The Rise of the Digital Party

By Tom Sandall

Since the mid-2000s, a new force entered politics, that of the Digital (or platform) party. Digital parties are distinct in their primary communication method is through social media and platforms of their own. Fundamentally, these digital parties see the web as a tool through which they can do away with the traditional bureaucratic elements contained within the traditional parties to enable a more direct means to bring about political change. The most significant of these platform parties are the Pirate parties throughout Europe, the Five-star movement within Italy and Podemos in Spain. Most successful has been the five-star movement within Italy, achieving the most votes nationally, obtaining 32.7% of the vote or 227 seats, 89 from majority. Podemos Received 35 seats last election, or 14% of the vote. The Pirate parties have had success in Iceland and the Czech Republic, achieving 8.6% and 15.6% (in coalition with the mayor and independents party) respectively in the country’s most recent elections, but most astounding has been their rapid spread across nations with around 50 parties arising after its original formation in Sweden . Traditional parties have also encompassed elements of these parties, such as labours momentum, Insoumise in France, and Bernie Sanders’s attempts to achieve victory in the Democratic primaries.

Central to these platform parties is the ideology of Participationalism, that mass participation should be central to political legitimacy instead of the dominant representative forms of democracy. Through participation, the collective intelligence of the many will shine through and produce a more authentic version of democracy. In the digital era, this makes sense as digital platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram exist solely due to possessing a solid user base who in turn self generate the entertainment they provide. They have a significant presence across these platforms and have created their own, such as the Pirate parties in Germany’s use of LiquidFeedBack, Fives stars Rousseau and Podemos’ Princepa portal. With LiquidFeedBack being the most ambitious in its attempts to achieve deliberative democracy, however, it failed due to a patchy adaption. Rousseau split with the Five-star movement last year as the Rousseau team behaved as a political entity of its own , so only Podemos’ Princepa remains.

The demographics of digital parties are interesting as they are not of the traditional left-right dimension; they have high levels of support amongst the technologically adept with younger voters, the highly educated, and also a large proportion of lower-class voters. This is due to the political circumstances as these parties were founded around the 2008 financial crisis. This was also when voter apathy and membership of the traditional parties were in decline. These bucked this trend by providing membership for free drawing inspiration from the social media platforms. They also took from the Platform model the use of free labour from these members. However, many of these members are passive, preferring to lurk or post occasionally, wherein only a few are hyperactive described by Paolo Gerbaudo as ‘super volunteers’ who would dedicate considerable free time and labour to the party. As these represent such a limited minority, they are akin to the ‘aristocrats’ of the older political formations as they disproportionality affect official party lines.

Digital parties may claim that through the use of the decentralised networks of social media, they too would allow for decentralisation in policymaking; unfortunately, this is not the case. They have created an inverse phenomenon, that of the ‘Hyperleader’, as platform algorithms on social media place a primacy over the individual who generates the posts. The Five-star movement owes a lot of its success to its founder Beppe Grillo, whose fame stems originally from his comedic shows, which mocked corrupt politicians. His blog (Homepage - Il Blog di Beppe Grillo) acted as the de facto house organ of the party from 2009-to 2018. So too do Podemos, who owe their successes to their leader Pablo Iglesias who had made appearances in media and television prior to leadership. As these leaders need to project themselves on social media constantly, they cannot devote themselves to strategic organising, the role of which is given to others who operate behind the scenes in a group that Paolo Gerbaudo considers a “micro-oligarchy, a ‘magic circle’ that is not very different from the oligarchy of old”.

Due to the above features, Paolo Gerbaudo believes that digital parties have created what he clinically describes as” ‘plebiscitarianism 2.0’ A top-down down form of ‘reactive democracy’”. Wherein decisions are ultimately top-down instead of being generated in a bottom-up fashion. A study by the European union further confirmed this as they only allowed for preference aggression. This is because incentives to drive policy are next to nil, so only those with a significant stake in the party take part. Whilst these digital parties have had interesting experiments in deliberation, Party officials remain in control as they are the ones that utilise their influence to drive the discussions of law proposals. Furthermore, most ballots produce Supermajorities in line with the ‘hyperleader’ and his ‘magic circle’. Whilst these platform parties have been an interesting development; it seems that they and the more traditional parties are converging, as the mainstream parties are copying techniques of engagement online, the Five Star movement has now also split for the Rosseau platform due to its attempts to restyle itself as a centre-left party

This post leans heavily on the analysis presented by: Paolo Gerbaudo (2019). In The Digital Party : Political Organisation and Online Democracy. London Pluto Press.