'Let the Citizens Fix This Mess!' Podemos' Claim for Participatory Democracy in Spain

Abstract

The declining trust in the representative institutions of liberal democracy after the 2008 economic crisis has generated a rise in appeals to substitute the representative model in favor of a participatory democracy. Although political representation has been in crisis since its very inception, for the first time the new technologies of communication based in the Web 2.0, smartphones and social media make replacing the elites’ intermediation in decision-making a real possibility. Aiming to critically address this issue, the article uses a political theory framework to analyze the role of political participation within the main models of democracy as a first step from where to question the viability and convenience of participatory democracy nowadays. Then, the article focuses on the case of Podemos in Spain, a left-wing populist party that advocates for instruments like referendums and citizen initiatives as a solution for the Spanish political crisis. Here, the article highlights the shortcomings of Podemos’s participatory proposal, mainly focused on aggregating predetermined positions instead of addressing the dynamics that undermine the quality of political debate. Finally, we conclude that dealing with the citizens’ political disaffection requires institutional innovations designed to increase the deliberative quality of our representative democracies.