For over a decade, scholars have examined digital democratic innovations within political parties, highlighting their potential to foster greater inclusivity and broaden participation through the introduction of new forms of cyber-membership (Scarrow, 2015). Thus far, academic research has predominantly focused on innovations that impact intra-party democracy, including deliberative forums, policy consultations, intra-party referenda, and primary elections (Bennett et al., 2018; De Blasio & Viviani, 2019; Mikola, 2017; Martínek & Malý, 2024; Mosca, 2020; Raniolo & Tarditi, 2019; Vodová & Voda, 2024). Although these innovations initially aimed to decentralize power and enhance member engagement, their practical implementation has often failed to meet expectations (Deseriis & Vittori, 2019; Gerbaudo, 2019; Vittori, 2020).
In recent years, however, scholarly attention has shifted to digital democratic innovations beyond decision-making processes. Examples include participatory financing mechanisms, such as microcredits, and platforms for personnel selection, like Banco de Talentos, both in Podemos (Lupato et al., 2023; Meloni & Lupato, 2023), as well as participatory law-making initiatives like Lex Eletti in the Five Star Movement (Tronconi & Bailo, 2024). This paper expands on this body of literature by examining Fro.lu, a question-and-answer (Q&A) innovation introduced by the Luxembourg Pirate Party. Q&A software, widely used since the advent of Web 2.0, facilitates question-and-answer exchanges (Shah et al., 2009), exemplified by social platforms like Quora and also in politics as governmental services to citizens, such as AskGov in Georgia and Singapore.
Fro.lu was launched in 2019, a year after the Luxembourg Pirates entered parliament, where they have since served as an opposition party. The platform operates by allowing citizens to submit questions to the government. A Pirate MP then decides whether to take up the question and poses it directly to a government member during parliamentary interpellations.Therefore, this paper aims to explore: To what extent does Fro.lu offer citizens new mechanisms (beyond the right to freedom of information) to hold the government accountable? To answer this question, we analyze the platform’s functioning and effectiveness by reviewing documents on its technical design and usage norms and examining a dataset of 185 proposed questions. Additionally, we conducted two semi-structured interviews—one with a Pirate MP and another with a parliamentary assistant responsible for managing the platform—to gain insights into the process from a parliamentary perspective. This paper seeks to contribute to the ongoing discussion on the use of Q&A software as a potential digital democratic innovation, offering citizens a platform for diagonal government accountability (Lührmann et al., 2020).