Paper delivered at the Conference “Alternative Futures andPopular Protests,” Manchester 2014

Protests Out of the Economic Crisis. TheMovimento 5 Stelle in Italy and 15M inSpain: Two Instances of a New Politics?

Lorenzo Cini* and Eliska Drapalova*

*PhD Candidates in Political and Social Sciences

European University Institute (Florence)

1

Table of ContentsIntroduction 3

Bringing Political Economy Back In Social Movement Studies

4

Understanding the New Wave of Protests

7

Methodology 8

The Political Economy of Corruption

9

What is Political in the Current Economic Crisis in Italy and

Spain? 11

The Movimento 5 Stelle: “Away with the old politics!”

13

The 15 M: “We are not anti-system, the system is anti-us!”

17

A New Idea of Politics? 21

Concluding Remarks 23

Appendix 26

References 27

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Introduction

The quality of democracy had been deteriorating long time before

the economic crisis struck. The implementation of austerity measures

following the crisis has only highlighted the incapacity of European

democracies to propose valid economic and political alternatives. This

generalized and univocal response has yet accelerated the perception,

among citizens, that something was going wrong in the decision-making

process of their governments. Why should the ordinary people have paid

the consequences of wild neoliberal policies in terms of cuts in public

spending to bail out a voracious banking system? To many, the austerity

measures have only proved the increasing dependence of democratic

politics on economic and financial markets in the direction of what

Lawrence Lessig (2013) called a process of institutional corruption. That

is, a process of collusion between politics and economic powers which

seems to have deteriorated the democratic governance over the last

decades. Facing such a widespread process of corruption, it is not

surprising that political protests have spread around the world precisely

in these years.

From Puerta del Sol in Madrid to Takzim Square in Istanbul and to Red

square in Moscow, a common frame seems to resonate in the words and in

the acts of the protestors: “STOP corruption! Or There isn’t enough bread

for so many chorizos!”1 These mobilizations have been spread and are

spreading around the world independently from the political orientation

of their governments (Andersen 2011). Progressive or conservative,

1 A CHORIZO is a spicy Spanish sausage, often sliced and served in a doughy sandwich. Chorizo is also slang for a swindler, cheat or corrupt person. At protests against corruption in Mariano Rajoy’s government, demonstrators have taken to waving loaves aloft and shouting: “There isn’t enough bread for so manychorizos! Chorizada is name for new ironical protest against corruption in Spain. The protesters are bringing the sausages “chorizos” to roast them on the fire in front of public institutions, the last manifestations were held in frontof the PP office, against corruption affairs involving Spanish Prime minister Mariano Rajoy.

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authoritarian or democratic, left or right, the governments have been

accused of being part of the same political corrupt elite. It has not

been a case that the Spanish slogan “Que se ne vayan todos” (“Out with

all of them”) has echoed in many different squares and in many different

languages.

In this paper, we focus on the protests that have invested Italy and

Spain over the last few years. In the variety of their mobilizations and

claims, the “15 M” in Spain and the “Movimento 5 Stelle” mobilizations

in Italy have, indeed, all publicly denounced the corruption involving

the Italian and the Spanish political elites. By protesting against their

own political “casta,” and, more in general, the political system, all

these mobilizations have, indeed, stressed the corrupt side of power. In

our view, these movements are part of a new protest cycle against

political elites and corruption that today is widespread over the globe.

Why are these protests all occurring today? Do they carry out a new idea

of politics? Our hypothesis is that these mobilizations radically

contesting corrupt political elites implementing austerity measures in

times of crisis point not only at representing a mere political

alternative, but rather at putting forward a new conception of politics

based on the defense of common goods.2 These mobilizations have, indeed,

had a particular strength and a specific anti-corruption framing in those2 Here a clarification on the concepts of common and public goods is needed.Many authors in social science literature tend to distinguish between public andcommon—or, even better, just commons—goods (just to list a few names: Hardt andNegri 2009, Mattei 2011, Fattori 2012, Harvey 2012). The former merely depictthose social goods whose ownership belongs to the State, whereas the latterdefine those goods, leaving aside State ownership or not, that are “deemedcrucial“ to the life and livelihood of a social group (Harvey 2012: 73) [Afurther complication is, then, the distinction made by Hardt and Negri (2009)between “common“ and “commons,“ but it will not discuss in this paper]. Althoughour understanding of the concept is closer to the interpretation of common thanpublic goods, we do not emphasize too much this distinction in the paper,because we think that ordinary people are not often aware of this difference andtend to indifferently speak of common and public goods by yet meaning theconcept in the sense of common and not public goods. Likewise, weinterchangeably use both concepts in the text, by mostly meaning the concept inthe sense of common good.

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countries where the problem of “institutional corruption” (Lessig 2013)

has been and is perceived with greater intensity. There, the target of

mobilizations has, indeed, concerned not only that or that other

political actor, but rather the political system as a whole. In a

nutshell, we hypothesize that these mobilizations constitute significant

instances of movements fostering the revitalization of an idea of

politics as public interest.

This is our principal hypothesis that we aim to test in this paper. To do

so, we employ different sources of analysis and research methods, ranging

from an investigation of some political and socio-economic data

concerning Italy and Spain to a frame analysis of the main documents and

websites of both mobilizations, to a wide collection of semi-structured

interviews with activists and leaders. Besides this introduction, the

paper is divided into the following sections: Bringing Political Economy

Back in and Understanding the New Wave of Protests shed light on some

economic mechanisms and structure as potential explaining factors at the

basis of mobilizations which have been overlooked in the “new social

movement” literature: economic crisis, neoliberal policies, and political

corruption. Then, in the next two sections, we will see how the

abovementioned mechanisms of relative deprivation and procedural

(in)justice are at the basis of the Italian and Spanish protests. The

paper ends, discussing what is the new idea of politics that these

movements have been bringing forward.

Bringing Political Economy Back In Social Movement Studies

There is a general agreement among a certain number of movement

scholars on the fact that the recent wave of mobilizations has put into

crisis the dominant theories on movement mobilizations (Tejerina et al.

2013; Perugorría and Tejerina 2013; Flesher Fominaya and Cox 2014; della

5

Porta 2013). These theories seem no longer to be effective in explaining

the factors at the basis of current mobilizations. How to explain, then,

the emergence of these mobilizations? We argue here that bringing back

political economy in the study of social movements is a first and

necessary step to be undertaken to answer this question. By calling for a

(re)turn to political economist perspectives in social movement research,

we try to make ours the appeal to bring “capitalism back in” made by a

recent and striking article by Hetland and Goodwin (2013). In that piece,

Hetland and Goodwin explain how to bring back capitalism (and political

economy) in the analyses of the “new” and “apparently” post-materialist

social movements. Our paper can be seen as a first attempt to build on

Hetland and Goodwin’s work to put forward an analysis of contemporary

mobilizations which takes seriously into account the explaining power of

economic structures and mechanisms. In particular, we look at how the

current economic crisis and dynamics of capitalism have triggered the

recent outburst of mobilizations in Italy and Spain and affected their

ways of doing and understanding politics.

