Transcript
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Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg

Philosophische Fakultät

Vorlesung „Einführung in die Politikwissenschaft“

Lecturer Dr. Christoph Haas

WS 2011/12

DELEGATIVE DEMOCRACY

IS THE PIRATENPARTEI LIQUID DEMOCRACY PROPOSAL FIT

FOR GERMANY?

Submitted by:

Andrea Cangialosi

[email protected]

B.A. Philosophie (5. Semester)

Università degli Studi di Palermo – Italien

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CONTENTS

Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 3

1. The concepts of Liquid Democracy............................................................................. 5

1.1 Last millennia of democracies .............................................................................. 5

1.2 The “golden mean” of democracy ........................................................................ 6

1.3 Modern-contemporary chronological account ..................................................... 7

1.4 DD in six features ................................................................................................. 9

1.5 LD: One idea, different (software) versions ....................................................... 11

2. German and Swedish political systems outline ......................................................... 15

2.1 The Swedish case (E-Democracy, grassroots parties, new issues invest politics,

worldwide phenomena) ................................................................................................. 16

2.2 The German case (DD, State parliament breach, internal debates, law

acknowledgment) .......................................................................................................... 18

2.3 LD cases comparison ......................................................................................... 19

3. Prospects of German LD ........................................................................................... 19

Results ............................................................................................................................... 21

Bibliography ..................................................................................................................... 22

ABBREVIATIONS

DD Delegative democracy

DE Demoex

LD Liquid democracy

PP PiratenPartei

PV Proxy voting

INDEX OF TABLES

Software comparison (LD criteria) ............... 13

German and Swedish in comparison ........... 16

DE and other Swedish grassroot parties ...... 17

PP and DE in comparison (LD cases) ........... 19

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«Every man is a sharer [...] and feels that he is a participator in the government of af-

fairs, not merely at an election one day in the year, but every day»1

Thomas Jefferson

INTRODUCTION

Little is known about Liquid Democracy, yet a consistent work around the world has al-

ready been done, both theoretical and practical, on many sorts of analogue projects. An

increasing spirit of disappointment and critical debate has arisen in Europe, the very heart

of democracy2. Liquid Democracy, with the help of a fairly new concept of participation,

the so called “transitive proxy” or “delegable proxy” voting, claims to be a solution; or if

not so, to be at least an improvement.

In between the two distant position of basic and representative democracy, there's a span

of opportunities. Liquid Democracy is one of the ways to explore it, “liquidifying” the ri-

gidity of these kinds of model.

«Delegative democracy is a new paradigm for a democratic organization which emphasizes individual-

ly chosen vote transfers (delegation) over mass election. Delegative democracy combines the best ele-

ments of direct and representative democracy by replacing artificially imposed representation struc-

tures with an adaptive structure founded on real personal and group trust relationships. Delegative de-

mocracy empowers individuals and encourages widespread direct participation in a democratic organi-

zation, without unduly burdening or disenfranchising those members who, for lack of time, interest, or

knowledge would prefer to take a more passive role».3

Though, even if this general definition of what is a delegative democracy (from now on

just “DD”) by Brian Ford was accepted, there would still be different peculiar variants to

regard. What also may be confusing is the plenty of names that refer to them: “Direct par-

1 Jefferson, Thomas, Letter to Samuel Kercheval, in: Lipscomb, Andrew A. / Bergh, Albert E. (Ed.), The

Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Washington 1905, Volume 13, P. 422 (Italics by A.C.). 2 In consequence of the Spanish “Movimiento 15-M” (15th May 2011 movement), many versions of the

same sort of questioning groups focusing nowadays democracy appeared in other Countries: right after the

national “¡Democracia real YA!” (also as “DRY”, Real democracy NOW), e.g., “Echte Demokratie,

JETZT!” in Germany. They consist of local assemblies spread into territories, in contact with each other.

More is to be found in the research paper Holberg, Sara, The Spanish Revolution: A study on the 15-M

movement in Spain, Uppsala University 2012, PP. 12 ff., http://bit.ly/ypOMd2, (03.03.2012). 3 Ford , Bryan, Delegative Democracy, Yale University 2002, P. 1, http://bit.ly/GBRvhm, (03.03.2012).

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liamentarism”, “Augmented democracy” and Liquid democracy (from now on just “LD”),

for example. Using DD I’ll refer to the general theory, meanwhile with LD I’ll stress on

its application, through the use of Internet and special software designs.4 It might also ap-

pear puzzling the variety of voting mechanisms: single-transferable-vote, proportional

voting, delegate cascade or proxy voting (from now on just “PV”). For the sake of the

discussion, only the last one will be characterized.

PV has principally two forms: delegable voting and delegated voting, which are proce-

dures for the delegation to another member of a voting body of that member's power to

vote in his absence, and/or for the selection of additional representatives, as in the case

with transitive proxies. Indeed, in a delegated voting framework, the proxy can be transi-

tive and the transfer recursive. Put simply, the vote can be further delegated to the proxy's

proxy, and so on.

