The fact that the Pirate party has won
title="Guardian: Pirate party snatches seats in Berlin
state election">8.9% of the vote in the Berlin state
elections – thereby giving them 15 seats in the
legislature – has given rise to some head-scratching in
psephological circles. And not without reason: it isn't
often that a political party takes a relaxed view of
filesharing, advocates radical reform of intellectual
property laws, opposes state surveillance in all its
forms,
title="Wikipedia: Pirate Party Germany">evangelises
about open source and then has electoral success in
the real world.
The big questions are: is the Pirates' electoral success
a culturally specific blip, or a pointer to longer-term
political change? Have we reached the point where the
internet is having a measurable effect not just on
political discourse, but also on what happens in polling
booths? And could it happen here?
The answer partly depends on which electoral system we're
talking about. Germany has a strictly proportional system:
once a party receives more than 5% of the vote it becomes
eligible not just to hold parliamentary seats, but also to
receive state financial support. So vocal minority parties
that can persuade more than 5% of the electorate to turn
out can expect to have a political impact. That's why
green parties have done relatively better in Germany and
Ireland than they have in other jurisdictions. (The last –
discredited – Irish government, for example, was sustained
in power by an alliance between Fianna Fáil and the tiny
Green party.)
So what happened in Berlin definitely couldn't happen
here. If you doubt that, just ask the Lib Dems, whose
share of the popular vote never translates into an
equivalent number of parliamentary seats.
There's also a cultural dimension to this. Historically,
Germany has been the European country that has been most
receptive to, and enthusiastic about, open source
software. The Bundestag is one of the few legislatures in
the world where you can find deputies who are
knowledgeable about Linux and free software generally.
The German government was one of the first to decide that
national-security systems should not be based on
proprietary software. In such a climate it's predictable
that a campaigning political party with a radical online
agenda would find a ready audience. The bovine way in
which the last House of Commons passed Lord Mandelson's
digital economy bill, with its clueless 'anti-piracy'
provisions, does not exactly engender confidence in the
British political class's understanding of these matters.
The great puzzle of the last decade is why the burgeoning
of online political discourse doesn't seem to have had a
proportional impact on the ground. The test case here is
Barack Obama's presidential campaign, which was positively
inspired in its use of social networking and other online
tools. His election led some enthusiasts to believe that
he would be able to mobilise this vast online movement to
bypass Washington's dysfunctional legislature and achieve
meaningful social and economic reform. It didn't happen:
as president, Obama didn't choose that route; and even if
he had it's not clear that it would have had that much
impact in terms of achieving real reform.
Online activism seems to be good at getting people
motivated and worked up for short-term campaigns – as the
Tea Party has shown. We haven't yet discovered how to use
it creatively as a tool for improving governance.
Is there anything established political parties can learn
from the Pirates' success in Berlin? Yes, if they are
operating in political jurisdictions with electoral
systems based on proportional representation. The lesson
there is that there is a small but significant segment of
the electorate – mostly young, and mostly apathetic about
conventional politics, but very interested in filesharing,
social networking and other online activities – whom it
would be unwise to ignore. But British parliamentarians,
secure behind an unfair but immovable electoral system,
can sleep easy in their beds.