The (failed?) promise of digital democracy

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The (failed?) promise

of digital democracy

Political participation platforms are becoming commonplace within political parties.

But they have yet to result in scalable direct democracy. Unless the dice were loaded

from the start?

Common positions have always been the glue holding political

parties together. But where meetings and rallies used to be

essential, the digital era has been shaking things up: a growing

number of political parties across Europe – such as Podemos

in Spain, the 5 Star Movement in Italy and the Pirate Party in

Germany – have been empowering their members like never

before with online, direct democracy platforms.

At first glance, these platforms are essentially tools that can

help improve internal party democracy while allowing for clearly

defined visions and objectives. But is it really that simple?

“Software is too often seen as a value-neutral and transpar-

ent means, just waiting to be used. The goal of SCALABLE

DEMOCRACY (Can Direct Democracy Be Scaled? The Promise of

Networked Democracy and the Affordances of Decision-Making

Software) was to demonstrate that each of these software or

participation platforms embeds a set of political values and

assumptions about democracy, which will necessarily shape

the nature of the decision-making process,” explains Dr Marco

Deseriis, project coordinator.

CORDIS Results Pack on elections and democratic participation

Understanding turbulent political times through innovative EU-funded research