An early proposal of delegate voting was that of Lewis Carroll in a paper dated 1884. But

there are almost no other historical accounts till the second half of 21st century. Internet

voting has been used by the Swedish local political party Demoex, who won its first seat

in the city council of Vallentuna in 2002.5 Is this idea's seed, planted long ago, finally be-

coming reality? Is Sweden a special case or is it going to be possible for other countries,

for example Germany, to have a working model of LD? Is the developed software feasi-

ble to accomplish what political parties and organization want from them?

Due to formal limitations, I'll be very specific in regard of study cases, giving just some

references about the bigger political frame where they take place. It’s also going to be re-

quired to leave out many alternative versions or additional features of theories found,

which I will likewise mention when possible through footnotes and bibliographic refer-

ences.

4 It’s a distinction made without referring to any source or literature, though it’s anyhow necessary and use-

ful to disambiguate. The name Liquid Democracy has also been used by the Berlin’s homonymous associa-

tion that promotes and develops these ideas. 5 There still are other events strictly intertwined with the history of these ideas that are going to be analyzed

with more attention introducing the first part of this work.

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In the first part of this work I will try to skim through the scarce material that exists about

the topic6. Doing so, I will sketch a chronology of democracy as we knew it and as it’s

lately changing. I’ll try to summarize in a comparative table the main features of LD, as

well as problems, through different software solutions (and their characteristics, too). In

the second one, I'll give a brief overview about the German and Swedish political systems,

in order to analyze in a comparison the Swedish Demoex (from now on just “DE”) with

the German case of PiratenPartei, reusing the criteria previously found. So another table

will be sketched. Then, in the third part, I'll attempt to forecast, as possible, the future de-

velopments of this young party to finally argue – in regard of those chosen criteria – that

the Piraten's proposal LiqdFeedback it's not yet fit to be politically well established (per-

haps not even inside the party itself). This is basically due to inner unresolved issues and

also a lack of reach over the so called not-yet-alphabetized internet population and, leav-

ing out the new generations, the remaining public opinion.

1. THE CONCEPTS OF LIQUID DEMOCRACY

1.1 LAST MILLENNIA OF DEMOCRACIES

Looking back at the past, using again the words of Ford, I’ll bluntly state that direct de-

mocracy is not only impractical, but that could also be deprecable.

«The basic principle of direct democracy is that, to ensure maximum equality and fairness, all mem-

bers of an organization should ideally take part directly in making all important decisions. Unfortu-

nately, direct democracy in its pure form only works in small and highly cohesive groups. […] In larg-

er or more widely distributed organizations, let alone governments, pure direct democracy is simply in-

feasible.

Furthermore, even if pure direct democracy was feasible, it is not clear that it would be desirable. Any

real human community shows a wide variance in knowledge, interests, and abilities among its mem-

bers, and if the influence of each member is forced to be exactly equal, then the effective intelligence

and wisdom of the collective may be not better than the average […] ». (Ford 2002: 1)

6 This work relies mostly on English and German working paper, journals and Internet sources, since there

is no different literature yet. One obvious reason of this is the very youth of these ideas and projects, anoth-

er one is the environment in which the discussion itself has taken place. That is strictly related to this trend:

media and tools used are so blogs, forums, wikis and so on. Also another reason will be advanced in the

conclusive part.

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This very reason is one the ones Aristotle used to show how democracy is indeed a pejo-

rative degree, a “perverted regime”, derived by a constitutional government – whose

name it's not explicitly mentioned – whilst, for example, there's a combination of small

property qualification for the poor and a high one for the rich.7 The egalitarian constraint

abolishes the natural differentiation between members' attitude to govern.

«For these reasons and others, large-scale democracy in the modern world always involves some form

of representative structure, in which a relatively small number of leaders are elected by the member-

ship at large to make decisions on their behalf. […] Regardless of specific structure, representative

democratic systems are invariably built around the premise that in a given election, voters are expected

to choose between a small number of candidates or parties for a given position or representative body,

with large representative bodies usually being divided into pre-defined districts or constituencies to

which voters are pre-assigned.» (Ford 2002: 2)

The insufficiency of a pure representative paradigm it's clearly already been shown: « [...]

a certain degree of direct democracy is often grafted onto otherwise representative sys-

tems by way of popular initiatives, referenda, and recalls, allowing voters to participate in

certain important decisions directly while leaving the vast majority of the day-to-day de-

cisions to the elected representatives». (Ford 2002: 2)

1.2 THE “GOLDEN MEAN” OF DEMOCRACY

Using the lexicon of ancient philosophers, it could be said that between the two extremes

of pure direct and pure representative, delegative democracy is the golden mean:

«DD is about truly bringing power to the people without overloading those who do not want to wallow

in the details». (Ford 2002: 3)

In a way, DD it’s not something new: it’s a mixture of components and elements of al-

ready existing democracies.

7 Such name was not given, letting us assume that it was the title itself as well as the main topic of the so

called “Politics” book. Politeia (πολιτεία) is an Ancient Greek word with no single English translation. De-

rived from the word polis ("city-state"), it is an important term in Ancient Greek political thought, especial-

ly that of Plato and Aristotle. In the works of these philosophers, the principal meaning of politeia appears

to be: "how a polis is run; constitution". A politeia differs from modern written constitutions in two re-

spects: first, not all Greek states put their laws in writing; more importantly, the Greeks did not normally

distinguish between ordinary and constitutional legislation. If a certain body had the power to change the

laws, it had the power to change the laws controlling its own power and membership – even to abolish it-

self and set up a new governing body.

