Are digital parties more democratic than traditional parties? Evaluating Podemos and Movimento 5 Stelle’s online decision-making platforms

Abstract

A number of Western European countries have recently seen the emergence of ‘digital parties’. This term refers to a new wave of political organisations committed to transforming intra-party democracy (IPD) through the adoption of online ‘participatory platforms’, sections of their official websites where registered members can debate and decide on various issues. In this article, I assess the democratic quality of online participatory platforms in the Five Star Movement in Italy and Podemos in Spain, examining various features embedded in them – discussions and proposals, elections of party officials and candidates and referendums – and evaluating their degree of inclusiveness, centralisation and institutionalisation. I argue that contrary to their promise to introduce a more membership-controlled and inclusive democracy, IPD in digital parties is strongly top-down. What these formations offer is a plebiscitarian ‘reactive democracy’ where members have little say over the process and are mostly left with ratifying decisions taken by the party leadership. This state of affairs calls for a critical rethinking of digital technology’s potential for transforming IPD.

Keywords

digital democracy digital parties digital politics Five Star Movement intra-party democracy participatory platforms plebiscitarianism Podemos

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Alvarez

Hall

(2010) Electronic Elections: The Perils and Promises of Digital Democracy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Biondo

Canestrari

(2018) Supernova: Com’è stato Ucciso il Movimento 5 Stelle. Milano: Ponte alle Grazie.

Blitzer

(2014) In Spain, politics via reddit. The New Yorker, 7 October. Available at: https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/spain-politics-via-reddit (accessed 22 April 2018).

Carty

(2004). Parties as franchise systems: the stratarchical organizational imperative. Party Politics 10(1): 5–24.

Casaleggio

(2017) How Italians learned to govern themselves through technology. The Huffington Post, 22 March. Available at: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/five-star-movement-internet_us_58cb008ae4b0be71dcf3048d (accessed 18 May 2018).

Casaleggio

(2018) The five star movement: an Italian revolution – Davide Casaleggio presents the Rousseau application. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqe5j47gisk (accessed 5 May 2018).

Chadwick

(2006) Internet Politics: States, Citizens, and New Communication Technologies. New York: Oxford University Press.

Coleman

(2005) New mediation and direct representation: reconceptualizing representation in the digital age. New Media & Society 7(2): 177–198.

Cross

Blais

(2012) Who selects the party leader? Party Politics 18(2): 127–150.

10.

Cross

Katz

(eds) (2013) The Challenges of Intra-Party Democracy. Oxford: OUP.

11.

Deseriis

(2017) Direct parliamentarianism: an analysis of the political values embedded in Rousseau, the “operating system” of the Five Star Movement. In: 2017 Conference for E-Democracy and open government (CeDEM) (eds P

Parycek

Edelmann

), Krems, Austria, 17–19 May 2017, pp. 15–25. IEEE Computer Society.

12.

Dryzek

(2000) Deliberative Democracy and Beyond: Liberals, Critics, Contestations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

13.

Duverger

(1959) Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State. London: Methuen.

14.

Ferdinand

(2000) The Internet, democracy and democratization. Democratization 7(1): 1–17.

15.

Floridia

Vignati

(2014) Deliberativa, diretta o partecipativa?. Le sfide del Movimento 5 Stelle alla democrazia rappresentativa. Quaderni di sociologia (65): 51–74.

16.

Garcia De Blas

(2017) Podemos no logra movilizar a sus bases en la consulta sobre la moción de censura. El Pais, 15 May.

17.

Gerbaudo

(2019) The Digital Party: Political Organisation and Online Democracy. London: Pluto Press.

18.

Gibbert

Ruigrok

(2010) The ‘what’ and ‘how’ of case study rigor: three strategies based on published work. Organizational Research Methods 13(4): 710–737.

19.

Gomez

Ramiro

(2017) The limits of organizational innovation and multi-speed membership: Podemos and its new forms of party membership. Party Politics 1(13): 534–546.

20.

Gramsci

(1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks, Hoare

Nowell Smith

(ed. and transl.). London: Lawrence & Wishart.

21.

Hacker

Van Dijk

(eds) (2000) Digital Democracy: Issues of Theory and Practice. London: Sage.

22.

Hague

Loader

(1999) Digital Democracy: Discourse and Decision Making in the Information Age. London: Routledge.

23.

Hartleb

(2013) Anti-elitist cyber parties? Journal of Public Affairs 13(4): 355–369.

24.

Held

(2006) Models of Democracy. Oxford: Polity.

25.

Hopkin

Paolucci

(1999) The business firm model of party organisation: cases from Spain and Italy. European Journal of Political Research 35(3): 307–339.

26.

Il Foglio (2018) Il programma del m5s è stato cambiato. Ecco i documenti, 17 April. Available at: https://www.Ilfoglio.It/Politica/2018/04/17/News/Programma-Truffa-Movimento-5-Stelle--189818/ (accessed 12 March 2019)

27.

Katz

Mair

(1995) Changing models of party organization and party democracy: the emergence of the cartel party. Party Politics 1(1): 5–28.

28.

Katz

(2001) The problem of candidate selection and models of party democracy. Party Politics 7(3): 277–296.

29.

