Democratic Regeneration through Technology: Learning from Podemos’ Internal Participatory Budgeting Project in Spain

Since 2008, Europe has faced its deepest economic and political crisis since Second World War. In this context, new social movements and political parties are emerging, particularly in Southern European democracies. Podemos, a new Spanish political party born from grassroots activism and protests (Indignados Movement), is trying to reinvigorate public institutions that have lost the trust of the public introducing massive online direct democracy participation mechanisms. In this context, this paper analyzes Podemos' internal participatory budgeting project: Impulsa ("Boost"). Podemos caps the salaries of all its elected officials, collects the difference between this cap and what the government pays Podemos officials, and allows anyone to vote online to determine which social inclusion projects should receive the funds. Impulsa marks the first hybrid participatory budgeting system--funded indirectly by taxpayers, but organised and managed by a political party--and could serve as a model for other political parties without legislative majorities seeking to enable substantive public participation. Through interviews with key promoters and stakeholders, this paper discusses Impulsa's voting procedure design, implementation, and evolution, to describe what has been learned so far and the challenges currently facing this new model of participatory budgeting. This research is theoretically and socially relevant because it aims to analyse how new technologies can better serve democratic regeneration. In this sense, our hope is that the lessons from Podemos can be used to help other political parties, across the spectrum, that want to use technology to become more democratic.