Before better specifying how these mechanisms have operated, a brief

literature review on the theories of social movements is needed. Among

the first, the theory of collective behavior (Smelser 1962) viewed

movements as a collective response to the feelings of fear and anxiety

that instances of rapid social change tended to engender. Movements were

here seen as an irrational response to the dysfunctions of social

systems. Conceived also as response to this theory, McCarthy and Zald

(1973; 1977) proposed an alternative explanation based on the concept of

“resource mobilization.” According to them, rather than the emergence of

grievances, it was an increase in the availability of different types of

resources needed to initiate process of collective action that triggered

mobilizations. Movements were, thus, seen as rational actors capable of

mobilizing resources in order to pursue their own aims.

6

By contrast, the so-called “new social movement theory” (Melucci 1980,

Touraine 1981), developed in Continental Europe also as alternative to

the rationalist (and American) model of resource mobilization, stressed

the emergence of “new” cultural contradictions in late capitalist

societies as the root cause for the rise of “new” movements. Finally, the

most systematic (and up to now successful) attempt to explain the

emergence of social movements has been the political process theory

(Tilly 1978, McAdam 1982, Tarrow 1983). According to the most recent

versions of this theory—movements are held to emerge in response to the

confluence of three factors: expanding political opportunities,

established organizations, and the development of certain shared

cognitions legitimating and motivating protest activity (McAdam 1995).

The ensemble of these three factors defines what is known to be as a sort

of “trinity model:” political opportunities, mobilizing structures, and

framing processes (McAdam et al. 2001).

Apart from the collective behavior approach, the idea that all movement

theories share is that the presence of grievances by itself cannot

explain the emergence of mobilizations. Either due to a new availability

of resources or to open political opportunities and/or mobilizing

structures and/or new cultural frames, all these theories see always the

presence of a “mediating factor” between grievances and protests as the

key element explaining mobilizations. Can we sustain the same idea for

today’s protests? We are not in presence of a generalized expansion of

political opportunities. Quite the opposite, over the last decade we have

assisted to changes concerning both institutional features and informal

alignments of many political systems that have increased the power

disparity between challenging groups and established institutions. In

addition, we have not seen an increased availability of movement

resources nor the presence of strong and durable mobilizing structures.

While the only resources that have fuelled to the fire on today’s

protests seem to have been “outrage and indignation” (Perugorría and7

Tejerina 2013), the fact that the vast majority of protestors were

“newcomers” (Tejerina et al. 2013) led us to suppose that preexisting

movement organizations have not played a key role in the rise of

mobilizations.

In our opinion, it is precisely the presence of such mediating factors

that turns out to be missing today. For this reason, we are strongly

tempted to suggest that current mobilizations are mostly the direct

product of changes in specific structural conditions. Put it simply:

specific (changed) structures have produced new and radical grievances,

and the latter have triggered generalized protests. Our hypothesis is

that in situations of systemic crisis (both political and economic) the

presence of grievances might be a sufficient condition for the emergence

of movements. Or, at least, for the emergence of specific grievances

through which particular constellations of actors may shape themselves

and start mobilizations. How to explain otherwise the rise of a global

(and new) cycle of contention facing the most serious economic crisis of

our times? Social movement scholars tell us that there exist two opposing

and alternative ways through which people react and respond to an

economic crisis: either they collectively rise up against this situation

or take refuge into a solely and asocial private. The mobilizations that

today have occurred and are occurring everywhere suggest that we are in

presence of the first scenario: people have, after all, chosen the

mobilization.

We do not intend to deny the role of agency in the emergence of these

mobilizations. Yet, we see social actors as strongly conditioned and,

even, structured by this jointly combination of economic and political

factors. We do think, like Mc Adam and Rucht (1993), that “non-relational

mechanisms of diffusion” achieved through social networks, such as for

instance facebook and twitter, have played an important role of activation

in the timing, framing, and diffusion of the mobilizations within and

8

across countries. However, unlike McAdam and Rucht (1993), we believe

that the key determinant for the emergence of this global contention has

been a near-simultaneous presence of structurally similar situations

rather than a “cross-national diffusion of movement ideas.” Similar

structural conditions (institutional corruption and economic crisis), on

which similar policies have been implemented (austerity measures), have

been globally and simultaneously experienced by the vast majority of

people. We define this mechanism of global movement emergence as

“mushroom effect.” As mushrooms grow in specific field conditions after

rain occurs, so such protests arise in specific economic conditions after

austerity measures are implemented (Cini and Drapalova 2013).

Understanding the New Wave of Protests

We see the presence of two distinct but complementary mechanisms

activating common people in joining and initiating current mobilizations:

the “relative deprivation” and the “need of procedural justice” seen as

refusal of institutional corruption (Klandermans a Staggenborg 2002;

Stekelenburg a Klandermans 2010). On the one hand, people feel deprived

of their social expectations concerning their professional careers and

standards of life. On the other, people see as unjust a democratic

decisional process led by those elites who are perceived as corrupt and,

at the same time, the main responsible of the critical situation,

detaining still the power to impose economic measures that compel common

people to solve the crisis at their expense (for a detailed explanation

of both mechanisms, see Cini and Drapalova (2013)).

If we retain that current protests share, among the others, similar

demands for a more collective and transparent idea of politics by

addressing the corruption of professional politics, we also believe that

the emergence of these movements could not but occur today, in times of

economic crisis and political distrust. Political corruption is, indeed,9

less socially tolerated, to the extent that there are less resources and

benefits to be distributed and people feel deprived of their future. More

radically, we think that current protesters all over the globe see

political corruption as a process of illegitimate private expropriation

of public goods, namely those goods such as education, healthcare, water

(but even politics!) that are neither rival nor exclusive (Hardin 1979)

but belong to all. Opposing the collusion between private interests and

state actors, these mobilizations point at protecting such goods by

bringing them back to the center of political life. In other words, the

common trait of this new wave of protest is the radical denounce of a

corrupt political class accused to be unable to fulfill its constitutive

function of providing and protecting public goods as too committed to

serve powerful private interests (Mattei and Nader 2010; Mattei 2011).

Unlike other explanations that privilege the idea that it is the

“internal diversity of capitalism” determining the timing and magnitude

of current mobilizations (della Porta forthcoming, 7), we hold instead

that it is the intensity of (perceived) corruption to make the

difference. Protests have occurred sooner and have been stronger in those

countries, such as Tunisia, Spain, Egypt, the US, Russia, Greece, and

Italy, in which the rates of perceived corruption have been and still are

the highest. We do not think that the nearly-simultaneous manifestation

of these events have been by chance. The protests against the austerity

measures as main response of the governments to the crisis have been

stronger, and have had an evident anticorruption frame, in those

countries where the distrust towards political institutions, due to a

widespread idea that such institutions are corrupt, was the highest. This

is why the movements of these countries have played a pivotal role in the

global wave of contention, by showing up as a sort of “initiator

movements” determining in a crucial way frames and action forms of the

following and “spin-off” movements belonging to the same cycle (McADAM a

Rucht 1993; McAdam 1995; Meyer a Whittier 1994). 10

Our hypothesis concerning the rise of these movements is that these

protests rise up against discredited and corrupt political elites when

the latter deliberately impose the austerity package and wide

privatizations of strategic sectors as “There-Is No-Alternative (TINA)”

solution to the economic crisis. The rapid deterioration of many

individual economic situations triggers a generalized process of

indignation and outrage among citizens whose countries have immediately

enforced such measures. The feelings of outrage and indignation

constitute, indeed, a central stepping stone for the emergence of these

mobilizations (Perugorría and Tejerina 2013). However, the literature

that assumes that these protests exclusively depends on

economic/material self-interest is missing a very important and

distinctive component, the pro-democratic and justice values (on

which the principle of democratic governance is based). The arguments

that see the activist as a rational actor which is moved only by a

self-interested calculus of individual benefits does not give the

complete picture of the motivations behind any mobilization. Theperception of violation of the democratic process and, therefore, the

perception of lack of procedural justice must be another key reason

motivating common people to take to the street and manifest in favor of

equality and justice that are seen as values shared within democratic

societies.