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«DD accepts the premise that some form of representation is needed to minimize the burden on voters

who are uninterested in or incapable of taking an active and well-informed role in the organization, but

it challenges the basic premise that the number of such representatives must be kept small and relative-

ly fixed, and that the number of candidates (or parties) a given voter may choose from for a given posi-

tion must similarly be kept small […]. Instead, DD adopts the alternative premise that voters should

have the widest possible direct choice of representatives, and that they should be enabled and encour-

aged to build personal relationships with their representatives, ideally involving some level of trust and

rapport.» (Ford 2002: 3)

The choice of delegation will be a sort of “proximity search” of the one who’s closest, in

regard of values, cultural or religious identity, geographic locality (also economic situa-

tion or other common interests, etc.). To be able to find this matching person, a voter’s

choice of delegate should be as broad and unrestricted as possible (preferring trust rela-

tionship, mutual identification rather than propaganda campaign).

If a member would instead be willing to participate actively (in opposition to “passively”

delegate) she could become a delegate herself: each candidate doesn’t compete with the

others in a win/lose game configuration. Instead, the “voting strength” of each delegate

commands in subsequent deliberation varies in proportion to the number of votes re-

ceived.

Obviously this fundamental paradigm shift raises many theoretical and practical issues.

For example: how could a body of delegates fit in a room and carry out a conventional

deliberative process, when it’s too numerous? This multitude could also complicate the

choice process first, and then the ballot: for ex., how many names could be placed in a list?

As for any real democracy, these problems regarding DD should by bypassed and, or

faced fitting a particular organization and specific cultural requirements. Every delegative

democracy has to be designed and adapted in peculiar ways.

1.3 MODERN-CONTEMPORARY CHRONOLOGICAL ACCOUNT

As anticipated already, these ideas didn’t always remain in the field of theories. There are

some episodes in history that may count as examples of a DD. In the 18th

century, the in-

ternal policies of the Paris Commune are seen as the real-world precursor to the more

formalized notions of modern delegative democracy. Also early soviets – Russian word

for council – had one, during the 1905 Russian revolution, before a Bolshevik majority

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was reached. After that, DD was gradually eroded in favor of more representational

forms of governance. As for precursor theories of the delegative voting, an ancestor is the

“single transferable vote” of the 19th

century short pamphlet by Lewis Carroll: “The Prin-

ciples of Parliamentary Representation” (1884). Traces of DD reappear in the theoretical

discussion with another mathematician, Gordon Tullock.

«In the late 1960’s, as people began to realize the power that computers would eventually have to re-

shape society, the academic literature on these ideas leapt forward. In 1967, Gordon Tullock devoted

the last chapter of “Toward a Mathematics of Politics” to proportional representation […] each repre-

sentative has voting power equal to the number of votes he receives. […] The direct-voting-option

principle […] appears in James C. Miller III’s 1969 article, “A Program for Direct and Proxy Voting in

the Legislative Process”. Miller, too, is inspired by the promise of technology».8

So, apart from the creative genius of Charles L. Dodgson (the real name behind the pseu-

donym Carroll), starting from Tullock to our century, the recent proposals were made,

among others, by a computer scientist expert, Bryan Ford, and from a software engineer,

Michael Allan.9 Except for the two revolutionary contexts – the French and the Russian

ones –, the return of these concepts is due to a change within the society we live in: we

are slowly becoming more and more an information society. That is a form of society

where the use, manipulation, distribution, diffusion of information is a significant eco-

nomic, political, and cultural activity. The so called digital citizens are those who have

means to partake the process, using IT in a creative and productive way.

With this in mind, I guess that what before was just a utopian idealization can – relatively

– soon really become reality, by means of technologies and average people knowledge.10

Democracy could make this step in this century on the way to digitalized democracy, but

there are also ways of having a LD without the use of Internet.11

8 Green-Armytage, James A.K., Voluntary delegation as the basis for a future political system, University

of California 2010, PP. 3-4, http://bit.ly/GCH5zT, (01.03.2012). 9 In Nordfors, Mikael, Democracy 2.1: How to make a bunch of selfish people work together, Online-

booklet 2003, http://bit.ly/GBJU7z, (03.03.2012) even being an “outsider” – i.e. doctor – Nordfors high-

lights some of the key problems with hierarchical/authoritarian organization and the current systems of de-

mocracy proposing new form of democracy empowered by the use of Information and Communications

Technology. 10 WikiLeaks and Arab Spring could be seen as strong signals of this process’ acceleration, too. 11 More about DD without Internet use may be found in the fourth section of the Green-Armytage paper.

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Indeed, as already stated, to prove that DD is doable there are already operating projects

spread around the world. PV is used by the Swedish local political party DemoEx (Dem-

ocratic Experiment). They won their first seat in the Swedish city council of Vallentuna

in 2002. The first years of activity in the party have been evaluated by Mitthögskolan

University in a paper by Karin Ottesen in 2003. As a DD, a voter can be passive, delegat-

ing, or active, voting directly (the direct vote overrules the proxy vote). A really im-

portant feature is the possibility to change the proxy at any time.

