Pirate Party Research Articles

Evaluation of the I-Voting System for Remote Primary Elections of the Czech Pirate Party

Evaluation of the I-Voting System for Remote Primary Elections of the Czech Pirate Party

From Civil Society Organisations to Pirate Parties to Digital Democracy

Reshaping our political and social systems for a sustainable future requires a multifaceted approach that addresses several key areas, such as: political reform, social change, economic development, environmental preservation, or technological innovation. In order to achieve a sustainable future, we need to implement its ideals in every societal sector. When dealing with the political system, we cannot ignore the antidemocratic tendencies arising or taking over our everyday life even in the Western World. Under these circumstances, political reform is a must and we have to admit that one of its most important tasks is strengthening democracy. The actual political discourse is full of ideas like proportional representation, direct democracy, sustainability-focused governance, transparency, accountability, and equity. Among the many actors that try to solve these problems there is a group that proposes some new solutions, based on the means of Information Society, Pirate Parties. Emerging from the digital world, they are a fresh wave of political movements with deep roots in online activism. These parties, some born from anti-establishment protests, have rapidly spread across the globe in just two decades. Their journey is one of transformation, from grassroots movements to established political players. Pirate Parties have a clear digital agenda, focusing on issues like copyright reform, open access to information, and online privacy. They champion net neutrality and the free flow of knowledge. However, most of them have recognized the importance of broader democratic values for political success. Beyond their digital focus, Pirate Parties also advocate for traditional democratic ideals, including civil rights, transparency, and combating corruption. They promote free speech, direct democracy, and exploring alternative forms of citizen participation in government, often leveraging technology (e-democracy). The future impact of Pirate Parties remains uncertain, but their influence is undeniable. They’ve challenged traditional political norms and brought issues of the digital age to the forefront. Pirate Parties have reshaped the European political landscape and inspired similar movements around the world. My paper aims to briefly present these political formations, with special regard to their origins in and their relations with civil society. After outlining the broad framework, I present some of the most notorious of these formations.

Using the Circular Model to Analyse Political Values: The Case of the Pirate Parties

Political parties that operate in the public space are classified, inter alia, according to the criterion of their ideological convergence (Mair, 2010; Gallagher, Laver, Mair, 2011). If we look at the convergence through the prism of the values declared by the parties, then the adaptation of Shalom H. Schwartz’s circular model makes it possible to explain many correlations. Ideological convergence must then be considered a derivative of the rules of compliance and conflict that Schwartz described. These become the starting point, the basis for selecting further axioms and, consequently, a guideline (imperative) in constructing political agendas. The article aims to show that the mentioned rules define party agendas, and the circular model can be used for analytical purposes. The manifestos of the pirate parties selected from 11 countries were used as an example. The method applied in the article is the meta-value matrix. Adapting the Schwartz model, it should be seen as a qualitative content analysis method.

THE RISE AND FALL OF PIRATE POLITICAL PARTIES Abstract This paper was created as an aspiration to view the pirate movement as a predecessor and herald of the anti-establishment wave that followed on the political scenes of Western liberal democracies in the mid-2010s. Based on a brief history of pirate parties in the four countries that were considered relevant to

THE RISE AND FALL OF PIRATE POLITICAL PARTIES Abstract This paper was created as an aspiration to view the pirate movement as a predecessor and herald of the anti-establishment wave that followed on the political scenes of Western liberal democracies in the mid-2010s. Based on a brief history of pirate parties in the four countries that were considered relevant to

The Science of Virtual Culture Wars

Much of today’s geopolitical conflict is taking place online, carried out in significant measure by volunteers, even as governments seek to emphasize information technology cooperation. Computational social scientists have discovered multiple online environments in which to collect relevant statistical data, including Wikipedia pageviews, archives of government research grant abstracts, and behavior in massively multiplayer online war games. Three very different examples of the dynamics of collaboration and conflict provide alternative perspectives: (1) the Pirate Parties that seem to have been an overly ambitious attempt to transform democracy in the Information Age, (2) citizen science that had some success attracting volunteers to donate labor to academic research projects, but generally avoided controversial research projects in areas such as human conflict, and (3) a genre of online role-playing games that emphasized spontaneous organization of volunteer armies to develop skills and resources for victory. Without claiming to offer strict rules for success, this article considers the organizational structures and practical methodologies that might be adapted for achievement of goals by ethical social movements.

