Democracy on the Five Star Movement's Rousseau Platform

The Five Star Movement, or M5S, is a popular anti-establishment,
populist political party in Italy. One of its key features is the
Rousseau platform, an online space designed to enable direct
democracy. Named after the eighteenth century thinker Jean-
Jacques Rousseau, it banks on the idea that the traditional state is
corrupt, while the people’s will can be more directly polled and
executed as a governing force. However, Rousseau has also been
critiqued for defending despotism and characterised as the
enemy of liberty. This paper takes a closer look at Rousseau’s
‘Emile’ and ‘The Social Contract’, and points out how a critical
reading could raise questions about the platform’s true meaning.
The analysis focuses specifically on the illusion of autonomous
choice and covert authoritarianism. The platform becomes a
powerful tool of both preventive as well as repressive social
control. As an anti-modern public sphere, it holds inherent threats
to democracy itself.