New network parties and their programs announcing the new era of citizen-centered politics change the way of thinking about public decision-making and the possibilities of civic engagement. These citizen-led political movements, standing out against “professional” politicians and “traditional” way of doing politics, propose alternative models of governance in which common people change their role from passive subordinates to proper decision-makers and equal partners for public administration. Leaders and members of new political movements together with academics, urban activists and hactivists search for the ways of opening the processes of public decision-making at the municipal, regional, national and even international levels. For the purpose of constructing a new model of network governance, they experiment with various digital tools and design on-line participatory platforms which facilitate direct decision-making processes and public deliberation of citizens.
In my paper I will present cases of on-line platforms using the community’s collective intelligence and enabling crowdsourced decision making, such as Decidim.barcelona, launched by the local government of Barcelona (led by Barcelona en Comú citizen platform). I will also discuss the activity and aspirations of new political parties that arose from social, grassroots and protest movements, inspired by the ideas of direct and participatory democracy: Pirate Party (Iceland), Podemos (Spain), Razem (Poland), Movimento 5 Stelle (Italy). How these new political movements try to turn democratic ideals into practice? To what extent their horizontal organizational structures exclude hierarchical relations? How digital tools are used to support participatory processes and democratization of public decision-making? How does the on-line decision-making and deliberation of citizens and party members relate to their off-line activity? And how should the new democratic model of doing politics look like? These are several questions on which the paper will seek to answer.