The Pirates of Czechia: The Curse of Preferential Vote

At the 2017 parliamentary elections in Czechia, the Czech Pirate Party was unprecedentedly successful compared to most Pirate Party in Europe. However, while the Pirate-led alliance PirSTAN won 15.62% of the votes in the 2021 Parliamentary Election, the number of Pirate MPs dropped from 22 to 4. The goal of this paper is therefore to explain this decline. We show that the pirates’ failures were primarily due to the tactical and strategic failures of the pirates, who, although acting as a data-based party, were unable to assess the danger of an electoral alliance with STAN, whose local and regional reputation and tactics targeting preferences have managed to minimize the representation of pirates.

Preferential Voting in the Elections to the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Republic

After the October 2021 elections to the Chamber of Deputies in the Czech Republic, the most discussed topic has been preferential voting due to the surprising results for the coalition of the Czech Pirate Party and the Mayors and Independents. This fact led us to pursue a comprehensive analysis of preferential voting in the Czech Republic. Taking a broad perspective, this study of the Czech Republic explores the mechanisms of preferential voting in flexible-party lists. Preferential voting is analysed at the party-electorate level. This article proves that a flexible-party list system can have significantly different results compared to other systems in accordance with the number of votes per voter and the threshold for candidates. It also finds evidence that sub-party competition is significantly higher for coalitions where the degree of preferential voting is higher. The ideological stance of a political party does not play a role in the use of preferential votes.

PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS IN CZECH REPUBLIC: OPPOSITION’S TRIUMPH

The article examines the results of the parliamentary elections in the Czech Republic, which took place on October 8-9, 2021. During them, the ruling ANO movement, headed by Prime Minister A. Babis, suffered an unexpected defeat. The winner of the vote was Together coalition, a three-party coalition with the goal of removing the Prime Minister due to his controversial reputation and alleged violation of democratic governance. The paper substantiates the decline in the popularity of ANO movement, outlines the opposition’s tools in the fight against the main competitor. Author characterized the reasons that led to the reduction of the representation of the Czech Pirate Party in the new composition of parliament, one of the favorites of pre-election sociological research. The factors of support growth for the movement «Mayors and Independents» are identified. Author paid attention to the historical failure of the Czech left. The author notes that according to the vote results, the Czech society remains polarized and disunited due to the presence of a large population group that does not agree with the ideology of the victorious forces

A Complexity-of-Strategic-Behavior Comparison between Schulze's Rule and Ranked Pairs

Schulze's rule and ranked pairs are two Condorcet methods that both satisfy many natural axiomatic properties. Schulze's rule is used in the elections of many organizations, including the Wikimedia Foundation, the Pirate Party of Sweden and Germany, the Debian project, and the Gento Project. Both rules are immune to control by cloning alternatives, but little is otherwise known about their strategic robustness, including resistance to manipulation by one or more voters, control by adding or deleting alternatives, adding or deleting votes, and bribery. Considering computational barriers, we show that these types of strategic behavior are NP-hard for ranked pairs (both constructive, in making an alternative a winner, and destructive, in precluding an alternative from being a winner). Schulze's rule, in comparison, remains vulnerable at least to constructive manipulation by a single voter and destructive manipulation by a coalition. As the first such polynomial-time rule known to resist all such manipulations, and considering also the broad axiomatic support, ranked pairs seems worthwhile to consider for practical applications.

Iceland's Pirate Party (Píratar) – In Permanent Opposition?

This research examines the rapid growth in popularity of Iceland’s Pirate Party (Piratur) by analyzing recent election results and public opinion polling (2013-17) on the popularity and ideological placement of the Pirate Party. We find that most respondents viewed the Pirate Party as centrist, and the majority of the respondents were neutral in their view of the party, although negative assessments rose by 2017.

Voting Behaviour and Power in Online Democracy: A Study of LiquidFeedback in Germany's Pirate Party

In recent years, political parties have adopted Online Delegative Democracy platforms such as LiquidFeedback to organise themselves and their political agendas via a grassroots approach. A common objection against the use of these platforms is the delegation system, where a user can delegate his vote to another user, giving rise to so-called super-voters, i.e. powerful users who receive many delegations. It has been asserted in the past that the presence of these super-voters undermines the democratic process, and therefore delegative democracy should be avoided. In this paper, we look at the emergence of super-voters in the largest delegative online democracy platform worldwide, operated by Germany’s Pirate Party. We investigate the distribution of power within the party systematically, study whether super-voters exist, and explore the influence they have on the outcome of votings conducted online. While we find that the theoretical power of super-voters is indeed high, we also observe that they use their power wisely. Super-voters do not fully act on their power to change the outcome of votes, but they vote in favour of proposals with the majority of voters in many cases thereby exhibiting a stabilising effect on the system. We use these findings to present a novel class of power indices that considers observed voting biases and gives significantly better predictions than state-of-the-art measures.