Mikael Nordfors, pioneer in the field of e-democracy, after having founded a company

called Vivarto, was also one of the founders of the DemoEx political party, offering them

the software the company had implemented. This idea has later also become adapted by

The World Parliament Experiment (WPE), where Mikael is a member. Outside Europe,

far from either Europe or United States, this kind of movement also reached in the Mid-

dle East: SD2 Pakistan project stands for “Structural Deep Democracy”.12

1.4 DD IN SIX FEATURES

Again, I want to emphasize this point: in different places democracy has to be shaped fol-

lowing the organization or any others’ system. The principle is that a truly fair and effec-

tive democratic system can’t be “top-down” imposed; instead it should be “self-

determinative” in order to uniform itself on everyone’s expectations.

Still a draft of main features can be draw following the summary made by Ford. (Ford

2002: 4-6)

1. Choice of Role: Each member can choose to take either a passive role as an individu-

al or an active role as a delegate.

Delegates have further choices as to how active they are and in what areas. A member

who chooses and active role by becoming a delegate is expected to make an effort to

understand the overall structure and operation of the organization, stay informed

about the major issues the organization is facing, be familiar with members and can-

12 In 2005 the pilot study in Pakistan, Structural Deep Democracy, was used for leadership selection in a

sustainable agriculture group called Contact Youth. SD2 uses PageRank for the processing of the transitive

proxy votes, with the additional constraints of mandating at least two initial proxies per voter, and all voters

are proxy candidates. Unfortunately nor official nor updated documentation regarding this has been found.

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didates of important offices, and be willing to communicate and interact regularly

with individuals and other delegates. The members who choose to remain individuals

can still participate in the process, but just in the form of identification with their del-

egates.

2. Low Barrier to Participation: The difficulty and cost of becoming a delegate is small,

and in particular does not require campaigning or winning a competitive election.

To maximize the chance that individual voters will be able to find delegates who they

identify with closely and with whom they can interact directly, there should be no

fixed limit on the total number of delegates, or in some situations, a small barrier en-

try might still be appropriate to ensure that would-be delegates are actually deter-

mined (for ex., have to pass a short exam covering the basic principles and structure

of the organization, based on readily available public information). Being a delegate

normally should by no means represent a full-time job.

3. Delegated Authority: Delegates exercise power in organizational processes on behalf

of themselves and those individuals who vote for them. Different delegates, therefore,

can exercise varying levels of decision power.

Delegates speak and act for themselves and for those individuals who have selected

them. Since the occasional “celebrity effects” can be expected, the system must en-

sure that the power of widely popular celebrities is counterbalanced by the larger

numbers of “ordinary” delegates wielding smaller voting blocks.

4. Privacy of the Individual: To avoid social pressures or coercion, all votes made by in-

dividuals are private, both from other individuals and from delegates.

To minimize the influence of social or peer pressures and the potential vulnerability

to coercion, the actual votes of individuals are strictly private and anonymous; while

the total number of individuals that voted for each delegate in a given election cycle

is public knowledge. This uncertainty of constituency, coupled with the fact that any

particular “unsatisfied customers” can always change their votes or become delegates

themselves, should encourage delegates to think broadly and independently and rep-

resent their community even-handedly instead of catering to the needs or demands of

a specific few.

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5. Accountability of the delegates: To ensure the accountability of delegates to their vot-

ers and to the community at large, all formal deliberative decisions made by delegates

are public.

This follows in two main respects: first, delegates must be accountable to their con-

stituents (voters being effectively able to watch delegate’s subsequent actions); se-

cond, delegates must be accountable to the larger community (secrecy might be used

not to having to explain one’s vote).

6. Specialization by Re-Delegation: Delegates can not only act directly on behalf of in-

dividuals as generalists, but through re-delegation they can also act on behalf of each

other as specialists.

The first-order duty of all delegates is to act as generalists, however, any complex or-

ganization or society also requires a wide variety of specialists, so many delegates

will have particular areas of expertise or interest in which they are willing and able to

devote additional time and attention: the principle of delegation is also used within

the body of delegates to further transfer or re-delegate to each other certain kinds of

specialized authority.

In this account, the tools presented are by Ford himself treated expressly only at a fairly

high, abstract level. Different types and scales of organizations’ structures will necessari-

ly differ among each other.13

1.5 LD: ONE IDEA, DIFFERENT (SOFTWARE) VERSIONS

Liquid democracy is expected to be accessed by Internet (that is nowadays reachable by

almost anyone, anytime); therefore it must somehow run on server machines. For these

servers to be able to provide all the functions stated above, specific software is required.

13 «One organization may fall in basically two categories: directive or executive. […] In a traditional repre-

sentative democratic organization, the board of directors or some equivalent usually serves as the primary

directive structure, whereas officers elected to one or a few key positions (President, treasurer, etc.) define

and manage the executive structure. […] In general, democratic values usually demand that directive struc-

tures be relatively flat and decentralized, in order to reflect the will of the membership accurately, whereas

executive structures are kept hierarchical and centralized for the purpose of focusing responsibility for im-

plementing policy and allowing more rapid response to unexpected situations.» (Ford 2002: 6-7) More is to

be found in the third section of the quoted paper.

