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XXIX SISP ANNUAL CONFERENCE (2015)
Panel 3.3 Comparative European Populism
Chair Roberto De Rosa, Dario Quattromani
Discussant Sara Gentile
Paper
XXI century Europopulism from Theory to Practice: on the cases of Front
national, M5S and UKIP
by Nicola Genga
Ph. D. in “Political language and communication”
“Comunicazione e Ricerca Sociale” Department
“Sapienza” Università di Roma
Via Salaria 113
00198 Roma
Introduction
The rising media relevance of the populist topic brings with itself the urgency to try and provide an up-to-
date analysis of the matter. A better comprehension of this issue is required, particularly in a scientific
context where a conceptual clarification is indeed the first step to take to build a framework for actual
phenomena.
This need has become even more urgent in the aftermath of the 2014 EP elections, in which Eurosceptic
players achieved a considerable success in some member states. Hence, this paper aims at proposing a
preliminary attempt of clarification on a theoretical level by summing up the conventional wisdom on
populism, with the purpose of outlining a possible typology of the today European populism as a concept
related to the notion of Euroscepticism.
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A deeper focus will be provided on case studies pertaining to three European key countries: France, United
Kingdom, and Italy. Both the French Front National and the British United Kingdom Independence Party
(UKIP) obtained the relative majority of the vote at the last European parliamentary elections, while the
Five Star Movement (Movimento 5 stelle - M5S) performed with a still satisfactory 21%. All of them display
a thick populist dimension in their political discourse. An overall comparison of their narrative regarding the
points of people and Europe is here proposed, in order to formulate some hypothesis about the
relationship between these actors and their respective political systems in contemporary democracy.
1. Populism as a dimension of politics
As it is known, after decades of scientific discussion there is still no consensus among scholars about the
nature of populism, and it will probably never be, due to a controversial issue defined by an “umbrella
term” referring to various political phenomena (Ionescu and Gellner, 1969; Taguieff, 1997; Mény and Surel
2000, 2002; Taggart 2000; Hermet 2001).
It is perhaps beyond the scope of this paper to solve the matter once and for all, for both opportunity and
space reasons. However, we are aware that the concept has been constructed on precise historical
archetypes (basically the Russian and the American one); yet most of the scholars agree that there is no
such thing as pure populism in the real world nowadays1, so that we can consider this object as something
relating to the sphere of Weberian “ideal types”.
In this sense, the term populism we assume here is a descriptive tool used by observers and analysts, rather
than a normative principle followed by political players. Therefore, its framing as an ideology, according to
the perspective of Mudde (2004, 2007), seems questionable. And this despite the distinction between
“thick-centred or macro” and “thin-centred” ideologies carefully explained by Mudde and Rovira
Kaltwasser (2013, pp. 150-151) with reference to Freeden’s works on this specific topic (1996; 1998). The
former authors admit that “populism hardly ever emerges in a pure form. Consequently, populism is almost
always attached to certain other ideological features that are related to particular grievances existing in
different regional contexts” (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2013, p. 168). This is consistent with what they
say in asserting that “thin-centred ideologies”, like populism, “have an identifiable but restricted
morphology that relies on a small number of core concepts whose meaning is highly context dependent”
(pp. 150-151). Nonetheless the point of conceiving populism as an ideology, although “thin-centred”, is far
1 With maybe one sole exception, as we will see later on.
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from being clear-cut. Analyzing the same topic, Canovan (1999, p. 4) wrote that “attempts to define
populism in terms of any such ideology fail” because of extreme contextual variability.
In its nature of theoretical construct, similar to an “ideal type”, the notion of populism can be rather
referred to a “forma mentis”, like Tarchi (2015) argues, or, as we assume here, a “dimension” of political
action and discourse crossing different phenomena (Worsley 1969; Taguieff 1997; Laclau 2005). As Worsley
said “ [...] populism is better regarded as an emphasis, a dimension of political culture in general, not simply
as a particular kind of overall ideological system or type of organization” (1969, p. 245).
The following features can be considered the main characteristics of the populist dimension: the appeal to
a supposedly homogeneous people by a leader; the disparagement of representative democracy and
political mediation; an a-classist vision of society; a criticism of the elites conceived as a uniform entity; a
propensity towards nationalism (Canovan 1981; Taggart 2000; Mény and Surel 2000; Hermet 2001; Mudde
2004).
Whereas some difficulties can emerge to apply this set of features in a cross-regional perspective, the
references to classes or representative democracy makes this same description particularly suitable for the
Western European reality. Here, like elsewhere, populism does not appear in pure forms: a populist
dimension can be picked out in the action and discourse of both mainstream and fringe parties. While in
the former it can be referred to the style of some leaders interested in appealing “the ordinary people” by
an unconventional media approach, in the latter can be detected an anti-elite propensity to focus on a
“united people” or, more specifically to an anti-immigrants “our people” (Canovan 1999, p. 5). Using the
classic Greek lexicon, the first recalls the demos notion, whereas the last can be overlapped to ethnos.
This does not mean that ruling parties or politicians holding roles as head of state of government are
exempt by populism, as the Italian and French cases show clearly (Tarchi 2015; Gentile 2013). As already
said, the populist dimension relates to different and various political phenomena. But we consider here
that kind of relevant political forces showing a thick populist dimension as their primary feature, mixing an
anti-élite and protest profile with an national-identity-based one (Taguieff 1996) in a typical European way
that Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser (2013) defined “exclusionary”.