Procedural justice refers to the perception that the process of policy

making is done accordingly to the existing rules and shared norms and it

is closely linked to the idea of impartiality to the extent that we can

talk also about procedural impartiality or ethical universalism

(Rothstein a Teorell 2005; Mungiu-Pippidi 2005). It is based on the idea

that people, when they evaluate a policy, are more concerned with the

fairness and the transparency of the processes by which decisions are

made, rather than by the results itself (Rothstein and Uslaner 2005).

11

When one perceives a process that results in the policy as procedurally

unjust, it also tends to perceive as unjust also the resulting policy.

When the people do not perceived the policies as just, then it is easier

to refuse to obey them or to exercise civil disobedience. But, how this

concept relates to democracy, corruption and to our first mechanism?

According to Warren, democratic government is based on two very important

values: inclusiveness (everybody can participate) and impartiality or

equality (everybody is treated equally) (Warren 1999). And thus

procedural justice is a crucial component for assessing quality of

democracy and for its incompatibility with corruption (Warren 2004).

Obviously institutional corruption, as Lessig and we understand it,

transgresses both rules, favoring a few at the expense of many. This is

why when citizens perceive that the government is favoring interests of a

particular group at the expense of all, then they can judge the system as

unjust and corrupted. These people are then more inclined to disobey or

protest (Holmberg S., Rothstein Bo, and Nasiritousi N. 2008).

Methodology

Our research is manly based on semi-structured interviews with

movement activists and participants conducted in Italy and Spain over the

summer and fall of 2013. We also included an extensive examination of the

available primary sources (such as movement documents and websites),

secondary literature and accessible quantitative data. Our aim was to

interpret the socio-political reality through the lenses of activists and

participants. In a general sense, qualitative “interviews may be defined

simply as a conversation with a purpose. Specifically, the purpose is to

gather information (Berg and Lune 2012: 106)”. In our interviews, we

tried to pick pieces of information regarding the social understandings,

motivations and (declared) political goals of the participants. More

specifically, we collected information concerning the collective identity

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formation process of Movimento 5 Stelle and 15 M with particular

reference to their own vision of politics.

To this end, we conducted 25 interviews with Italian activists belonging

to the Movimento 5 Stelle (in Puglia, Sicily, Rome and several others

cities in Northern Italy) and around 20 interviews with Spanish activists

belonging to movement organizations such as Juventud sin Futuro, PAH, DRY

association and platform, and 15M committees in Barcelona, Madrid and

Murcia. Because the 15M movement is so diverse, we have tried to include

all the major associations and platforms that have called or organized

the occupation of the streets and demonstrations (DRY, PAH, Youth Without

a Future, Do Not Vote for Them!). We did not report and take into

consideration those parts of interviews where the activists did not

exhibit opinions or clearly misunderstood the question. By doing this we

tried to prevent the problems of researchers’ manipulation and biases.

Additionally, we took into account several socio-economic data available

in the most common European databases and opinion polls such as Euro-

barometer, European social survey and some national sources such as CIS

particularly the study n2029 on the political perception of 15M published

in 2012. For the data on corruption, we looked at Gallup bribe payer

index, Transparency International Corruption Perception Index, European

Commission, and national association such as Fundación Alternativas.

The Political Economy of Corruption

In this section, we aim to illustrate how the structural and

systematic state of corruption affecting European societies represents a

key condition for the origin and development of 2011 mobilizations.

Partially building on some of the most significant works by Crouch (2003)

and Lessig (2012), we hold that the state of endemic corruption affecting

so deeply the political institutions of Italy and Spain is a direct13

manifestation of specific and enduring relationships of exchange and

cooperation/collusion between political and economic actors in

contemporary capitalism. Put it otherwise, the current modality of

operation of capitalism is—for us—at the basis of peculiar political

economist dynamics producing endemic (and not conjectural) processes of

corruption within and across public institutions. This is why we think

that taking into account the political economy of corruption is an

important step to be undertaken in order to understand the outburst of

2011 protests, their goals, grievances, and, above all, their ways of

conceiving and doing politics.

Before seeing all these mechanisms at work, a conceptual clarification on

what we mean by “political economy of corruption” is needed. In general

terms, by political economy of corruption we mean those stable and

enduring relations and processes of production and reproduction of

corruption occurring within political institutions. More specifically,

the political economy of corruption is the study of those (mostly hidden

and invisible) phenomena of corruption occurring in public institutions

in their relationships of embedded-ness and (reciprocal) dependence with

key economic institutions and actors. We think that some aspects of

contemporary capitalism such as the process of financialization of the

economy and that of marketization of society have accelerated,

multiplied, facilitated, and, even, stabilized these relations of “hidden

exchange” (della Porta a Vannucci 1999) and mutual dependence. This seems

to have been precisely the case of Italy and Spain that we investigate in

the present paper.

To better situate our interpretation of the relations between corruption

and the recent emergence of political unrest in Italy and Spain, we hold

that the concept of institutional corruption coined by Thompson and

further developed by Lawrence Lessig is of paramount importance. They

understand corruption as a “political gain or benefit by a public

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official under conditions that in general tend to promote private

interests.” Most especially, Lessig argues that the main difference

between the private and institutional corruption is precisely the

existence of conditions that in general tend to promote private interests over the common

good. In this definition, corruption is not only a result of personal

greed, but becomes de facto inbuilt into democratic institutions, diverting

them from their primary purpose. Through these analytical lenses,

corruption is no longer understood as an abnormal, deviant or even

individual phenomenon, but rather as an institutional logic of conduct

(see Table I).

Table I: the difference between the Individual and InstitutionalCorruptionIndividual corruption is Institutional corruption isPolitical PoliticalGain of benefit by a publicofficial

Gain of benefit by a publicofficial

In exchange for promoting Under conditions that in generaltend to promote

Private interests Private interestsSource: Lawrence Lessig 2012 RSC working Paper

We hypothesize that the “conditions that tend to promote institutional

corruption are the following: the process of financialization of the

economy3, liberating a huge amount of capital for speculative activities,

and the process of marketization of hitherto public sectors, importing

neoliberal market-friendly principles into the core of the political

institutions. These structural transformations have changed the relations

between politics and economy by ultimately rendering economic business

(especially financial) an indispensable actor in the process of

“autonomization” (from the rest of society) and reproduction of the

political class itself and, thus, creating the most favourable conditions

for the promotion of institutional corruption. 3 For a more detailed explanation of what process of financialization means, seeCasalini and Cini (2012).

15

The process of autonomization of politics seems to have undermined the

legitimacy of the representative democratic process, which is by now

perceived among the vast majority of citizens as corrupt. The perception

that the phenomenon of corruption has been affecting the political system

as a whole is widespread among all the European citizens; according to

recent surveys and studies (European Commission 2014a; European

Commission 2014b; European Commission 2014c), 95% of Europeans think that

corruption is present in their country and constitute one of the most

important problems of their political systems. They interpret corruption

“as inbuilt into and promoted by a political regime which undermines

democratic process,” going thus far beyond the traditional understanding

of “misuse of office for personal gain” (Klitgaard 1991). In other words,

European citizens are more and more aware that professional politics has

become a sort of impenetrable “caste” operating for its own benefits at

the expense of collective interest.

