Excerpted from Andrew Dolan in Red Pepper, and based on a interview of Eduardo Maura, international representative of Podemos:

“In describing this phenomenon Maura speaks of the ‘hacker logic’ that from the outset structured Podemos’s approach to politics: ‘We operated from the very beginning in what we call the logic of proliferation, the hacker logic. When you are doing politics as a hacker you proliferate, you have to be everywhere, you want to be everywhere.’

To do this, Maura elaborates, you need a low cost of entry in relation to both tools and knowledge. This is precisely what Podemos ensured, with remarkable results: ‘To create a branch you only need a Facebook account, an email and a meeting. No membership, no fees. So, in the first two months we got more than 300 branches, not only in different places but also branches that had to do with specific fields, like education, culture, the environment.’ The number of branches has since more than tripled and includes ones focused on feminism, psychology, a basic income and even music – in other words, whatever the participants want them to be.

According to Maura, the logic of proliferation enabled Podemos to not only expand but also to develop the participatory practices necessary for a truly democratic party: ‘Although it was a relatively small amount of people who thought about it and launched it, we knew we weren’t making Podemos; it was other people that were making it happen and this is something we had very clearly in mind from the beginning. There is always this problem of who starts something and how it develops, but this logic of proliferation made us very accountable.’

To continue the tech-speak, Podemos in effect operates an open-source development model in which access to and redistribution of the Podemos ‘blueprint’ are universal, but the ‘licence agreement’ also includes the right of redesign and improvement. Consequently, since its inception, Podemos’s internal development and political trajectory have been shaped by the input of its members – and, indeed, non-members.”

* Processes of participation

“Although Podemos is still very much a work in progress, its inaugural ‘Citizens’ Assembly’ provides a useful overview of the democratic culture and processes that have already taken root within the party.

A multi-stage process comprised primarily but not exclusively of online activity, the two-month-long assembly began on 15 September and in effect functioned as a forum for deciding how Podemos is to be structured, how it will function and who will represent it in future elections. It is, in the somewhat generous words of Podemos London, ‘a fairly complex process’, comprised of multiple stages.
The first stage was a two-week period for the submission of drafts (organisational, ethical, political) accompanied by a partially overlapping month-long process devoted to their reduction in number through discussion, debate and convergence. Once the window for draft submissions closed, another one opened for the submission of resolutions – ‘short texts summarising a consensus regarding a particular topic’ that have no relation to ‘strategic or manifesto points, or any other aspect covered by the drafts’. These were voted on mid-October.

Drafts were further debated at a face-to-face meeting in Madrid on 18-19 October attended by 7,000 people; voting on them began the following week. The final stages of the Citizens’ Assembly, which commenced following the approval of an organisational principles document, involved the presentation of candidates, live?streamed debates and, finally, elections to decide which of them will represent Podemos.

The initial planning of this detailed process began immediately after Podemos’s European election triumph and the central concern of those involved was how to make it different and, more importantly, democratic. As Maura emphasises, the organisation process was from the outset an open one, with two lists of 25 people competing in an election – in which anyone, non-members included, could stand or vote – to determine who would organise the technical side of the conference.

When it came to the election, the major disagreement was between those who wanted to implement a system of branch delegates and those who instead argued for one person, one vote. The latter, which Maura himself advocated, won out and the result was that all one needed to participate in the Citizens’ Assembly was a voting code and an email account, irrespective of whether one was a member of Podemos or not. Maura’s explanation for the decision to adopt this system goes to the heart of Podemos’s approach to politics: ‘Most people who participate in the branches have more time to engage in politics, but we don’t think a process like this should be just for people already engaged in politics. We think that this kind of process is a good way of drawing people in and of making them feel that politics is not what they think it is. We think that we should give people the opportunity of not only having their say but also of having the same decision-making power as people who engage in politics at grassroots level.

‘People don’t necessarily want to spend a weekend in a conference hall discussing, but people were interested and a lot of people registered online, where they can also participate. Some of them became members, others didn’t, but they are willing to participate and we are happy they want to.’

* Online democracy

“Aside from the well-attended face-to-face meeting in Madrid, the Citizens’ Assembly was conducted almost entirely online. Much of this was done via the social networking site Reddit, which provided the main platform for the submission, debate and voting on drafts and resolutions. Such has been the flow of information on Podemos’s Reddit site, Plaza Podemos, which also hosts regular open question-and-answer sessions with party leaders, that it caught the eye of Reddit’s general manager, forcing him to enquire what exactly Podemos was and why exactly it was generating so much traffic.

Reddit is by no means the only digital platform used by Podemos. It has also developed and utilised apps for multiple aspects of the democratic process, from determining agendas to voting. Yet despite the centrality of digital technology to the Podemos project, which has garnered as much attention from the technological community as it has from the political, it should not be mistaken for techno-fetishism, nor for a belief that online participation is necessarily better than physical.

Rather, Podemos’s decision to embrace technology is rooted in its analysis of contemporary work and society. ‘Work, and with it people’s lives, have become fragmented and we thought we needed a participation process that recognised this,’ says Maura. ‘The problem that most people have is that working and having a family and doing politics is not compatible, the one often excludes the other. There is no perfect solution but online participation is a very good thing. Most people use mobile phones all the time, so why shouldn’t you be able to do politics from the tube or from the bus?’

The use of technology for political purposes inevitably presents its own set of problems, especially as regards the tendency of hierarchies, both formal and informal, to develop on the basis of expertise. This power dynamic also manifests itself in relation to non-technological expertise, and has an increased resonance in the context of the technocratic dimension to austerity politics and contemporary global governance. Podemos is of course a very far cry from the IMF or any other such technocratic behemoth, but there are a notable number of economists and political scientists in senior positions in the party, raising difficult issues for participation and democracy.

‘You can’t avoid people having different levels of expertise or of interest,’ says Maura. ‘Those who pass motions, pose questions and participate more sometimes have the expertise, but what we have discovered is that normally these people are not used to debating and discussing things in an open space; they are more used to discussing in very small groups in the academy. When a person with a certain level of expertise has to engage in a very open space things get very even very quickly – because you can’t use the same old words anymore, because no one will understand you. These people are facing a new audience and this audience is determining a lot.’

Democratising expertise, then, doesn’t necessarily mean everyone becoming an expert, but rather ensuring that expertise operates within the boundaries of democracy and accountability. Maura says this is precisely what happened with the election to determine who would organise the Citizens’ Assembly, a process he describes as an attempt to politicise the technical and democratise what one might term the tyranny of expertise.”