Movement parties: A new hybrid form of politics?

Citation preview

24 Movement parties A new hybrid form of politics? Marina Prentoulis and Lasse Thomassen

Introduction Movement parties are not a new phenomenon. One can think of the labour movement and how it developed into conrnrnnist, socialist and social- democratic parties in the late 19th century and early 20th century. In many countries, close ties remain between unions and socialist and social-democratic parties today. One can also think of the Green parties emerging from the environmental movement in the 1970s. In this chapter, we fo cus on the movement parties that have emerged over the last decade or so. Many of these contemporary movement parties emerged in response to the financial crisis of 2007-2008 and the austerity politics that followed. They also emerged in response to the square movements in the early 2010s, such as the aganaktis111enoi in Greece, the indignados in Spain and Occupy Wall Street in the US. W e fo cus on European movement parties, such as SYRIZA in Greece, Podemos in Spain and Labour in the UK, and so we largely leave out of consideration developments in the Global South and in North America. W e also limit ourselves to movement parties on the Left . W e do so beca use we are particularly interested in how the movement parties respond to the crisis of representation expressed in the slogan of the square movements that 'they don't represent us!' While right-wing populist parties also respond to this crisis of representation, left- wing movement parties maintain an inclusive character. Given the crisis of liberal democratic representative institutions, it is important to examine how movement parties n egotiate their way between the horizontalist prac tices of the square movements and the vertical institutions of the political system. W e start, in the next section, by examining the disparate literatures on social movements and political parties, noting how the links between mo vements and parties have been largely underexplored. W e then examine the historical context for the emergence of the latest wave of movement parties in the section that follows. W e argue that the emergence and continual existence of movement parties should be viewed throu gh two tensions: between horizontality and verticality, and between civil society and state. W e also argue that the question of representation is central to understanding both the attraction and the limits of contemporary movement parties . In the last section, we draw out key similarities and differences between some of the current movement parties: SYRIZA, Podemos and Labour. The conclusion

343

Movement parties

Marina Prentoulis and Lasse Thomassen

raises questions for further research, including the relationship between movement parties and populism.

A tale of two literatures: social movements and political parties We start by exanuning the literatures on social movements and political parties respectively. As we show, these literatures are disparate (see McAdam & Tarrow, 2010 for an exception). With the exception of the literature on Left-libertarian parties, they pay little attention to the links between social movements and political parties.

The social movement literature In order to differentiate between the movements of earlier centuries and the movements that emerged after the 1960s, scholars used the term 'social movements' to distinguish them from the older 'labour movements' (Nash, 2000) . The key difference is that labour movements advanced demands about economic redistribution and the extension of citizenship rights. As such, these demands were directed towards the state. The demands of the trade union movement, for instance, were aimed either at improving the working conditions and econonuc benefits of its members or at wider economic redistribution in society, and they had a class character (Nash, 2000: 103) . Social movements, on the other hand, advance wider social causes often related to cultural identity. As such, they are not necessarily restricted to econonuc or labour demands. However, labour and social movements are not necessarily mutually exclusive. For instance, Craig Calhoun (1993) discussed the fenunist, nationalist and religious movements of the 19th century. Affirnung that, historically, labour and social movements coexisted, does not dispel the division between the two in the literature: social movements are seen in the literature as part of civil society, they open up questions of culture and identity beyond socio-econonuc rights and in tenns of organization, and they are organized in more flexible, informal and, in many cases, horizontal ways (Nash, 2000: 102). With the possible exception of agricultural movements, the relations between social movements and political parties were looser than the relations between the labour movement and the political parties that emerged in the 19th and early 20th centuries . lt is this previously loose connection between social movements and parties that is increasingly relevant today and to which some parties are trying to respond. The term 'movement parties' captures this new affinity between social movements and parties, and an attempt to create more horizontalist, participatory stmctures within electoral politics. Today, approaching the phenomenon of movement parties through a social movement theory lens is not self-evident. The social movement theories that emerged after the 1960s were responding to problems entrenched in the particular acadenuc framework of that period. The first major preoccupation of theorists in the 1960s was to rescue social movements from the lens of crowd psychology (Kurzman, 2008). The latter field, dominated by figures such as Gustave Le Bon and his successors, perceived mass mobilizations and protests as deviant instances of collective irrationality. The acadenuc debate about collective action changed significantly during the 1960s, not least because the events of May 1968 challenged trade unions and parties as the principal agents of progressive change, while putting postmaterialist values on the political agenda. With a sympathetic view towards this type of phenomena, many social theorists tried to reinterpret collective action in rational terms. The starting point was Mancur Olson's senunal 344