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So, in this way the implementation itself will shape system’s policies and what users can

do.

Green-Armytage gives a hypothetical overview of what that could be:

«So, suppose that there are a number of issues to be decided at the end of a given time period. As a cit-

izen, I have an online account that allows me to view these issues and vote on each of them. Suppose

also that a number of people (called “public voters” or “model voters”) have chosen to publicly cast

suggested votes on each of these issues, that is, to post them online for anyone to refer to, perhaps

along with discussion forums and written or taped statements explaining the reasoning behind the votes.

Now, if I’m not sure how to vote on an issue, then rather than abstaining or taking a random guess, I

can pick a public voter whom I trust and copy his vote onto my own ballot. For convenience, I should

be able to simply enter the name of the public voter in a particular field; then the computer will copy

his vote automatically to mine. After I do this, if the public voter decides to change his public vote be-

fore the end of the period, then my online ballot will update itself accordingly (unless I specify other-

wise). Likewise, if I change my mind during the period, I can cast a different vote or indicate a differ-

ent public voter as my proxy.

If I want to use the same public voter as the basis for all of my public votes, then I should be able to do

this with a single command, rather than having to perform the same action separately on each of the

different issues. The goal here is to minimize the cost to citizens with limited time to spend on voting.

Public voters can view each other’s accounts, discuss the issues, and copy each other’s votes. »

(Green-Armytage 2010: 8-9)

Many projects have sought to implement proxy voting systems. Just in the comparison

page from which I’ll extract the information about the three most performing systems

(Votorola, Adhocracy, LiqdFeedback), there’s a list of sixteen different software.14

These

seven criteria about the freedom degree of voters (plus the stage of development) will be

further addressed below the table, even though, of course, there are many more parame-

ters under which a DD could – and should – be analyzed.

14 The objectivity of this comparison might be argued since the author is also involved in Votorola’s project.

The page mentioned was last modified in October 2011 and is to be found at: Von Der Elbe, Thomas,

Software-Vergleich, 2011, http://bit.ly/GHUypX, (03.03.2012). I’ll suggest considering also a deeper tech-

nical analysis in the working paper Horbank, David, Liquid Democracy: Neue Formen direkter Demokratie

im Internetzeitalter, Leipzig University 2011, PP. 17-20, http://bit.ly/GBPPo2, (03.03.2012). Another pre-

cious source is the database ParticipateDB (right now in beta version) that provides a growing list of tools

and services that have been used for web-based participation in the past: ParticipateDB, 2009,

http://participatedb.com, (03.03.2012).

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1. Scaling: Are voters free to vote on any local, national and global issue that concerns

them? In terms of software this is called scalability. Many tools are suitable rather for

groups from small to medium proportions.

2. Availability: Are voters free to vote at any time, 24 hours a day, every day of the year?

Some tools avoid the fact that a vote must go through various phases, such as the

phase of the proposal to jointly work without the possibility to vote on them simulta-

neously.

3. Participation: Are voters free to provide their own solutions to the vote and collect

votes? For example, in some cases only administrators can.

4. Delegability: Are voters free to delegate their own voice and the votes received yet

any further? Many tools provide generally no votes delegation.

5. Modifiability: Are voters free to change their position or vote at any time? Also, this

is prevented in part by segments in phases: a proposal would for example be “frozen”,

so it can’t be changed. Or there are times where the vote is declared by the system

“complete” and one cannot change it anymore.

6. Network:

a. Are voters free to choose between different tools, so that their voice is displayed

and counted in all the other tools? Few tools support mirrored votes, or thematize

this problem at all. Several, however, have given their consent to a “common vote

registry”.

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b. Are voters free to maintain their own voting tool, independent of governments, in-

stitutions, etc., but connected to the rest of the vote network? Again, the openness

toward mirroring to a different (new) tool is here the only condition.

7. Export:

a. Are voters free to filter all the votes for all possible criteria, such as nationali-

ty, age, etc.? How much is the reliability of the used tools, also which is the

authentication method used? Once data export is supported, this filter function

can also be realized by an external application. Internally, it hasn’t been real-

ized in any tool.

b. Are voters free to check the results? More or less, as above.

8. Development (state of):

This describes the current state of tools’ development, and thus the assessment of

their usability. This means that a tool can be obtain 10 points in a specific category, if

the feature is clearly documented, but yet without having it implemented.

In few years, between the time of this comparison and today, many new projects have

started. And, of course, also those mentioned have gone thought developments and

changes.

Votorola is social software in support of non-party primary elections and public rule

making. It provides the tools to enable a radically free democracy based on unrestricted

voting, drafting and discussion. The alpha prototypes cover everything from voter regis-

tration in electoral districts to consensus making. This may be the oldest project, inspiring

the followers, but now less active then them.15

Adhocracy is a policy drafting tool for distributed groups, developed by a team from Liq-

uid Democracy e.V.. It allows members of organizations or the public to compose or vote

documents that represent the policy of the group.16

So it targets organizations, NGOs,

15 No party seems to use it anymore; even Demoex shifted to a forum framework called ED (2003-2006),

and then developed (2006) and started using their own (2008). 16 As for the term, Adhocracy is a type of organization that operates in opposite fashion to a bureaucracy.

