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Love, convenience, or respectability? Understanding the alliances of the Five Star Movement in the European Parliament

Part of: IPSR-RISP 5-Star Collection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 April 2018

Edoardo Bressanelli  and
Margherita de Candia
Edoardo Bressanelli*
Affiliation:
Department of European and International Studies, King’s College London, 22 Kingsway, London, UK
Margherita de Candia
Affiliation:
Department of European and International Studies, King’s College London, 22 Kingsway, London, UK
*
*E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

The Five Star Movement (M5S) formed the Eurosceptic Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy Group when it first elected its members in the European Parliament (EP) in 2014. Two and a half years later, the M5S sought, without success, to leave the Eurosceptics and join the Liberal group. This attempted a change of transnational affiliation is puzzling: why has the M5S tried to leave the Eurosceptic group to ally with the most Europhile group in the EP? How could this U-turn be explained? Relying on several different data – the EUANDI party data set, official EP data, and original interviews with members of the EP – this article provides a systematic answer to these questions. We test three general hypotheses on group membership in the EP, using the M5S as a case study. We show that neither policy congruence nor the pursuit of office fully explains the M5S’s observed or attempted alliances. We suggest, instead, that ‘domestic politics’ is the key driver of the M5S’s behaviour in the EP. Political group membership is functional to the Movement’s strategic objectives at home. This article shows that national-level explanations of transnational affiliation need to be given more consideration, and highlights the ‘second-order’ importance of the EU arena with respect to ‘first-order’ national strategic objectives.

Keywords

European UnionItalymulti-level governancepolitical parties
Type
Research Article
Information
Italian Political Science Review / Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , March 2019 , pp. 25 - 48
Copyright
© Società Italiana di Scienza Politica 2018 

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