Decidim, a Technopolitical Network for Participatory Democracy: Philosophy, Practice and Autonomy of a Collective Platform in the Age of Digital Intelligence (SpringerBriefs in Political Science)

This Open Access book explains the philosophy, design principles, and community organization of Decidim and provides essential insights into how the platform works. Decidim is the world leading digital infrastructure for participatory democracy, built entirely and collaboratively as free software, and used by more than 500 institutions with over three million users worldwide. The platform allows any organization (government, association, university, NGO, neighbourhood, or cooperative) to support multitudinous processes of participatory democracy. In a context dominated by corporate-owned digital platforms, in the era of increasing social structuring via Artificial Intelligence, Decidim stands as a public or community owned platform for collective human intelligence. Yet, the project is much more than its technological features. Decidim is in itself a crossroad of the various dimensions of the networked society, a detailed practical map of its complexities and conflicts. Theauthors distinguish three general dimensions of the project: (1) the political - shedding light on the democratic model that Decidim promotes and its impact on public policies and organizations, (2) the technopolitical - explaining how this technology is democratically designed and managed to produce and protect certain political effects, and (3) the technical - presenting the conditions of production, operation, and success of the project. This book systematically covers those three levels in an academically sound, technologically consistent, and politically innovative manner. Serving as a useful resource and handbook for the use of Decidim, it will not only appeal to students and scholars interested in participatory and digital democracy but also to professionals, policy-makers, and a wider audience interested in learning more about the Decidim platform. This is an open access book. Preface Acknowledgements Contents About the Authors Chapter 1: Decidim: A Brief Overview 1.1 What Is Decidim 1.2 Why Decidim? 1.2.1 The Contemporary Crisis of Democracy and Its Alternatives 1.2.2 The Rise of the Network Society, Digital Capitalism and Knowledge Commons 1.3 How to Decidim: Use, Extension and Practices 1.3.1 General Data of Decidim Extension and Use 1.3.2 Citizen Participation in Strategic Planning, a Case Study in Barcelona 1.3.3 Uses of Decidim in Public Administrations and Social Organisations References Chapter 2: The Political Plane: Decidim and the Vision of a Radically Democratic Society 2.1 Decidim, Models of Democracy and Its Discontents 2.2 Decidim and Participatory Government 2.2.1 The Difference Between Government, Governance and Governmentality 2.2.2 Decidim and the Political System: Reconstructing the Complexity of the Will 2.2.3 Decidim and Paradigms of Government: From Open Government to Common Government 2.3 Decidim and Participatory Governance 2.3.1 Governance Beyond Government: Neoliberal vs Democratic Models 2.3.2 A Brief, Systemic View of Participatory Governance 2.3.3 Decidim in Public Administration and Labour Governance 2.4 Decidim and Participatory Governmentality 2.4.1 Decidim and Collective Subjectivation 2.4.2 Decidim and Collective Intelligence 2.4.3 Decidim and Collective Action References Chapter 3: The Technopolitical Plane: Decidim as a Democratic Software Paradigm 3.1 Design: Decidim and Its Technopolitical Design 3.1.1 The Social Contract as a Design Principle 3.1.2 Other Technopolitical Design Principles 3.2 Architecture: Decidim ́s Functional Architecture for Participation 3.2.1 Participatory Spaces 3.2.2 Participatory Components 3.2.3 Other Features 3.3 Configuration: Decidim ́s Configuration of Participatory Spaces 3.4 Metadecidim: Decidim ́s Participatory Governance, Community and Organisation 3.4.1 The Reflexivity of a Technopolitical Network: Technopolitical Democratisation, Recursive (Participatory) Subjects and De... 3.4.2 Organisational Scales: Decidim Team and Metadecidim Assemblies 3.4.3 Community Governance and the Decidim Association 3.4.4 Code Governance and Decidim Agile 3.4.5 Public-Common Partnership: Public Procurements and Digital Commons References Chapter 4: The Technical Plane: The Fabric of an Infrastructure 4.1 Development: Code Programming and Deployment 4.1.1 Modular Architecture 4.1.2 Code Contribution and Collaboration 4.1.3 Installation Deployment and Configuration 4.1.4 Integration with Other Services and Compatibility/Creation of Additional Services 4.2 Documentation: Decidim ́s Documentation System 4.3 Legal: Licences, Regulation, Procurements, Agreements and Statutes 4.4 Research: Laboratories, Innovation and Collective Intelligence 4.4.1 Lab.Metadecidim 4.4.2 Centre for Digital and Democratic Innovation (Canòdrom) in Barcelona 4.5 Education: Training, Empowerment and Mediation References Chapter 5: A Technopolitical Network for Participatory Democracy: The Future of a Collective Platform 5.1 The Future of Decidim 5.1.1 Decidim ́s Past: Lessons for the Future 5.1.2 The Challenges of Artificial Intelligence and Computational Complexity 5.1.3 Federation, Self-Organisation and Decentralisation 5.1.4 A Future of Democratic Quality 5.2 A Technopolitical Network 5.3 for Participatory Democracy 5.4 Autonomy of a Collective Platform in the Age of Digital Intelligence 5.5 Choosing Decidim as Generative Democracy References This Open Access book explains the philosophy, design principles, and community organization of Decidim and provides essential insights into how the platform works. Decidim is the world leading digital infrastructure for participatory democracy, built entirely and collaboratively as free software, and used by more than 500 institutions with over three million users worldwide. The platform allows any organization (government, association, university, NGO, neighbourhood, or cooperative) to support multitudinous processes of participatory democracy. In a context dominated by corporate-owned digital platforms, in the era of increasing social structuring via Artificial Intelligence, Decidim stands as a public or community owned platform for collective human intelligence. Yet, the project is much more than its technological features. Decidim is in itself a crossroad of the various dimensions of the networked society, a detailed practical map of its complexities and conflicts. The authors distinguish three general dimensions of the project: (1) the political - shedding light on the democratic model that Decidim promotes and its impact on public policies and organizations, (2) the technopolitical - explaining how this technology is democratically designed and managed to produce and protect certain political effects, and (3) the technical - presenting the conditions of production, operation, and success of the project. This book systematically covers those three levels in an academically sound, technologically consistent, and politically innovative manner. Serving as a useful resource and handbook for the use of Decidim, it will not only appeal to students and scholars interested in participatory and digital democracy but also to professionals, policy-makers, and a wider audience interested in learning more about the Decidim platform. This is an open access book.