Democratic Procedures or Corporate Structure? Analysis of the Digital Background of the Czech Pirate Party

Digital platforms dominate (part of) the public sphere and are increasingly being adopted by political parties. Digital platforms connect people to services (taxis, food delivery), using social media and Big Data to personalize their services. Political parties adopt similar logic, and the digitalization of political parties takes two forms: the gradual adaptation of existing parties and the emergence of new (digital) parties. Current research on digital parties focuses mainly on Western European movements - the Spanish Podemos movement, the Italian Five Star Movement, and the German Piratenpartei (Gerbaudo, 2019; Deseriis, 2020; Meloni & Lupato, 2023). Turning attention to Central Europe and the case of the Czech Pirate Party would not only offer a glance at what some authors (Jääsaari & Šárovec, 2021) consider the original digital party family but also study a party, which not only successfully entered parliament (2013) but also government (2021). Focusing on the Czech Pirate Party, the paper offers an in-depth analysis of the evolution of its technological background. Using interviews with party members and employees in the digital branch of the party, the paper aims to answer whether digitalization serves as a tool of democratization or (effective) party management along the lines of corporate digital platforms. The paper aims to contribute to the growing debate on digital parties and, more generally, to the future of political parties.