work The Logic ef Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Croups (1965), where he anchored rationality in the idea of collective interests that bring individuals together. Since the nud-1970s, this rationalist instrumentalist framework has donunated the field of social movements theories (Polletta & Jasper, 2001; Edelman, 2001). From Olson's (1965) accounts of political and econonuc development through Charles Tilly's (1978) emphasis on the interests of collective actors to Sidney Tarrow's (1998) work on strategic opportunities - all express the donunant paradigm associated with the exanunation of social movements. The underlying assumption of this paradigm is that the interests of collective actors are constituted prior to collective action and are inherent to the actors' structural position (Rule, 1988). This b1ings us to the second preoccupation of other social movement theorists such as Meluci (1985) and Touraine (1981): identity formation through collective action. Whether Marxists or not, social movement theorists take interests and identities as a given, and thus they are not far from a Marxist reading that sees pre-constituted class interests at the roots of any social movement. In response to this, Melucci (1985), Touraine (1981) and others started to examine collective identity not as a given, but as formed through collective action. The formation of a collective 'we' must be understood as an ongoing process of negotiations and re-negotiations, which ultimately produces the social movement as such (Nash, 2000). Similarly, Della Porta and Diani (1999: 87) write: 'Collective action cannot occur in the absence of a "we" characterized by common traits and specific solidarity'. In this case, 'traits' may be pre-shared, but this does not necessarily assume an already constituted identity (Polletta & Jasper, 2001: 291). These two contributions of social movement theories allow for a double take on movement parties. Firstly, the rationalist/instrumentalist strand allows us to contemplate specific interests, expressed, first, in activism and social movements and, later, in parties . Secondly, the identity formation strand allows us to see how identities forged through collective action may go beyond the specific demands and be articulated with wider demands abo ut cultural and political change. Contemporary movement parties do not only claim to represent particular demands, but also claim to represent citizens in a different - and, thus, better - way through more horizontalist and participatory structures. 'lhis is why their organizational structure becomes so important: their claim is that they are parties of civil society (as opposed to the state) and parties of the people (as opposed to the elites) . lt is for this reason that, in our analysis of movement parties, we consider both the specific econonuc and political demands associated with the financial crisis (from a more instrumental-rationalist perspective) and the wider demands about democracy and for socio-cultural change (see also della Porta, this volume).

From movements to parties Social movement theorists have argued at length that the main difference between movements and parties is explained in organizational tern1s. Despite the diversity of forms of orga1uzation in social movements - some with more formal structures than others, some more hierarchical than horizontalist - the social movements and the political parties literatures remain separate (Goodwin & Jasper, 2009: 189-190). This persists even though a number of studies have shown that, under the surface of what seems like 'disorderly politics', that is, social movements, a number of more hierarchical organizations are fonnally or informally part of them. One such case was the civil rights movement in Baltimore where many participants were members of organizations such as the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) or Young People's Social Alliance (YPSA) (Von Eschen et al., 1971). 345

Marina Prentoulis and Lasse Thomassen

T he relationship between movements (in their less hierarchical, autonomist form ) and m ore hierarchical organizations is often seen as problematic. For example, altho ugh it is recognized that they often grant local m ovem ents the n ecessary legi timacy, inte rnational NGOs are seen as interested mainly in their own organizational survival and can undemline the goals of the mo vem ents (Bob, 2005). At the sam e time, although N GOs are part of civil society, they often have links with the state, and so vertical bureaucratic stru ctu res may col011.ize social movements in civil society throu gh the NGOs. R obert Michels (1911) argued that the interaction between radical political organizations oppositional parties originally, but, in o ur context, it can apply to movements - and formal political institutions leads to the conservative transfonnation of the former and their failure to achi eve true social change . Michels identified l:\;vo m ain areas of the conservative transformation of radical organiza tions: they adopt llierarchical fo rms of orga11ization, and they prioritize electo ral success over social change (Michels, 1911). Where international N GO s undernline the social movem ents, formal political institutions undernline oppositional, radical parties. In this way, movem ent parties face a double challenge: they risk losing their radical character when they come into contact with formal political institutions, and their horizontalism is challenged when they become formal political organizations. The qu estion is if contemporary movement parties are able to resist tllis double challenge . Turning to the literature on political parties, w e can find some common then1es with the social movement literature. In the late 1980s and in the 1990s, the relatio nsllip between parties and civil society was seen to weaken , while alte1native orga11izations such as mo vements took pronlinence (Lawson & M erkl, 1988). According to Katz and M air (1994), the neglect of comparative research on party organizations and change reinforced the focus on party m embership and civil society, leading to the widely accepted assertion that mass parties are in decline and generalized as the decline of parties more generally. Som e have argued that the mass party had given place to the catch- all party, while others have argued that the m ass party had been replaced by the ' elector-professional party' (Katz & M air, 1994: 2). Both acco unt suggest that the erosion of the civil society-party linkage may simultaneously suggest a closer relationship bew een party and state (Katz & M air, 1994: 7-8). The result is a dem ocratic void ruled by the elites of political parties, to paraphrase Peter M air (2013 ; see also Tom1ey, 2015). This is an argu ment that is relevant in most of the cases that we will exanline later on . The success of SYRI ZA, Podemos and the Labo ur Party under C orbyn , fo r instance, follows either the decline of the social-democratic parties or their need for renewal. A different way to conceptualize the decline of mass parties of the past and their w eakening after the financial crisis is to link their denlise with what C olin C rou ch (2004) called the 'post- democratic' condition: politics as a game between elected go vernments and elites ainling to maximize business interests, resulting in a crisis of representation. T hus, left to professional politicians and ' technocrats', the link between party politics and civil society was broken , and the new movement parties aim to restore this link.

Left-libertarian movement parties An earlier attempt to bridge the divide bew een social movements and parties is seen in the Green parties in Gennany and other W est European countries from the 1970s onwards. These parties are referred to by H erbert Kitschelt (1990) and others as 'Left- libertarian parties' . Later, Kitschelt (2006) singled o ut these parties as a prime example of w hat he named movem ent parties . Four things distinguish the Left-libertarian parties as movem ent parties: they are horizontal in structu re, with rotating leaders or spokes-p ersons; the active 346

