From the ‘Indignados Movement’ to power politics: a critical study of the theoretical underpinnings of ‘Podemos’

Abstract

This paper was awarded the Gillian Rose Memorial Prize for Social and Political Thought 2015, awarded to the best essay produced by a candidate for the MA in Social and Political Thought at the University of Sussex. The following is a shortened version of the original dissertation. This paper argues that the theoretical foundations of Podemos are grounded in a series of premises that do not sufficiently challenge the political logic of liberal representative democracy. This forces the party to adopt a model that presents some similarities with what is encouraged by other realist theories of democracy such as Schumpeter’s or Down’s. As a result, the party has faced serious problems in escaping the competitive, hierarchical and efficacy-driven dynamic of a conception of politics that derives from an overemphasis on the goal of electoral victory.