Abstract
Emerging in the mid-2000s, Pirate parties were the first parties to make the Internet the centre of party politics and party organisation. This chapter reviews the literature on Pirate parties and discusses the legacy of Pirate parties in the use of digital tools for party organisation and internal party decision-making that later inspired new digital parties. The chapter empirically assesses two case studies of the Pirate Party family, the Finnish Pirate Party and the Czech Pirate Party, to demonstrate different applications of digital tools in organisation and campaigning. The cases show that both parties have remained true to the original Pirate ethos in creating and sustaining numerous platforms for open discussion and debate as well as retaining a commitment to transparency and equality in decision-making. While the organisational structure built around online participation and communication has been an advantage for the members and supporters of these parties, the success or failure of parties to mobilise voters in the longer run rests on other factors than the use of digital tools.
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Notes
- 1.
The Swedish Pirate Party received another seat after 18 new MEPs entered the European Parliament in accordance with the Lisbon Treaty.
- 2.
In addition, there were successful pirate parties in the Czech Republic, Iceland and Luxembourg.
- 3.
‘Element’ is the flagship secure-collaboration app for the decentralised matrix communication network.
- 4.
The Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat commented on its editorial page that Pennanen’s initiative is true to pirate ideology: it is copied. The Finnish Communist Party was only a member organisation of the Finnish People’s Democratic League (1944–1990) but in fact steered its politics (HS.fi, 2019).
- 5.
In its first elections to the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic, it gained only 0.80% of the votes and thus did not reach the 5% threshold necessary for obtaining mandates. It was almost successful in the 2014 European Elections with 4.78% of votes, but gained no mandates. It is also worth mentioning the success in the municipal elections 2014, winning the post of mayor in the spa town of Mariánské Lázně in West Bohemia.
- 6.
He was a candidate in a three-party coalition: Czech Pirate Party, Green Party and Christian and Democratic Union-Czechoslovak People's Party. The proposing party was the Czech Pirate Party. Libor Michálek was not a political party member (see Šárovec, 2019a, pp. 6–7).
- 7.
The Czech Pirate Party gained mandates in the national parliament, as did the Icelandic Pirate Party. Subsequently, the Luxembourgish Pirate Party was also successful.
- 8.
Moreover the party was created from below, has a history and can build on an extensive network of volunteers and sympathizers (Kilberger, 2017).
- 9.
Free translation: ‘pirate finances’.
- 10.
Among other things, it serves to verify registered supporters.
- 11.
The Czech Pirate Party has two ways to vote on the internet: (i) by Forum or (ii) by Helios.
- 12.
CodiMD is a more modern alternative to the pad that pirates have used in the past.
- 13.
In addition, the party used the Hithit.cz website for a crowdfunding campaign before the 2017 elections (Šárovec, 2019a, p. 11). Another external website, Jobs.cz, acts as a portal for job opportunities in the Czech Republic and abroad. Pirates advertise work opportunities within the party on the website.
- 14.
The party also has a YouTube channel that is not shown in Fig. 11.3.
- 15.
According to party regulations, all contracts and documents of the Czech Pirate Party are archived in the register of contracts or on the Piroplácení website (Piroplaceni.pirati.cz). The Czech Pirate Party maintains a documentary archive of contracts, which is located at the party’s headquarters. It also maintains a digital (transparent) archive called the register of contracts at Smlouvy.pirati.cz (Wiki.pirati.cz, 2020c).
- 16.
Party representatives have a duty to publish lobbying contacts. These are cases where party representatives are contacted by representatives of business, other political parties, non-profit associations and other entities who want to obtain information from party representatives or influence their decisions, but in other instances such people are contacted by party representatives for various reasons (Forum.pirati.cz, 2020b).
- 17.
The link leads to a website with public information on financial aspects of the party operation (e.g. financing of election campaigns, annual financial reports, transparent accounts, economic activities or gifts and donations) (see website Piroplácení and Wiki.pirati.cz, 2020d).
- 18.
Without registration, the site is accessible on a read-only basis.
- 19.
There are three historical regions in the Czech Republic, namely Bohemia, Moravia, and Czech Silesia. An accent on Moravia and Silesia in the name of a split-off pirate party indicates hostility to the original Czech Pirate Party based in Prague, the historic capital of the Czech lands.
- 20.
The party statues specify that voting shall take place, as far as possible, electronically, by correspondence and with an extended voting time (Pirati.cz, 2020b).
- 21.
Helios is a non-partisan organisation led by software engineer and architect Ben Adida. Helios offers verifiable online elections with the statement: ‘We believe democracy is important, whether it’s your book club, parent-teacher association, student government, workers’ union, or state. So we’ve made truly verifiable elections as easy as everything else on the Web.’ According to the website, Helios elections are private (no one knows how participants voted), verifiable (each voter gets a tracking number) and proven (Helios is open-source, vetted by top-tier experts, and used by major organisations) (Heliosvoting.org, 2020; comp. Pereira, 2016).
- 22.
When voting, members can log in to the Helios system via their device connected to the internet. The votes do not have to be added manually, as is the case with other parties.
- 23.
If there was only one such candidate, he would be elected in the first round. It is recommended in the first round to support all options that are acceptable to voters (or even all that are not unacceptable) and in the second round to give votes to those that voters prefer (Wiki.pirati.cz, 2020f).
- 24.
The Supreme Audit Office (SAO) is an independent audit institution with the mission to review the state’s management of public revenue and expenditure. The SAO’s task is to provide feedback to makers and implementers of national policies, so they know how successfully their policies have been implemented and at what price, how effective they have been, and what economic and other impacts they have made (Nku.cz, 2020b).
- 25.
The topic of electronic state administration and the use of e-platforms in general proved to be important even in the context of the coronavirus crisis 2020. A state of emergency was declared in the Czech Republic for 66 days from March to May 2020 (Nguyen, 2020). There was limited access to some public services for citizens within this extraordinary situation.
- 26.
In the 2016 parliamentary elections in Iceland, the pirate party celebrated its largest electoral success, winning 14.5% of the popular vote and securing 10 of the 63 seats in the Althing. In the 2017 parliamentary elections, it won 9.20% of the votes and 6 seats (parties-and-elections.eu, 2020).
- 27.
As well as many variances between the Finnish and the Czech party systems.
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Daniel Šárovec composed the text within the Charles University Research Programme “Progres” Q18—Social Sciences: From Multidisciplinarity to Interdisciplinarity.
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Jääsaari, J., Šárovec, D. (2021). Pirate Parties: The Original Digital Party Family. In: Barberà, O., Sandri, G., Correa, P., Rodríguez-Teruel, J. (eds) Digital Parties. Studies in Digital Politics and Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78668-7_11
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