The Digital Party by Paolo Gerbaudo

Author:Paolo Gerbaudo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Book Network Int'l Limited trading as NBN International (NBNi)

LiquidFeedback and Loomio

The platform that has to a great extent introduced the question of digital democracy to public debates beyond small circles of activists and developers is undoubtedly LiquidFeedback, a software produced by programmers connected to the Berlin-based Association for Interactive Democracy.

The software was first released in 2009 and is described by its creators as ‘an open-source software, powering internet platforms for proposition development and decision making’.245 It is written in Lua and uses PL/pgSQL for its database. The programme was brought to fame because of its use by the German Pirate Party between 2009 and 2011, but in the ensuing years it has been adopted by a variety of subjects, including co-ops, civic associations and companies, to gather ideas and register the sentiment of the base. It presents itself as a system of direct democracy that can supplement rather than completely substitute representative democracy.

The orientation of LiquidFeedback is strongly deliberative as it is chiefly concerned with ‘proposition development’, namely the development of policies to be adopted by parties or social organisations. To this end it adopts ‘threaded conversations’, meaning that discussions develop in multiple directions, which allows for more complexity in deliberation. Propositions proceed through three stages. First, ‘initiators’ can launch a proposal, providing a rationale and background for it, in order to gain support. If the proposal reaches a certain quorum, it passes to a revision stage in which other users can provide ‘structured feedback’ by making comments, proposing amendments as well as voting these. In the final stage the initiators revise the proposal, integrating some of the feedback, and the proposal goes to a vote. The discussion adopts a ‘harmonic weighting’ system aimed at the fair representation of minorities in order to avoid that minority ideas are too quickly brushed over.

One of the innovative features of LiquidFeedback is the mechanism of delegated, or proxy, voting, which it derives from the philosophy of ‘liquid democracy’, whose initial concept was proposed in 2000 by an anonymous internet user going under the name of Sayke. This means that users can delegate their votes on various issues to a person they trust on that area of expertise, as explained by Andreas Nitsche, one of the developers of the platform:

The basic idea: voters can delegate their vote to a trustee (technically a transitive proxy). The vote can be further delegated to the proxy’s proxy thus building a network of trust. All delegations can be done, altered and revoked by topic; e.g. I myself vote in environmental questions, Anne represents me in foreign affairs, Mike represents me in all other areas – but I can change my mind at any time. A dynamic scheme of representation takes place. Anyone can select their own way ranging from direct democracy to representative democracy. Basically, one participates in what one is interested (or expert) in but for all other areas gives their vote to somebody acting in their interest. One may make a bad choice once in a while but can change their mind at any time.

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