Uberisation of politics

Vladan Lausevic
3 min readMar 1, 2019

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Source: Kaspars Grinvalds

In 2005, columnist Johan Thyni wrote in “Perspectives — don’t throw away the old bucket until …” that (my adaptation of the original text in Swedish):

In the future, there will be no political parties as they exist today. “Parties” of the future are instead going to be consisting of interest-driven organisations whose members are involved in one or several political issues”.

According to Thyni’s writings, both the political parties and democratic elections are still going to exist in the future. The main difference would be that the citizens are going to be more active in several interest organisations at the same time. Involvement and activism are going to be more based on issues rather than being based on class or ideological identification.

A process with a growing number of topic-organizations was, according to Thyni, reflecting two future development aspects. Firstly, the new parties of the future would be differently organized than the older ones when it comes to values and ideas. Secondly, that such organisations would not always be categorised by left-right political compass or class identification:

The point is that the voters can say what they think without need to be sorted into ideological boxes”.

Swedish government inquiry on democracy — “Demokratiutredningen.”

In Sweden nowadays it is common with criticism directed towards the political parties for being “closed” and “rigid” as organisations. Almost 15 years ago Thyni wrote that fewer people, and especially fewer young people, were getting to be engaged into political parties which often were perceived as “rigid opinion-packages” and “outdated social beliefs”.

In 2015, Olle Wästberg, a longstanding member of the Liberal Party (formerly known as Folkpartiet Liberalerna) was given the assignment by the Swedish government to conduct an inquiry about democracy’s condition. Wästberg, also an active opinion-maker regarding issues of democracy, noted the following tendencies:

  • The parties are not functioning as popular movements or as a method for influence between elections.
  • Probability for a single party-governments in the future is low. The parties must be willing to compromise to preserve their profile.
  • Fewer people are active as members. Today, Sweden has a larger population than in 1980. During the 1980s around 20% of the voting population (18+-) were active in political parties. Today, the number is under 4%, when all voting entitled Swedes are counted.
  • More and more voters vote for different parties on the election day (Sweden has the same election day for local, regional and national elections). During the 1980s, only around 10% of the voters did so. In 2014 elections about 30% of the voters did so.
  • Social surveys, as by the SOM-institute at Gothenburg’s University, are showing the lower levels of trust that the voters have in parties than before.
  • System with the public subsidies for political parties from 1965 makes parties less dependent on their members, whose support plays a marginal role.

And Wästberg also made the following proposals:

  • Make trials during local election where 16-year old residents can vote.
  • Implement the system of “peoples’ motion” based on the method of citizen initiative in Finland. If one per cent of the voters are supporting a proposal, which also can be conducted via the Internet, the proposal has to be discussed in the local, regional or national council/parliament.
  • Abolish the common election’s day in favour of three electoral days to promote” midterm democracy”.

Uberisation of politics

According to Jan Oravec, who writes for the liberal portal 4Liberty and is active in the F.A Hayek Foundation in Slovakia, the political parties are “turning into relics of organised political life” and “dinosaurs ”.

Internet, social media and smartphones have changed people’s possibilities for political organisation. More and more can act individually when it comes to identifying and solving problems. Oravec argues that there has been a process of “uberisation of politics”, which reminds of shifting relations between consumers and producers when it comes to e-commerce.

Namely, a customer, thanks to transport apps, does not depend on taxi companies. Similarly, a voter, when it comes to projecting influence, does not depend on a political party thanks to the social media.

The web development has also led to dramatically decreased transaction costs for doing politics, which has before demanded higher economic and human resources. As Oravec points out, if the political parties want to survive, they must persuade voters that they can be doing politics better than the people themselves.

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Vladan Lausevic
Vladan Lausevic

Written by Vladan Lausevic

I am active as a social and policy entrepreneur. SEEDS ambassador. Motto: I have no identity, I have only identities.

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