The word is a portmanteau of the Latin ad hoc, meaning "for the purpose", and the suffix -cracy, from the

ancient Greek kratein (κρατεῖν), meaning "to govern".

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corporations and social initiatives offering a democratic process the possibility to develop

its strategies, aims and internal rules. From 2011 a new interface (GUI) has been imple-

mented granting better user-friendly access.

LiqdFeedback – often written as “LQFB” – implementation focuses on structured feed-

back (intended to organize communication between an initiative and the voters) and the

voting process itself while leaving the means of discussion within an initiative (alliance

or party as far as an issue is concerned) to the choice of a given initiative. Initiatives shall

get an idea how successful a proposition is likely to be and what to change in order to

gain more support. Likewise voters can try to influence propositions by their feedback or

instigate a new initiative with an own proper version.

2. GERMAN AND SWEDISH POLITICAL SYSTEMS OUTLINE

Sweden is a constitutional monarchy, in which the king is head of state, but royal power

has long been limited to official and ceremonial functions. The nation's legislative body

is constitutionally; its power is only exercised by the riksdag (parliament). The 349

members of the unicameral parliament are responsible for choosing the prime minister,

who then appoints the government department heads (cabinet ministers). Executive pow-

er is exercised by the prime minister and the cabinet, while the judiciary is independent.

Members are elected on the basis of proportional representation for a four-year term.

Since the Great Depression, Swedish national politics has largely been dominated by the

Social Democratic Workers' Party, which has held a plurality (and sometimes a majority)

in parliament since 1917. During the period from 1932-2006 the Social Democrats pre-

sided over the government for 65 years, almost exclusively without a minor partner.17

The Federal Republic of Germany is a federal parliamentary republic, in which the Chan-

cellor is the head of government, while the President of Germany is the head of state

(which is a ceremonial role with substantial reserve powers). Executive power is vested

17 A more detailed historical analysis about parties can be found in Klingemann, Hans-Dieter / Hofferbert,

Richard I. / Budge, Ian, Parties, Policies and Democracy, Boulder 1994 – this counts both for Sweden (PP.

155-171) and Germany (PP. 188-205); regarding the electoral systems and party system, refer to the com-

parison in Siaroff, Alan, Comparing political regimes: a thematic introduction to comparative politics, Pe-

terborough 2005, PP. 173-199.

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in the Bundesregierung (Federal cabinet), and federal legislative power is vested in the

Bundestag (Federal diet) and the Bundesrat – the representative body of the Länder (re-

gional states). The parliament is elected for a four-year term and consists of 598 or more

members elected by a means of mixed member proportional representation. The judiciary

power is independent from the executive and the legislature.

There is a multi-party system that, since 1949, has been dominated by the Christian

Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).18

2.1 THE SWEDISH CASE (E-DEMOCRACY, GRASSROOTS PAR-

TIES, NEW ISSUES INVEST POLITICS, WORLDWIDE PHE-

NOMENA)

Within Sweden, four small political parties have been named “grassroots parties” by

Boyd, because of their claims to combine participation and ICTs. Here a summary ac-

count excerpted from a bigger table.19

18 See previous footnote. 19 Boyd, P. Ovid, Grassroots Political Parties in Sweden, Örebro University 2008, P. 4, http://bit.ly/GB3lvU,

(03.03.2012)

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«Demoex formed in Vallentuna municipality out of high school discussions on democracy. “Though

the advertising campaign was small and cheap, it was enough to win the first [direct democracy] man-

datory in Europe” [Norbäck, 2004]. The party binds its elected representative to vote in the council ac-

cording to the results of citizens’ eVote. Participation in their system is low, possibly due to the unlike-

lihood of the party’s one representative casting a deciding vote. Nonetheless, Demoex managed to

nearly double its votes in the last election. Participation in their system is low, possibly due to the un-

likelihood of the party’s one representative casting a deciding vote. Nonetheless, Demoex managed to

nearly double its votes in the last election». (Boyd 2008: 3)

Is it to be stressed that the DE political form makes indeed use of Internet and “electronic

votes” but doesn’t fulfill the features of a DD: it’s still simply direct democracy.

Sweden has inspired also similar projects in other Countries, such as “DemoEx UK” and

“DemoEx Brasil”. But the most exported Swedish “political good” is possibly the Pirate

Party. Piratpartiet was founded in 2006 by Rickard Falkvinge (leader until 2011) as the

website was launched. It has taken part of the 2006 Riksag elections, without reaching the

4% minimum required; though, it became the third largest political party by membership

in May 2009.20

The Pirate Party received 7.13% of the total Swedish votes in the 2009

European Parliament elections, which was originally to result in one seat in the European

parliament, but became two when the Lisbon Treaty was ratified. The Pirate Parties In-

20 Its influence can be seen as less than a week before the 2006 elections, the Green Party shifted their

stance on copyright reform. Additionally, both the Moderate Party and the Left Party changed their stances

on internet downloads, and both prime minister candidates stated publicly that it shouldn't be illegal for

young people to share files. Several influential analysts have credited the Pirate Party and its rising popular-

ity for this shift in the political climate.

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ternational (PPI) is the international side of movement, founded in 2010 to promote and

coordinate the rise of parties with the same name and similar goals in Europe and world-

wide.