What is Political in the Current Economic Crisis in Italy and

Spain?

Economic crises have always been part of human history as droughts

and flooding. Yet, what makes the current crisis new or somehow

particular, is a hegemonic political response to it. Despite the fact

that there was no clear agreement on the causes of the economic downturn

(irresponsible financial capital, building bubble, and public deficit of

costly welfare states), the political response to the crisis was a unison

adoption of austerity measures under the surveillance of the “Troika”

(Blyth 2013). The well-known austerity package (consisting of cuts in

public spending, tax increases, flexibility of labor market, and pension

reforms) was perceived by the people as a shift of responsibilities from

the real culpable (banks and politicians) to themselves without the

16

opportunity of voicing any dissent. The implementation of these measures

has had as immediate consequence the impoverishment and downgrading of

the middle and low classes of Italy and Spain.

After almost two decades of constant economic growth, Spain entered into

a recession in the end of the 2008.4 In 2008, the housing bubble burst

and years of banks speculations with housing and large public investments

(mainly infrastructure5) in infrastructure threatened banking sector

solvency (Martínez Ibanez 2013). As a response the Spanish government

approved a crash-plan of 24 austerity measures and granted for a maximum

amount of 100,000 million euros to finance banking operations6. The

following year a growing deficit and no economic growth forced the

socialist government to revise its 2008-2011 Stability Program. This

revision, known under its quite curious name “ New sustainable Economy

Act” included more unemployment, more cuts, more privatization and less

public services.78 The era of austerity was officially installed in

Spain.

Even though the Italian problem was not its rotten banking system, but a

deep public deficit, the (already technocratic) government response was

surprisingly similar to the Spanish one. From 2011 the Monti technocratic

government implemented a series of urgent polices in order to “save Italy

from default”. This “austerity package,” contained several public

spending cuts and tax rises, including a deeply unpopular rise in the

4 The third trimmest was the second consecutive with the negative growth.5 The most famous cases are several regional airports build by local politicians(and financed with local banks) that nowadays remain unused and without airplanes. 6 The Spanish government has basically constituted itself as the guarantee of solvency of Spanish banks. 7 http://www.rtve.es/noticias/20090116/recesion-paro-deficit-publico-formula-economia-espanola-para-2009/220867.shtml8 In 2007 Spain has a superavit of 1,9% of GDP and the public depth is lower that 45% which made from Spain more balanced than the rest of OECD countries,

17

retirement age. A reform of labor contracts followed, making it easier

for firms (to hire and) to fire workers9.

The consequences of the austerity measures hit both countries hard. The

Spanish economy shrank by 3.6%GDP and unemployment grows by 1,118,600 to

4,326,500 reaching 18.83% for the first time in thirteen years (EPA

2010).10 The inability of the people to pay their credits and mortgages

has caused more than 500 eviction per day and huge firms’ mortality

between 2009 and 2011. In Italy, poverty has increased across all socio-

economic categories and in the whole territory by reaching 12% in 2012.

According to the Istat, people in severely deprived households doubled in

two years, from 6.9% in 2010 to 14.3% in 2012. The unemployment increased

especially among the younger age groups while the income of households

decreased.

However, not everybody have suffered the crisis equally. Spanish

government, while cutting the public services, guaranteed a public re-

financing and financial support totaling 100 000 million for the Spanish

banking sector and passed laws allowing mayor amnesty for large tax

evaders in the history of the country. From 2008 onwards, several banks

were rescued with public money: Caja Castilla-La Mancha (2009), CajaSur

(2010), CAM, Caixa Catalunya, Banco de Valencia and Bankia (Martínez

Ibanez 2013). Most of them had politicians in their directive board and

were financing electoral campaigns. At that time, a major corruption

scandals involving secret Swiss bank accounts and huge shrinking of

public money for party financing was being discovered (Jimenez, Villoria,

a Garcia-Quesada 2012; Quesada, Jiménez-Sanchez, a Villoria 2013;

Aguilera Klink a Naredo 2009). The nationalization of banks, which were

for years sources of speculative operations with public money and cause

of many peoples´ disgrace, was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

9 It was the first task on the ECB list send to Berlusconi government.10 http://www.rtve.es/noticias/20100129/paro-aumento-durante-2009-1118600-personas-3487-mas-2008/314898.shtml

18

In Italy, since Tangentopoli corruption had never actually really

abandoned the Italian public debate. There were continuous scandals of

illicit party finance, construction and urban abuses, misuses of European

funds at local, regional and national institutional levels and across all

parties (della Porta a Vannucci 2007). This explains why the trust in the

Italian political institutions was so low in 2013, when—as a survey has

highlighted—the best ratings were assigned to firefighters (8 from 10),

while political parties and government were at minimum (3 from 10)11.

Almost 80 percent of the voters did not feel represented, whereas only 30

percent of population declared support for the government (European

Commission 2014a).

With the previous sections we have intended to shed light on some

economic mechanisms and structure as potential explaining factors at the

basis of mobilizations which are usually overlooked in social movement

literature. We hold that the worsening of the economic crisis, the high

levels of institutional corruption, and the austerity measures have

played a pivotal role in the 2011 mobilizations in Italy and Spain. Put

it simply, we believe that political economy does explain the formation

and development of contemporary mobilizations. In the next two sections,

we will see how the abovementioned mechanisms of relative deprivation and

procedural (in)justice are at the basis of the Italian and Spanish

protests.

The Movimento 5 Stelle: “Away with the old politics!”

11 The study of Donatella della Porta (della Porta 2013) shows a high increaseof distrust in the two main institutions of representative democracy (Partiesand Parliament). In a decade, the levels of trust among those who protest sankto 8 percent for Parliament, and 14 percent in case of political parties. Thisis a tendency in line with the general Italian public opinion.

19

Widely represented in all the Italian mainstream media as the

“anti-caste movement by definition,” the Movimento Cinque Stelle (M5S)

has reached its highest peaks of consensus and mobilization during the

period of economic crisis and, in particular, after the imposition of the

austerity measures by the Monti government (2011-2012). Officially, the

Movimento Cinque Stelle was born in 2009 as an ensemble of civic lists

composed by common citizens who, sick of the widespread corruption

concerning the Italian party system, took the decision to run for local

elections to challenge the old way of doing politics. To be precise, 2009

was not the first year in which this movement had showed up in Italy.

Informal networks of activists, organized through the system of meet-

ups,”12 had, indeed, already been present since 2005, when the Italian

comedian and leading promoter of the Movimento 5 Stelle, Beppe Grillo,

had launched through his blog (www.beppegrillo.it) the idea of carrying

out an alternative form of politics based on the values of transparency,

deliberation, online and offline participation of ordinary citizens

(Grillo a Casaleggio 2011, 7–13; Biorcio a Natale 2013, 49).

