How do digital political parties bridge the debate between open and closed proportional electoral systems?

Author: Bangkit Adhi Wiguna
Editor: M Perdana Karim

To simplify the electoral and party system, the Government of Indonesia issued various regulations to tighten the candidacy of elections.¹ Against such a background, it is hard to imagine the emergence of a candidate who is able to run for two parties at the same time due to regulatory errors. However, it actually happened recently. One day after being registered as a candidate for the Legislative Candidate for the People’s Representative Council (DPR) RI in the Electoral District of West Java 2 by the Indonesian Unity Party (Perindo), Aldi Taher was again registered as a Legislative Candidate for the DKI Jakarta Regional People’s Representative Council (DPRD) in the Electoral District of DKI Jakarta 1 by Crescent Star Party (PBB) on 13 May 2023. By regulation, Aldi Taher’s candidacy violates Article 11 Paragraph (1) of the General Election Commission (KPU) Regulations which regulate the administrative requirements for candidates for members of the DPR and DPRD.This phenomenon then caught the attention of many parties because Aldi Taher is indeed known as a social media celebrity whose popularity is on the rise.

A political scientist from Universitas Gadjah Mada, Mada Sukmajati, commented on the phenomenon of Aldi Taher candidacy. According to Mada, Aldi Taher’s candidacy was triggered by the phenomenon of figure-based politics, which is an implication of an open proportional system.² A political candidate elected in an election, in an open proportional system, is elected based on popularity rather than political or ideological propositions. This condition can occur because an open proportional election system indirectly makes voters focus on a figure rather than a party, ideology, or policy.³ Mada’s statement sharpens the debate between open and closed proportional electoral systems that have started since the end of 2022. This debate started with the submission of a proposal for a judicial review of Law Number 7 of 2017 concerning General Elections to the Constitutional Court by three people who were identified as coming from three major political parties in Indonesia.

The debate between the two camps always revolves around two things: those who support the open proportional system accuse the closed proportional system of having authoritarian tendencies, while those who support the closed proportional system accuse the open proportional system of creating figure-based politics. When respecified, the debate between the two camps always revolves around how the party is able to bridge the interests of the public and the state. In the midst of this debate, the model of political parties also needs attention. One model of a political party that was born from the emergence of a digital society that is able to bridge the debate between an open proportional system and a closed proportional system is a digital party.

Digital Party and Its Characteristics

The electoral system does play an important role in shaping the political landscape in a country, namely influencing representation models,⁴ forms of campaigns,⁵ and party systems.⁶ Apart from being influenced by the electoral system, these aspects are also influenced by the party model. One of the models of political parties that seek to uphold the openness of the political system and cut the gap between public and state interests is the digital party, a popular term in Europe which is often used as a reference for several political parties with an operational basis in the digital sphere.

Paolo Gerbaudo, a political scientist from Italy, researched several digital parties in Europe and then formulated five characteristics of digital parties: (1) cloud, (2) participationism, (3) hyperleader, (4) superbase, and (5) plescibitiarianism 2.0.⁷ The “cloud” characteristic refers to efforts to shift the physical infrastructure that forms the basis of daily party operations to the digital realm. This shift is not just digitization or digitalization but a digital transformation. This transformation made digital parties have a different logic from conventional parties. If conventional parties have mechanisms for aggregating interests and channelling hierarchical, bureaucratic, and multilevel aspirations, digital parties are usually direct.

The second aspect of the digital party model, “participationism”, refers to efforts to transform and contextualize democratic participation models into digital systems. To understand this aspect, Gerbaudo proposes a digital participation model formed by one of the digital parties in Italy, the Five Star Movement (5SM). 5SM builds a participatory system that bridges the public with the state through the party with a system they call “direct democracy”. This system is built through an application called Rousseau. Through this application, the public, who are 5SM constituents, are able to participate directly in state policymaking processes. This participation is realized through writing draft laws that can be submitted directly through the Rousseau application. An almost similar participation model is also shared by a digital party from Spain, Podemos. The basic difference is that Podemos through Participa provides a channel for aspirations for democracy at not only the state level, but also internal party democracy.

The third and fourth aspects, namely “hyperleader” and “superbase”, refer to patterns of leadership and digital party membership. Because they have the main operational domain in the digital realm, digital party leaders must have leadership characteristics that combine conventional party leaders and digital celebrities. This kind of leadership model is what Gerbaudo calls “hyperleader”. Meanwhile, because the membership base is solely in the digital realm, digital party members are usually challenging to identify in detail and depth. The overall number of digital party members is very easy to identify. However, the detailed and in-depth characteristics of each member of the digital party are almost impossible to identify, a condition which Gerbaudo calls “superbase”.      

