Berlusconi and Grillo. Photo by Mike Nicht via flickr.

Among the events scheduled for Italian President Giorgio Napolitano’s visit in Germany last week was a dinner with German Social Democrat Peer Steinbruek. The meeting, however, never took place. President Napolitano snubbed Steinbruek upon hearing that the Chancellor candidate had ridiculed the results of Italy’s February 24-25 elections, claiming to be “horrified that two clowns had won”. That the image of former PM Silvio Berlusconi does not enjoy great credibility outside – and arguably within – Italy’s borders is nothing new. But the rise of former comedian Beppe Grillo, leader of the anti-establishment 5 Star Movement (M5S), must seem like an act of pure masochism. Italy is on the brink of economic collapse. Italy needs reforms. And yet Italians have sided for a former stand-up comic and for a man who’s spent the past twenty years bringing clowning to the world stage. What went wrong?

A very short introduction to a “political disaster”

Rome, February 25. Minutes after the closure of poll stations, the first exit polls indicated Pierluigi Bersani’s centre-left coalition ahead of Berlusconi’s centre-right bloc by 5-6 points in both the Senate and Chamber of Deputies. At last, it seemed that a twenty-year old lethargy had ended, Italy had awakened and marked a break with its past. In the space of a few minutes, Milan’s stock exchange sky-rocketed, journalists flocked towards Bersani’s headquarters while his advisors kept predicating caution. Italy has had a long tradition of unreliable exit polls. And this was no exception.

As the night progressed and official results were gradually released, Italy’s two-day election turned into what the Economist ominously termed a “political disaster”. Bersani’s bloc won the majority in the Chamber of Deputies, while Berlusconi remained ahead in the Senate and PM Monti’s centrist coalition sunk below 10%. Against all expectations, Grillo’s movement emerged as the single most voted party, securing a 25.5% in the Chamber of Deputies and 23.7% in the Senate. A political stalemate of epic proportions loomed large. Italians woke up with a democratic hangover which left them with an ungovernable country and an army of Grillo’s devotees promising to wage war against a rotten political elite.

How could a former comedian manage to turn an anti-establishment movement into the political force that will now be shaping Italy’s future?

Parties, surrender: anti-politics takes over?

According to its own statute, the M5S is not a party. Born out of Grillo’s own blog (beppegrillo.it), it is a platform aiming to tighten the link between people and democracy without the mediation of any other political body. Grillo himself is not its leader, but acts, in his devotees’ own words, as the spokesperson through which everybody’s opinion can be voiced. Traditional politics is Grillo’s anathema. The 163 newly elected M5S parliamentarians have already gone through a round of web-based primaries, where candidates were chosen on the basis of self-made video clips. Turning politics into a pseudo-reality show, the M5S managed to speak to the heart of an electorate which had grown tired of a political system altogether deaf to the needs and aspirations of its people.

Surfing on a wave of protest and growing disenchantment towards politics at large, Grillo managed to catalyse people’s anger and gathered thousands of like-minded followers to shout at the failures of Italy’s political caste. Unlike Bersani, he had the physique du role to embody the rupture he promised with the country’s past. He chose a vocabulary that could be easily picked up and re-interpreted by its devotees. The mantra “Parties: surrender, your time is over” resonated widely in a country where both left and right were held responsible for sustaining PM Monti’s austerity measures.

True change, in the eyes of Italians, at once became a matter of detaching oneself from Berlusconi’s traumatic legacy and choosing something that stood beyond traditional politics altogether. The solution could not come from 61-year-old Bersani’s phlegmatic promises to clean up two decades of right wing embarrassments. Grillo’s triumph was, in some fundamental sense, the left’s own failure. By turning Berlusconi into a mythological figure and framing the entire electoral campaign into a battle against his ghost, Bersani addressed an electorate with whom he was already accustomed, but did nothing to convince right wing voters now looking for a political alternative. It was the M5S these voters turned to.

5 stars, 163 novices and many doubts

Promising a more direct form of democracy to a country in which politics is all too often synonymous with scandals, nepotism and corruption is alluring. But if the idea behind the M5S is fascinating, the way it combines with Grillo’s own political persona is problematic. The M5S vows to be a horizontal organisation, wherein decisions are taken upon discussions involving all its members, with Grillo acting as the movement’s megaphone. Whether or not this will hold in the weeks to come is a matter of serious concern.

Whatever the shape the next government will take, it will require Grillo’s support to enjoy stability. And Grillo has no intention of seeing his devotees being co-opted in a political cattle market. Over the next few days, 163 novices will enter Parliament as members of a movement that knows very well what it wants to fight against, but not so much what it stands for. Grillo pursued an electoral campaign built on negative terms – a reaction against a system which had seemingly lost its legitimacy. And now, thrown into a system which has been obsessively stigmatized, M5S members might be cowed into obedience by Grillo’s diktat not to side with either left or right, irrespective of Italy’s need for stability and the members’ own views.

The risk, in other words, is to see the illusion of a truly democratic and pluralist movement suffocated by the power of Grillo’s decision making. It is to see the M5S turning into the embodiment of a cult of personality – Grillo’s – which may not differ much from the mass idolatry which allowed the 76-year-old Berlusconi to retain a key role in the country’s political scene.

A serious vote

Whether or not Italy has just added another clown to its political circus, this was an election from which Europe should learn a great deal. For it represents the democratic expression of a country which has chosen to reject the austerity-driven agenda of PM Monti and followed more populist narratives instead. It confirms, at once, the frailty of a centre-left constantly living under Berlusconi’s shadow, and the former PM’s undying appeal, this time boosted by his bitter criticism of Germany’s influence over Italy’s domestic politics.

And crucially, it marks the birth of a movement which promises to change politics as we know it. Whether or not the M5S will abide by its mantra, the movement now has to face the responsibility of being the political anomaly which will shape the future of a country riddled with economic and social ills.

To paraphrase Steinbruek, Grillo and Berlusconi may be two faces of the same coin. But they also, and more fundamentally, emerge as the symptoms of a larger political malaise. Dismissing Italy’s choices as a bad joke might fail to capture the seriousness of this moment.