5. CROWDLAW | THE POLITICAL CONTEXT IN SPAIN AND ELSEWHERE

This section introduces Podemos and why this effort to institutionalize public engagement is taking place in Spain now, including a brief account of motivating regional and global events.

This is a draft version of the report (dated October 12, 2017) and will be updated in November.

Public trust in government is at an all-time low

In Europe and the United States, the public has become increasingly dissatisfied with government. According to recent Gallup Poll data, only 54% of people worldwide report having confidence in their national governments.¹ The 2017 Edelman Trust Barometer paints an even bleaker picture, asserting that “government is now distrusted in 75% of countries.”²

In the U.S. alone, only 20% of citizens say they trust the federal government to do what is right and “[n]o more than about 30% have expressed trust in the government in Washington to do the right thing at any point over the last decade.” In Europe, Dalia Research finds that anti-establishment parties are on the rise because Europeans are fed-up with their political class: barely a third trust politicians to do the right thing, with Eastern Europeans registering only 23% confidence in their leaders.³

This growing trust deficit, or “implosion of trust,”⁴ is particularly concerning as it often leads to a self-perpetuating cycle — a “widespread belief that the system is broken increases a person’s vulnerability to fear, ultimately causing deeper distrust in institutions.”⁵

Declining tax revenues and deteriorating fiscal conditions, coupled with increasing volatility of state financial support, have put significant pressures on governments, often diminishing their ability to deliver services they have traditionally provided — much less adapt to changing times. These operational challenges have been coupled with an equally difficult image problem: although public trust in government has eroded to all-time lows, paradoxically, public expectations of what government should deliver have risen.

As the saying goes, “trust takes years to build, seconds to break, and forever to repair.” Thus, government urgently needs to do a better job. In order to identify and implement innovative solutions to problems such as climate change, economic fluctuations, pandemics, and terrorism, public institutions need to change the way they work.

One such change is to open up the lawmaking practices of governments to outside input and more collaborative decision-making. Our discussion thus far has highlighted lessons learned from public engagement efforts around the world. These examples show how the desire to increase engagement in the legislative and political arena is widely shared across many different countries and contexts. In this respect, the desire to bolster civic participation in the Autonomous Community of Madrid is not unique, but instead can be viewed as part of a broader trend of promoting civic participation around the world.

Over the past decade, citizen distrust in public institutions combined with the reverberations of financial crises have motivated increased civic participation, and use of digital democracy tools. The 2008 financial crisis spurred the “Kitchenware Revolution” in Iceland, the country’s largest protests calling for representatives’ resignations; it was in this context that Reykjavik’s Better Neighborhoods platform emerged. Estonia’s Citizens’ Assembly was erected by the President “to make recommendations for democratic reforms” following a major corruption scandal. Taiwan emerged following the Sunflower Student Movement, during which student protesters occupied the Taiwanese parliament in protest of a planned trade deal with China.⁶

However widely shared these goals may be, any successful public engagement program must be mindful of the particular economic, social, and political factors that define civic life in a given polity. Before returning our discussion to specific recommendations for Podemos, a brief overview of Spain’s economic and political climate is in order.

Mistrust of government in Spain

Although Spain’s electoral system operates under a form of imperfect proportional system of representation,⁷ ⁸ for much of the country’s history as a democracy its electoral politics have been dominated by two parties: the PP (the center-right Partido Popular, or People’s Party) and the PSOE (the center-left Partido Socialista Obrera Español, or Spanish Socialist Workers Party).⁹ The same two parties tend to dominate at the regional level, albeit to a lesser extent. Particularly in communities with strong regional identities (such as in Basque Country or Catalonia), parties more deeply associated with that region tend to hold a majority of the seats in their respective legislatures.

