Book Review: Filippo Tronconi (ed.), Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement: Organisation, Communication and Ideology
| Published date | 01 November 2017 |
| Date | 01 November 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929917718672 |
| Author | Marcela Monica Stoica |
| Subject Matter | Book ReviewsEurope |
Book Reviews 669
Britain and the European Union by Alistair
Jones. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
2016. 258pp., £19.99 (p/b), ISBN 9780748683680
Britain’s relationship with the European Union
is usually viewed as a tumultuous one. It
refused to participate in the early years of the
project and since joining in 1973 it has been
consistently reluctant to integrate with the rest
of the group, opting out of various policies and
eventually winning its cherished budget
rebate. This has given it a reputation over the
years of being an ‘awkward partner’, and
while this isn’t completely undeserved, it does
ignore the fact that Britain has been incredibly
proactive in other policy areas such as the sin-
gle market and free trade.
Showing that Britain’s relationship with
the European Union is more complex than the
‘awkward partner’ moniker suggests is one of
the key aims of Alistair Jones’ book. To do
this, he provides basic overviews of the
European Union and Britain and how the two
have interacted throughout their relationship.
As with most publications from the Politics
Study Guide series, this book is primarily
aimed at the undergraduate level, but it con-
tains useful insights regardless. The book is
well organised and the easily readable text is
broken down into manageable sections and
complemented by various tables and infor-
mation boxes. Learning is further enhanced
by reinforcing to the reader the educational
goals of each chapter at both the beginning
and the end of each one.
Other publications focussing on Britain’s
relationship with the European Union often
focus on specific aspects of the relationship and
in doing so they often assume that the reader is
already intimately familiar with the issues, the
nomenclature and indeed how the European
Union itself works. This often leads to them
being quite inaccessible, especially for newer
entrants to the field. In contrast to this, Jones’
book starts by providing the reader with a good
and broad grounding of the basics and builds up
from there. While this is refreshing, it does come
at the expense of deeper analysis on many issues.
Although the author has attempted to counter
this by providing suggestions for further reading,
it does ultimately limit how useful some readers
may find the book.
However, as is perhaps the intention, this
book serves as an invaluable introductory text
to Britain’s relationship with the European
Union, providing the reader with a good start-
ing point from which to further research a topic
that will become much more prominent over the
coming years as Britain goes through the pro-
cess of leaving the European Union altogether.
Chris Stafford
(University of Nottingham)
© The Author(s) 2017
Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1478929917712144
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Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement:
Organisation, Communication and Ideology
by Filippo Tronconi (ed.). Farnham: Ashgate,
2015. 237pp., £65.00 (h/b), ISBN 9781472436634
This book is focused on the analysis of a
unique and original Italian party, the
Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S), which has man-
aged in only a few years since its beginnings,
in 2009, to win in the local and regional elec-
tions in 2012 and to gain access the Chamber
of Deputies in 2013. Beppe Grillo, a comedian,
is the founding leader of this party and he has
placed the headquarters of his movement on
his blog.
The book comprises of nine chapters writ-
ten by 11 contributors, preceded by an
Introduction and ending with a Conclusion
written by the editor, Filippo Tronconi.
In the authors’ view, M5S is considered to
be an anti-system party with many features of
populism since it uses the Internet and the blog
as a direct medium of communication with
ordinary citizens fighting against the corrupt
elites.
The complex topics approached in the book
through a comparative perspective are as follows:
ideology, charismatic leadership and organisa-
tional innovation, communication between the
movement and its electors, the process of selec-
tion and recruitment of the representatives in
local, regional and parliamentary structures and
the way that the leader’s vision is translated into
action during day-to-day political activity.
Those interested in political parties and in
the modern dialogical communication will find
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