Which are, then, the factors at the basis of their mass protests in

2011/2012? Feelings of social downgrading were spread among the

participants of the Movimento Cinque Stelle, who blamed the whole Italian

political elite for that. All the Cinque Stelle activists that we have

interviewed, indeed, talked of the economic crisis as the triggering

mechanism for their mobilization. Most of them were young and educated

people, some were in productive age but unemployed (long-time

unemployed). Among the activists of many "meet-ups" we met (Ragusa,

Lecce, Brindisi, Siracusa, Ragusa, Roma and Firenze), the majority were

12 The Meetup is a virtual platform that facilitates online discussions and offline group meetings on specific topics and issues. The Meetup allows members to find and join groups unified by a common interest. It is a paid service. For the activists of Movimento 5 Stelle, the Meetup is a sort of virtual agora whereeverybody can contribute independently of his/her socioeconomic condition, whereeverybody is equal bringing in its own ideas. See Biorcio and Natale (2013: 81) to better understand how the Movimento 5 Stelle has used this platform.

20

without political experience (some of them even never voted). Some older

members declared that in the past had been sympathizers of leftish

parties and labor unions but then they had left, feeling unsatisfied and

alienated of that way of doing politics. All of them generally tended to

see M5S as the last chance to change things in Italy. In Ragusa, we

interviewed, among the others, two people who were highly educated but

unemployed: Andrea (graduated with master in graphic design and comic

drawing) and Umberto (who worked as driver but in the time of interview

was long time unemployed). Both guys agreed on the fact that they started

to protest in 2011/2012 mainly for the worsening of their social and

economic conditions. In Siracusa, we spoke with a guy around 33 years

old, who worked in a factory near Augusta. He was still working at the

time of our interview, although in precarious conditions and in constant

fear of being dismissed from his job as many of his colleagues. He argued

that with the new Italian labor laws "in the morning you go to work and

you don’t know if in afternoon you will be still employed." In Lecce and

Brindisi we attended several activities and assemblies. The composition

of the movement was very diverse: from housewives and unemployed to

students and free-professionals (doctors, lawyers). However, the

recurrent topics in all these assemblies were basically the same:

economic crisis, increasing poverty and social inequality, and inadequate

responses from the Italian government. In the light of what seen and

said, we can therefore definitely argue that one of the leading factors

causing such peaks of mobilization in 2011 was precisely a generalized

feeling of (relative) deprivation.

Yet, this is not the whole story. A widespread feeling of being

undergoing an unjust political making process can be, indeed, regarded as

the second mechanism, both cognitive and affective, convincing many

people to join the Movimento 5 Stelle. The latter had since the beginning

identified the representative institutions and political representatives

of Italian democracy as the main cause of the Italian democratic deficit:21

Italian democracy was accused of being a system of “institutional

corruption” (Casaleggio and Grillo 2011: 7-15). Most of the activists in

Movimento 5 Stelle (but also della Porta and Vannucci 2007, Ginsborg

2003) regarded Italy as a society where rights, obligations or justice

were not applied to everybody with the same criteria, but depending on

whom you were. In other words, they blamed the Italian political system

to create laws ad personam (Travaglio 2010). The globally known slogan

“Out of all of them”—chanted by the 15 M in 2011 (“Que se vayan todos”)—

was already the “ante litteram” political manifesto of the 5 Stelle in

2009. Speaking of the lack of democracy of the Italian political

institutions, Federica Daga—a longtime activist and today deputy of the

Cinque Stelle—told us that “the problem of representative democracy is

the full detachment of politicians from the people.” And she added that:

The crisis of democracy comes out when there is a structuralgap between political elites and the people. The politiciandoes not pursue the public interest, but the interests of asmall group. The crisis of political representation stemsprecisely from this process.

According to many participants of the Movimento 5 Stelle meet-ups, the

best political solution to the crisis of representative democracy could

not but be considered the building of a new democratic institution,

namely “participatory democracy.”13 It is still Federica who well

explains what participatory democracy meant for them:

We want a participatory democracy. From the user of a serviceto the citizen. Democracy is participation of the people whouse a service and of the workers who produce it. Democracy isthe capacity to work and cooperate with many people. We arerecently doing the “agorà” in many squares. We go and gatherin a square and we make an assembly in order to discuss whatwe are doing as political representatives in the

13 To our question, what kind of democratic institutions do you prefigure to overcome the lack of democratic accountability of existing representative institutions, most of the activists and meet-ups participants responded explicitly participatory democracy. Though not all of them had a clear (or similar) idea of what such a democracy had to be like in concrete terms, they all clearly expressed the concern for a democracy capable of involving all and based on the idea of politics as common good.

22

institutions. To a certain extent, we are like an "occupysocial movement."

Concluding this section, we try to provide an answer to the second

question of our paper. What is the Movimento 5 Stelle asking for? What

is, in other words, its overall idea of politics? We think that all the

interviews we conducted and documents we read express a quite homogenous

point of view on how to understand (and do) politics among the Movimento

5 Stelle activists. In particular, we have identified two peculiar

features that can be considered as “common heritage” of all the 5 Stelle

activists: a common good oriented attitude and a post-ideological view of

politics.

Let us give a deeper look at each of both characteristics. The idea that

politics should be oriented at the defense of common goods has been

pointed out by all the interviews (from the rank-and-file militant to

deputy) we conducted. As the members of the Ragusa meet-up have well put

it:

Common goods are a genetic part of the 5 Stelle. We did notinvent anything from scratch. Other movements, such as theone for the “water as a common good,” had already beenbringing forward a public discourse on common goods. We havejust generalized and brought them back in the Italian publicsphere

Most of the 5 Stelle activists seemed also to share a precise definition

of what common goods are. As some students taking part in the meet-up in

Lecce told us:

Common goods are all those good of which every human being isentitled to use and share. They are things from the mostessential to the most volatile. Water, food, education,knowledge, culture. Over them there cannot be market andprivate management. Common goods are essential to the life ofevery human been.

A second element shared among all the 5 Stars activists was their view of

politics that we defined as “post-ideological.” All the activists

declared that the “time of old politics was over.” For them, the

23

distinction left-right did no longer make sense, in that all the

politicians, regardless of their formal political belonging, had

demonstrated to have more interests in common (“the belonging to the same

and corrupt system of power”) than conflicting over the past decade. This

is why all the participants in the 5 Stelle mobilizations easily agreed

on calling “Casta” the Italian political elite and “political corruption”

this “old way of doing politics.” As Luigi (Di Maio), former activist of

the Cinque Stelle and today the youngest Vice President of the Italian

Chamber, told us, speaking of what the Casta is—for him:

[the Casta] is a way of doing politics. It is an ensemble ofpeople who do politics in a certain way to defend their owninterests. The Caste today is a pachyderm that through theassociation of several political entities [the parties]prevents the young generations from having a bearing on thepolitical institutions. Today, the Caste is the guardian ofthe gates of the representative institutions aimed atimpeding the entry of social movements and civil society. Thecurrent political system points only at defending itself fromthe outside, by protecting its particular interests. Theseinterests are not only the interests of individuals, but itis a way of practicing politics. A way of governing publicresources. Measures ad hoc for a specific part of society.The Caste is a way to get and be together to maintain apolitical model based on private and not public interests.

And its political corruption:

[Corruption] is to use public offices and resources forvested interests. The private interest before the publicinterest. I come from a movement [5 Stars Movement] whichconceive the common good and the commons as its foundingprinciples. That we have to assure to the future generations.On the other side, there is “the corrupt” who uses publicpowers to achieve his privatistic goals and those of hisgroup of friends. Over the past years public affairs havebeen too much occupied by private interests. Also the way inwhich you aim to be reelected is a form of corruption.14

14 On the other hand, also the activists of the Onda Anomala share this definition of political corruption. As Fabio, one of the leaders of the student union Link, well pointed out here: “[corruption] is when you sell out your ideals and the public interest for some private interest. Corruption is the politics of the private interests. Making a privatistic use of politics. Sellingout your ideals for private interests and for gaining power. Then, you are politically corrupt.”