2. The Eurosceptic Populists as a “party family”?
A tight bond links populism and Euroscepticism. Not only because the latter can be read as “a specific form
of populist discourse” or “a manifestation of the wider, global phenomenon of populism” (Leconte 2015, p.
259 and 251) and “a reaction to the ‘democratic deficit’ affecting the EU and its member states” (Ibid., p.
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255), but also since the contribution that European integration is giving to the weakening of national party
systems, no longer able by themselves to deliver solid answers to citizens hit by the crisis whereas at the EU
level a responsive parliamentary democracy is still utopia. In this context, the unmediated populist anti-
elite protest, linking leaders and a growing portion of the electorate, seems to be the only alternative to the
status quo (Laclau 2005b; Mair 2000; Leconte 2015, pp. 256-257).
Furthermore, there is an overlapping between Peter Mair’s notion of “populist protest” “a substantive if
not always coherent programme which seeks to mobilise popular support against established elites and
institutions” (Mair in Mény and Surel 2002, p. 88) and the attitude defined Taggart and Szczerbiak “hard
Euroscepticism”, i.e. “a principled opposition to the EU and European integration and therefore can be seen
in parties who think that their counties should withdraw from membership, or whose policies towards the
EU are tantamount to being opposed to the whole project of European integration as it is currently
conceived” (Taggart and Szczerbiak 2002, p. 7).
The recognition of a Europopulist phenomenon needs some further reflections. Significant problems in
considering “populists”, as such, a party family arise from various reasons: absence of a proper ideology,
name of the actors themselves, their origins and sociology, absence of specific transnational federations.
First of all, it is not useless to remember that one of the main criticism against populism concerns the
derogatory undertones associated with the same label, which suffers from the lack of a “nominalist” status,
since political movements and leaders avoid to use it to define themselves. As recalled by Mudde and
Rovira Kaltwasser “establishing a definition of populism represents a challenge, not only because of the
absence of a consensus on its defining properties, but also due to the normative considerations about it”
(2013, p. 149).
Therefore, we basically consider here some parties and movements who share the main features previously
outlined as the core of their political platform, i.e. appeal to “the” people as a whole, strong and
personalized leadership; anti-system and anti-representative democracy protest; nationalism and/or hard
euro-scepticism. Particularly, the EU arena is, at present, the main space of voice for these populist actors,
who obtained their best result ever in the 2014 European Elections: the parties and movements adhering to
Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD) secured 48 seats, then become 45; those who in June
2015 would constitute the Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF), among which the Front national and the
Lega Nord, gathered 38 seats. Besides them the soft Eurosceptics European Conservative and Reformists
(ECR) obtained 70 seats, subsequently increased to 74. At present, 21,3% of the EP seats are held by Hard
and Soft Eurosceptics.
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As previously said, three political actors from as many core member states have been here identified to be
observed as relevant cases fitting into this “Eurosceptic populist” category: Front national from France, Five
Star Movement (Movimento Cinque Stelle - M5S) from Italy and UKIP from the United Kingdom.
Within this “party family-like” category, we aim at comparing three different objects in many of their
features, according to the “most different systems” logic (Przeworski and Teune, 1970). As a matter of fact,
in terms of origins, the populist actors in general can hardly be framed according to the frame of the
Rokkan’s cleavages. If we consider here the centre-periphery polarity as the most salient one for populist
parties, still we need to admit that this is not significant at all for none of them, at least at a national level,
whereas maybe it does mean something at a European level. At the same time Von Beyme did not identify
populism as one of his familles spirituelles (von Beyme 1985, pp. 29-158; Mair and Mudde 1998, pp. 215-
221), while on the contrary Seiler (1980) inserts the “populist parties” item instead of the “fascist” or
“extreme right” ones.
From a sociological point of view, UKIP and FN are basically petit-bourgeois party with an increasing
working class constituency, whereas M5S holds a more trans-classist electorate (Ford and Goodwin 2014;
Mayer 2013; Pedrazzani and Pinto 2015). At this respect, one can remark that the ongoing economic crisis
seems to intensify the recent tendency of blue and white collar workers to back more radical parties,
among which populist are nowadays the most likely to collect a “proletarian vote” (Evans, 2005).
On the point of the membership in transnational federations lato sensu, they do not belong to the same
clusters. On the one hand the FN is a member of the Movement for a Europe of Nations and Freedom
(MENF), a federation of Eurosceptic parties founded in 2010 and joined by, among others, the Freedom
Party of Austria and the Vlaams Belang. The same parties altogether launched in June 2015 the common
group named Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF) in the European Parliament.
On the other hand, M5S and UKIP are the largest delegations in the EFDD group within the European
Parliament. At the same time, UKIP is a member and a co-founder of the “European political party” Alliance
for Direct Democracy in Europe (ADDE).
The main reason why there is not an overlapping between those clusters (ENF and EFDD as parliamentary
groups, EAF and ADDE as transnational federations or European political parties) lies in the refusal that
both M5S and UKIP express against the FN, considered as a neo-fascist party impossible to deal with. That
has obviously a relation with the different ideological profile of the three parties. In the case of FN we can
acknowledge a form of radical-right national-populism, with an actual neo-fascist background and a recent
emphasis on an anti-Islam conception of republican secularism; conservatism, libertarianism and civic
nationalism are the characteristics that best describe the UKIP; a qualunquismo-like anti-establishment
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rhetoric, with a reference to the principles of electronic and direct democracy are the main features of the
M5S.
