Pirate Parties as Projects of Empowered Electronic Democracy

• In Event: 066 - Section on Political Sociology Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 06. Political Parties

Abstract

Many modern democratic institutions are neither widely participatory, nor deeply democratic. Nevertheless, it is reported that Pirate Parties have succeeded to establish an empowered electronic democracy internally and to promote in both on local and societal levels. Thereby this study explores how the real utopia model of Pirate Party as electronic democracy project functions. The real utopias approach exploring desirable, viable, and achievable alternative social designs is applied. The inquiry is grounded on theorizing, case studies, and qualitative expert interviews. The research revealed that Pirate Parties are genuine democratic initiatives, widely implementing principles and mechanisms of electronic democracy in both direct and representative forms. The most striking is the wide decentralization of authority: it is most vividly expressed in open collective editing of resolutions, universal online voting, and the “3 pirates” rule. Overall, the Pirate Parties studied allow participation on all levels of organizational governance: from agenda-setting through decision-making and elections to monitoring and control. Moreover, due to representation in legislative bodies in European parliament they can impose influence on regional, national, and even supranational levels. Definitely, their potential for political reach is debatable. Even despite the fact that Pirate Parties currently celebrate modest electoral results, their model of internal democratic organization and political vision are copied by rival parties, thus facilitating their wider promotion. In any case, Pirate Parties are relatively new initiative; they are still experimenting with specific forms of democratic participation, developing agenda, and gaining popular support.

Author

• Dmytro Khutkyy, University of California-Riverside