2.2 THE GERMAN CASE (DD, STATE PARLIAMENT BREACH,

INTERNAL DEBATES, LAW ACKNOWLEDGMENT)

Soon after the foundation of Piratenpartei Österreichs in Austria (July 2006), in Berlin is

founded the Piratenpartei Deutschland or short Piraten, officially born 10th

September

2006. In the 2011 Berlin state election, with 8.9 % of the votes the PP managed for the

first time to overcome the 5 % threshold and to win seats (numbering 15 out of 141 seats

in the Abgeordnetenhaus) in a German state parliament.

As its relatives, the party supports the preservation of current civil rights in telephony and

on the Internet; in particular, it opposes the European data retention policies. PP favors

the civil right to information privacy and reforms of copyright, education, genetic patents

and drug policy. It promotes in particular an enhanced transparency of government by

implementing open source governance and providing for APIs (Application Program-

ming Interface) to allow for electronic inspection and monitoring of government opera-

tions by the citizen. They themselves are testing the LD tool previously mentioned and

discussed, called Liquid Feedback.21

As result of these tests, a debate arose within the party. Some of them experienced prob-

lems like a lack of participation, after the first few days of activity, resulting in leaving

delegated votes unmonitored; concerning this, they are trying a delegative choice’s “expi-

ration date” solution of six months, to prevent inactive users to compromise the system.

Another issue involves anonymity and the choice of user names: should they be clearly

visible for everyone or just for them who are managing their delegates? Should they

match the personal ID or be freely chosen? Also, of a great importance is the fact that

many have “globally” delegated their voting power, without filtering any specific area:

one of the aims of DD was to rely on some experts on a matter, while on others on anoth-

21 The party program is constantly updated on their Wiki website: PiratenPartei, Parteiprogramm: Grund-

satzprogramm der Piratenpartei Deutschland, 2012, http://bit.ly/GIsdCa, (22.03.2012).

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er one. In any case, the DD system is still confined within the physical members of PP in

a way that all the official decisions as party have to be made by presence, since the elec-

tronic vote it’s not yet legitimate.

2.3 LD CASES COMPARISON

Using again the same criteria of the first part about “LD: One idea, different (software)

versions” (see section 1.5), it’s possible to discuss and compare this party that have such

a distinctive shape.

First – and maybe most important by means of practicability – is the scale: while DE

works within a city council, the PP wants to be a national party of a State big like Ger-

many. Then the very IT system: DE has been already running its second software, tested

in years, on the contrary the PP hasn’t the same amount of experience and wants also to

push the “experiment” further with the LD concepts (delegability). Pooling rate, or else

the frequency with which the topics are discussed and voted: there’s no relevant differ-

ence here. As for the delegability, PP made it clear as an aim, while the entire direction of

DE is different and – as far as for the present – it doesn’t include this possibility. The

modifiability had to do with the state of the voting process; here it’s not applicable to the

party itself. For “Party” Network it’s suggested the feature of interfacing different party

systems so that, for ex. voters’ list can merge without creating duplicates or one voter can

move from a party to another without losing his/her voters, and so on. Export is the

chance of transferring the contents from an IT system to another: it’s something that al-

ready happened for the DE and still it’s unknown in the case of PP.

3. PROSPECTS OF GERMAN LD

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A series of interesting facts about the Swedish pirate party are worthy of a closer atten-

tion. On 31 May 2006 Swedish police raided a facility hosting The Pirate Bay (and Pirat-

byrån, along with over 200 other independent site owners, hosted at the same facility),

leading to a breakthrough for the Pirate Party in the public eye. Before the raid, the Party

was steadily growing with some ten new members every day, but the raid caused a surge

of 500 new members by the end of the day. The next day the members were more than

doubled. Later, on 17 April 2009 the court reached a guilty verdict in the Pirate Bay trial

and on the same day and the day after a total of over 9,000 new members joined the Par-

ty.22

This legal fight between the entertaining industry and the use of download shed light on

something now more important than it ever was, with the recent American S.O.P.A and

P.I.P.A. and, especially for Europe, the A.C.T.A.. The battle about copyright infringe-

ment it’s been resonating all around the world, with billions of bloggers, website owners

and even the whole Wikipedia going on strike.

With this in mind, in a sketched future of the Germany – as well as the rest of EU – more

and more IT users will be fighting to defend and promote their own digital rights and

supposedly wider fractions of political scenery will address these issues. This would be of

great impact both for the PP and for the LD system, which would be used as one among

other tools provided by Internet for its citizens.

If on the one hand the processes regarding IT have always had an increasing pace, on the

other hand democracy has a totally different timing. Thomas von der Elbe, project man-

ager of Votorola, was addressed about the complained inadequacy of LD promotion and

it has been wisely replied:

«We are still prototyping and we don't rush things, because democracy is not a race and nobody

knows yet how it all will work together. This is also why we don't advertise our software, we want

to attract activists/users directly by the design of the tools and finally with the tools themselves

22 «“Today, on 18 May [2010], the Swedish Pirate Party took over the delivery of bandwidth to The Pirate

Bay,” says the Party’s Rick Falkvinge in a statement. “We got tired of Hollywood’s cat and mouse game

with the Pirate Bay so we decided to offer the site bandwidth,” he adds. “It is time to take the bull by the

horns and stand up for what we believe is a legitimate activity.” The Pirate Party says they will provide

bandwidth to the site’s homepage and search engine. “The Pirate Bay is a search engine, and as such it is

not responsible for the results,” notes Falkvinge.» Anderson, Nate, Pirate Party hosting Pirate Bay in pro-

P2P political gesture, 2010, http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/05/pirate-party-hosting-pirate-

bay-in-pro-p2p-political-gesture.ars, (03.03.2012).