Movement parties

participation of party m embers is lligh.ly valued; they stress their autonomy from the state and from other organizations; and they articulate new post- mate1ialist issues (Kitschelt, 1990). Whereas traditional challenging parties of the Left were critical of capitalism , these new challengers on the Left are also c1itical of state bureaucracy - hence the label 'Leftlibertarian' (Kitschelt, 1990: 202). The literature on Left-libertarian parties takes m ovement parties to be rational agents seeking to maxinlize votes and/ or influence policy based on their ideology. As in Michels, parties are seen as representatives of constitu encies and as p olitical entrepreneurs competing for voters and influence , and their success depends on navigating bew een these two roles (Kitschelt, 2006) . This literature also sees m ovement parties as a hyb1id fonn of political parties that respond to their environments by beconling ever more formalized and hierarchical. As such , movement parties are seen as part of a process that leads from the less formal politics of social movements in civil society to the more formal politics of political parties within the political institutions of the state. The key qu estion then becomes how these parties' success is advanced or constrained by this process, when the movem ent party adjust to the environment of fo1mal and institutionalized politics (Kitschelt, 1990; 2006 ; Poguntke, 2005). The Left-libertarian movem ent parties emerged in response to societal changes in the 1960s and 1970s. Kitschelt (1 990) identifies three conditions for the em ergence of this type of party: fi rst, economic afflu ence facilitating the em ergence of p ost- materialist demands; second, the corporatist welfare state, wllich provided secmity but also the exp e1ience of oppression from burea ucratic measures; and, third, centralized parties, interest groups and bureaucracies . Left-libertarian movem ent parties emerged in response to the failure of existing parties, interest groups and the state to represent new interests and demands. Importantly, these interests and demands were first expressed in social movements and only subsequ ently - when other fo rms of m ediation failed - through Left-libertarian parties representing new substantial (post- materialist) demands as well as a new form of (horizontalist and participato1y ) politics . Like other parties, movem ent parties are seen in this literature as m ediators - understood as aggregators - of interests within civil society, and thus as a (new) link betwee n civil society and the state. If we compare the contemporary m ovem ent parties to the Left-libertarian parties, it is clear that the context to day is different (Kriesi, 2015). Although we still live in corporatist welfare states, and although parties, interest groups and bureaucracies are still overwhelmingly centralized, the contemporary movem ent parties em erged not dming a time of grow th and prospe1ity, but in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and austerity politics . Much of the literature on parties such as SYRIZA and Podemos also confirms this (Della Porta et al., 2017). The contempora1y movem ent parties share with the Left-lib ertarian movement parties the aspiration towards a horizontal structure, the emphasis on participation and the autonomy from the state and other organizations. They also share the post- materialist valu es of earlier movem ent parties, but this is now combined with social and econonlic demands in response to anti-austerity politics . The tension bew een movement and parties reflects theoretical debates about horizontality and verticality . On the side of ho1izontality, we have theorists such as Michael H ardt and Antonio N egri (201 7) who see in movements the institution of horizontal, leaderless neworks that are autonomous from existing institutions. On the side of verticality, we have theorists influ enced by a Gramscian notion of hegemony, implying some form of political leadership that will change the donlinant political discourse and take over existing institutions (Errej6n & Mouffe, 201 6; Mouffe, 2018). W e have argued that horizontality is never pure and ' uncontanlinated' by verticality (Prentoulis & Thomassen , 201 3). The real political challenge is to create orga11izational entities that 347

Marina Prentoulis and Lasse Thomassen

Movement parties

challenge electoral politics (verticality) while simultaneo usly tiying to enable participation via horizontal relationships. This is the challenge that movement parties represent.

contempora1y movement parties, we must exam..ine how they negotiate between horizontality and verticality, and between civil society and the state.

The contemporary historical context and key issues

Contemporary movement parties

To understand the factors that facilitated the emergence of the current movement parties, as well as the challenges they face, it is important to look at the historical context. The immediate context is the financial crisis from 2007 onwards and the squ are movem ents of 2011 and beyond, but these two phenomena must be placed in a larger historical context.

W e now turn to examine three contemporaiy parties with a claim to the movement party label: SYRIZA in Greece, Podemos in Spain and Labour in Britain. W e will draw out similarities and differences between the three cases, focusing on how they have sought to overcome the divides between horizontality and verticality and bet\-veen civil society and the state through the creation of links with social movements, i1movative organizational structures and the use of new technologies . If we look at the demands put forward by the movements directly associated with the financial crisis - the aganaktismenoi in Greece, the indignados in Spain and O ccupy London the outcomes were very different. In the case of O ccupy London, nothing much happened: the demands of the movement remained anti-system, and the y were left there. They did not become widely accepted by articulating together diverse grievances related to people's eve1yday experiences. In the case of Greece and Spain, things were different. There, SYRIZA and Podemos tried to articulate the demands of the protesters into equi valentia1 chains connecting the demands together. Moreover, while operating within the terrain of electoral politics, they presented themselves as the facilitators of a new kind of politics. The trajectories of SYRIZA and Podemos were different though. SYRIZA pre-existed the 2011 square movements as a small electoral coalition of organizations and parties on the Left , which had been actively supporting the relationship with social movements. Podemos was only formed as a party in 2014 after the indignados movement had retreated from the squares (see chapters by del Campo et al. and Calvo, this volume). What is common is that we move from one site, that of the movement in civil society, to another, that of electoral politics connected to the party system and the state institutions. The qu estion is what happens in this process to the relationship between horizontality and verticality, and between civil society and the state.