3. Framework and research questions
The analysis here is a preliminary and cautious attempt to give a contribution to rising questioning about
the political future of a presumed Europopulist party family. Thus this paper aims at analysing the main
features of these selected parties in order to propose a reflection on the populist dimension of
contemporary European democracy.
The reasons why these particular parties have been chosen need further explanation. Firstly, all of them
topped the poll in a nationally contested balloting held in the last two years. In 2013 Italian general
elections M5S obtained the relative majority within the national borders, while the UKIP and FN won the
most votes in their respective countries on the occasion of 2014 European parliament elections. The former
case is an impressive breakthrough for a newcomer in the party system; the latter went far beyond the
standards of the second order logic (Reif and Schmitt 1980) and, despite the habitual low turnout in this
kind of election, they show the increasing mainstreaming of Euroscepticism within the nation states as an
aftermath of the Eurozone crisis (Brack and Startin 2015, pp. 239-241; Usherwood and Startin 2013). So the
Eurosceptic parties become unprecedentedly relevant in a general Eurosceptic Zeitgeist.
This trend is even more significant taking into account that it happens in three “core” member states,
holding altogether 220 out of 751 European parliament states. If, on the one hand, the United Kingdom has
always been an “awkward partner” in the Eu (Startin 2015), Italy and France are two founding members of
the European Community. Indeed this is a further reason not to consider the Europopulist phenomenon as
a peripheral one.
As a whole, a different “Political Opportunity Structure” (Meyer and Staggenborg 1996) differentiates the
three cases here observed. It can indeed be noted that these outstanding scores (in all the cases close to
one fourth of the expressed votes) where performed within a proportional competition, but in three very
different political systems. First of all we have three forms of government: constitutional monarchy for the
United Kingdom, semi-presidential republic for France and parliamentary republic for Italy. Secondly, in
terms of electoral law they have respectively a plurality, a majority and a national-coalition-plurality system
(at least in the lower house). Then the long-term backgrounds in terms of party systems’ formats and
mechanics are not quite the same: a tendential two-party system (with rare and partial exceptions) in the
Uk, a moderate pluralism in France, and in Italy a moderate pluralism that seems actually going back to the
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so called “First republic” dynamics of polarized pluralism, at least until the implementation of the recently
approved Italicum system.
About their interaction with the mass media, at first can be said that all of them nourish an apparently
conflicting relationship. Since the ‘80s the FN has been regularly denouncing an alleged “censorship” by the
mainstream media, the so called “lobby médiatique” (Dézé 2012, pp. 140-142). Yet, the relationship of
interdependence between the FN and the mass media is one of the reasons why Le Pen’s party suddenly
emerged in the French political system (Genga 2015, pp. 33-54).
Something similar can be noted about the Five Star Movement: newspapers and television journalists are
between the main targets of Grillo’s rhetoric (Bordignon and Ceccarini 2013, pp. 430-434) in the name of a
disintermediation of the communication flows, yet the overexposure given by the Italian broadcast TV to
M5S played a key role in shaping their 2013 electoral success. Furthermore, Nigel Farage keeps defining the
media “biased against the Ukip”, well knowing how the tabloid press, especially the Daily Express,
contributed to the mainstreaming of Eurosceptic theses and to the rise of his party (Startin 2015).
The theoretical notions earlier outlined on the topic of Europopulism, to be interpreted as a wide political
phenomenon with a thick populist dimension and displaying both exclusionary and Eurosceptic sides, are
therefore to be read in the light of the actual profiles of FN, UKIP, M5S.
To investigate so, the paper briefly looks at the evolution of the three actors and at their electoral fortunes.
Then a focus on these parties is provided by an overall comparison of their main “populist features”, to
observe to what extent they have common points in terms of political culture and what kind of people they
appeal to. Secondly, their discourse on Europe, considered as a key topic of their political engagement, is
investigated by analysing official documents elaborated by the party themselves.
The main research question concerns the benefit of inserting these actors in a same cluster for research
aims, by considering them part of a political family. Furthermore, hypotheses are formulated about the
relationship between populist actors, their respective political systems and the EU arena.
4. Front national, MoVimento 5 Stelle and United Kingdom independence party: a brief outline
4.1 Front national
The populist labelling of the FN dates back to the Eighties, when the definition “national-populisme”
replaced the word “fascisme”, which had been used until then in the intellectual and media environment
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(Taguieff 1984, pp. 113-119; Milza 1992, pp. 691-729). In the French public debate Le Pen's Front National
embodies an explicit form of populism: first recognized by external observers, then acknowledged by the
party itself. The use of the term “national-populist” gives the members of the FN, and their leader, a
respectable image compared to that associated with the words “fascist” and “extremist” used since the
foundation of the party in 1972. As a consequence, claiming the populist hallmark has been a provocative,
sometimes sarcastic way to find a distinguishing feature from the political system.
After some remarkable as well as unprecedented performance in local elections in first eighties, the FN
emerged into the limelight of the national politics at the European polls of 1984, when it gained about 11%
of the vote and 10 seats. Even though the European elections results climbed down the threshold of 10% in
1999 (5,7% with 5 seats), 2004 (9,8% with 7 seats) and 2009 (6,3% with 3 seats), the party kept stably
double figures in the electoral competition for two decades, and their leader Jean-Marie Le Pen able to get
to the second round of presidential elections in 2002 with 16,8% of the vote.
