Technological progress and political systems: Non-institutional digital platforms and political transformation

Abstract

Digital platforms have emerged as a new technical and organizational element capable of changing the dynamics of consolidated socioeconomic models. We seek to understand how non-institutional initiatives on digital platforms affect the perspectives of democracy. To reach our goal we employed an empirical exploratory case study of Brazil. We present two non-institutional initiatives developed indigenously – “Nosso Mandato” and “Poder do Voto”. We handled in-depth interviews, conducted participant observation, and subsequently supplemented the analysis with secondary materials. Our investigation demonstrates those two non-institutional platforms target Brazilian democratic deficit and in some way they both aim at transforming the country's politics by creating new mechanisms for political participation and by fostering a change in the political culture. More specifically, they reinforce trends of direct digital democracy, truth-based advocacy and constituent mobilization. On the other hand, both platforms are still struggling to leverage network externalities to their advantage – and the barriers are both economic (financial and organizational) and political. They represent a movement that believes it can change politics by creating new spaces for social mobilization via technology, even if built on the digital services of a global oligopoly. We found initial evidence that points to two important points in the relationship between digital platforms and democracy: (i) specific digital platforms for political participation face greater difficulty in scaling up the number of users than general purpose social networks; (ii) the most successful initiatives in terms of non-institutional digital platforms for political participation are based on, and thus strengthen, the Big Five global oligopoly.