The financial crisis not only hit both the working and the middle classes. They were hit twice: first, by the crisis itself and the job losses and mortgao-e closures resultinob from it·, b and, second , by the austerity measures imposed by governments and international organizations in response to the crisis. Greece is a particularly vivid example of this, and of how national governments and supra-national bodies brou ght austerity to bear on populations ali·eady on their knees. The situation created a widespread distrust of elites: banks and other financial institutions, governments, political parties and international organizations were 110 longer seen to represent the interests of ordina1y p eople. However, these developments must be seen as part of the emergence of a neoliberal consensus among parties on the right and on the centre-left, starting in the 1970s, through the neo-conservative governments of the 1980s and the Third Way of the 1990s until today. The role of the social-democratic parties is particularly important here. Those parties are no longer perceived as challengers to the existing order, because there is little difference between them and the parties on the right when it comes to economic policy. The flipside of this post- democratic consensus around neoliberalism is a crisis of representation encompassing political parties and the political class as well as economic institutions such as the banks (Crouch, 2004; Feenstra et al., 2017; Tormey, 2015) . Th.is crisis of representation is important in order to understand the emergence of the square movements, such as the aganaktismenoi in Greece and the indignados in Spain. Apart from protesting against the austerity measures imposed by the neoliberal consensus (see also Lobera, this volume), these movements' central claim was that 'they don't represent us!', where 'they' referred to political parties and institutions, banks, and so on. For many of the protesters, this critique of current representative institutions was part of a general critiqu e of representation as necessarily involving hierarchy (between represented and representative) and silencing of those who are spoken for by others. Against representative democracy, the protesters posited a different model of democracy: one that was direct, participatory and bottom- up, as opposed to the top-down competition among elites fo r the votes of otherwise passive masses. In short, one that was more horizontal and less vertical (Feenstra et al. , 2017 ; Tormey, 2015) . The central values were horizontality, voice, inclu sion through participation, and autonomy from existing organization (the state, but also parties and unions) . What is important here is not whether the square movements realized this model of democracy (Prentoulis & Thomassen, 2013; Toplisek & Thomassen, 2017). What is important is that they planted an image of democracy in the public mind at large and among activists on the Left in particular. Any existing or new party that sought to tap the energies of the square movements had to engage with this new image of democracy as horizontalist, participato1y and autonomous (Feenstra et al. , 2017; Tormey, 2015). This image of democracy became a resource for parties such as SYRIZA and Podemos, but it also limited how they could manoeuvre in the political landscape after the square movements. In order to understand the 348

SYRIZA The 2011 aganaktismenoi ('indignant') movement brought together diverse and new subj ect positions articulated around the trope of indignation. The protests came to an end later that summer after clashes with the police which succeeded in evacuating Syntagma (and other squares) by August 2011. While they las ted, there was a visible division between the 'upper' and 'lower' parts of Syntagma Square in front of the Greek Parliament in Athens. This division signalled the different political trajectories of indignation: the lower square was the location of daily assemblies, the space where inclusivity and horizontality were instituted and proposals for a direct democracy discussed. The upper part of the square was associated with gatherings expressing outrage towards the political system , but without articulating alternative democratic demands. This part also included nationalists, right-wingers and fascist elements. The aganaktis,nenoi brou ght to the forefront old and unresolved debates regarding the relationship between movements and parties. However, the grassroots activity outside political parties did not come to an end with the aganaktismenoi movement. T he severe austerity politics led to the creation of a network of solidarity groups operating at local level (from neighbourhood level to city or regional level) across Greece. Some were new gro ups, some pre-existing alternative social centres; some organizationally informal, some with a more 349

Movement parties

Marina Prentoulis and Lasse Thomassen

formal structure and membership; and they were dealing mainly, but not exclusively, with food (soup kitchens, food banks) and health care (social clinics, pharmacies). Most of SYRIZA's activists were part of both the aganaktismenoi protest movement and involved in the creation of the solidarity networks but outside their affiliation with SYRIZA or one of its member organizations. During the aganaktismenoi protests, specific party affiliations were met with rnistmst and largely excluded from the protests . In this respect, SYRIZA was part of the creation of a broad horizontalist movement, which moved from indignation to solidarity. During that time, and especially after the end of the aganaktismenoi movement, the leading counter-hegemonic force of the country was SYRIZA. SYRIZA took on the role of the political agent that could transpose the demands of the Greek aganaktismenoi movement to the level of electoral politics (Douzinas, 2017; Prentoulis & Thomassen, 2014). As such, SYRIZA positioned itself in an antagonistic relationship vis-a-vis the political elites of the country and the Troika (the EU, the ECB and the IMF). In the first national election following the summer of protests, SYRIZA increased its share of the votes from 4.6% in 2009 to 16.7% in May 2012. This election did not produce a viable government, and a second national election followed in June 2012 . In this second election, SYRIZA came second with 26.9%, becoming the formal opposition to the coalition government formed by the conservative Nea Democratia, the centre-left Democratiki Aristera and the social-democratic PASO K. Looking back, SYRIZA's ability to articulate the demands of the aganaktismenoi movement in the electoral arena is not surprising. SYRIZA was set up as a coalition of the leftist party SYNASPISMOS (SYN - Coalition of Left, of Movements and Ecology) and twelve other organizations in 2004. SYRIZA was shaped by four different tendencies, one of which was the alter-globalization movements of the 2000s (Milios, 2016). The largest party in the SYRIZA coalition, SYNASPISMOS, was already strongly oriented towards creating links with social movements. For SYNASPISMOS , the role of the Left was 'not to guide but to participate in movements and try to influence them, while learning from them' (Tsakatika & Eleftheriou, 2013: 93). When SYRIZA attempted to establish the Network of Trade Unionists, in order to increase its influence within the Trade Unions, it failed, but the relationship with the movements - national and transnational - was explicit (Tsakatika & Eleftheriou, 2013). In this spirit of coordination between the movements and social demands, SYRIZA funded the creation of the umbrella organization Solidarity4All in 2012. The aim of the organization has since then been to link the different autonomous solidarity groups operating in Greece in a network enabling the exchange of knowledge, information and simultaneously increasing their online and offiine visibility. The transformative process from a small leftist party to a broader organization able to incorporate diverse social groups and demands was symbolically acknowledged with the addition of the acronym EKM (United Social Front) to the party's name in 2012 . The displacement of the people's demands from the movement of aganaktismenoi to SYRIZA had been decisive for the identity of the party and for its electoral success. Nevertheless, as a party, SYRIZA was progressively losing its ability to sustain grassroots activism, especially after it came to power in 2015. It is not only the relationship between the party and the movements of civil society that has been marked by tensions. Internally, the tension has been between a unified party represented by the party leadership and the party as a coalition of parties and organizations, where many of the grassroots did not identify with SYRIZA as an electoral machine . This became apparent at the first founding conference of SYRIZA in July 2013, which established SYRIZA as a unified party. The conference was marked by intense reactions to the proposal 350