A confluence of factors, though, recently began to unravel this established order. First, the economic crisis and the government’s push for austerity measures galvanized a new opposition. This opposition was most pronounced in early 2015, when hundreds of thousands of Spaniards took to the streets around the country to protest austerity measures. Further compounding the discontentment with the government’s response to the economic climate was a series of corruption scandals running up to the highest levels of government.¹⁰ Such scandals have had a palpably corrosive effect on citizens’ views of government. According to the OECD, only 30% of Spaniards felt in 2015 that they had confidence in the national government; this level had fallen by a staggering 20% from its 2007 figure.¹¹ Trust at the regional level seems to mirror that of the national government: according to a Eurobarometer and Gallup World Survey, only 20% of Spaniards indicated that they trusted their regional authorities.¹² For context, Spain ranks below every western European country except for Italy in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, with an overall ranking of 41 out of 176.¹³ Perhaps not surprisingly, Spanish respondents to one survey have in the past few years consistently ranked corruption as the second most pressing problem facing Spain, only after unemployment; “politicians, political parties, and politics” has consistently ranked third or fourth.¹⁴

The Global Recession

Although few countries emerged unscathed from the global financial crisis in 2008, Spain was particularly hard hit, even compared to its similarly situated EU neighbors. A collapse in tax revenue rendered the existing government spending levels unsustainable, forcing massive public sector layoffs that had ripple effects throughout the Spanish economy. In 2009, Spanish output shrunk by nearly 4%, and with the exception of 2010 (in which GDP held steady), it was not until 2014 that the country experienced economic growth.¹⁵ Unemployment in Spain skyrocketed, reaching a high of nearly 26%, and youth fared particularly poorly, with unemployment levels among jobseekers younger than 25 climbing as high as 50%. Though the Spanish economy has since begun to recover, only within the past year has the overall unemployment rate fallen below 20%, a level still significantly higher than neighboring Portugal and nearby Italy, which faced similar macroeconomic conditions.¹⁶ Economic output has also experienced a recent uptick, with two consecutive years of approximately 3% growth, but the duration of Spain’s economic crisis and the perceived inability of the government to adequately respond greatly diminished citizens’ faith in the power political institutions to address pressing societal problems.

It is important as well to recognize the effect that this economic malaise had on individual Spaniards. By the beginning of 2013, Household Disposable Income had fallen by over 12% from its 2007 level, and household consumption had fallen by approximately 15%.¹⁷ Young people’s ability to start financially independent lives was severely inhibited: half or more of Spaniards under 30 remained living with their parents, and the average age of a youth’s “emancipation” from their families continually tracked upwards.¹⁸ This dearth of economic opportunity for Spain’s youth has led to them being called the “lost generation.”¹⁹ Further, the concentrated effect of Spain’s economic crisis on young people has engendered a particularly strong disdain for politics as usual, culminating in the unrest described below.

Podemos

The emergence of Podemos

Podemos is a new Spanish political party created in 2014 by Spanish leftist activists associated with the grassroots activism and protests linked to the “Indignados” (Indignants) Movement. This movement, also called 15-M (it began on the 15th of May) or Anti-Austerity Movement, started in May 2011 with demonstrations in 58 Spanish cities. Its origin can be traced to civilian digital platforms and associations.²⁰ Protests continued, albeit more sporadically and with smaller turnout, throughout subsequent years. It was from this activism — largely led by youth²¹ — that sowed the seeds for new political parties.

Even though demonstrators formed a heterogeneous and ambiguous group, they shared a strong rejection of unemployment, welfare cuts, corruption in Spanish politics, and the current bipartisanism at that time between the PP and PSOE. Since Spain transitioned to democracy in the 1970s, only these two parties have governed the country and both have had a number of corruption scandals during their respective administrations. The street protests lasted from May into sporadically October of 2011, with officials estimating between 6.5 to 8 million protestors in all.

In 2014, although not claiming to be a direct result of this Movement, Podemos was founded by many of the same leaders of these protests to oppose the European Union austerity mandated and to demand radical change in Spanish politics. In the broader context of economic turmoil and austerity in Europe, Podemos was not a unique phenomenon. Economic hardship coupled with apathy towards elitist political institutions also gave rise to anti-establishment parties such as Syriza in Greece, as well as the Italy’s Five Star Movement in Italy.²²

It is against this backdrop of mistrust that Podemos found its roots as a party clamoring for change. The party established support particularly among young Spaniards seeking to upend the two-party political order and institute a more transparent, accessible, and left-leaning government. Relying on this groundswell of support, Podemos was in part responsible for a major political sea change that disrupted the longstanding balance of power in Spanish politics.²³ Podemos (“We can”) was established as a political party in 2014.

