Left-Wing Populism and the Incorporation of Precarious Workers: A Comparative Study of the Movimento Cinque Stelle and Unidas Podemos

In the 2010s new left-wing populist parties emerged in Southern Europe, deeply restructuring the national political context. Little attention has so far been devoted to the concrete policy measures pursued by left-wing populism and the ideational factors underpinning them. Against this background, this paper comparatively investigates the social, labour and income policies pursued by the Movimento Cinque Stelle (M5S) in Italy and Unidas Podemos (UP) in Spain during Conte (2018-2021) and Sanchez (2020-present) governments, as well as the socio-economic ideology driving them.

Through the analysis of policy documents and secondary sources, I demonstrate that the M5S and UP share a commitment to ‘de-dualize’ the national labour market and welfare institutions, i.e. extending protection to outsiders. This shared orientation is manifest in key policies, such as the regulation of temporary work, the substantial raise/introduction of a statutory minimum wage, and the introduction of minimum guaranteed income schemes. Mobilizing foundational party documents, I further argue that their political project has been one of incorporation of precarious workers into the State, similar to what has happened in Latin America (Kapiszewski et al. 2021). This opposes left populism to right populism, whose project is one of conservative safeguard of secure workers against precarious workers, while keeping them subordinate to capital (Rathgeb 2020).

Despite commonalities, I argue that UP has gone far beyond the M5S in de-dualizing the labour market nd the welfare state. I claim that this difference can be traced back to party ideology, as Unidas Podemos has a more radical and coherent ideology than the Five Star Movement, as largely discussed in the existing literature. Ideological specificities, also explain why some policies implemented by the M5S are exclusionary towards foreign nationals. This argument is confronted with alternative – and complementary – explanations, such as the respective government composition and duration.