that the different organizations, which had so far made up the SYRIZA coalition, should dissolve themselves. A compromise was agreed giving 'reasonable' time for the organizations to dissolve or to cease their public presence . Instead, party members were encouraged to join the internal party 'tendencies', promoting collective positions within the party and publicly as long as they specified that they did not express the official position of the party. For some, the new structure of SYRIZA was a necessa1y step dictated by the Greek electoral law that offers a bonus of 50 seats to the party that comes first in the national elections. For others, it assisted in the development of a more leader-centred orientation (verticality) within the party. For a while, however, SYRIZA was seen as a movement party that took on the energy of the aganaktismenoi movement and transforn1ed it into an electoral victo1y. Nevertheless, although SYRIZA was the beneficiary of the crisis of representation expressed in the aganaktismenoi movement, it did not manage to institute more horizontalist forms of representation, neither within the party nor at the level of local or national government.

Podemos Since its inception in 2014 , Podemos has been marked by a tension between horizontality and verticality and between civil society and the state, and it has gradually become more vertical and more oriented towards the formal politics of the state (see Calvo's chapter in this volume; Della Porta et al., 2017; Kioupkiolis, 2016 for overviews) . Podemos only emerged in 2014 when the indignados movement had long since withdrawn from the squares. However, it is difficult to explain the emergence and success of Podemos without the financial crisis of 2007-2008 and the 2011 indignados movement. Like the previous case of the aganaktismenoi movement in Greece, the financial crisis dislocated social and political identities, and representative institutions - from political parties to banks - were surrounded by a crisis of legitimacy. This created a space for the emergence of an anti-austerity party and for something new. The indignados movement picked up the anger towards the representative institutions and articulated an alternative image of democracy, one that was horizontalist and participatory. The only anti-austerity party on the Left was lzquierda Unida (IU) , but they were seen by the indignados as part of the establishment. Anti-austerity and anti-establishment became associated, and the available political space for the emergence of a political movement was defined by the image of 'real democracy' as horizontalist and participatory. This is the political situation in which Podemos emerged in early 2014 prior to the elections to the European Parliament. From its inception, Podemos was based on circles (circulos), most of which were local circles, and some of which were thematic. The circles mirrored the assemblies of the indignados movement: popular sovereignty rests with citizens who self-organize and deliberate, and the views and decisions of the circles are then filtered upwards. Over time, the circles have gradually lost their influence within the party, and the party has become less horizontal and more vertical in its orgartizational structure. Apart from the circles, the other major innovation introduced by Podemos into Spanish politics was the use of social media and digital technologies. This includes the use of Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp, but also the use of platforms and digital technologies such as Plaza Podemos and Agora Voting to facilitate deliberation and decision-making. Podemos continues to rely heavily on social media and digital technologies, but the emphasis has gradually moved away from active participation in deliberation and decision-making. The emphasis today is more on using social media and digital technologies as a way for the leadership to communicate to members and non-members, and members are 351

Marina Prentoulis and Lasse Thomasse n

primarily activa ted around the selection of lists of candidates fo r elections (see C alvo in this volume; Kioupkiolis, 201 6 for a more optimistic view). The founders of Podemos were all acti ve in social movements, and they retained close ties to movements such as the Platform for People Affected by Mortgages (P AH - Plataforma de Afectados por la H ipoteca) and the different 'tides' (mareas) against public sector cuts. As the party has become part of the political system , it has become more difficult to retain these ties, althou gh they do persist at both national and local level. Podemos's open membership it is free and relatively easy to join - facilitates relationships with civil society because Podemos becomes one more organization you join rather than an organization meant to capture your entire political identity. In this way, individual members can move between Podemos (as a political party) and movements in civil society, thus creating networks across the movement/ party and the civil society/ state divides. This is further facilitated by the use of social media and virtual platforms. The res ult is the blurring of the divides betvveen active and passive members and between members and voters, even as the divide between members and the leadership has grown du1ing the same period. For Podemos as a party, the connections with civil society facilitate the party's ability to connect to, and become the voice for, movements in civil society who are not otherwise represented within the political system. The downside is that the party does not have a pool of members who can be easily activated as resources in ca mpaigns because the members are less inclined to identify (solely) with Podemos. When Podemos first emerged, they stressed horizontality over verticality, and civil society activism over the fon11al politics of the state. Since then, Podemos has gradually become more vertical and more centralized, and has adapted to the institutional logics of the political system, especially when it comes to elections. This is propounded by the party's use of media, both social media and mainstream media, and by the mediatization of its leader, Pablo Iglesias. Today, Podemos relies more on a direct appeal to the electoral masses than the active participation of citizens in the fon11ulation of policy. A final point concerns the populist character of Podemos (Errej6n & Mouffe, 2016; Iglesias, 2015). As noted above, much of Podemos's public presence turns around the mediatized personality of its leader, Iglesias . What is more, from its inception, Podemos has pursued a discourse of the people vs the establishment (la casta), a discourse supposed to transverse the traditional Left/ Right continuum. Podemos has taken inspiration from the left populist Pink Tide in Latin America and from Ernesto Laclau's and Chantal Mouffe's theories of hegemony and populism (see chapter by de Campo et al. in this volume). The qu estion is if the populist character of the party is at odds with the intention to transform Spanish democracy in a more horizontalist and participatory direction. In Podemos's own terms, the party has pursued a dual hegemonic strategy: as an electoral machine in order to gain power within the institutions in the short run, and as a force to facilitate a new cultural and social hegemony in the long run and together with the movements of civil society. Whereas the first strategy is focused on the state and takes a more vertical form, the second strategy is fo cused on civil society and is more horizontal. C ritics have noted how the first strategy tends to take precedence over the second, and that one cannot create a new society from above (by taking state power) , only from below, from civil society (Feenstra et al. , 201 7) .

