Dear net-timers,
Around the world and Europe in particular we are witnessing to a rapid transformation of political parties. Political parties seemed to be among the most impervious to the change ushered by the digital revolution, that has transformed for good or worse almost all aspects of our lives. But now also this social sphere is adapting to changed technological and cultural conditions.
From the Five Star Movement in Italy, to Podemos in Spain and France Insoumise in France, and before them the Pirate Parties, we are witnessing to the rise of a new party type, a "digital party", that integrates digital technology in its very functioning. What is remarkable about these formations, as I discuss in my new book "The Digital Party: Political Organisation and Online Democracy" [
https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745335797/the-digital-party/] is the way they seem to adapt to the political sphere the data-driven business model of Facebook, Amazon and Google.
These parties have not only used social media to attain momentous growth. They have also created their own dedicated platforms, decision-making platforms, such as Rousseau in the Five Star Movement or Consul in the case of Podemos, which have come to constitute a key organisational infrastructure for these formations. These platforms are for these parties the intermediate element, what Antonio Gramsci called the third element, the articulating element between leadership and membership. They are the place where the party's collective action is legitimised and coordinated, and therefore play a key role in the functioning of these formations.
This "platformisation" of the political party, which besides these formations is also affecting more traditional parties such as Labour in the UK and PSOE in Spain, carries a number of important implications for membership, leadership, mobiliastion and organisation. Regarding membership, platformisation means the adoption of the free sign-up process that thas become a signature feature of many social media services such as Twitter, Facebook etc. This entails a radical lowering of the barrier to membership, also because no fees have to be paid, thus delinking membership from donorship.
This turn has allowed these parties to grow at break-neck speed: Podemos now stands at half million members 4 years since its foundation, and similar numbers has France Insoumise. But much of this membership has turned out to be a rather dormant membership, which participates only occasionally in consultations on participatory platforms, where the turnout rate in referenda and other votes is often around just 20%. The risk thus is that by becoming a platform political parties internalise some of the typical ills of social media platforms: the quest for instant gratification; the obsession with metrics immediately taken as public opinion 'votes' on whatever issue; a very skewed power distribution in which very people lead, and the mass of users can do little but follow, like, or share.
Furthermore, this transformation also carries important and problematic implications for power structures within political parties. The adoption of participatory platforms is often assumed by party advocates to translate into democratisation, turning the membership into an highly empowered and active "superbase". Yet, this superbase goes hand in hand with an Hyperleader, with new forms of charismatic and highly centralised leadership that are visible in the prominence within these parties of figures such as Pablo Iglesias, Beppe Grillo, Jean-Luc Melenchon etc. Platformisation entails a demolition of the old party bureaucracy, that Robert Michels considered the principal redoubt of the oligarchy he so much decried. But what if we are abandoning the Scylla of the infamous "iron law of oligarchy", only to crash against the Carybdis of a "benevolent dictatorship"?
These are some of the questions and issues activists around the world should engage with as they discuss new organisational forms, and the lessons that should be taken from the new digital parties. These parties undoubtedly offer great potential for scaling up organisational structures and for creating collective actors capable of fighting against the old behemots. But the political and ethical issues this new organisational template raises should not be underestimated.
Best Regards,
Paolo