What is the role of participation in the new parties? A vast body of research highlights the emergence of new models of political party in the political panorama, characterised by heterogeneity and coexistence of different elements as populism, sovereignty and claim for innovative forms of participation. On the one hand, some of the new party models discourses recognize participation as identity pillar, embracing new forms of mobilization and activism, even if many of the participatory processes promoted remain tokenistic in nature. On the other hand, other new parties discourses are based on top-down communication and they use to promote populist claims within more classical models, including the widespread catch-all-party. To what extent does participation influence the party models in the new parties?
This paper analyses the role of participation in new models of political party in the Spanish political context, starting from the Intra-Party Democracy and the decision-making processes. With a particular attention to the different role that new technologies play in the political and organizational activities of the new parties, according to the twofold use: on the one-side tools for participation, on the other tools for communication.
This research chooses to study the presented topic through the comparison between two new political parties at national level, both in the Spanish political panorama: Podemos (We can) and Ciudadanos - Partido de la Ciudadanía (Citizens - Party of the Citizenry). The first one is a party-movement founded in March 2014 on the wave of the anti-austerity protest movement 15-M. It is self-described as left-wing populist party. Since the beginning, Podemos pinpointed participation as one of the principal features of its identity and declared its commitment to participation and democracy, inside and outside the party. The most significant tools and participatory processes of Podemos are: the Consulta Ciudadana, internal referendum open to party members (the last one has been the Consulta para el sistema de votación on the party voting system); the Citizens‘ Assembly, with “full sovereignty over the issues most relevant for the whole organisation” (Podemos, 2014) and representative of all members; the primaries elections among the members of the party for the selection of all candidates at the different levels, both national and locals (Vittori, 2017; Podemos, 2014). Moreover, in many of the municipalities administered by Podemos representatives, they implemented participatory processes, e.g. Participatory Budget, most of them thanks to the support of the open software platform Consul, firstly promoted by the Municipality of Madrid.
The second one, Ciudadanos, is a liberal political party born in Catalonia in July 2006 and become a national actor in the rest of Spain between 2013 and the 2015 general elections. It is self-defined as post-nationalist and progressive party. At the moment, it is principally recognized as centrist party with a centre-left past and a centre-right programme (Rodon and Hierro, 2016). Ciudadanos claims for honesty, transparency, and competence, underlining the importance of the action of every citizen. Ciudadanos offers the possibility to become member, who accesses to all the activities, voting, and physical meetings, or sympathiser, a form of light support. It is even possible to take part to the Red Naranja (Orange Net), the digital communication team of the party. In general terms, the participation that they tend to promote have the traditional characteristic of the membership and their accurate web communication encourage that dimension (www.ciudadanos-cs.org).
The existing analysis tends to focus on their electoral success in the 2015 general elections, the leadership dimension considering their charismatic leaders Pablo Iglesias (Podemos) and Albert Rivera (Ciudadanos) and the populist and anti-populism discourse. Instead, this paper focuses in the participatory dimension examining the role of participation and its discourse in the new parties, including the coherence between claims and processes, the role of new technologies, and its democratising potential.