With the election results only a few hours away, we’d like to finish today’s coverage with an extract from Katharine Ainger‘s excellent Al-Jazeera article entitled “Spain’s ‘citizen candidates’ shake up politics“. In preparation for the article Ainger contacted P2P Foundation co-founder Michel Bauwens for some feedback.

---

Bauwens told Al Jazeera given historical problems with monolithic political parties on the one hand, and problems with direct democratic assemblies on the other, “the most realistic option is to combine electoral democracy with new forms of deliberative and participative democracy”.

With numerous figures from both traditional major parties in Spain embroiled in corruption scandals, there has been a collapse of public trust for conventional politicians. This crisis of political legitimacy is exacerbated by the second highest unemployment rate in Europe, low wages, and anger against cuts to social welfare. As a result the country’s bipartisan system is being eroded, in many different directions.

This is the context in which Barcelona en Comú and sister coalitions are contesting Sunday’s municipal elections in towns and cities across the country, from Galicia to the Canary Islands. They are polling best in Spain’s two largest cities, Madrid and Barcelona. In many cases allied with anti-austerity party Podemos, and using crowdsourced electoral platforms, social activists are running for office under names such as Ahora Madrid (Madrid Now) and Zaragoza en Comun (Zaragoza in Common).

Javier Toret, the developer of Barcelona en Comú’s online participation platforms, said he is influenced by theorists such as Michel Bauwens, who is working in the field of peer-to-peer technology to create new forms of democracy.

Bauwens told Al Jazeera given historical problems with monolithic political parties on the one hand, and problems with direct democratic assemblies on the other, “the most realistic option is to combine electoral democracy with new forms of deliberative and participative democracy”.

With new technology it is now easier and cheaper than ever before for citizens to vote on almost any issue in the running of their cities. Toret was particularly inspired by web tools from Reykjavik in Iceland, where users proposed and debated policies online, took budgetary decisions, and voted on neighbourhood issues.

Using a similar model, 1,000 people took part online in the creation of Barcelona en Comú’s ethical code. Aimed at increasing transparency and avoiding corruption, the code limits wages to 26,400 euros ($29,000) a year for all party officials – thereby slashing the mayor’s salary by more than 100,000 euros ($110,100) – and commits them to full transparency, including publishing all meetings and income sources, and to “promote and support all citizen initiatives”.

Click here to read the full article