Abstract
In the digital age, new ways of interaction provide a new type of public sphere which has dramatically changed party politics. This includes not only the modernisation and professionalisation of mainstream political parties but also paves the way for new challengers and a new dimension of campaigning. The current examples, the Pirate Party, especially in Germany, and the Five Star Movement of Beppe Grillo, show at least short-term potential. The Pirate Party caused a media hype about the young activists. Grillo transcended the borders between comedy and politics without the helping hand of the traditional media, which ignored him. The threat for representative democracies lies in the growing anti-elitism which is combined in the Pirates and Grillo. Mainstream political parties should indicate that the claim for a new participatory politics beyond right and left is a utopian one, while attacking the way that party politics works.
Introduction: digital campaigning and the growing anti-elitism
Political parties have been reacting to the growing volatility within the electoral market and the tendency that only a few issues are decisive when choosing how to vote. In modern democracies, political parties tend to be professionalised, media- and communication-orientated, and often have the following features (Jun 2004):
professional communication management;
quick adoption of issues based on their attractiveness;
orientation more towards single issues than towards a coherent programme;
perceived competences filtered through a strategic centre of power.
Obviously, social media have a new impact on campaigning, emotionally addressing single issues or at least the symbolic, controlled level mobilising voters who are already affected by politics. People with the same interests can be a part of the virtual community, open to activism in real politics or at least virtual support via comments and other contributions (Bartlett et al. 2013, 12–13). This new sphere of politics provides an opportunity for new challengers and grassroots movements throughout Europe. This article focuses on two new models which put into context the common approaches of party politics: first, the tendency towards participation with the Pirate Party, especially in Germany; second, the Five Star Movement (M5S) of the Italian comedian Beppe Grillo, who used the deep economic and political crisis to gain populist momentum and entered politics as high as the national level. Both are examples of the new anti-elitism in Europe, the growing tendency to (mis-)use new technologies to challenge the hierarchical rules of politics and decision-making processes. This does not mean that such phenomena are long-lasting, but it indicates the importance of digital campaigning for all future parties (Hartleb 2012).
Liquid democracy and the idea of permanent participation: the case of the Pirate Party
Throughout Europe, new ‘flash parties’ have entered the political landscape. Even in Germany, which has a relatively stable political system, a new party can gather support. Since 2011, the Pirate Party, a new political force of Internet freedom activists modelled on the Swedish Piratpartiet, has succeeded in attaining enough votes to enter four state parliaments in Germany: first Berlin and then North Rhine-Westphalia, Saarland and Schleswig-Holstein. Membership grew to 20,000 in just 4 months (Niedermayer 2013). The Party was consistently polling at over 10% on the national level, competing with the Greens and Liberals for third place. Some observers thought that on the European level, a European Pirate political family could also make an impact in the 2014 European elections, after realising that Pirate Parties are found, at least via websites and in the virtual world, under the so-called Pirate Party International, both in Europe and beyond, from Latin America to Australia. The Pirate Party is consequently a phenomenon between a transnational movement (mostly only marginal) and a local force with national ambitions (Dobusch and Gollatz 2012).
But now, in the decisive year of the German national elections (Bundestag) in autumn 2013, the German Pirate Party has experienced a strong decline in public support due to a lack of strategy, struggles in the leadership, diminished media hype and the non-fulfilment of the admittedly excessive public expectations in general. Consequently, the Pirate Party won only 2% of the vote in the elections for the state parliament in Lower Saxony–-a disaster for the party's ambitions. A dramatic development would be necessary for the party to garner enough support to enter the Bundestag. The decline of the German Pirates has also negatively affected the morale of its associate parties across Europe, particularly in Sweden. In general, it does not seem that a new party family has been born.
The Pirates began by depicting themselves as a party to which everybody could contribute and one in which nobody held any privileged position. Although originally a party of ‘computer nerds and hackers’ demanding online freedom, its appeal as an anti-establishment movement lured many young voters to the ballot boxes, catapulting the Party into state parliaments. The all-volunteer Pirates offer little in coherent ideology and focus primarily on promoting their flagship policies of near-total transparency and an unrestricted Internet. On their emergence, the German media were fascinated and invited the young new politicians and parliamentarians onto television talk shows (where they sometimes simultaneously tweeted), describing them as ‘good populists’ in sharp contrast to the right-wing populist parties (Hartleb 2013). They viewed the Pirate Party as a new and fascinating model to create real participation in the world of Web 2.0. The magazine Der Spiegel had a headline saying ‘Avanti Dilettanti’, portraying the Pirates as a group of amateurs but with a serious model (Der Spiegel 2012), which even caused discussion among intellectuals and political observers. In the narrow political sense, this approach fits the reality despite the fact that the young activists are open-minded, experts in new technologies and the virtual world and certainly not the losers of modernisation–-people with low education who deny any cosmopolitan, globalised lifestyle (in sharp contrast to the supporters of extremist parties). Two young women who gained television attention even wrote books explaining their passion for new technologies and included some comments on the future of democracies (Schramm 2012; Weisband 2013).