After having struggled during Sarkozy’s presidential years, when the UMP’s leader managed to intercept a
large part of the FN electorate, a strong change occurred in the party leadership. Once she became the
head of the Front in 2011, Marine Le Pen launched a process of ideological revision aimed at “de-
demonizing” (i.e. normalizing) the party, with particular regard to the acceptance of republican secular
values as opposed to the challenge of an alleged impending communitarian model, implied by the presence
of a growing Islamic minority. Challenging the main French parties UMP and PS, since then the “new” FN
aspires to extend their own electoral support in order to get fit to rule the country. A first step in this path
has been the outstanding national performance of 2012, when FN obtained a striking 17,9% in the
presidential and 13,9% in the first round of general elections (as Rassemblement bleu Marine), getting only
two parliamentary seats because of both the electoral system and the inability/impossibility to build
alliances with other political forces (Shields 2013, p. 189).
A further consolidation comes in some local by-elections, and above all in the municipal elections of march
2014, when the FN obtained mayoralties in 12 cities and more than 1500 city councillors, their best result
ever in this kind of balloting. Two months later, on May 25th, Le Pen’s party got an unmatched 24,9% of the
vote, topping the poll at a national level for the first time and resulting to be the most voted party in 5 out
of 8 constituencies and enlarging their delegation at the European parliament from 3 to 24 MEPs. This
happened also thanks to the already mentioned second order effect and the extremely low turnout
(42,4%), but with unprecedented proportions.
Later on, in September 2014, the party entered the Palais de Luxembourg for the first time, two of their
members being chosen as Senators by indirect universal suffrage. Then, in march 2015 departmental
elections the FN scored a not negligible 25,5%, the best result for a single list at the national level, but
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obtained a minuscule amount of seats: 62, that is 1,5% of the total number of seats available in the whole
country. Currently, the FN’s leader Marine Le Pen is believed to be a likely second round contestant at the
forthcoming presidential elections to be held in 20172.
4.2 MoVimento 5 Stelle
In this analysis, MoVimento 5 Stelle (Five Star Movement) has been chosen to the detriment of the Lega
Nord (Northern League), often considered the typical expression of italian right-wing identity populism
(Tarchi 2002, 2008; Goodwin 2011, X). Despite a recent attempt of repositioning aimed at nationalising
their political platform, in effect the League is still a relevant political party in the Northern part of Italy
only, whereas the M5S holds a homogenous support across the whole country. That makes it more suitable
for a comparison that, at a later stage of the research path whose this paper represents the beginning,
could need an assessment of the electoral support at this actors in a homogeneous space like the national
one.
In any case, the emergence of the Five Star Movement has taken place at a local level too, through a
gradual rising of their electoral performances due, at least partially, to the activism of the meetups that
promoted civil lists on the occasion of municipal elections. After being founded in 2009 by the comedian
Giuseppe Piero Grillo and the businessman Gianroberto Casaleggio, the professed “non-association” seized
their first significant electoral results in March 2010, in the regional elections held in Emilia Romagna and
Piedmont. In the former case, obtained a 6% of the vote and two regional councillors, in the latter the 4%
and again two councillors, giving an indirect contribution in impeding the center-left candidate Mercedes
Bresso to win against the Northern League (and center-right) candidate Roberto Cota. One year after, in
May 2011 municipal elections, the M5S achieved again positive, although not exceptional results in some
metropolitan areas of central-northern Italy, obtaining city councilmen in Bologna, Rimini, Turin and
Trieste.
However, the proper electoral exploit occurred between 2012 and 2013. At first, in May 2012, when the
M5S won the city council election in Parma as well as three mayoralties in small town in the northern part
of the country (Sarego, Comacchio and Mira); then at the Sicilian regional elections held in October, when
they got 14,9% of the vote becoming the largest single party in the region; finally, at the 2013 Italian
general election that they reached the peak of their history so far, with an astonishing 25,5% and 9 million
2 Marine Le Pen en tête en 2017, des sondages à lire avec prudence, “Le Monde”, 30/1/2015. http://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2015/01/30/marine-le-pen-en-tete-en-2017-des-sondages-a-lire-avec-prudence_4567091_823448.html
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votes. In that occasion M5S received the greatest number of votes in the country (then not taking into
account Italian national voting abroad). With this outcome Grillo’s movement obtained on the whole 163
MPs: 109 in the Chamber of Deputies, 54 in the Senate. Since then, part of whom (18 deputies and 23
senators) have left the parliamentary group, due to disagreements with the leadership or as a consequence
of disciplinary actions. Meanwhile, the M5S has obtained the score of 21,16% at 2014 EP elections,
resulting the second most voted party in Italy after the Democratic Party.
We deal here with a phenomenon whose populist labelling remains still controversial in the experts’ debate
(Corbetta and Gualmini 2013; Biorcio and Natale 2013). Yet, as we will see later, the populist view of M5S
seems to fit with the definition made by Mudde of “an ideology that considers society to be ultimately
separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’, and
which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people”
(Mudde 2004, p. 543).