The party quickly became known as a disruptor and innovator in Spanish politics and is now a major political party at the national and regional levels. Just four months after its founding, Podemos received 1.2 million votes, eight percent of the total in the 2014 European Parliament elections.²⁴ In the year of its founding Podemos also became second largest party in Spain in terms of membership.²⁵

While many saw the success of these upstart parties as an encouraging sign of change, their electoral victories had an additional consequence: no party was able to capture a majority of seats in the national legislature, resulting in political deadlock. Lacking a majority party or coalition that could form a working government, Spain suffered from a power vacuum, during which time a “caretaker government” was put in place to maintain some semblance of continuity. The political crisis was finally alleviated in 2016 when members of the PPOE agreed to abstain from a vote of confidence for Mariano Rajoy, thus allowing him to remain as Prime Minister. But though the political crisis may have come to an end, the ten-month ordeal has likely registered even more damage to citizens’ faith in the ability of the major parties to put the country’s interests above their own.²⁶

In the Spanish General Election in December 2015, Podemos garnered 20% of the vote.²⁷ In the 2015 parliamentary elections, Podemos and another upstart political party named Ciudadanos cumulatively captured a third of the seats in the Congress of Deputies, effectively upending a nearly half-century tradition of two-party politics.²⁸

In addition to Podemos’s success at the national level, the party was also able to find its footing in various regional legislatures. The party was particularly successful that year in the Autonomous Community of Madrid, where it picked up 27 out of 129 available seats.²⁹ This victory placed Podemos — then a brand new party — as the third most represented party in Madrid’s regional legislature, just behind PSOE, which secured 36 seats. Additionally, in the May 2015 Municipal elections Podemos, through affiliated local coalitions rather than directly, won the city councils of Barcelona and Madrid, as well as many smaller cities.

The “world’s first Reddit party”

In response to past corruption scandals, austerity measures, and high unemployment levels following the European debt crisis,³⁰ ³¹ ³² ³³ Podemos seeks to improve trust by the public in government and increase its own popularity and standing by adopting the use of software platforms to create more open governing processes. To that end, Podemos has adopted what they dub a people-centered approach to politics. Called the “world’s first Reddit party,” Podemos has leveraged online platforms to host debates and referenda to craft the party’s platform and structure.³⁴ The platforms that helped the party campaign successfully and build its political base include:

● Plaza Podemos (Podemos Square), a debating site that provides a space for political deliberation and participation for Podemos’s followers. Plaza Podemos attracts between 10,000 and 20,000 followers per day.

● Portal de Participatción (Participation Portal), an online voting registration and authentication system and a crowdfunding platform to engage people to support Podemos and the initiatives it supports.

● Iniciativas Ciudadanas (Citizen Initiatives), an online tool hosted within the “Portal de Participación” website where citizens can post proposals for reforms within Podemos and other citizens can support the proposals or post their own.

● Impulsa (Boost/Impulse), an online political participation space for building, brainstorming, and implementing projects.

● Banco de Talentos (Talent Bank), a new tool that Podemos will use to identify and leverage the talent within its group of followers.³⁵

Now that Podemos is governing rather than campaigning, however, it needs to design processes and platforms to tie participatory democracy to governing. Building on its success using technology to craft the party’s political agenda, it is only natural that it should want to bring its brand of bottom-up participatory politics to governing the country. But this is where it is struggling. Many people lack confidence in this inexperienced party’s ability to govern, and whether the party can push government to be as open, transparent, and grassroots as the party’s successful campaigns were. How, exactly, Podemos will redefine Spanish politics and governance remains an open question.

Despite the recent economic and political hardships that Spain has endured, there is much reason to be optimistic about the potential of new citizen engagement efforts. For one, the worst of the economic crisis is over: as previously mentioned, Spain’s economy has been experiencing consistent, positive growth, and unemployment has been meaningfully reduced as a consequence. Legislators might feel more willing to divert attention towards other issues, and among such issues, citizen engagement seems like a worthy and relevant cause.