Labour In the UK, we find a different political traj ecto1y from the squares to electoral and party politics. In 2011 , two protest movements reacted to the disenfranchisement of communities 352

Movement parties

and questioned the legitimacy of the political system: the London riots in August 2011 and Occupy London from September onwards. N either of them managed to b1ing together different demands or to extend discontent beyond parti cular sectors of the population. In the case of the London 1iots, the looting and violence and the absence of clear demands obscured the root causes of the events and the anger accumulated in co111.munities that had been victimized, marginalized and excluded from the benefits of globalization for decades. The O ccupy London movement failed to generate a widespread response that would transfonn electoral politics . One possible cont1ibuting fa ctor is that the financial c1isis had not produ ced the same dislocato1y effect on the B1itish working and middle classes, and, as such , they still identified with the institutions - including the political parties - of the existing economic and political system. Instead, the 'movement' that promised to challenge electoral politics in Britain was C orbynism via Momentum: the organization built out of the Jeremy Corbyn campaign for the leadership of the Labour Party in 2015 (Wainwright, 201 8). The organization defines itself as 'a people-powered, vibrant movem ent. W e aim to transform the Labour Party, our commu nities and Britain in the interests of the many, not the few ' (People's Momentum, 2019). The creation of Momentum is the outcome of organizational changes by the previous Labour leader Ed Miliband, but Momentum has made itself an agent of further organizational changes within the party. Its ability to capitalize on Jeremy Corbyn's popularity with, on the one hand , a younger base and , on the other hand , the disenfranchised older supporters who welcomed the left turn that C orbyn represented made it a formidable force within Labour and an agent of the promise of the institution of ho1izontality and close links with civil society. By instituting a system of one-m ember-one-vote, Miliband shifted power from the Parliamentary Labour Party and from the unions towards ordinary members (Garland, 201 7). The additional inclusion of 'supporters' in the 2015 leadership contest only reinforced this. Limiting the power of the Parliamenta1y Labour Party had the effect of making the party more ho1izontal in its stru cture; limiting the role of the unions had the effect of opening the party up to younger generations who are less unionized . Being able to register as a 'supporter' for a small fee, gave supporters the right to participate in the leadership election, thereby bringing in a whole new constituency. The shift in the organizational structures thus goes hand in hand with changes to the party's base of members, supporters and voters. After C orbyn became leader of the Labour Party in 2015 , Momentum became the agent of further calls shifting the party towards a potentially more horizontalist representation of the members. One of these was the call for an easier deselect.ion process of sitting MPs and a more open and inclusive selection process. According to Momentum , opening up the selection process from the start will bring MPs closer to their members and their communities (Kentish, 201 8). From its inception, Momentum was not as inclusive as a social movement (although at the beginning it was more open in tenm of the membership and future direction). Like other organizations inside Labour, it has a particularly sectarian identity: rather than simply being an agent of change, it aims to engage supporters who are sympathetic to C orbyn's message . This is reflected in the current organizational structures of Momentum. Since the new constitution in 201 7, Momentum requires all new m embers to be Labour Party members. Furthem1ore, the organization was split from the start between those who prefer the traditional branch- based stru cture (seen as more susceptive to entry.ism by non-Labour groups) and those who prefer a more 'virtual' structure, more attrac tive to younger activists but also 353

Movement parties

Marina Prentoulis and Lasse Thomassen

easier to be controlled by the found er, J on Lansman (Pettitt, 2017) . In its current form, the key decisions are taken by the N ational Coordinating Group (N CG), made up by members of the three geographical divisions, Labour public officers, m embers nominated by the affiliated trade unions and members of other affili ated organizations. The organization has a digital platform 'My Momentum', and voting takes place on.line. The tensions between horizontality and verticality are also evident in a number of power struggles between m embership and the Labo ur leadership. One such case happen ed during the 201 7 Labour Conference when a M om entum email to its supporters urged delegates to prioritize the disc ussion on issues such as housing and the NHS at the party conference rather than Brexit. As a result, Brexit was not among the eight priority issues voted in the conference, saving C orbyn from confronting this divisive issue. It does however testify to a vertical stru cture where the Momentum m embership is supposed to follo w the line decided by its leadership, a leadership whose primary aim is to support the Labour Party leadership of Corbyn. As W atts and Bale (201 9) argue, the attempt to create a more horizontalist structure with.in Labour is related to changes within the party (intra-party) , rather than to the links between , on one side, the party and, on the other side, movem ents and the rest of society (inter-party). Together with the inability of the Labour Party, and the C orbyn leadership in particular, to deal with the rupture created by the 2016 Brexit referendum, this confined Momentum to the role of a particular type of hybrid party 'pressure group' supporting Corbyn's leadership. Apart from the confinem ent to intra-party politics and the tension between horizontality and verticality, both Momentum and the Labour Party are worth attention in their own right. Both are distinct attempts to intervene in electoral politics and create a movement party that engages in novel ways with its m embers.