The last aspect, namely “plebiscitarianism 2.0”, refers to the problem of representation that arises from the participationism aspect of digital parties. Digital parties often claim to be parties that encourage participation in a form of direct democracy. Instead of aggregating interests and channelling aspirations in a representative manner, digital parties have an orientation to provide a digital platform that directly intermediaries between the public and the state. In practice, instead of emphasizing in-depth discussions between various elements of the public, the digital party participation model only emphasizes voting.⁸ This kind of reductionist participation model was later referred to by Gerbaudo as “plebiscitarianism 2.0”.

Digital Party between Two Electoral Systems

Digital parties try to answer the same problems that open and closed proportional systems try to solve: the openness of the political system and the expansion of public participation. Digital parties try to encourage the openness of the political system and expand public participation by cutting the interaction gap between political parties, which are important institutions that bridge the public and the state, and the public. The five characteristics of digital parties offer answers to the problems debated by open and closed proportional systems while also having the potential to repeat the same problem.

Aspects of “cloud” and “participationism” offer answers to the problem of openness by making the political system and internal political parties open to the public. “Cloud” aspect tries to cut through the physical infrastructure of conventional political parties and the complex hierarchical bureaucracy they carry. With “participationism”, digital parties try to conduct a participatory mechanism called “direct democracy”, which refers to the pattern of channeling aspirations and interests in the style of direct democracy in Ancient Greece. The figure and personal image-based politics caused by an open proportional system can be overcome by changing the content of party apps or websites to a more ideological or policy-oriented one. The authoritarian tendency of a closed proportional system can be overcome by internal party discussion and decision-making processes through party applications or websites. Thus, even though the public is only given the opportunity to vote for parties rather than individuals during elections in a closed proportional system, the public can still participate in policy briefings and mobilize candidates for election candidates through the party’s digital platform.

On the other hand, digital parties also have the potential to cause problems that open and closed proportional systems try to overcome. Gerbaudo’s findings regarding the tendency of digital party leaders to be “hyperleader”, for example, actually have the potential to strengthen figure-based politics in electoral politics. The aspects of “superbase” and “plebiscitarianism 2.0” also have the potential to create a reductionist political climate.⁹ This is because these two aspects make the public, who are constituents of political parties only limited to a collection of meaningless numbers known as party members and voters. Ideological and policy-oriented content in political party applications and websites becomes meaningless if the electoral political system continues to have the nuances of figure-based politics and plebiscite democracy. Another problem that may arise from digital parties is that they are not contextual in some countries with a high digital divide. The digital divide in Indonesia, according to the 2021 Ministry of Communication and Informatics survey, for example, is still at 3.49 (on a scale of 1 to 5), so implementing digital parties in Indonesia still has a long way to go.¹⁰ Even so, the presence of digital parties can still affect a group of urban middle classes who have access to internal and digital society. For the past two decades, these community groups have played a significant role and contributed to Indonesian politics.¹¹ Thus, influencing urban middle-class politics becomes an urgent agenda.

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Endnotes

1 Aminuddin, M.F. (2016). “Electoral System and Party Dimension Assessment in Democratic Indonesia”.  Jurnal Ilmu Sosial dan Ilmu Politik 20(1), pp. 1—15.

2 Astrina, A.R. (2023) “Mada Sukmajati: Pemilu Proporsional Tertutup Lebih Baik”, PARES Indonesia. [online]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSguXvkBK-0&t=1368s [Accessed 12 July 2023].

3 Reynolds, A., Reilly, B., Ellis, A. (2005). Electoral System Design: The New International IDEA Handbook. Stockholm:  International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. pp. 54—59.

4 Hooghe, M. (2014). “Citizenship and Participation”. Comparing Democracies 4: Election and Voting in a Changing World. London: SAGE Publications. pp. 58—76.

5 Wleizen, C. (2014). “Election Campaigns”. Comparing Democracies 4: Election and Voting in a Changing World. London: SAGE Publications. pp. 76—96.

6 Duverger, M. (1954). Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State. New York: Wiley.

7 Gerbaudo, P. (2019). The Digital Party: Political Organisation and Online Democracy. Pluto Press.

8 Mosca, L., Vittori, D. (2022). “A digital principal? Substantive representation in

the case of the Italian Five Star Movement”. European Societies.

9 Barbero, M. (2021). “Italy’s failed digital democracy dream is a warning”, Wired. [online]. Available at: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/italy-five-star-rousseau-online [Accessed 13 July 2023].

10 Ameliah, R., Negara, A. R., Rahmawati, I. (2021). Status Literasi Digital di Indonesia 2021. Jakarta: Katadata Insight Center & Kementerian Informasi dan Informatika. pp. 50—55. 11 Raharjo, W. J. “Investigating the Political Base of Indonesian Middle Class: A Comparative Study”. International Journal of Indonesian Society and Culture 9(2), pp. 267—282.