How can digitalisation promote intra-party democracy in a populist right-wing party? The case of the Estonian radical right.

Digitalisation has provided new tools for parties to promote intra-party democracy via social media and other digital platforms (Gerbaudo, 2019). So far, researchers have often ignored the populist right-wing parties while regarding them as inherently authoritarian with little potential for developing democratic mechanisms internally. However, recent research (Albertazzi and van Kessel, 2021) demonstrates that the picture could be more diverse, and some populist right-wing parties have successfully used digital tools to promote intra-party engagement and participation, not only during electoral campaigns but between elections. However, recent research has still shed little light on how digitalisation has affected engagement in those parties at a party branch level. Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE) has created a wide array of digital platforms for mobilising and engaging party members: numerous social media groups at the national and local level, popular webzines, etc. (Saarts, Jakobson, and Kalev, 2021). The preliminary qualitative interviews show that the party elites pay quite a lot of attention to the everyday discussions upheld by the core activists online and have occasionally tuned their public messages and changed some decisions accordingly. Furthermore, the EKRE's party elites have intentionally supported the creation of new platforms and formats of online communication, enabling them to effectively organise the activist core between elections – for instance, for protest rallies and other contentious actions. EKRE is somewhat of an exceptional party that has also established its branch abroad to mobilise the Estonian guest worker community in Finland (Jakobson, Saarts, and Kalev, 2020). However, in a situation where party activists are geographically dispersed in a foreign country, politically not as active as national citizens, it is much harder to sustain active participation and organisational routines. Thus, our previous research has indicated that digital tools could become even more indispensable for enhancing engagement, participation and the sense of community at a branch level in transnational settings (Jakobson, Saarts and Kalev, 2021). Furthermore, digital tools do not solely help to promote intra-party democracy but also facilitate the institutionalisation of the whole transnational party organisation. The current article intends to focus on two major blocks of questions. First, how have digital platforms been used to promote intra-party democracy and participation in EKRE between elections at the national-level organisation? To what extent has digitalisation helped promote participation and engagement internally and affected decision-making processes in the party leadership? In what way do digital tools facilitate offline mobilisation for protest activities and other contentious actions? Second, we adopt a more micro perspective and explore how digitalisation has facilitated engagement and intra-party democracy at a branch level (the Finnish branch). The proposed study will employ primarily qualitative research methods, such as interviews with party activists and content analysis of the relevant online media platforms, and builds upon the previous research already done on EKRE.