Direct Parliamentarianism: An Analysis of the Political Values Embedded in Rousseau, the "Operating System" of the Five STAR Movement

Abstract

This article focuses on the technological affordances and use of Rousseau, the decision-making platform of the second largest Italian political party, the Five Star Movement. Crossing an empirical observation of the platform's functionalities with data regarding its use and qualitative data collected during the 2016 National Meeting of the Five Star Movement, I argue that Rousseau supports an emerging "direct parliamentarianism," which allows party members to entertain a direct relationship with their elected representatives, at the expense, however, of deliberative processes that may allow them to influence the party's political line.