4.3 United Kingdom Independence Party
Looking back to the history of Great Britain, no proper populist movement with a significant impact on the
domestic party system had ever emerged in the country. That is in large part related to the first-past-the-
post electoral system, which heavily affects new political forces. The United Kingdom independence party
(UKIP) is here considered as a relevant case of British populism, expressing “a radical revolt against the
established political parties, which is guided by their Eurosceptic beliefs and wrapped heavily in the radical
right-wing themes of populism and opposition to immigration” (Ford and Goodwin 2014, p. 15) and,
generally speaking, can be defined an Anti-Political Establishment party (Abedi and Lundberg 2009, p. 74)
Founded in 1991 with the label of Anti-Federalist League by some intellectuals and politicians members of
the Bruges Club, among whom the historian and liberal candidate Alan Sked, UKIP, as the party has been
renamed in 1993, is a hard Eurosceptic political force created with the aim of opposing the Maastricht
Treaty and the “Europe project” as a whole (Ford and Goodwin, p. 39).
In their first years UKIP seemed to be a single issue pressure group doomed to languish on the fringes of
British politics. Indeed, during their first decade as a whole, UKIP fielded candidates in 25 parliamentary by-
elections, securing the unsatisfactory average of 1,7% (Ford and Goodwin, p. 22). In 1997 general election
they gathered 0,3% of the vote with 194 candidates running. The UKIP emerged in 1999 EP election with a
7% score and 3 seats won: Nigel Farage was elected in the South-East England, Jeffrey Titford in the East
and Michael Holmes in the South-West.
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In 2001, UKIP obtained 1,5% of the vote in the general election, suffering from the Eurosceptic shift of the
Conservatives under the leadership of William Hague. Then in 2004 European Parliament election the
scored improved neatly up to 16,1%, resulting in 12 seats and the third place among the parties running in
the UK. The following year was characterised by the internal debate about the opportunity of challenging
the Tory candidates despite their stances on EU, this way turning from a pressure group into a proper party.
This position was embodied by the newly elected MEP Robert Kilroy-Silk, former labour MP and popular tv
anchorman striving for UKIP leadership. But on this pathway he was hindered by a considerable number of
party members and led to defect (Ford and Goodwin 2014, pp. 64-67; Abedi and Lundberg 2009, pp. 81-83)
Meanwhile the number of candidates standing for UKIP had been gradually increasing, but with an
improvement of a modest entity, as the 2005 general election results show: 2,2% from 496 candidates. The
result was affected by the competition of the BNP, quite strong in those years.
Coming to the leadership in 2006, Nigel Farage gave the party a socially conservative orientation. In 2009,
thanks to the introduction of a proportional system, UKIP achieved a further progress the EP elections,
securing 16,5% and 13 seats, as well as resulting the second largest party in the country after the
Conservatives. Nevertheless, they obtained a still scarce 3,1% in 2010 General elections.
A moderately positive result occurred in May 2012 local elections, with an average vote share of 13%. The
proper breakthrough occurred in 2013 local elections, when it obtained the best score for a party outside
the “big-three” since the ‘40s, polling an average of 23% in the constituencies where it run and securing
147 councillors. Again in local elections, one year later, UKIP gathered 163 seats.
Like happened to the French FN, the major success for the party came in the 2014 European Parliament
election, when UKIP won the most votes in a nationally contested election for the first time, obtaining the
27,49% and winning their 24 seats3 in every region of Britain. The same year UKIP won two parliamentary
by-elections. In the 2015 general election only one out of these two seats has been held, while the party
obtained the 12,6% nationally and UKIP gained the Thanet District Council in the same ward Farage had just
lost his parliamentary race. At present, the party also has 3 seats in the House of Lords, one seat in the
House of Commons and 496 local councillors.
5. Affinities and divergences between Europopulist actors
5.1 In the name of people: between direct democracy and populist rhetoric
3 One of them, Amjad Bashir, defected to the Conservatives in January 2015.
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The claim for direct democracy shared by this political players is a consequence of the conception of
democracy that Canovan (1999) defined as “redemptive face” as opposed to the “pragmatic” one,
considering populism as a “shadow cast by democracy itself” (p. 3).
UKIP’s and M5S’s commitment to direct democracy is even officially declared by the name of the EP group
they both take part in, which is, as previously said, “Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy”. In the case
of M5S “appeal for direct democracy has been a ruse employed to mask his lack of a political programme”
as a form of plebiscitarianism (Corbetta and Vignati 2014, pp. 62-63).
Ironically, the expression “direct democracy” is never mentioned neither in the M5S program nor in the
UKIP Manifesto. In the former case a laconic statement “Both abrogative and initiative referendums
without quorum” is inserted in the list of measures included in the first chapter “State and citizens” (M5S,
p. 3). In the latter, key political reform measures are present such as the “Right of Recall”, “Open Primaries
Bill” to avoid “candidates in winnable seats […] be Westminster insiders” and, above all, the so called
“Citizens’ Initiative”, whose content is the following: “Every two years we will allow a national referendum
on the issues of greatest importance to the British public, gathered via an approved petition, provided the
petition has more than two million signatures. The outcome of these referendums will be included in the
Queen’s Speech, therefore allowing the public to directly influence legislation” (UKIP 2015, p. 57).
Furthermore, the Freedom of Movement of People and the EU membership are proposed as issues to be
decided via referendum.
FN considers direct democracy as a “condition for guaranteeing the freedom of the people”. In their
political project, there is the following statement: “the initiative referendum will be inscribed in the
Constitution and the conditions of its organisation will be lighten in order to enable a genuine exercise of
direct democracy” (FN, p. 103). In the case of the FN, however, referendum proposals are generally
associated with a list of specific issues, such as the death penalty, immigration, the Code of Nationality,
fiscal system. Somehow then, referenda are viewed as a way of promoting the output of their own political
agenda rather than as a means of fostering policy inputs.