24

The 15 M: “We are not anti-system, the system is anti-us!”

We are ordinary people. We are like you: people, who get upevery morning to study, work or find a job, people who havefamily and friends. People, who work hard every day to providea better future for those around us. Some of us considerourselves progressive, others conservative. Some of us arebelievers, some not. Some of us have clearly definedideologies, others are apolitical, but we are all concerned andangry about the political, economic, and social outlook whichwe see around us: corruption among politicians, businessmen,bankers, leaving us helpless, without a voice (Cabal 2011, 7).

What is known as 15M or Acampada Sol was born out of a group of 60

people that spontaneously decided, after the manifestation called on 15th

May, to stay and camp on Puerta del Sol square, a very central place in

Madrid. They managed to stay for two nights, until when on 17 May evening

police evicted them. The day after a larger number of people returned to

the square and successfully managed to occupy it again by, thus,

converting Puerta del Sol in the neuralgic center of the protest. The

demonstrations on the 15th May was organized in all major cities by an

independent platform of citizens called “Democracia Real Ya!” and supported

by tens of associations and movements. Under the slogan "We are not

merchandise in hands of politicians and bankers," they intended to

protest against the political measures taken by the government after the

outbreak of the financial crisis. The call circulated through Facebook,

Twitter and other social media without any contribution from the

traditional media, unions or political parties. That day was the first

time that such a large manifestation, around 130 000 people, was

organized without the infrastructure of parties and unions. For many

people, Spain did change that day.

The movement grew exponentially in the next few days, driven by internal

dynamics and social networks. New technologies such as Facebook and

twitter played also an important role for the diffusion of information.

25

The encampment in Puerta del Sol, initially thought to be settled till

the day of elections, was prolonged till the end of August: during this

period tens of manifestations, rallies, and assemblies took place.

Totally unprepared, unions and parties looked astonished at the masses of

people chanting against them on the streets. Main-stream media rapidly

re-baptized the mobilizations Indignados (Hessel a Sampedro 2010), mainly

because they did not understand for what the mobilizations were standing

for. Other commenters preferred to downplay the mobilizations and the

participants as peroflautas15 (La Vanguardia 25/5/2011) or simply think about

them as a negative and an emotional or even naïve crowd (País 2011, 15).

This initial idea of spontaneity and nativity contrasts with the

trajectory of the movement. Although the associations and platforms

calling for the 15M were very specific in their area of actuation, they

all convened in the square to protest against those that held the power

in national, regional, and local institutions. There were tens and tens

of collectives that had called for the mobilization of 15 M, but the most

important or, at least, the most active, were a few: Democracy Real Ya

(Real Democracy Now), Juventud sin futuro (Youth sin future)16, PAH17

Another important association was !No les votes! platform (Don’t vote for

them!) which was also related to the copy-left movement and the campaign

against the law SINDE and SOPA. All these organizations were active prior

to the 15M, mainly through social media, chats, and blogs.

However, this (pre-existing) organizational infrastructure has not been

an important factor for the Spanish mobilization: neither for its rise

15 Peroflautas is a Spanish expression referring to a young person that is not working nor studying and earning the money by playing flute and begging on the streets, generally accompanied by a dog. Translated literally peroflautas mean men with flute and dog. 16 This collective was born from the university student mobilizations that protested against the reform of the higher education known as the Bologna process. 17 This movement was born in 2008 as Platform for decent housing protesting fora decent housing and vindicating something that is a right guaranteed by the Spanish constitution.

26

nor for its strength. More than half of the people present there were,

indeed, a multitude of normal citizens for whom the 15M was the truly

first direct experience with unconventional political participation (CIS

studio 2029,2012).

This corresponds with the evidence collected from the interviews. As Kike

one of the spokesperson from DRY Madrid explained:

“There are two basic profiles 15M, on the one hand a longtimeactivists who are the people who collaborated with freeSahara and the movement for decent housing that existedbefore 15M or in neighborhood associations. And then there isanother profile, that is people who have not done or have notparticipated in anything similar before and activated by 15Mevents. I would say they were 40% and 60%.”

And other activist Stephan added:“Before becoming part of DRY I was nothing, I mean, I havenever participated actively before. And now I am thespokesman of DRY. Although I was always interested inpolitics. I enjoyed reading newspapers and watching TV. I gota call from Facebook for 15M Demo, and I found it veryimportant so I went. And at the square all seemed wonderfulto me, and when it happened I felt that I wanted toparticipate in it, I joined some committees, I started tohelp in assemblies and then I came to DRY.”

The common feeling was stop complaining and acting in order to changesomething. As Stephan carried on:

“I found it an interesting and useful way to work together tochange the world. Because everyone in the square thought thatanother world was possible. And here I am, I am stillparticipating.”

But which psychological and social factors were at the basis of the

Spanish mobilizations? Our interviews seem to confirm, also for the

Spanish case, the presence of both the mechanism of relative deprivation

and that of procedural (in)justice. As for the relative deprivation

mechanism, all the Spanish activists interviewed refer to their social

27

downgrading due to the economic crisis in combination with the austerity

measures as something that weighted in the mobilization.

The vast majority of those who participated were people whohad never been activists before, but due to evictions,precarious situations and so on... they felt forced to moveto political action. We had a fresh new language. We soughtsomething completely new. We did not join political parties;ideas and feelings united us in this struggle. (Gallego PableDRY)

Stephan from DRY Barcelona:

Seeing the unemployment rate arises steadily and watchingthem (politicians), willing of privatizing the basic andstrategic sectors of the country that had not been touchedbefore, made us very pissed. What they called the middleclass, which is nothing other than the working class, wasstarting to fade as well as the purchasing power of people todecrease. The healthcare, education, pensions were beingprivatized. And no one proposed any solution, any policy. Thecrisis had become something that nobody could touch orchange. … All this influenced the young people. There was nofamily that does not have someone unemployed or evicted. Allpolitical and economic malaises were there latent, but thecrisis made them visible and, thus, we decided to take to thestreet.”

As in the case of Movimento 5 Stelle, the feeling of relative deprivation

could not explain alone why such a huge amount of common people took to

the street in 2011. The 2011 mobilizations did not involve only the most

marginalized or socially weakest groups of Spanish society, such as

precarious workers, students, and unemployed. As a survey conducted by

CIS (n 2029) in 2011 showed, the social composition of 15M was more

heterogeneous and complex: besides students and young unemployed, there

was a strong participation of employed people.