Conclusion SYRIZA, Podemos and Labour/Momentum have attempted to straddle the divides between hori zontality and verticality and between civil society and the state. Their attempts have been m arked by tensions, and they have taken different forms depending on the historical context, the opportunities available to them and the decisions taken by key actors. SYRIZA, Podemos and Labour/ Momentum are the most well- known cases of contemporaiy Left movement parties in Europe, but there are others. In Slovenia, Levica (The Left) started out as a coalition of parties and groups just like SYRIZA in Greece and Izquierda Unida in Spain. In the case of Levica, the party retains strong links with civil society (Toplisek & Thomassen , 2017). Like SYRIZA and Podemos, Levica links a populist claim to speak in the nam e of ordina1y people to a relatively horizontalist party structu re and to its close links to civil society (Toplisek, 2019) . In D enmark, A lternativet (The Alternative) define themselves in an antagonistic opposition vis-a-vis the established parties . The Alternative can then prese nt themselves as a response to a crisis of representation and the concerns of ordina1y people. They can do this because, they claim, they have a different structure. At the sam e time, the party evolves around its charismatic found er and leader, Uffe Elbx k. There is a paradox here - also found in other cases - whereby in a relatively h orizontalist party so mu ch media attention and organizational power is centred on a single person (Garcia Agustin, 201 9). This is even more so in the case of Emmanuel Macron's La R epublique en lvlarche! and Jean-Lu c M elenchon's La France Insoumise. In these two cases, the movem ent parties - insofar as we can call them that - appear to be little more than organiza tions establish ed with the 354

single purpose of getting their leaders elected to public offi ce (M arliere, 201 9) . It remains to be seen what will becom e of the Yellow Vest (Cilets jaunes) activists attempting to create an electoral platform (Rallie111ent d'lnitiative Cito yenne) . From the beginning, this initiati ve has been m et with hostili ty from many Yellow Vest protesters. It may be that, in the case of France, the crisis of representation is so entrenched that any attempt to establish a m ovement party bridging horizontality and verticality, and civil society and the state, is bound to fail. Looking towards the future, w e believe that research on contempora1y movem ent parties must address two qu estions in particular. First, we need to exam.ine the key variables in the failure or success of these parties . These variables may include wider societal events such as the square movem ents of 2011 , entrance into government power, and the use of populist discourse . Second, given that many of the contemporaiy movem ent parties are also populist, it is worth exam.ining the connection between the m ovem ent party f01m and populist discourse . Populism is often associated with vertical and state-centred politics, and the question is if populism can be combined with more horizontalist forms of organization (see also Woodford, this volume).

References Bob, C. (2005) . Th e 111arketing of rebellion: lns111ge11ts, 111edia1 and i11ternatio11al activis111. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Calhoun, C. (1993) . 'New social movements' of the early ninetee nth ce ntu ry. Social Science History, 17(3) : 385-427 . C rou ch, C. (2004). Post-de111ocracy. C ambridge: Polity. D ella Porta, D. & Diani , M. (1999) . Social 111ove111ents: A ll illtrod11ctio11 . O xford: Blackwell. Della Porta, D. , Fernandez, J.. Kouki, H. , & M osca, L. (2017). Move111ent parties against a11sterity. C ambridge: Polity. D ouzinas, C. (2017). Syriz a in power. Cambridge: Poli ty. Edelman, M. (2001) Social movem ents: C hanging paradigms and forms of politics, A nn11al R eview of A 11thropology, 30: 285-3 17. Errej 6n, i. & C. M ouffe (201 6). Pode111os: Ju the na111e of the people. Lo ndon: Lawrence & Wi shart. Feenstra, R. A., T ormey, S., Casero-Ripolles, A., Keane, J. (2017) . Refig11ring de111ocracy: Th e Spanish political laboratory. London: Routledge. Garcia Agustin, 6. (201 9). Emo ti ons and the left in D enm ark: T owards left-wing and mainstream populism. In P. C ossarini & F. Vallespin (eds .) Pop11lis111 a11d passio11s: De111ocratic legiti111ac )' aft.er austerity. N ew York: R outledge, C hapter 7. Ga rland, J. (2017). Labour's new mo del party. In M. Perryman (ed.) Th e Co rby11 effect. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 68-80. Goodwin, J. & Jasper, J. M . (eds.) (2009) . The social 111ove111e11ts reader: Cases and concepts. N ew Yo rk: Wiley-Blackwell. t-brdt, M. & N egri , A. (201 7). Asse111bly. Oxford: O xford University Press. Iglesias, P. (201 5). Understanding Podemos. Ne w Left R eview, 93 : 7- 22 . Katz, R. S. & M air, P. (eds.) (1994). How parties 01ganise: Change and adaption ill party organisations in vllestem de111ocracies. London: Sage. Kentish, B. (201 8) . J eremy Corbyn backs Momentum calls fo r 'c hanges' that co uld make it easier to deselec t labour MPs. The lndepwdent. 3 September. R etrieved fro m: wv,rw.independent.co .uk/ news/ uk/ politics/j eremy-corbyn-labour-mp-deselec tion (accessed 31 Janu ary 201 9) . Kioupkiolis, A. (2016) . Podemos: T he ambiguous promises ofleft-wing populism in contemporary Spain. j o11rnal of Political Ideologies, 21(2) : 99-1 20. Kitschelt, H . (1990) . N ew social movements and 'new politics' parties in W estern Europe. In R . J. Dalton & M . Kuechler (eds.) Challengillg the political order: Ne w social and political 111ove111enfs i11 Western. de111ocracies. Cambrid ge: Polity, pp. 179-208. Kitsc helt, H. (2006). Movement parties. In R . S. Katz & W. J. C rotty (eds.) Handbook ef party politics. N ew York: Sage, pp. 278-290.