All of these parties sooner or later, sincerely or strategically, have claimed their populist nature. For
instance, in 1991, answering to the interviewers of the nationalist periodical Aspects de la France,
Jean‐Marie Le Pen said: “Populism means taking into account the people’s opinion. If, in democracy, the
people have the right to an opinion then, yes, I consider myself a populist”. Almost the same did his
daughter and successor Marine, stating “If, as I think, populism means defending the people from the
elites, defending those who have been left behind from the elites that are choking them, then, yes, in this
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case I am a populist”. “Populist and proud of it” was a slogan used by the party in the ‘90s (Genga 2013, pp.
73-75).
In a post on Europe issued on his blog on October 16th 2013, Beppe Grillo wrote “The word populism has
become an insult (…) but [it] means ‘political, social or cultural attitude or movement that tends generically
to raise the poorest classes’. Populism mean that if European peoples are fed up and want to build a better
Europe, people like Letta have to pack their bags right after the European election. The populist Five Star
Movement will take part in the European election to win. It will be a crusade. Lift up your hearts” (See also
Tarchi 2015, pp. 354). Recently, Marco Tarchi has speculated on the possible consideration of M5S as a case
of “populism in its pure state” (Tarchi 2015, p. 344).
Regarding the UKIP the aim of the founders was explicitly “take on the name and structure of a populist
party”, as Nigel Farage himself has admitted (Farage 2011, p. 78). This party can be considered as an
populist anti political establishment organization according to the three criteria set by Abedi, that are: “it
challenges the status quo in terms of major policy issues and core elements of the political system”,
advocating for a withdrawal from the EU; “it perceives itself as a challenger to the parties that make up the
political establishment”; and “it asserts that there exists a fundamental divide between the establishment
and the people, thereby implying that all mainstream parties, whether in government or in the opposition,
are essentially the same” (Abedi and Lundberg 2009, p. 74; Tournier-Sol 2015, p. 149). This latter point is
particularly interesting since UKIP dismiss the big three parties as interchangeable and call them
“LibLabCon”, similarly to what FN make using the term “UMPS” to associate symbolically French
mainstream parties UMP and PS and also to M5S used to make with the Italian “PD and PD minus L”. All of
them are castes, detached from the people.
But what people are they appealing to? Is it just the “the populace of the heartland”? (Taggart 2002b, p.
64). The people to be trusted is the “ordinary people”, the “united people” or “our people” (Canovan 1999,
p. 5)? A demos or an ethnos?
As the essential core of populism, the appeal to the people, is, in fact, a key element of the FN’s discourse.
Between 1983 and ‘96 the word peuple occurs 325 times in Jean-Marie Le Pen’s speeches and it is second
only to pays (440) as the most utilised term (Cuminal, Souchard, Wahnich, Wathier 1997, p. 95). Back in
2012 Marine Le Pen run for the presidential election with the slogan “The Voice of People, the Spirit of
France”. The FN populism combines the protest of the people as “demos” against the political
establishment (pays réel vs pays legal), with an identity populism based on the “ethnos”. That is certainly
possible due to the semantic ambiguity of the word “people”, which can be interpreted as both “the
sovereign people” and “the nation people. While protest populism is expressed in demagogical slogans
14
such as “we are the people” or “putting the people back in control”, identity populism founded upon
ethnos deploy itself in the policy principle of “national preference” or “national priority” as the key of a
welfare chauvinism. The “project” of FN say that “family allowances” will be “reserved to families where at
least one of the parents is French or European”, “companies will be encouraged, when hiring, to prefer
French nationals with the same qualifications”, “the health care programme provides access to health care
anywhere, for all the French” (FN, pp. 12-13).
The M5S “people” gathers many features of the “populist peoples” described by Mény and Surel (2000),
with a deeper emphasis on the protest side. Grillo stresses the resemblance between M5S candidates to
the people calling the MPs “citizens” and wheedle the attendants of his meetings saying: “They are all
people like you. They are your mirror, democracy back to front”. This in a “a clearly anti-elitist approach,
typical of populist rhetoric, which harks back to the virtues of the people as the source of political
legitimacy” (Bordignon and Ceccarini 2013, p. 435). Along with these elements appealing to the “ordinary
people”, there is also a relevant ethnic-identity side, with a reference to the cohesion of the inner
community and the refusal of inclusive policies such as ius soli. Some blog’s posts and public speeches
display a visible diffidence towards immigration, seen as a threat for both security and economic reasons
(Tarchi 2015, p. 345).
“Empowering the people” was the evocative title of 2009 UKIP Manifesto. And indeed UKIP is a model of “a
populist narrative, which urges voters to ‘sod the lot’ and sets the common sense of the ordinary people
against the political class, who are framed as corrupt, complacent and out of touch” (Ford and Goodwin
2014, p. 180). But looking at their policy proposal contained in their more recent Manifesto, the party
seems especially devoted to underline strongly its exclusive concern for the British nationals. As an
example, it can be noted that the word people comes constantly out within expressions evoking Canovan’s
notion of “our people”: for instance the will of the British people (p. 3), the people of this country (p. 3), our
people (p. 3), our current immigration rules ignore the wishes of the British people (p. 11), the people of
Britain (p. 14), The jobs of British people (p. 41), the vast majority of the British people (pp. 61 and 71). The
idea of an “ordinary people” is largely overwhelmed by the political acceptation of “our people”, to use
again Canovan’s lexicon. The British people is the main character of a narrative in which it plays the role of
the victim “persecuted” by the Brussels’ tormenter (Ford and Goodwin 2014, p. 51).