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[...]. I would love to see new contributors and moving at a faster pace, but experience has shown

that many people are interested, but not willing to contribute and work on a common vision. »23

RESULTS

After having explored the circumstances of DD theories’ birth, their relationship with the

IT world and their common features, it has become even clearer how vital it is that a LD

theory matches a distinctive version of a software framework (and how much work has

still to be done in this field). In the attempt of comparing the Swedish and German case it

has become evident how the former is innovative in regard of e-democracy and digital

rights; meanwhile how the latter, the LQFB approach, is a unique – therefore almost in-

comparable – process of implementing DD. The young and experimentalist way of pirate

parties to embrace and valorize the information society has spread these new themes in

the global political panorama. Furthermore, it received and gave day by day attention to

questions of this information society age.

At last, whether PP proposal fits to Germany or not, it’s first to be asked if it would actu-

ally rather be suitable for the party itself. Apart from the digital vote not being legally

thoroughly regulated, PP has ever since had a debate about LD, which could end with

stopping LQFB and shifting to another system. It’s conceivable that DD – with the time

that democracy requires – might be present in the German political arena, even via

LiquidFeedback or not.

I’d insist in stating that the PP appraises LQFB as a participatory trait of their party, but

nevertheless is not going to “sink” for this matter. Losing a tool wouldn’t mean losing an

ideal, a value – also shared and inspired by all those Swedish movements mentioned –

that relies on a bottom-up way of conceiving and making politics in 21st century time.

Further investigations could address the LQFB trial made by the Brazilian and Swiss Pi-

rate Party or the variety of solutions adopted by newborn Swedish parties. Another sug-

gested analysis might also be about the spreading phenomenon of pirate parties them-

selves, in relationship with the events that involved events of media and population’s care.

23 Excerpted from the mailing list [MG] Agora 2.0 and Votorola, 2011,

http://metagovernment.org/pipermail/start_metagovernment.org/2011-October/004385.html, (03.03.2012).

Of course it’s not an official statement, but nevertheless it expresses a point about the time of democracy

that it’s per se remarkable.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY24

Monographies

· KLINGEMANN, HANS-DIETER / HOFFERBERT, RICHARD I. / BUDGE, IAN, Parties, Policies

and Democracy, Boulder 1994.

· SIAROFF, ALAN, Comparing political regimes: a thematic introduction to comparative

politics, Peterborough 2005.

Papers

· BOYD, P. OVID, Grassroots Political Parties in Sweden, Örebro University 2008,

http://bit.ly/GB3lvU, (03.03.2012).

· FORD, BRYAN, Delegative Democracy, Yale University 2002, http://bit.ly/GBRvhm,

(03.03.2012).

· GREEN-ARMYTAGE, JAMES A.K., Voluntary delegation as the basis for a future political

system, University of California 2010, http://bit.ly/GCH5zT, (01.03.2012).

· HOLBERG, SARA, The Spanish Revolution: A study on the 15-M movement in Spain,

Uppsala University 2012, http://bit.ly/ypOMd2, (03.03.2012).

· HORBANK, DAVID, Liquid Democracy: Neue Formen direkter Demokratie im

Internetzeitalter, Leipzig University 2011, http://bit.ly/GBPPo2, (03.03.2012).

· JABBUSCH, SEBASTIAN, Liquid Democracy in der Piratenpartei: Eine neue Chance für

innerparteiliche Demokratie im 21. Jahrhundert?, Greifswald University 2011,

http://bit.ly/qTi3Dr, (03.03.2012).

· NORDFORS, MIKAEL, Democracy 2.1: How to make a bunch of selfish people work

together, Online-booklet 2003, http://bit.ly/GBJU7z, (03.03.2012).

Reference websites

· ANDERSON, NATE, Pirate Party hosting Pirate Bay in pro-P2P political gesture, 2010,

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/05/pirate-party-hosting-pirate-bay-in-pro-

p2p-political-gesture.ars, (03.03.2012).

24 Most of the references here given are online sources. If the URL address would change in time, contact

the email address (see cover) and I’ll be pleased to send the missing material.

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· [MG] Agora 2.0 and Votorola, 2011,

http://metagovernment.org/pipermail/start_metagovernment.org/2011-

October/004385.html, (03.03.2012).

· ParticipateDB, 2009, http://participatedb.com, (03.03.2012).

· PIRATENPARTEI, Parteiprogramm: Grundsatzprogramm der Piratenpartei Deutschland,

2012, http://bit.ly/GIsdCa, (22.03.2012).

· VON DER ELBE, THOMAS, Software-Vergleich, 2011, http://bit.ly/GHUypX, (03.03.2012).