Democracy 4.0

= spanish post-15M initiative to re-invent democracy

Interview

From an interview with Francisco Jurado by Carlos Delclos:

• What about Democracy 4.0? Like I said, I think this idea was especially interesting…

Democracy 4.0 inserted new ideas into the public debate, like the possibility of telematic voting and eDemocracy in Spain. And it did so on a much greater scale than the Liquid Democracy of the Pirate Party, despite the fact that Liquid Democracy has been around longer and is better known internationally. We were surprised to see Democracy 4.0 groups popping up in places as different as Colombia or Germany. Not long ago, I found out they had named a congress on activism D4.0, in honour of our initiative.

I do think it’s true that this name has been surpassed, and that we have to give it a new name now that it is starting to enter the policy programs of different political parties—Partido X call it “real voting”, for instance—and different city governments, under the name “Local Demo”). In any case, what’s important is the essence, the way it works, not the name.

* Why did you call it Democracy 4.0? Why not 2.0, 3.0, 5.1 Digital Surround…?

Well, as the guy who came up with the name, it was just a funny way to indicate that it was something way more advanced than what we have now. So we just skipped version 2.0 and 3.0. There’s not much more behind it.

* What does it entail, exactly?

It was a juridical project based on a petition directed at the Spanish Congress which argued that, in keeping with our existing set of laws, people already have the right to vote on laws directly. So the petition asked Congress to implement the technical mechanism with which to do that. This juridical project, which was taken up by DRY at the time, led to the creation of a working group, several social network and media campaigns and a new current of critical thought based on an idea I call “Political De-Representation”." (https://roarmag.org/essays/podemos-spain-fransisco-jurado-interviw/)