Kautsky

(2017 [1893]) Parliamentarism and democracy. In: Karl Kautsky on Democracy and Republicanism, Lewis

(ed. and transl.). Leiden, Boston: Brill.

30.

Kioupkiolis

Pérez

(2018) Reflexive technopopulism: Podemos and the search for a new left-wing hegemony. European Political Science 18: 1–13.

31.

Kreiss

(2015) The problem of citizens: E-democracy for actually existing democracy. Social Media+ Society 1(2), DOI: 10.1177/2056305115616151

32.

Klimowicz

(2018) Network parties: a new model to democratise and digitise party politics? Discussion Paper. Democracy Lab. Germany: Das Progressive Zentrum. Available at: http://www.progressives-zentrum.org/network-parties-a-new-model-to-democratise-and-digitise-party-politics/ (accessed 6 April 2019).

33.

Lanzone

Rombi

(2014) Who did participate in the online primary elections of the Five Star Movement (M5S) in Italy? Causes, features and effects of the selection process. Partecipazione e conflitto 7(1): 170–191.

34.

Loxbo

(2013) The fate of intra-party democracy: leadership autonomy and activist influence in the mass party and the cartel party. Party Politics 19(4): 537–554.

35.

Marcos

(2018) Iglesias y Montero salvan la consulta de Podemos sobre su chalé con el rechazo de un tercio de los votantes. El Pais, 28 March. Available at: https://politica.elpais.com/politica/2018/05/27/actualidad/1527441453_921527.html (accessed 2 June 2019).

36.

Margetts

(2001) The Cyber Party: The Causes and Consequences of Organisational Innovation in European Political Parties. Oxford: Oxford Internet Institute.

37.

Margetts

(2006) The cyber party. In: Katz

Crotty

(eds) Handbook of Party Politics. London: Sage, pp. 528–535.

38.

Michels

(1915) Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy. New York: Hearst’s International Library Company.

39.

Mikola

(2017) Online primaries and intra-party democracy: candidate selection processes in Podemos and the Five Star movement. IDP. Revista de Internet, Derecho y Política (24): 37–49.

40.

Mosca

(2015) Problemi e limiti del modello organizzativo ‘cybercratico’ nell’esperienza del Movimento 5 Stelle. Ragion pratica 44(1): 37–52.

41.

Mosca

(2018) Democratic vision and online participatory spaces in the Italian Movimento 5 Stelle. Acta Politica 1–18. First online, 11 June 2018.

42.

Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S) (2017) Lex Parlamento: Introduzione. Available at: https://rousseau.movimento5stelle.it/lex_faq.php (accessed 27 May 2018).

43.

Podemos (2016) Releasing the code of Podemos’ digital heart. Available at: https://podemos.info/releasing-the-code-of-podemos-digital-heart/ (accessed 20 May 2018).

44.

Poguntke

Scarrow

Webb

, et al. (2016) Party rules, party resources and the politics of parliamentary democracies: how parties organize in the 21st century. Party Politics 22(6): 661–678.

45.

Qvortrup

(2005) A Comparative Study of Referendums: Government by the People. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

46.

Rahat

Shapira

(2017) An intra-party democracy index: theory, design and a demonstration. Parliamentary Affairs 70(1): 84–110.

47.

Riveiro

(2016) Podemos pone fin a las ‘listas plancha’ en sus primarias. El Diario, 6 April. Available at: https://www.eldiario.es/politica/podemos-pone-listas-plancha-primarias_0_502550826.html (accessed 18 February 2018).

48.

Sartori

(2005) Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis. Colchester: ECPR Press.

49.

Scarrow

(2005) Political Parties and Democracy in Theoretical and Practical Perspectives: Implementing Intra-Party Democracy. Washington, DC: National Democratic Institute for International Affairs.

50.

Scarrow

(1996) Parties and Their Members: Organizing for Victory in Britain and Germany. Oxford University Press.

51.

Scarrow

Gezgor

(2010) Declining memberships, changing members? European political party members in a new era. Party Politics 16(6): 823–843.

52.

Schlosberg

Dryzek

(2002) Digital democracy: authentic or virtual? Organization & Environment 15(3): 332.

53.

Schumpeter

(2010) Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. New York: Routledge.

54.

Seyd

(1999) New parties/new politics? A case study of the British labour party. Party Politics 5(3): 383–405.

55.

Suksi

(1993) Bringing in the People: A Comparison of Constitutional Forms and Practices of the Referendum. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff.

56.

Van Biezen

Mair

Poguntke

(2012) Going, going,…gone? The decline of party membership in contemporary Europe. European Journal of Political Research 51(1): 24–56.

57.

Van Dijck

Poell

(2013) Understanding social media logic. Media and Communication 1(1): 2.

58.

Weber

(1978) Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Vol. 1. Berkeley: University of California Press.

59.

Whiteley

(2011) Is the party over? The decline of party activism and membership across the democratic world. Party Politics 17(1): 21–44.

60.

Wolkenstein

(2016) A deliberative model of intra-party democracy. Journal of Political Philosophy 24(3): 297–320.

61.

Yin

(1994) Discovering the future of the case study method in evaluation research. Evaluation Practice 15(3): 283–290.

62.

Yin

(2011) Applications of Case Study Research. Thousands Oaks: Sage.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.01 MB