ideology and joined the left liberal mainstream steeped in the spirit of Tony Blair’s notorious Third Way). It is their combinations and infighting that constituted the gist of the political process in the country. But the situation changed in the 2010s, when Italy, like other EU countries, had to come to grips with civil unrest and protests. In this context, Italy was distinct from other European countries in that against the background of the consolidated two-coalition system the new civic movement almost immediately was cast in an anarchistic mold and launched protests against the entire old system with its right and left wings. The motto, or, more precisely, the obscene street cry of the Five Star Movement, Italy’s main (and only) new protest group, “Vaffa,” meant: Go to Jericho, all of you, left or right! We will not go deeper into the still persisting patriarchal political culture and traditions in Italy to discover the roots of this anarchism. But at least at the level of stereotypes, the explanation lies on the surface and is quite clear.
Meanwhile, the situation is different in other EU countries. The civil protest movements in many of them have crystallized into two non-system – left and right – political movements. This was the case in France, where the right was filled by the burgeoning National Front and the opposite flank – by Melenchon’s movement. The same in Germany, where the non-system right came to be held by a new party, Alternative for Germany, while the left was taken by the thoroughly upgraded Left Party that by and large managed to overcome its former image as a post-GDR appendix to the mainstream. The same picture emerged in Greece with its Syriza and Golden Dawn parties.
In Spain, the situation was influenced by history: its two new protest movements were distinguished not so much by a left-right dynamic as they were their strong attitudes (naturally, almost undeclared) to the legacy of Francoism. It is obvious that Spanish society is still split along these lines. This was manifested in the old system mainstream too when voters, many of whom were, let us say, sufficiently tolerant of Francoism, cast their ballots for the People’s Party, while its convinced opponents voted for the Socialists. This is why Spain saw the emergence of two protest movements (despite the similarity of their programs) – the Podemos (in the anti-Franco environment) and the Citizens Party in what could be described as a pro-Franco milieu. But this Spain’s national specifics.
In any event, where there were two opposite protest movements, they paradoxically split the protest electorate and practically deprived it of any chance (with the exception of the Greek example) of winning the majority vote and defeating the mainstream. Besides, as the election campaigns went forward, these protest parties were regularly labeled “fascists” and “communists,” which was out of tune with reality. These labels were used by the mainstream parties (which is understandable), but this was an additional factor that pushed both protest parties away from each other. As a result, they took highly irreconcilable positions towards each other and ruled out any possibility of forming a coalition against the established mainstream. This wasted their chances of coming to power and guaranteed them only a marginal niche as parliamentary backbenchers, something that was clearly manifested both at the national level and in the European Parliament following the latest election in 2014. We have already commented on the importance of a right-left synthesis in protest ideology (and at least a tactical unity of the right and left wings in the protest movement, if they want to achieve success): http://valdaiclub.com/a/reports/report-global-rightist-revolt-trumpism/ This right-left idea synthesis (rather than common ultra-right populism) formed the basis of “Trumpism” as the US president’s electoral ideology: http://valdaiclub.com/a/reports/report-global-rightist-revolt-trumpism/
This right-left protest synthesis has materialized in Italy, a rare case in Western Europe because it has evolved into one protest party instead of two. It is for this reason that we see vastly different assessments of the political nature of the Five Star Movement. Some people seek to put them in the context of leftist protests in Europe (aligning them with Syriza and Podemos), while others brand the movement’s founder, Beppe Grillo, a “fascist.”
But in any event, the Five Star Movement has profited by the right-left synthesis by starting to gain more support than the other (disunited) protest parties in Western Europe. At the previous election in 2013, it won about 25 percent of the vote, while its current result is almost 32%. This is why the Five Stars (after the Syriza leaders joined the mainstream) is now the only new civic protest party that can tangibly influence the alignment of forces in parliament as efforts are made to form a new government coalition. In the last parliament, the FSM refused to enter a coalition with any of the old forces (which automatically led to an “old vs. new” government. At that time, Grillo declared that his movement would wait for an absolute electoral victory to form a homogenous government of its own. But it failed to gain an absolute victory (although it boosted its gain by 7 percent), and the new Five Star leader, Luigi Di Maio, said he was prepared for a coalition (meaning that he would be prime minister).
But the situation on Italy’s “old” right flank has changed as well. The former right-center coalition led by Silvio Berlusconi, l’enfant terrible of the entire European Union, was even less a part of the system (and accepted as such) of “old” right parties in the European mainstream. What added spice to the situation, apart from Berlusconi’s personal factor, was that his coalition included a former neo-Mussolini party, National Alliance, and the Northern League, a radical regional party with an anti-immigrant and later on an anti-Brussels agenda. But one thing was immutable for twenty years: Berlusconi’s own party, Forza Italia, was seen as the main partner in the coalition and gained perceptibly more votes at all elections than its junior partners.
But now the situation is changed. Headed by Matteo Salvini, the Northern League has carried out a powerful rebranding and for the first time asserted itself as a national force (rather than just a representative of the more industrialized north). This was also facilitated by the fact that in 2013 the Northern League was the only major old party that refused to join the coalition of “all vs. the Five Stars” and therefore positioned itself as active opposition to the mainstream. As result, the Northern League won more votes in the recent election than Forza Italia (17 percent versus 14 percent, with Salvini saying that now he, rather than a man appointed by Berlusconi, will be the right’s candidate for prime minister). This has brought about a slight split inside the coalition. But what is important for us is that the Northern League, owing to its new policy, has filled the vacant niche of a second protest party (as discussed).
Following this logic, it is quite natural that the relationship between the Northern League and the Five Stars has been strongly polarized since the March 4 elections. This is why the Di Maio-Salvini negotiations were so hard-going during the last two months (and the reason is not only that both want to be prime minister). The reason is primarily that the Five Stars’ spontaneously emerged monopoly on civic protests can now be called into question by the Northern League. In this case, Italy will share the fate of other EU countries with their split civil protest movements.
