Deliberation, Plebiscitarianism and Representation: the trilemma of party democratic innovations

This paper builds a conceptual framework of party democratic innovations based in a trilemma between representation, deliberation and plebiscitarianism in order to overcome dichotomous conceptualizations and account for mixed patterns. It also explores the role of two main expectations of intra party democratic decision making: that new parties will foster mixed democratic innovations rather than strictly pure deliberative modes; and that deliberation will develop rather in online tools to the detriment of offline, traditional deliberation. The paper qualitatively assesses the main intra-party democratic innovations -particularly those based on digital tools- introduced by the most relevant statewide Spanish parties (PSOE, PP, Podemos-IU, Ciudadanos and Vox) during the last decade and their deliberative qualities. The results point out the relevance of mixed patterns of intra- party democratic innovations that, at least in the Spanish case, seem to be reinforcing plebiscitarian trends. The paper also confirms our expectations on the influence of new parties and digitalization as drivers of party democratic innovations.