Law making and online deliberation in the Five Star Movement

In the context of an increasing digitalization of political participation, the Five Star Movement has implemented one of the most advanced experiments of platform politics. The online platform Rousseau has indeed been a trademark of this party since its early years, not only for internal deliberations on candidate selection, policy directions, statute amendments, but also for the involvement of ordinary members in the law-making activity of its elected representatives. The use of this tool for law-making is the least studied, and is at the centre of this work. Not only is the FSM an interesting case per se, given the relevance of the party in the Italian political scenario, but it can offer an insight on the potential and limits of online platforms in the work of legislators and in the relations between the party in public office and the party on the ground. In this paper we rely on an original dataset built on a screening of the activity on the Rousseau platform in the section dedicated to legislative activity of MPs (“lex-eletti”) and match this with the official repository of bills presented in the two chambers of the Italian parliament in the last two legislative terms. Through an analysis of these data, we aim to describe how Rousseau has actually been used by MPs, with what consequences on legislative work and on the opportunities for an increased participation of party members. Our results show that the use of Rousseau for the purpose of aid to law making has been disappointing, both as an instrument for enhancing political activism by ordinary party members and as an instrument to improve the quality of legislative work of MPs. Being the Five Star Movement a pioneering example for the use of a digital platform in the field of law making, we believe these results offer useful insights for the future evolution of digital tools for participatory democracy, beyond this specific case.