Why also these groups took to the street? To answer this question—we

think—one needs to recall the second mechanism we introduced above,

namely, the “procedural justice.” A generalized feeling of facing a

situation of procedural (in)justice has been a triggering factor for all

the mobilizations. In particular, the feeling that the Spanish political

28

system was deeply perverted, serving the economic and political elites

instead than the common people, was widespread among all the 15 M

participants. Although the economic crisis of 2008 was one of the

strongest crises, it was not the first one in the Spanish history since

the Transition. But this time, something seemed to be different. While in

1986 or 1995 were the unions leading the protest and calling for a

general strike, in 2011 the unions were one of the enemies together with

banks, and politicians.18 For the protesters, they were part of the same

corrupt and impenetrable elite, the cast. What Lessig (2012) calls

“conflicting dependence” became so evident to the 15M activists. The

somehow comic slogans, such as “There is not enough bread for so many

chorizos”, “Put your hands in the air, this is not crisis this is a

robbery!” or “Out of all of them” showed the refusal of the population to

no longer stand the Spanish political establishment. Institutional

corruption and collusion between politicians and bankers were indeed

regarded as two of the most serious malaises of Spanish society. As

clearly argued by the Spokesperson of PAH Barcelona:

[corruption] is one of the main causes of current situationbecause it leads politicians and bankers to be and do thesame [stealing]. They depend on each other. The politics isnot led by the idea of common good but by clientelism, and itis under permanent influence of banks. The government islegislating against instead that for the people. This systemis not a democracy anymore. We protested against this aswell.

Stephane (15M) provided one clear example:

Today I read that in the stadium of real Madrid there will bedone some maintenance, so it is there where they will stealfrom us a lot, they will steal from your scholarship, mysalary and my mother´s pension. This is the type ofcorruption invisible and omnipresent. Maybe since before wehad money this relation was not so clear, but now, since weare in crisis we don’t have money anymore; this is startingto be much more visible and is becoming one of the biggestproblems for our country.

18 In October 2011, the unions called for a general strike but the attendance waslow and the impact very limited.

29

The feeling of procedural injustice was, thus, one the main motivations

convincing people to mobilize.

Concluding the section on the 15M, we provide an answer to the second

question of our paper. What was the overall idea of politics expressed by

the 15 M participants? All the interviews we conducted and documents we

read seem to confirm the interpretation that we have already provided for

the Movimento 5 Stelle. As in the Italian case, both the ideas that

politics must exhibit a common good orientation and a post-ideological

nature were part of the15 M from its initial phases of mobilization.

Looking closely at the common good orientation of politics, we can

appreciate a shared perception of politics as…

“Politics should serve the common good, fundamental principlethat must be governed for the common good. ...Politics is abig thing, it is a vocation to the public, to the commongood. It is a service you do to people, politics is totallyservice-like. And the only sense is that fundament this andnot another. ..The ruling should be the service by and foryour people and look for the benefit of all. Not yours insome revolving door (revolving door), nor is for the benefitof economic hidden powers. That can be extended to the wholemovement, we share, we all agree”.(Stephane 15M Madrid)

Moving on toward the idea of post ideological politics. Many activists we

interviewed explicitly refused to use the categories Left/right,

referring to as empty of any signifier. As Claudia, from Dry Barcelona,

said: “We have divided the world between the under and the above.” Cesar from DRY

Barcelona was even more explicit:

We have never defined ourselves as left-wing movement. Well,it's because being from left or right, being socialist orliberal has by now a number of very negative connotations. …What we do is try to change the language, to unite people. Wedo not talk about left or right but about citizens, thepeople. We are neither right nor left because if we use thesecategories, we will fall into the same fallacy and createconfusion. What we do is to tell you what we stand for, whatwe want to achieve but we will never tell if we are left orright.

30

In the same vein, Kike from DRY Madrid:

One of the slogans was: “They do not represent us!” But theyunderstood it as we are against politics! This is not true,we say they do not represent us because they serve otherinterests. We voted for them and they rather defending ourvindications, care only for their personal interests and ofthe economic and financial powers. They do not representinterests of the people but of a protected and powerfulminority. There is a political crisis because this model doesnot listen and has no obligation to listen. Politicians onlylisten to the party machines and the economic and financialinterests. The fact that we vote or not, with this electoralsystem, is secondary. This system has now become a systemthat exists only to perpetuate itself.

And Stephan, from 15M Madrid, concluded by reaffirming thepolitical nature of their protests:

“The 15M is deeply political, is more political than anythingI know. We are all politicians, and we believe that all freemen should be interested in politics. What happened so far isthat people said they voted for a socialist and socialistpolicies without thinking if they make are really socialistsor benefit them. Politics is not like a football league; I'ma truly Madrid fan and I support my team. But this is notpolitics. The 15M can support ideas but not politicalparties, because if a socialists implement liberal policieshow you can trust them.”

A New Idea of Politics?

What are, therefore, all these protesters asking for? Are they strictu

sensu political protests or just a “new” apolitical (or, even, anti-

political) generalized manifestation of social rage? Many words have been

said so far on the fact that these mobilizations did not have clear and

specific demands.19 Only speaking of the left political spectrum of the

media system, from the liberal (or center-left) mainstream newspapers in

Italy and Spain, such as Repubblica and El Pais, to some more radical leftish

19 If this account is certainly true for 15 M mobilizations, it can be, in a broader sense, extended to the Movimento 5 Stelle if we mean by lack of “clear and specific demands” a lack of political credibility. A lack of political credibility has been associated, and still is, to the Movimento 5 Stelle in all its phases of mobilization.

31

magazines, such as the Italian Micro Mega and the Spanish El Publico, the

political and analytical accounts of the 15 M and Movimento 5 Stelle

mobilizations were anything but positive. Accused of being, in the best

of the cases, “apolitical” or naïve, these protests have been seen as

unable to put forward an alternative and well defined vision of politics

and/or, at least, carry out clear and concrete objectives for a

substantive political change (País 2011). If we cannot deny that some of

these remarks are legitimate and, to a certain extent, grounded, yet the

whole picture coming out from them is far from being true and can be,

even, misleading. Thus, it is precisely this misleading representation of

the protests that we aim to challenge by presenting here our

(counter)interpretation.

Even though tracing back the history of the concept of politics exceeds

the purpose of this paper (and, above all, of our academic and personal

capacities), here we want to make clear some points on the issue before

introducing our interpretation. We do not think to be incorrect if

looking back at the history of Western societies, we single out the

existence of two distinct, if anything opposite, visions of politics. On

the one hand, there is the interpretation of politics, explicitly derived

from the, to a certain extent, utopian reconstructions of the agoras in

the Greek polis—understood as a public and collective space free from

private and personal interests. Over the past two centuries, these

interpretations have been retaken and employed mostly by radical thinkers

and social movements having, in a broad sense, an anarchist orientation

(see, for instance Graeber 2009; Taibo 2013). Needless to say that, yet

significant, such visions have had a minor fortune and attention in the

contemporary theoretical and political debate of our democracies.

On the other hand, the second vision of politics has been by far the most

known and widespread, and it is, indeed, today the interpretation on

which we found our way of thinking (and acting) about politics. From

32

Machiavelli to the current liberal thinkers (and passing through authors

such as significant yet theoretically distant as Hobbes, Locke, Marx,

Weber, Schmitt, Rawls), the unifying interpretation of what the essence

or principle of politics were was conflict. Understood in different (and

somehow opposing) manners, such as the struggle between rich and poor

(Machiavelli), all against all (Hobbes), proletariat against capital

(Marx), friends versus foes (Schmitt), competition of interests (the

liberals), the common trait of all these interpretations was precisely

their antagonistic character: either—they say—the domain of politics is

seen as antagonistic or it is just not. If we look back at the history of

modern democracy, we cannot but agree with this interpretation. From the

American and French revolutions to our days, the origin and development

of democracy have been marked by a “principle of dissociation” (Marazzi

2009), historically institutionalized and embodied in the political

spectrum as “left-right” distinction. Put it simply, in this second and

most known comprehension, politics encompasses a strong divisive

connotation: politics is here the domain in which opposing ideas,

interests, and groups of interests (left and right) democratically

conflict and confront with each other. As a result, the political

institutions of representative democracy are the only legitimate sites in

which this confrontation (left vs. right) can be democratically

represented and played.