Yet another reason to be optimistic is that numerous Spanish localities — including the City Council of Madrid — have already successfully taken up the mantle of citizen engagement. Many of these examples are included in our own analysis and guide our final recommendations. For instance, tens of thousands of Madrileños have voted on proposals, participated in debates, and offered ideas for how to allocate the city’s budget through Decide Madrid. The Autonomous Community of Aragon has embraced civic participation as a constitutionally mandated goal; this directive has been used to support a wide variety of ad hoc engagement efforts that are uniquely tailored to the specific issue being addressed. The Basque government has deployed an online participation platform called Irekia, which has modeled some of the forms of online participation proposed by numerous authors referenced in our brief summary of the academic literature. And the City Council of Barcelona, through its Decidim Barcelona platform (which precedes Podemos), allows citizens to sponsor initiatives and review government proposals.

In sum, new and exciting citizen engagement measures can and have been implemented throughout Spain, and we hope that CrowdLaw mechanisms for the Autonomous Community of Madrid will be next.

- Gabriella Capone and Beth Noveck

Next posts in the series:

• #6. CrowdLaw | Why public engagement? Normative goals
• #7. CrowdLaw | 25 Global Citizen Engagement Case Studies
• #8. CrowdLaw | Expanded Recommendations

Or go to the first post in the series and table of contents here.

Footnotes

¹ “Gallup World Poll,” Gallup (2016), available at http://www.gallup.com/services/170945/world-poll.aspx

² “2017: Executive Summary,” Edelman Annual trust barometer survey (2017), available at http://www.edelman.com/executive-summary/

³ “Majority of Europeans Distrust Their Politicians,” Dalia Research (April 26, 2016), accessed on June 25, 2017, available at https://daliaresearch.com/majority-of-europeans-distrust-their-politicians/

⁴ “2017: Executive Summary,” 2.

⁵ Ibid., 8.

⁶ Julie Simon, Theo Bass, Victoria Boelman, and Geoff Mulgan, “Digital Democracy: The tools transforming political engagement,” Nesta (February 2017), accessed June 26, 2017, available at http://www.nesta.org.uk/sites/default/files/digital_democracy.pdf

⁷ Ángel J. Sánchez Navarro, “The Spanish System of Proportional Representation and its Limits, according to the Constitutional Court,” paper prepared for Unidem Seminar: European Standards of electoral Law in the Contemporary Constitutionalism (Sofia, Bulgaria: May 28–29, 2004), available at http://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/?pdf=CDL-UD(2004)006-e

⁸ “Understanding the d’Hondt method: Allocation of parliamentary seats and leadership positions,” European Parliament Briefing (April 2016), available at http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2016/580901/EPRS_BRI(2016)580901_EN.pdf

⁹ “Current Senators. Distribution by Parliamentary Group,” Senado de España (2017), accessed June 25, 2017, available at http://www.senado.es/web/composicionorganizacion/senadores/composicionsenado/senadoresenactivo/consultagrupoparlamentario/index.html
“Listing of Members by parliamentary groups,” Congreso de los deputados (2017), accessed June 25, 2017, available at http://www.congreso.es/portal/page/portal/Congreso/Congreso/Diputados/DipGrupParl

¹⁰ Tobias Buck, “Corruption scandals threaten Mariano Rajoy’s future,” Financial Times (February 15, 2016), available at https://www.ft.com/content/1f98d546-d3e4-11e5-829b-8564e7528e54

¹¹ “Trust and Public Policy: How Better Governance Can Help Rebuild Public Trust,” Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (March 27, 2017), available at http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/download/4217051e.pdf?expires=1492821633&id=id&accname=ocid177224&checksum=6C5097C12FAE130455255C94D249CA20

¹² Ibid.

¹³ Corruptions Perception Index,” Transparency International (January 25, 2017), available at https://www.transparency.org/news/feature/corruption_perceptions_index_2016

¹⁴ “Tres problemas, “Encuestas de Opinión del Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, accessed April 26, 2017, available at www.cis.es/cis/export/sites/default/-Archivos/Indicadores/documentos_html/TresProblemas.html

¹⁵ “Spanish Annual GDP Growth,” World Bank (2017), accessed June 24, 2017, available at http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locations=ES

¹⁶ Peter Evais, “The Mystery of Spain’s Perpetual Jobs Problem,” New York Times (May 2, 2016), accessed June 24, 2017, available at https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/03/upshot/spains-jobless-numbers-almost-look-like-misprints.html

¹⁷ Federico Giovannelli, “A dash of data: Spotlight on Spanish households,” OECD Insights (November 10, 2016), accessed June 24, 2017, available at http://oecdinsights.org/2016/11/10/a-dash-of-data-spotlight-on-spanish-households/