355

Marina Prentoulis and Lasse Thomassen

Kriesi, H. (2015). Party systems, electoral systems, and social movements. In D. della Porta & M. Diani (eds.) The Oxford handbook of social movements. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 667-680. Kurzman, C. (2008). Meaning making in social movements. Anthropology Quarterly, 81 (1): 5-15. Lawson, K. & Merkl, P. (1988). l1111en parties fail: Eme1gi11g alternative organizations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Mair, P. (2013). Ruling the void: The hollowing-011t of Westem democracy. London: Verso. Marliere, P. (2019) . Jean-Luc Melenchon and France lnsoumise: The manufacturing of populism. In G. Katsambekis & A. Kioupkiolis (eds.) The populist radical lefi in Europe. London: Routledge, Chapter 4. McAdam, D. & Tarrow, S. (2010). Ballots and barricades: On the reciprocal relationship between elections and social movements. Perspectives on Politics, 8(2): 529- 542. Melucci, A. (1985). The symbolic challenges of contemporary movements, Social R esearch, 52: 789-816. Michels, R. (1911). Political parties: A sociological study of the oligarchical tendencies of modern de111ocracy. New York: Free Press. Milios, J. (2016). Does social democracy hold up half the sky? The decline of PASOK and the rise of SYRIZA in Greece. In I. Schmidt (ed.) Th e three worlds of social democracy: A global view. London: Pluto Press, 127-145. Mouffe, C. (2018). For a lefi populism. London: Verso. Nash, K. (2000). Contemporary political sociology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Olson, M. (1965) The logic of collective action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. People's Momentum. (2019). About us. Retrieved from: https:/ /peoplesmomentum.com/about (accessed 31 January 2019). Pettitt, R. (2017). Losing momentum? The power struggles that are hobbling the Corbyn movement. Democratic Audit UK, 7 March. Poguntke, Thomas. (2005). Political parties and other organizations, in Richard S. Katz and William Crotty (eds.) Handbook of Party Politics. London: Sage, 396-405. Polletta, F. & Jasper, J. M. (2001) . Collective identity and social movements. Annual Review of Sociology, 27: 283-305. Prentoulis, M. & Thomassen, L. (2013). Political theory in the square: Protest, representation and subj ectification. Contemporary Political Th eory, 12(3): 166-184. Prentoulis, M. & Thomassen, L. (2014). Autonomy and hegemony in the squares: The 20:ll protests in Greece and Spain. In A. Kioupkiolis & G. Katasambekis (eds.) Radical democracy and collective movements today. Farnham: Ashgate, 213-234. Rule, J. B. (1988). Theories of civil violence. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Tarrow, S. (1998). Power in movement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tilly, C. (1978) . Fro111 mobiliz ation to revolution.. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Toplisek, A. (2019). Between populism and socialism: Slovenia's left party. In G. Katsambekis & A. Kioupkiolis (eds.) The populist radical lefi in Europe. London: Routledge, Chapter 3. Toplisek, A. & Thomassen, L. (2017). From protest to party: Horizontality and verticality on the Slovenian left. Europe-Asia Studies, 69(9): 1383-1400. Torn1ey, S. (2015). The end of representative politics. Cambridge: Polity. Touraine, A. (1981) The voice and the eye: An analysis of social movements. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. Tsakatika, M. & Eleftheriou, C. (2013) . The radical left's turn towards civil society in Greece: One strategy, two paths. South European Society and Politics, 18(1): 81-99. Von Eschen, D. , Kirk, J. & Pinard, M. (1971). The organizational sub-structure of disorderly politics. Social Forces, 490une): 529-543 . Wainwright, H. (2018). A new politics for the lefi. Cambridge: Polity Press. Watts, J. & Bale, T. (2019). Populism as an intra-party phenomenon: The British Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn. The Britishjo11rnal of Politics and International Relations, 21(1): 99-115.

356

25 The Five Star Movement's progressive detachment from social movements Lorenzo Mosca

Introduction Beppe Grillo is a famous Italian comedian who became widely recognized and popular with his television shows at the end of the seventies. Banned from public television during the 1980s because of satire against the governing Socialist Party, he decided to move his shows to squares and theatres (Bordignon & Ceccarini, 2013a). His pe1formances have always been a mL'C of political satire, social and environmental campaigns, consumer defence, and other topics. Before establishing his own party, Grillo had supported countless events, initiatives, and grassroots campaigns, as well as groups, associations, and social movements (Mosca, 2013). A meeting with an expert of digital communication, Gianroberto Casaleggio, was essential to recognize the importance of the internet and start a blog in 2005 that promptly became very successful. After a series of trials and errors, in 2009 they decided to create a political party. The 2013 elections saw the breakthrough of the Five Star Movement (FSM) onto the national scene as the party collected 25.5% of the votes in the low chamber. This represents by far the most successful electoral debut of any party in any European election since 1945 (Tronconi, 2015), determining an historical change in the structure of party competition from a bi-polar to tri-polar dynamic (Chiaramonte & Emanuele, 2013). The astonishing success of the FSM was related to a particularly favourable context characterized by the formation of a bipartisan government, the economic c1isis, and widespread corruption scandals involving all parties (Tronconi, 2015). The 2018 elections represented a further consolidation of the FSM parliamentary presence, gaining 32.7% of the votes and entering a coalition government with the right-wing nationalist Lega. The FSM is loosely organized, building its very identity on a distinct organizational model ve1y far from traditional political parties in terms of structure, membership, funding, and participatory instruments (Mosca et al., 2015a) . The party label is even rejected in the ve1y name of this political force, which self-presents as 'a Movement'. Because of their hyb1id nature, collective actors with one foot in the party system and the other one in the social movement arena have been defined by the literature as 'movement parties'. According to the classic definition of Kitschelt these parties can be defined as

357