Inexperienced, leftists, and grassroots democrats: a profile of the Five Star Movement’s MPs

The aim of this article is to present original empirical data on the profile of the Five Star Movement’s parliamentary group at the outset of current legislature. Who are the Movement’s parliamentary representatives, what are their ideological orientations, and how do they perceive their role vis-à-vis the other components of the party (party members and the extra-parliamentary leadership)? We think that providing answers to these questions can help us to understand both the performance of the party in Parliament and its relationships with the Movement’s leaders. In this article, we present the results of a survey we conducted with the Movement’s parliamentarians. Our survey’s results show a parliamentary group which is primarily characterised by a lack of previous political experience, a clear leftist ideological orientation, and the rejection not only of an oligarchic but also of a ‘leaderistic’ conception of the party. These characteristics are particularly illuminating when it comes to understanding the issues that have arisen and the events that have occurred within the party in the last 2 years, as well as the prospects of party change/institutionalisation, especially in the form of emancipation from the founding leaders. This study can be of use for future research into the Movement’s performance in Parliament, as well as into its strategic and organisational adaptation to emerging trade-offs between vote maximisation, policy achievements, and office holding.