Have the most recent protests precisely put into question this vision of

politics? Are they actually carrying out a new vision of politics? Which

vision? Our parallel analysis of Movimento 5 Stelle and 15 M has

highlighted the presence of similarities in terms of political visions

between the two cases. In particular, both mobilizations seem to share

two characteristics in their understanding and practice of politics. On

the one hand, both 5 Stelle and 15M seem to have been the bears of a

common good-oriented attitude towards the political process itself; on

the other, they also seem to have internalized a post-ideological view of33

politics. Let us now examine closer each of these characteristics. What

do we mean by common good oriented attitude? What do we mean by post-

ideological nature of politics?

By common good-oriented attitude we mean a conception of politics which

does not regard the key spheres of social reproduction (such as, in

contemporary societies, goods as knowledge, education, healthcare,

environment, natural resources, and so on)—meaning, those spheres

essential to the social reproduction of human life (Fattori 2012)—as

domains that can be left in the hands of private interests, made objects

of their expropriation, or their logic of management and profit. Quite

the opposite, common good oriented attitude points to a politics aiming

to ensure the public and collective management and use of all these

goods. If common goods are essential to social reproduction, then they

cannot belong to anyone but all.

The second feature characterizing politics as common good can be

considered a sort of logical and practical corollary of the first. If

essential goods such as education and healthcare must belong to all, then

a fortiori the domain through which such goods are managed and allocated,

politics, must be rethought as “the common space” par excellence, whose

only function is to serve the interest of all. Put it otherwise, by post-

ideological nature we mean the end of the idea of politics based on the

left-right distinction. If the only “ideology” that matters is the

safeguard of public goods in and for the interest of all, then all the

outdated left-right ideologies—meaning the antagonism over the

alternative managements and allocations of such goods—can no longer play

a fundamental role. Post-ideological politics means, thus, a politics of

and for the common goods.

Concluding Remarks

34

The recent burst of protests from Tahir in Egypt to Sol in Spain

has caught many scholars unprepared, incredulous of the strength that

these mobilizations were able to produce and of the impact they were able

to have. Some regimes faltered, others took a refuge in already “armored”

institutions refusing to attend the vindications of people in the street.

The breath-taking spread of protests has induced several political

observers to ask the same question: Why and how is this all happening? In

a previous paper, we talked about the potential causes of this general

uprising and we searched for the specific mechanisms motivating common

people to actively manifest their indignation (see Cini and Drapalova

2013). We singled out two mechanisms, one cognitive (relative

deprivation) and the second more attitudinal (procedural justice),

enabling politically unskilled people to take to the streets. On the one

hand, they perceived an increasing gap between their social expectations

and the life they were actually living (relative deprivation). On the

other, they also perceived a situation of political disempowerment and

opacity in the democratic process (procedural justice).

What both Spanish and Italian mobilizations have identified as highly

problematic and, thus, aimed to reverse was precisely what we have

described as a process of “institutional corruption” involving

representative democracy. Recalling here the lessons by Lessig and

Thompson, this corruption can be seen as de facto inbuilt into democratic

institutions. Corruption is no longer understood as an abnormal, deviant

or even individual phenomenon, but rather almost as an institutional

logic of conduct. Facing this phenomenon, many people started to be aware

of being deprived of their political sovereignty. They realized that

representative institutions were no longer serving the public good, but

the interests of a few else, generally, business and economic elites. No

real democracy is, thus, possible—according to the 15M and 5 Stelle

participants—as long as there is collusion between political and economic

elites. 35

In this paper, we wanted to make one step further and connect these

motivations with the visions and practices of politics that these

mobilizations have more or less consciously carried out. We have chosen

to compare two countries that have suffered more than others the effects

of the economic crisis and that, at the same time, have conveyed wide

mobilizations of protest. We have chosen Italy and Spain to see whether

their mobilizations exhibited similar characteristics in terms of

conceptions of corruption and politics. Surprisingly or not, both

mobilizations seem to have shared a common political orientation

embodying two similar characteristics: a common good oriented attitude

and a post-ideological nature of politics. In our opinion, both these

characteristics can potentially be at the basis of a new idea of

politics.

The first characteristic shared by both mobilizations is a common good

oriented attitude. Common goods are not appropriable by the parties,

individuals, markets or state. Far from being considered as full-fledged

unitary things, common goods are always contentious and as such have to

be always commonly created, debated and agreed upon. In other words,

these mobilizations point at putting forward and stress a conception of

politics aiming to ensure the public and collective management and use of

all those goods deemed as crucial for the social reproduction of human

life. If these goods are essential for the reproduction of human life,

then—both Italian and Spanish activists put it—they cannot be property of

anybody else but the collectivity.

In our view, both mobilizations have also substantially showed a post-

ideological orientation. Both M5S and 15M activists have, indeed,

exhibited a strong refusal to have anything to do with established

political parties and labor unions. Most especially, there seems to be a

strong refusal to cooperate with leftish parties and organizations,

historically considered as political allies for the rise and impact of

36

social movements, but in today’s protests completely dismissed. The 2011

mobilizations seem, thus, to disregard all those conceptions and

practices of politics understood in the old political axes of left and

right. This brings us to share the remarks made by Barker et all. in

Marxism and Social Movements (2013) who in their introduction argue that

“this is, perhaps, the first time since 1848 when specifically Marxist

ideas are not the natural lingua franca of a rising movement” (12). This is

precisely the case of the M5S in Italy and 15M in Spain. In our opinion,

they have been expressing a “post-ideological” view of politics, meaning,

a politics which explicitly refuses to identify with left (and right)

wings ideologies. For them, the only “ideology” that matters is the

safeguard of common goods in the interest of all. If common goods such as

education and healthcare must belong to all, then a fortiori the domain

through which such goods are managed and allocated, politics, must be

rethought as “the common space” par excellence, whose only function is to

serve the interest of all. Post-ideological politics, in conclusion,

means precisely a politics of the common goods. Is this the type of

politics that all of us should try to put forward?

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Appendix

Interview for 15M

(participants quoted in the text: 8 out of 20)

Stephane Grueso (15M activist and he was in charge of communication,author of documentary film about 15M)

Kike Castello (Spokesperson of DRY Madrid)

Antonio Zamora (Juventud sin Futuro Murcia)

Claudia (Activist of DRY and one of the organizers of acampada inBarcelona)

PAH Barcelona

PAH Madrid

Victor Egío (Juventud Sin Futuro)

Mar (Can Batlo)

Cesar (coordinator of DRY Barcelona)

Movimento 5 Stelle

(participants quoted in the text: 5 out of 25)

Luigi di Maio (Movimento 5 Stelle Activist and Vicepresident of Italian Chamber)

Movimento 5 Stelle Assembly Lecce (20 activist focus grouo)

Federica Daga (Movimento 5 Stelle Activist and Parlamentarian)

Local assemblies of Movimento 5 Stelle Lecce and Brindisi

Umberto and Andrea (Movimento 5 Stelle Activist, meet up Ragusa)

Luca (Movimento 5 Stelle Activist, meet up Siracusa)

38

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