After decades of economic stagnation, growing inequality and concerns about immigration (the latter grossly amplified by social media) Italians turned their back on mainstream political forces. The Five-Star Movement, the largest vote-winner, appeals mainly to the disaffected middle-class while the League, the other populist winner, draws support from the working class and small business community. While the League is by far the most influential political force in the north, Five Star won virtually every constituency in the south. Together they have more than 50 percent of the proportional vote. [...]
Five Star has had its share of scandals, but in its major battles, Five Star has been on the right side of history. It fights corruption, advocates for more transparency in government and typically communicates in plain language through its website. In other words, Five Star has shown its readiness to address the concerns that any progressive political force should tackle, but that former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's Democratic Party (PD), the leading Italian progressive party, failed to do. As such, Five Star must coalesce with other political forces, including possibly PD itself now that Renzi has conceded defeat and stepped down. [...]
Five Star's normalization would require it to change: It would have to leave aside the bigotry and bizarre anti-science agenda that has dogged some of its candidates and platform, and render its governance structure more transparent and accountable. That won't be easy: The experience of the past few years has shown Five Star to be opaque, top-down and authoritarian in the way it is run; a reality its supporters either ignore or excuse. That would have to change and it's not clear Five Star has the will or ability to make this happen. [...]
It would also need to clarify its ambiguous position on Europe. Over the last 20 years, Italian politicians – both from the right and the left– have used Europe as a scapegoat for Italy's home-grown problems. Much of this EU-bashing fueled the rise of an anti-EU sentiment in the country, giving Five Star the momentum that propelled it onto the national and European stage; the party's deputies currently sit in the European Parliament in a group with the British anti-Europe UKIP party that campaigned for Brexit.
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