New anti-system parties and political competition: the case of Italy

The surprising results of the 2013 Italian general elections have led several political scientists to study the Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement, which has been identified as the beneficiary of protest voting thanks to its anti-establishment rhetoric. Although we recognize that the M5S can certainly be considered as a new political actor because of its particular organizational structure as well as its innovative framing of some post-materialist issues, at the same time we argue that Grillo’s party can be considered as a ‘new anti-system party ’ along with the Radical Party, the Communist Refoundation and the Northern League. Despite new anti-system parties display a clear difference from their anti-democratic variants - that is the absence of a structured and pervasive ideological profile - nevertheless both the types produce similar effects on the dynamics of political competition. For these reason, we argue that the concept of anti-system party proposed by Sartori can be meaningfully applied even to a parties that do not profess anti-democratic Weltanschauungen