¹⁸ Tobias Buck, “Spanish Youth in Crisis,” The Financial Times (May 23, 2014), accessed June 24, 2017, available at https://www.ft.com/content/5908da36-db09-11e3-8273-00144feabdc0

¹⁹ Laure Fillon, “Meet Spain’s lost generation: The drop outs facing a bleak future,” The Local (December 11, 2015), accessed June 24, 2017, available at https://www.thelocal.es/20151211/spains-lost-generation-the-drops-outs-facing-bleak-future-election

²⁰ “Tahrir Sqaure in Madrid: Spain’s Lost Generation Finds its Voice,” Der Spiegel (May 19, 2011), accessed June 24, 2017, available at http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/tahrir-square-in-madrid-spain-s-lost-generation-finds-its-voice-a-763581.html

²¹ Diego Beas, “How Spain’s 15-M movement is redefining politics,” The Guardian (October 15, 2001), accessed June 25, 2017, available at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/oct/15/spain-15-m-movement-activism

²² Florian Hartleb, “Here to stay: anti-establishment parties in Europe,” European View 14:1 (June 2015): 39–49, available at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12290-015-0348-4

²³ “Podemos: Spain anti-austerity party banging on doors of power,” BBC, (December 21, 2015), accessed April 24, 2017, available at http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35150771

²⁴ “Results of the 2014 European elections,” European Parliament (November 22, 2014), accessed June 25, 2017, available at http://www.europarl.europa.eu/elections2014-results/en/country-results-es-2014.html

²⁵ Gustavo Garcia, “Podemos ya tiene más ‘militantes’ que el PSOE,” El Boletin (October 28, 2014), accessed June 25, 2017, available at http://www.elboletin.com/contraportada/106783/fisher-price-shakira-juguetes-bebes.html

²⁶ Sam Jones, “Mariano Rajoy sworn in as Spain’s PM after deadlock broken,” The Guardian (October 31, 2016), accessed July 24, 2017, available at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/31/mariono-rajoy-to-be-sworn-in-as-spains-prime-minister

²⁷ “Podemos celebra con euforia sus 69 diputados,” abc (December 21, 2015), accessed June 21, 2017, available at http://www.abc.es/espana/abci-podemos-celebra-euforia-diputados-4669698984001-20151221085000_video.html

²⁸ “Konservative sind Wahlsieger, verlieren aber Mehrheit,” Spiegel Online (December 21, 2015), accessed June 21, 2017, http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/spanien-die-ersten-hochrechnungen-zur-parlamentswahl-a-1068834.html

²⁹ “Distribución de escaños,” Asamblea de Madrid (2017), accessed June 9, 2017, available at http://www.asambleamadrid.es/ES/QueEsLaAsamblea/ComposiciondelaAsamblea/Distribuciondeescanos/default.aspx

³⁰ Tobias Buck, “Spain: Political Stalemate in Madrid,” Financial Times (February 10, 2016), accessed April 24, 2017, available at https://www.ft.com/content/27b93f7c-ce67-11e5-831d-09f7778e7377

³¹ Tobias Buck, “No Right Turn for Spanish Politics,” Financial Times (January 17, 2017), accessed April 24, 2017, available at https://www.ft.com/content/414246f6-dbe4-11e6-86ac-f253db7791c6

³² Tobias Buck, “Spanish Politics: Podemos’ populist surge,” Financial Times (February 19, 2015), accessed April 24, 2017, available at https://www.ft.com/content/ecca8824-b7a3-11e4-981d-00144feab7de

³³ Raphael Minder and David Zucchino, “Spaniards, Exhausted by Politics, Warm to Life Without a Government,” The New York Times (October 2, 2016), accessed April 24, 2017, available at https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/03/world/europe/spain-socialists-sanchez-rajoy.html?_r=2

³⁴ Jonathan Blitzer, “In Spain, Politics Via Reddit,” The New Yorker (October 7, 2014), accessed April 24, 2017, available at http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/spain-politics-via-reddit

³⁵ Hannah Cutler, “People-Driven Governance: Spain’s Podemos Party,” The Governance Lab (June 25, 2015), accessed June 21, 2017, available at http://thegovlab.org/people-driven-governance-spains-podemos-party/