Podemos pôr fim às oligarquias? A organização de um partido-movimento na sociedade em redes (2014-2020)

Abstract

The present work aims to highlight the debates on the party's political organisation in the present century. For this goal, it focuses the analysis on the concrete case of Podemos’ party, in Spain. Considering the changes after the recent collective action cycle, propelled by Information and Communication Technology (ICT), it proposes to think of their gains for internal party democracy focusing on Podemos. Thus, Podemos is studied as a way to illuminate the more general party tendencies, arising from changes in the forms of organization and subjective perception in contemporary times. We carried out a bibliographic survey of secondary sources, including interviews with members of the party, as well as a documentary analysis of the main documents and rules in dispute in citizen assemblies with the aim of reconstructing the meanders of Podemos’ organisation. Thus, in chapter 1 we present the concepts of party, and internal party democracy, as well as presenting the problem of tendencies towards party oligarchization in different typologies. Then, in chapter 2, we present the emergence of a new cleavage as part of the changes in the forms of organization for a networked structure and we discuss the problems arising from it. Chapter 3 analysis the the trajectory of Podemos until the present, giving materiality to the discussion that had been presented and highlighting the recent problems of the party in strengthening internal democracy against centralization and personalism. The conclusion returns to the concepts presented along the chapters and consider that one of the greatest dangers of the new tendencies of the party organization resides in hyper-leaderships.