5.2 Something is rotten in the state of Europe: between soft and hard Euroscepticism
15
The Euroscepticism of these political actors is hardly questionable. In the meantime, their relationship with
the European Union is somehow paradoxical. While they indeed express a strong criticism towards the
idea, the current set and the actual practice of really existing European Union, they acquire considerable
benefits from it, in terms of both visibility and economic resources. Especially UKIP and FN owe their
international notoriety mainly to the outstanding scores they performed on the occasion of EP elections.
Furthermore, the staff and the equipment they can afford thanks to the Brussels endowments allow them
to have undeniable advantages from an organizational point of view.
As already pointed out several times so far, UKIP is a genuinely hard Eurosceptic that consequently
“opposed to the very principle of European political integration and demanded that Britain withdraw from
the ‘Europe project’” (Ford and Goodwin, p. 39). Having been at first merely a single topic pressure group,
since the beginning this party advocates a “Brexit” from the EU as its core issue. UKIP Manifesto issued in
1997 was clear enough about Eu saying that “The UK Independence Party’s policy of withdrawal is the only
viable option. THE ONLY WAY IS OUT”.
Things have not changed as the years passed by: very hypothesis of European political integration is
consequently still rejected as unacceptable. In 2013 Nigel Farage clearly explained his view in an interview
given to the M5S blog:
“Who wants a United States of Europe? Do you want a United States of Europe? Has anyone ever asked you whether you want a
United States of Europe? Not me. I don’t want a United States of Europe and wherever I go, whether it be Belgium, France, on
holiday in Portugal or Denmark, none of the people I have met wants a United States of Europe. (…) I don’t want to see a United
States of Europe, all I want is a Europe consisting of individual, sovereign, democratic states that trade and work with each other”4.
After all, the 2015 UKIP Manifesto contains several assertions that condemn even a lighter form of
integration than the effectively engaging U.S.E. one. To do some examples:
“We can never control immigration while we continue to be members of the European Union” (p. 12), “Being in the European
Union is damaging the prospects for British workers” (p. 40), “The longer we stay in the European Union, the more we become like
‘little Englanders,’ an isolated, insignificant, offshore province in a country called Europe. We become less and less like the ‘Great’
Britain we really are” (…) “We have a choice between a dying Europe and a vibrant, growing world” (p. 63).
The cornerstone of the party’s discourse on this crucial topic is the following straightforward statement:
“UKIP’s position has been quite unfairly and misleadingly labelled ‘anti-Europe.’ We are not ‘anti-Europe,’
4 “Passaparola - The sovereignty of the European people”, 08/06/2013
http://www.beppegrillo.it/en/2013/08/06/passaparola_the_sovereignty_of_1.html
16
but we are firmly opposed to political integration within Europe” (p. 70). The Farage’s famous speech
against Van Rompuy in Brussels (February 24th 2010) seems to be echoed by the assertion “It is an out-of-
sight, unaccountable, pan-European bureaucratic elite which has the final say and they do not consider
Britain’s best interests” (Ibid.). The same idea of a political union with the rest of Europe is defined
“abhorrent” (p. 71).
About the FN, one can easily say that it uses Europe “as a back door for national politics” and “European
elections (...) appear as a first-order event for FN actors” (Reungoat 2015, p. 298). The EP is a proper
provider of material and symbolic resources for Le Pen’s party. Nonetheless, but not surprisingly, the
party’s anti EU rhetoric of this party has always been harsh. Among Jean‐Marie Le Pen’s targets were the
Brussels technocrats (l’Europe des fédérastes), which in 2005 were harassing France with the threat of a
European Constitution. Having become the FN leader in 2011, Marine Le Pen started bashing Europe in
public speeches calling it the “monster that’s being hatched in Brussels” (Genga 2013, p. 82). More
recently, before 2014 EP elections, Marine Le Pen reiterated the same epithet, talking about a “European
cold monster” and inciting French electors to use the ballot as “a weapon” with which “fight to defend the
French interests” (Genga 2015, p. 189). The “criticism of the Euro, the defence of French values, identity
and traditions, the protection of French agriculture and public services, but also border control and the
restoration of the supremacy of national law over European law” are at the core of Le Pen’s concerns
(Reungoat 2015, p. 303).
In the Projet, their political program, a strong criticism is expressed towards the European Union, defined
“Trojan horse of ultra-liberal globalisation”(p. 5) and considered as “without the peoples” and “against the
peoples” for “since its birth it has been suffering from a ‘democratic deficit’” (FN, p. 47). At the same time a
sort of soft Euroscepticism stance is supported by evoking the idea of a betrayal of the original European
project “founded on the principle of communitarian preference” and the present one “completely led
astray from its purposes” (ibidem). The same can be said of the statement “France is one of the countries
that this Europe penalizes the most” (ibidem), with the significant adjective this to mean that another kind
of EU might instead be more benevolent with France.
In any case, FN narrative “Europe has lost its semblance of democratic legitimacy when three peoples voted
against the project for a European constitution without any consequence” (p. 48). Then, concrete political
proposal are formulated, like
“Renegotiate the European treaties to regain national sovereignty” and “France must regain control of its borders, preferably
through a free association of European States that share the same vision and the same interests on matters such as immigration,
17
the regulation of foreign trade and the circulation of capital” (p. 49); alongside them some symbolical provisions are envisaged, like
the clear-cut, and a bit folkloristic “The European union flag will be no longer authorised” (p. 6).