The six faces of ignorance in online piracy: How not knowing shapes the practices of media consumption

The aim of this study is to explore the interrelation between online piracy and ignorance. It brings together literature on both piracy and ignorance and theorizes the role that ignorance plays in media consumption. The empirical analysis first demonstrates how ignorance is used by the members of the Czech Pirate Party to avoid liability for operating a website that streams copyright content. Then, it draws upon interviews with the members of convergent audiences to account for six dimensions of ignorance that are employed by users at the end of the media distribution chain. An argument is made that the concept of ignorance accounts for a set of seemingly paradoxical findings, providing a single frame of reference within which they might be explained. Finally, a perspective is put forth that invites the study of ignorance outside of formal organizations and questions the prevailing association of strategic ignorance with established positions of power.

‘Let us blow them down!’: Corruption as the subject of (non-)populist communication of the Czech Pirate Party

The issue of the relationship between pirate parties and populism has not yet been adequately resolved. This article aims to answer this question: Regarding its communication, is it possible to classify the Czech Pirate Party as a populist party? For that purpose, the Pirates’ communication has been contextualized in a comparative perspective with the Czech parties ANO and SPD, which are commonly considered populist. The study uses qualitative and quantitative content analysis and the principle of triplets to measure populism. Among other things, the analysis indicates that the level of populism in the communication of the Pirates is negligible and the party cannot be identified as populist. Moreover, the anti-establishment appeal does not prevail in the communication either. In this respect, however, the communication of the Pirates has significantly changed after entering the Parliament.

Czech Republic on the Threshold of Parliamentary Elections: Pirate Party Factor

On the eve of the next parliamentary elections in the Czech Republic (October 2021), the leader of the electoral race changed. It was the Czech Pirate Party (CPP), which squeezed out the ruling movement of Prime Minister A. Babiš ANO (Action of Dissatisfied Citizens). It is highly probable «pirates» will head the Cabinet of Ministers in the fall of 2021. The situation emerging in the Czech Republic is unique, since for the first time in world practice, the national government will be headed by a Pirate party. The article examines the transformation of CPP from a «single issue party» to its current position. The features of the CPP functioning are indicated, the circumstances of the growth of its popularity are revealed. An explanation of the reasons for the weakening of the ANO is also given.

The New European Parties without Registration in the EU

This article presents an analysis of the activities of ten new European parties that do not yet have official registration in the European Union: the Europe-Democracy-Esperanto, the New Europeans, European Party of Individual Freedoms, the European Pirate Party, the European Party for Animal Rights, the European Federalist Party, Volt Europe, the Movement for Democracy in Europe 2025, and Now the People, which have appeared on the European political arena in the last 15-20 years, do not yet have official recognition, Nevertheless, their representatives participate in pan-European and national elections, sometimes quite successfully. A brief historical overview of the emergence and formation of each of these parties is given, their ideological platforms and membership base are presented. The results of their participation in the European elections are considered and it is noted with which factions of European parties in the European Parliament the MEPs elected from these parties cooperate. In conclusion, an analysis of the future prospects for the development of these parties is presented.

From xbox to the ballot box? The influence of leisure activities on political engagement and vote choice

ABSTRACT How does engagement in leisure activities, such as playing videogames, affect political behavior and preferences? Are young adult gamers just a group of basement-dwellers who are disengaged from politics, or are there specific political issues that gamers care about? Analysis of panel data of Swedish young adults suggests that avid gamers are more likely than non-gamers to care about issues that fall under the umbrella of Pirate politics, and therefore support the Swedish Pirate Party. Avid gamers are also more likely to use the Internet to engage in political behavior. These findings help explain the political attitudes of the ever-growing number of young adult gamers, and the effects of seemingly apolitical leisure activities on political behavior more broadly.

