I have already talked about Beppe Grillo and his V-Day in the previous post on this blog. Few days ago Grillo has proposed to people that have backed his initiative to give life to civic lists, that are lists of independent candidates, for the upcoming local elections. Here you can find more details.

However what I found interesting is the idea of giving to those lists which will fulfil some specific requirements a kind of certification, Grillo talks about a “transparency certification”.

Many people speculated about what Grillo’s political movement would have become, among them someone guessed it would have become a new political party. However Grillo is giving the movement a quite different direction. Instead of creating the common structure of a party, which is in essence a hierarchical structure modelled on the base of armies even if tempered by liberal and democratic principles, Grillo is setting a standard.

Setting standards, I think we all know it, is not anything ludicrous. International credit rating agencies, such as Moody’s, Standard&Poors or Fitch, have an enormous power upon many States even without being States. Of course their power is not based on military force or investment assets, but on reputation. When someone fixes a standard and judges people or associations or goods basing on that standard, all their power lies in their reliability.

I have already stated that in my opinion policies are made of ends, means, choices and standards. Besides I have also already stated that policies can be distinguished from politics. However when someone wants to set a policy for a community they need politics, and politics are based on force, which can come from armies or money or public consensus.

Grillo now is going to set a standard based on his reputation. This standard in this sense is part of his policy, but it will also affect politics, because it is a standard that will affect consensus becoming in this way a means for getting an end, cleaning Italian politics, at least in what seems to be Grillo’s idea.

So we come back to the fact that it is difficult to separate definitely policies and politics: in the end politics can become means for setting some policies as standards, even if it often happens quite the opposite, that is policies used as flags just for seeking power, policies used as means for politics.