The Pirates have their own software and use the Internet as the medium for internal party decision-making, which is based in theory on these tools. However, the new way of decision-making does not work in practice, as the application of ‘liquid democracy’ has demonstrated. As a new party, it was able to establish a functioning organisation by means of the Internet. Even critics have to admit that the new form of participation has revitalised intra-party democracy, although caution should be exercised before taking any revolutionary idea too seriously. Excessive transparency, for instance, the live streaming of each session, could open politics to ridicule. Each malfunction or scurrilous occurrence would be closely monitored. The party congress in October 2012 showed clearly that the revolutionary model the party adopted does not work: it included more than 1,400 pages and 700 initiatives, endless debates that had already taken place in the virtual world, complicated decision-making processes and an obvious lack of a coherent vision. Only a small number of party members are generally active in the Pirates’ online communities such as Liquid Feedback, a programme that lets people vote on documents or delegate votes to proxies.
This notion is based on a technical-administrative image of political decisionmaking that has–-against all claims–-nothing to do with grassroots democratic participation. Moreover, the party congresses of the Pirates are, in important respects, conventional. We have witnessed internal quarrels, even up to the level of insults over internal regulations and statutes–-typical problems encountered in the internal debates of established parties. Currently, the party itself is openly searching for a new way of communicating between the leadership and the party's base, following recent developments (Hartleb 2013). The system of liquid democracy obviously does not work. It seems that the party will not follow the example of the green parties, which started on the path to a permanent success story in the 1980s, profiting from an increased interest in issues such as ecology, peace and feminism.
To sum up, the Pirate Party can be characterised as follows:
It claims that we have entered a new age of digital politics that includes greater transparency in the political decision-making process.
It seeks to provide a new conceptual framework for understanding the virtual world. (This includes attempting to counter the image of its ‘inhabitants’ as computer-mad ‘nerds’ with no friends in the real world.)
It promotes itself as not having an ideology to which all its members subscribe and as being beyond left and right, whereas in reality it can be regarded as an alternative-left party.
It holds that, by means of new technology, citizens should continually participate in politics and stand against the hierarchies within the mainstream parties.
It claims to embody the ideal of a ‘party without any leadership’ (whereas in reality a party board exists, and its existence has caused struggles over the relationship between followers and leaders).
The party has high ambitions concerning input (for example, for party congresses), whereas the outcome seems to be utopian.
Politics of anger via blogs and real face-to-face encounters: Beppe Grillo
In Italy, former comedian and showman Beppe Grillo, born in 1948, started a leadership-based grassroots movement in 2010, called ‘Movimento 5 Stelle’ (‘Five Star Movement’, or M5S), based on political blogs and addressing young people. He has used social media to communicate, recruit and organise, growing the M5S from practically nothing to a major political force in Italy in three years. In 2013, the movement won a significant number of voters but is not prepared to participate in a government coalition. Typically, especially for the emerging right-wing populist parties, the new challengers prefer to be in opposition in order to avoid a ‘reality check’. Of course, this tendency is not dogma or a fixed principle: Austrian Jörg Haider, the prototype of a radical right-wing populist, governed in the province of Carinthia for a long time (which included a comeback), and the Grillo movement has a mayor in the city of Parma after winning the local election in May 2012. But, similar to the right-wing populists, Grillo sees himself as excluded and outside the political class.
Grillo leans to the political left, but he spares neither side in his sold-out shows and popular blog. Strong words are typical of the language Grillo has used for politicians, political parties and the political system itself. The problem, in his view, is the system itself. Actions include demands to ‘clean up parliament’ and releasing a list of names of Italian representatives in the Italian and European Parliaments that have been convicted of a crime. In some cases Grillo was right, for example, in blaming the former socialist Prime Minister Bettino Craxi, who left the country after corruption scandals were revealed. The five stars represent the five basic points of the shared programme: Water, Environment, Transport, Connectivity and Growth.
In 2005 he started his blog (www.beppe.grillo.it/); it is also available in English and Japanese (!), and has become one of the most influential blogs in the world (The Guardian 2008). In September 2007, Grillo held his infamous ‘V Day’ rally, the ‘V’ standing for vaffanculo (‘f*** off’), during which he collected 350,000 signatures for proposed legislation that would ‘clean up’ parliament. Grillo delivered his petition, but parliament paid little or no attention. Grillo often attacks politicians on superficial issues and criticises their private lives. This he does with a satirical style, claiming to be anti-politician with an emphasis on ecology (‘anti-elitist green movement’). His blog has been developed into a political movement and has IT-specialist Gianroberto Casaleggio as its mastermind (Brandau 2013). Grillo has slogans such as ‘all politicians have to go home’ and ‘all professional politicians are corrupt’. He claims to show, as a comedian, the truth after the collapse of the stock market (Grillo 2013). The comedian also promises a new politics in Italy.