Generally speaking, the Five Star Movement lacks of a comprehensive program on European Union or
Europe in a broad, cultural sense. Like explained by Corbetta and Vignati (2014) a clear and consistent
position of M5S on Europe is not officially available. No references of this issue can be found in the program
of the MoVimento, apart from some hurried mentions of EU’s directives concerning telecommunications,
energy and pain therapy.
Basically, Grillo’s attention and efforts are absorbed by the idea of calling for a referendum on Italy’s
membership in the Euro-zone. Although a referendum on this topic is explicitly forbidden by the article 75
of Italian constitution, M5S talks every once in a while of the possibility of an advisory referendum to be
held in order to consult people. In doing so, they implicitly support the idea of a withdrawal, leaning on an
already widespread sentiment against the Euro as a currency.
M5S and Grillo statements seem projected on a parochial use of Europe, aimed at fostering the Italian
debate by arguing with the government in office (Monti, Letta, Renzi). In this view, Italian politicians use
the authority of Brussels institution as a means to impose arbitrary and otherwise unacceptable decisions
(Corbetta and Vignati 2014, p. 55). Furthermore, the Italian elites are rhetorically linked to the head of the
other member states governments, in order to build a narrative based upon the idea of a conspiracy
against the people (s) and their legitimate defender, amongst which the M5S itself:
“European governments are terrified by the possible success of parties and movements willing to change the current model of
Europe, grounded on finance, and aiming at a Europe of solidarity where a state facing difficulties, like in the case of Greece, is not
left dying to save the French and German banks. A Union oriented to development rather than to growth. Europe is not a bank, but
in effect we are ruled by the ECB […] But if European peoples wanted to change the current policy of the EU and the ECB that would
be a normal democratic process ratified by free elections. Who are those bureaucrats and bankers and their puppets lent to polit ics
to decide instead of citizens?”5
Similarly to what happens with FN discourse, there is in M5S vision of the EU an evocation of a mythicized
European Community of the origins, with a frequent ritual homage to De Gasperi, Adenauer, Monnet and
Schuman. This way, the disparagement of the institutional dynamics of current Europe is coupled with a
fundamentalist regret for an alleged paradise lost to be rediscovered.
So, if on the one hand the EU remains a scapegoat to be blamed alternatively for either its authoritarianism
or inaction, so that it can be fruitfully used to boost anti-establishment rhetoric, on the other Europe is
5 http://www.beppegrillo.it/2013/10/il_m5s_alle_elezioni_europee.html
18
conceived as a positive space, a sort of promise land to reclaim and restore to its glorious past, accordingly
to the traditional Italian Europhile sentiment.
6. Some final remarks
The review conducted so far can be considered as a first step towards the framing of a possible
Europopulist party family, in the particular context of the XXI century Western democracies, affected by the
combination of the long-term post-modern social dynamics with the more recent consequences of 2007-
2008 economic crisis.
With respect to their appeal to the people, a tendency for considering the citizens as a “pure” pole opposed
to corrupt elite (Mudde 2004) is equally identifiable in all of the cases analysed. Obviously, there is no
overlapping of identical stances. In the FN, due to the on-going de-demonization process, an attempt of
concealing the French ethnos reference in favour of the evocation of a wider demos is visible, e.g. by the
addition of the adjective “European” in the proposal regarding the so-called “national priority”, probably to
alleviate the exclusionary content of the same principle.
In M5S’ discourse the word and the concept of people is often replaced with the more Jacobin term
“citizens”; yet as a collective actor the people is evoked as a depositary of good qualities and common
sense to be set against the national and international establishment; while the invective against immigrants
and foreigners is sporadic, no internationalist vocation is displayed by Grillo’s representatives, as by the
way the refusal of M5S to join the Alliance for Direct Democracy in Europe can at least partially testify.
As regards the UKIP, the explicit and reiterated mention of the British nationality can be linked to the “civic
nationalism” claimed by the party as inspiration for their same founders; in addition it can be noted that
the absence from Great Britain’s history of past fascist/nationalistic dictatorships allows UKIP to be more
straightforward, unlike Italians and French; last but not least, the endemic British Euroscepticism makes
Farage’s statements less extreme than they would be considered elsewhere.
In a nutshell, the obstacles to a full cooperation among these political forces are on the one hand the “neo-
fascist” stigma looming on the FN image; on the other the fact that Europe is seen as either an obstacle to
national political goals, or as an instrument to be employed for mere national political goals. Nonetheless a
convergence of these parties’ discourses on a same political platform can be in fact acknowledged.
As a joint observation of the political situation concerning to the three single countries can suggest, the
success of this kind of parties, although still relative and limited, is one of the aftermaths of the long and
short-term socio-economic phenomena described above, as well as the product of a consequent
19
democratic crisis, testified among other things by the low turnouts in most kind of elections. What these
Europopulists seem to testify with their success is the shifting of former fringe issues to the centre of the
debate occurred in the last 20 years. The theme of a joint “pathological normalcy” (Mudde 2010) of these
parties needs obviously further in-depth investigation, to move the discussion from an often hasty media
chat on the “danger for democracies” to a pondered reflection about the broader political meaning of
these (apparently?) new phenomena.
20
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