The Czech Pirate Party

In 2017, in addition to the traditional, old, and more recently established political parties, a new formation – the Czech Pirate Party – espousing more participative principles, including the use of online platforms for discussions – arrived on the political scene in the Czech Republic. This newcomer to the parliamentary ecosystem, shortly after achieving success at the national level, also managed to attract significant support in local elections. For this reason, there is currently a Pirate Party parliamentary group present in the Chamber of Deputies (the lower chamber of the Czech parliament), while simultaneously the mayor of Prague and members of the ruling coalition in Brno – the second biggest city in the Czech Republic – also represent the Pirate Party. Furthermore, recent opinion polls show support for the Pirates running at about 14%. This is coupled with another new feature: the young age of the party’s elected parliamentarians and local councilors, which brings new challenges to politics. After the elections, a number of commentators immediately dubbed the Pirate Party a ‘youth party.’ But is this really the case? What forms of participation do the party and/or its members use and encourage? This article offers answers to these questions. In particular, it presents the electoral base of this new political party through interpretative analysis. The data are based on election results triangulated with other sources – specifically, a Czech election study is juxtaposed against a quantitative survey carried out by three academic institutions in the Czech Republic (the Faculty of Social Studies at Masaryk University, Brno; Palacký University, Olomouc; and the Institute of Sociology at the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague). These statistical tools enable us to identify in great detail the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of Pirate Party voters (for instance: age, education, their views about contemporary democracy, and the timing of their decision to vote) and map their attitudes towards other parties and their leaders. The article reveals how popular the Czech Pirate Party is among the younger generation of voters, where the latter come from, and what political preferences they had previously.

How cyber political brands emerge: a socio-material analysis of the Italian Five Star movement and the Czech pirate party

Purpose Although information technology has been at the centre of attention of political branding for some time, research has traditionally focused mainly on its role in the facilitation of communication. This paper aims to unpack the role of information technology in the emergence of new cyber political brands. Design/methodology/approach This research uses a dual case study approach that focuses on the relationship between branding, politics and information technology. The analysis focuses on two successful political cyber brands: the Italian Five Star Movement and the Czech Pirate Party. Data collection covering the time frame between their emergence and their political success occurs through netnographic methods. Findings Cyber political brands emerge and materialize in different forms. The present analysis allows for a delineation of three conceptual elements that characterize the constitutive interrelationship of information technology in the emergence of cyber political brands. The first conceptual element, organization, refers to how political brands become structured around linked activities. The second conceptual element, orientation, describes how the activities of a political brand are directed to build a specific path and legitimize courses of action. The third conceptual element, operation, delineates the processes that anchor and stabilize the political brands in its “own” culture, establishing specific base activities. Research limitations/implications Information technology and the techno-culture emerging around the two cyber party brands can be seen as the possible delineations of new “cleavages” in the form of “information technology-culture” which enables potential electoral success. Originality/value The present study by offering the conceptualization of the cyber political brand shows how political brands can reflect a type of performative cultural branding where they become able, as a networked-medium, to assemble a specific techno-culture. In terms of political brand development, the current analysis offers a framework that allows us to consider the process of political party development in a new fashion.

Regional Election in Czech Republic 2020

On October 2-3, 2020, regional elections were held in the Czech Republic amid the second wave of the COVID-19 Coronavirus pandemic. Despite the traditional attitude to this election as secondary, its significance for the expert community was in the fact that it made possible to study political preferences of the population on the eve of the upcoming elections in 2021. Although the citizens of the Czech Republic preferred ANO movement, analysts noted the strengthening of the opposition forces – Pirate Party, the Civil Democratic Party and the STAN movement. The main feature of their participation in the last election campaign was their coalition with regional associations and movements, which made it possible to mobilize the population and claim more active participation in the work of regional authorities. Thus, scholars concluded that this approach could become the key to success in 2021. In turn, the ANO’s coalition partners tend to weaken their positions. Their fate in the future parliament was uncertain.

Information Commons Between Enclosure and Exposure: Regulating Piracy and Privacy in the EU

In the first decade of the 21s century, copyright was high on the political agenda as activists and academics criticised how stricter implementations of copyright laws limited the public access to culture and knowledge and enclosed the information commons. A decade later, streaming media and data mining have changed the information-political agenda, shifting the focus from piracy to privacy, giving concepts such as access to knowledge and information commons new meanings. This article relates the copyfights of the early 2000nds to more recent copyright discussions. It relies on a series of interviews with members of the Pirate Party, conducted between 2011 and 2015 and connects them to more recent debates about the European Union Directive on Copyright for the Digital Single Market (COM/2016/0593) that was passed in march 2019. The article asks if and how the information commons movement and the international political agenda about intellectual property rights and access to information have changed with the rise of a digital economy build around streaming media and data mining.