Book review: Beppe Grillo's Five Star Movement. Organisation, Communication and Ideology

Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement. Organisation, Communication and Ideology Filippo Tronconi, (ed), Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement. Organisation, Communication and Ideology, Abingdon: Routledge, 2015; xiii + 237 pp.: ISBN 9781472436634, £67.99 (hbk), 9781315569062, £24.49 (eBook) The emergence of the Five Star Movement (MoVimento 5 Stelle: M5S) at the 2013 Italian general elections still represents the most surprising electoral success in post-1945 Europe. Officially founded in 2009, it first gained support at the local and regional levels in May 2012, and just a few months later became the leading political party in Sicily (pp. 1–3). In the same year, polls signalled its increasing success as the second most popular party nationally. A few months later, in February 2013, the M5S surprised political commentators and gained 25.6% of the votes, emerging as the most popular political party in the general elections, and again increasing its success in 2018, with 32.7%.