[17] In the early 2010s, IdV was eclipsed by the new-born Five Star Movement, founded by comedian Beppe Grillo, which used the same populist and anti-corruption rhetoric.

[19] In November 1997 Di Pietro was elected senator for The Olive Tree in a by-election in Mugello, a stronghold of the Democrats of the Left (DS) in Tuscany, with 67.7% of the vote, much more than centre-right independent Giuliano Ferrara (16.1%) and Communist Sandro Curzi (13.0%).

[24] IdV took part to the 2001 general election as a stand-alone party on a populist platform, which included tough management of illegal immigration and protest against waste of public money.

IdV's campaign was focused principally against Silvio Berlusconi, who was the candidate for Prime Minister of the House of Freedoms (CdL) centre-right coalition.

After the election, Occhetto immediately renounced to his seat and was replaced by Giulietto Chiesa, a communist journalist, who sat with the Party of European Socialists Group.

[27] In 2005 IdV joined The Union, a new centre-left coalition led by Prodi, who won the primary election with 74.2% of the vote, defeating also Di Pietro (3.3%).

In early 2006 Leoluca Orlando, former mayor of Palermo, some splinters from the Union of Democrats for Europe (UDEUR), including Pino Pisicchio and Egidio Pedrini, and former DS such as Fabio Evangelisti and Federico Palomba, joined the party, in an effort of broadening its electoral base.

The Union narrowly won the 2006 general election, IdV scored a mere 2.1% and Di Pietro was sworn in as Minister of Infrastructures in the Prodi II Cabinet.

In the run-up for the election Di Pietro recruited to run in IdV lists Pino Arlacchi, a former senator for the DS, Gianni Vattimo, a left-wing philosopher,[32] Maurizio Zipponi, a former trade unionist and deputy of the Communist Refoundation Party (PRC), and Luigi de Magistris, a left-wing[33] former prosecutor of Catanzaro who inquired Romano Prodi.

In an interview to Il Fatto Quotidiano, Di Pietro declared IdV "dead" and, foreseeing its exclusion from Parliament after the next election, stated that the party would fight from the outside and would endorse the M5S.

[49] Donadi, along with other three deputies (Nello Formisano, Giovanni Paladini and Gaetano Porcino) and one senator (Stefano Pedica), launched Rights and Freedom (DL),[56][57] which later joined the Democratic Centre (CD).

[49] As soon as late December, both IdV and MA were founding components of Civil Revolution (RC), a far-left coalition led by Antonio Ingroia.

[59] In the meantime, Leoluca Orlando, Felice Belisario, Carlo Costantini and other leading members of IdV left the party to launch the 139 Movement (139 being the number of the articles of the Italian Constitution).

In the party congress, convened for 28–30 June, delegates chose the new leader, a secretary instead of a president, among five candidates: Antonio Borghesi, Matteo Castellarin, Ignazio Messina, Niccolò Rinaldi and Nicola Scalera.

In 2022, Ignazio Messina announced the federation of IdV with Us with Italy and the support for Us Moderates (a centrist list within the centre-right coalition) in the 2022 general election.

[67] The party is a supporter of legality, law and order, the police forces, first-past-the-post voting,[68] federalism, corporate reform, lowering the costs of politics, improving the efficiency of public services, fighting corruption, simplifying trials bureaucracy to achieve faster verdicts and regulating conflict of interest.

During the Prodi II Cabinet IdV was one of the most centrist voices in the centre-left coalition and sometimes, despite its harsh criticism of Berlusconi, it switched sides in Parliament on some key issues.

[69][70][71] Also during the Berlusconi IV Cabinet, IdV supported some plans of the government, notably the introduction of fiscal federalism; however, due to its uncompromising anti-berlusconismo, IdV has been at times very popular among left-wing voters, a fact that was highlighted also by the increasing number of communists in party ranks[72] and often forms stable alliances with the parties of the far left at the local level, such as in the case of Luigi de Magistris' election as mayor of Naples or in the 2012 regional election in Sicily.

The shift to the left embodied by the emergence of figures like de Magistris and Franco Grillini (honorary president of Arcigay, who joined in November 2009).

[78][79] According to Panorama, the reason for these bitter comments by Bertinotti is that Di Pietro is very able to attract votes from the far-left electorate, as well as the right, and this could prevent a resurgence of those parties which were driven out of Parliament in the 2008 general election.