A Populist Green Party? Discourses and Practices on Green Transition by the Five Stars Movement (2009-2023)
Author(s)
Date Issued
2023
Type
article
Volume
18
Issue
3
Start Page
233
End Page
256
Journal
Abstract
While unanimous in its categorization as ‘populist’, scholars have little analysed M5S discourse and practices on environmental issues (so central to the very identity of the party since its foundation); nor have they adopted them as the primary lens through which to categorize it and interpret its evolution over time. This paper aims to start to fill this gap. By relying on in-depth interviews with party representatives collected in the past few years, and on a focused analysis of manifestos and key party documents, this paper argues that M5S’s discourses over environmental issues mirror the (ideological, strategic, in terms of leadership) transformations of the party. Once inspired by technological utopianism and mobilizing through both forms of pre-figurative politics and ownership of LULU conflicts, the party, particularly under Luigi Di Maio’s leadership, for a while downplayed the priority assigned to the green transition and the challenges brought by climate change. In recent years, the M5S has been consistently framing green transition-related policies as tools for stimulating state-led economic growth. In this way, the M5S has gradually combined its environmentalist platform (previously branded as a valence issue and mostly stated in terms of ‘good practices’) with its ‘economic populist’ (Dornbusch and Edwards, 1991), inward-oriented, and highly divisive (in the Italian context) proposals, thus actively contributing to further politiciz- ing the issues of green transition and climate change. While M5S’s recent ‘progressive’ turn has increased its similarities to the European Green parties, the party’s ongoing populist features discourage its inclusion within the Green party family.