Grillo has no party headquarters or party membership in the traditional sense (only the Amici di Beppe Grillo, non statuto), but via new technologies, he brings about so-called get-togethers of people in places, replicating the old Athenian model of democracy, the agora. He uses modern technology to gather often young, well-educated people in their hundreds of thousands in central locations. During campaigning, his so-called ‘Tsunami Tour’ filled large areas in cities. The original party communication system is based on Twitter and the activism of many volunteers. He also involves the well-known singer and actor Adriano Celentano and the Nobel Prize winner in Literature Dario Fo. The latter example shows that the movement is not simply anti-intellectual, a typical accusation against populist parties. Grillo has not appeared in the traditional media since he was expelled in the 1980s due to his attacks on the political elite (Brandau 2013). The attacks from the traditional media have even helped Grillo in his anti-elitist stance and the claim to bring ordinary citizens into the corrupted sphere of politics. Grillo himself is not on the ballot sheet, as he has a criminal conviction, thus keeping in accordance with the rules of his movement. As a leader, Grillo is very authoritarian, similar to leaders of right-wing populist parties (Dirani 2012).
A study conducted by the Demos think tank in August 2012 showed 1,865 Beppe Grillo Facebook supporters (Bartlett et al. 2013). Grillo has an enormous social media following: almost one million people have joined his Facebook page. Grillo tweets regularly, and on 6 November 2012 had 700,556 followers. Surprisingly, the followers are older than the typical Facebook user. The proportion of Beppe Grillo Facebook fans with a high-school diploma was 54%, which indicates the digital divide between educated and non-educated people. Of the respondents, 80% do not define themselves as formal members of the M5S. Beppe Grillo Facebook fans were most likely to cite economic issues due to the awful situation in the country. In this sense, the growth of the movement has much to do with the current crisis. Beppe Grillo Facebook fans are substantially more pessimistic than the Italian public concerning the economic situation in Italy. The same is true of the current state of democracy, as well as the dissatisfaction with traditional parties. Also, the level of Euroscepticism is similar to what it was in the last elections in Finland, Greece, France and the Netherlands, an important role for mobilisation: 70% felt that things were going in the wrong direction in the EU.
To sum up, Grillo's Five Star Movement
combines modern technologies (blog, Twitter) with archaic forms of politics (for example, Beppe Grillo's shouting in marketplaces);
distances itself from party politics (calling itself a ‘movement’ rather than a ‘party’) and has a fluid structure (non statuto, no party headquarters);
excludes itself from traditional media (Grillo himself gives no interviews in the Italian media), resulting in the creation of a ‘myth’ about Grillo;
is a one man-show (having built up a public image over a long period);
has as its keywords ‘corruption, professional politics and ordinary citizens’;
predicts the collapse of the current system;
engages in politics based on enemies (globalisation, the EU, politicians, the justice system, traditional media); and
holds up Grillo as the saviour of the country.
Conclusion: facing the new anti-elitism
It is possible to believe that the current rise of populism is just a temporary aberration on the road to normal ‘European’ party politics. In this brave new world of populist politics and the mélange of virtual and real-world political activity, there is no need for coherent party platforms and stable loyalties. Parties have to adapt their communication via slogans and sound-bytes, which they have already started (Hartleb 2012, 62–8), while defending ‘politics as a profession’ (Weber 1992) and the crucial role of elites. Social media can increase the tendency of anti-elitism via anonymous actions such as so-called shitstorms.
Traditional parties can draw lessons from the cases of the Pirates and M5S. They should take into account the limits of such movements:
The liquid structure of such parties or movements with the claim of representing a politics beyond ‘right’ and ‘left’ is a utopian one and has, other than common points, little to offer in important policies.
One should not overestimate the real importance of a new party just based on the media hype it attracts at the beginning (Pirates).
The politics of permanent participation is either artificial (M5S as a one-man show) or does not work (Pirates) due to over-activism and mutual distrust among the activists.
However, traditional parties should also bear in mind that social media enable organisations to reach out to audiences that have little or no connection to the offline world (Römmele 2012, 121). Parties could benefit by adapting their communication via slogans and sound-bytes, which they have started doing, while maintaining stability, credibility and loyalty among the electorate. Moreover, as with the equally new alternative-left Pirates in Germany and the M5S in Italy, these new parties are targeting youth and protesting against the behaviour of the establishment. Traditional forms of politics can only remain sustainable if political parties make an effort to reach out to youth cultures, without surrendering, in the interest of pragmatism, the pillars of sensible and sustainable politics.
Footnotes