As Warren and Pearse introduced their Designing Deliberative Democracy in 2008, “[c]ompeting arguments over the sources of political disengagement are accompanied by alternative prescriptions for democratic renewal”.
Political parties are often considered the main ones to blame for having enlarged the democratic deficit, affecting political institutions with the same malaise.
In Italy, attempting to reduce the increasing distance between politics, institutions and citizens, a few parties began to develop digital platforms whereby their electors could (try to) take part in the decision-making process.
The most remarkable instruments designed until now, amongst the Italian political forces, have been those ones adopted from the Five Stars MoVement, whose core ideas lead to the development of a direct democracy that would substitute the actual representative form.
Besides the previous digital platforms developed by the M5S, the focus of this paper will be the recently released Electronic Parliament Online (PARELON), a project that originated inside Grillo’s movement, then continued outside with no political logo, open to every (national and international) party or institution willing to work with it.
The aim is triple: by means of a theoretical approach, it will be observed if and where various models of democracy are considered in this platform; later, methodologically, it will be made a comparison with some other civic platforms, in order to eventually underline significant differences between them; finally, through an empirical analysis of the project, it will be tested how the participatory process is intended to produce “legislation from below”, and what degree of legitimacy could reach such a “liquid deliberation”.
