Abstract
This chapter analyses the use of digital platforms and its intra-party consequences by the radical left party La France Insoumise (Unbowed France—LFI), founded in 2016 by the Presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon. First, we conceptualise LFI as an ‘anti-party digital party’, a type of movements designed around cyber tools both as organisational means to mobilise citizens and as new disruptive spaces prompting novel opportunities of contestation towards mainstream parties. Secondly, we focus on the digital tools through which LFI is organised, mainly structured around the ‘Action Platform’ Agir, integrating multiple functions such as registering membership, organising locally- or theme based ‘action groups’ and online voting. Thirdly, we identify the intra-movement tensions associated with the use of digital platforms, mainly between, on the one hand, the promise of horizontality and participatory democracy and, on the other hand, the centralisation of strategic decisions by party leader resulting in plebiscitarian decision-making. We conclude that digital parties as LFI constitutively oscillate between opening new opportunities of activation for citizens otherwise excluded from politics when their organisations remain open to further innovations and demobilising effects when parties’ leaders reduce the transformative potentialities of online participation to reactive means to retain their intra-party power.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Bardi, L., Bartolini, S., & Trechsel, A. H. (2014). Responsive and responsible? The role of parties in twenty-first century politics. West European Politics, 37(2), 235–252.
Bolleyer, N. (2013). New parties in old party systems: Persistence and decline in seventeen democracies. Oxford University Press.
Caruso, L. (2017). Digital capitalism and the end of politics: The case of the Italian Five Star Movement. Politics & Society, 45(4), 585–609.
Castells, M. (2015). Networks of outrage and hope, social movements in the Internet age. Polity Press.
Cautrès, B. (2017). Mélenchon,‘Vainqueur Caché’ de la Présidentielle? In P. Perrineau (Ed.), Le vote disruptif. Les élections présidentielle et législatives de 2017 (pp. 176–203). Presses de Sciences Po.
Chadwick, A., & Stromer-Galley, J. (2016). Digital media, power, and democracy in parties and election campaigns: Party decline or party renewal? The International Journal of Press/politics, 21(3), 283–293.
Chiocchetti, P. (2016). The radical left party family in Western Europe, 1989–2015. Routledge.
Damiani, M. (2016). La sinistra radicale in Europa: Italia, Spagna, Francia, Germania. Donzelli editore.
Damiani, M. (2020). Populist radical left parties in Western Europe: Equality and sovereignty. Routledge.
De Blasio, E., & Sorice, M. (2018). Populism between direct democracy and the technological myth. Palgrave Communications, 4(1).
Della Porta, D., Fernández, J., Kouki, H., & Mosca, L. (2017). Movement parties against austerity. Polity Press.
Escalona, F. (2017). L’émergence d’une nouvelle gauche radicale. In B. Badie & D. Vidal (Eds.), En quête d’alternatives: L'état du monde 2018. La Découverte.
Fenton, N. (2016a). Digital, political, radical. Polity.
Fenton, N. (2016b). Left out? Digital media, radical politics and social change. Information Communication & Society, 19(3), 346–361.
Gerbaudo, P. (2018). The digital party: Political organisation and online democracy. Pluto Press.
Gerbaudo, P. (2019). Are digital parties more democratic than traditional parties? Evaluating Podemos and Movimento 5 Stelle’s online decision-making platforms. Party Politics, Online first: 1354068819884878.
Hamburger, J. (2018). Whose populism? The mixed messages of La France Insoumise. Dissent, 65(3), 101–110.
Hartleb, F. (2013). Anti-elitist cyber parties? Journal of Public Affairs, 13(4), 355–369.
Ivaldi, G. (2018). Contesting the EU in times of crisis: The Front National and politics of Euroscepticism in France. Politics, 38(3), 278–294.
Karpf, D. (2010). Online political mobilization from the advocacy group’s perspective: Looking beyond clicktivism. Policy & Internet, 2(4), 7–41.
Katz, R. S., & Mair, P. (2018). Democracy and the cartelization of political parties. Oxford University Press.
Kioupkiolis, A. (2016). Podemos: The ambiguous promises of left-wing populism in contemporary Spain. Journal of Political Ideologies, 21(2), 99–120.
Kitschelt, H. (2006). Movement parties. In R. Katz & W. Crotty (Eds.), Handbook of party politics (pp. 278–290). Sage.
Klimowicz, K. A. (2018). Network parties. A new model to democratise and digitise party politics? Das Progressive Zentrum.
La-France-Insoumise. (2016). L’Avenir en commun, le programme de la France Insoumise. Éditions du Seuil.
Lachapelle, G., & Maarek, P. (Eds.). (2015). Political parties in the digital age: The impact of new technologies in politics. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG.
LFI. (2016). Les législatives. https://lafranceinsoumise.fr/2016/11/25/les-legislatives. Accessed 10 Jul 2020.
LFI. (2017a). Charte des groupes d’action de la France insoumise. https://lafranceinsoumise.fr/groupes-action/charte-groupes-dappui-de-france-insoumise. Accessed 10 Jul 2020.
LFI. (2017b). Résultat des votes organisés pendant la convention. https://lafranceinsoumise.fr/2017/11/28/resultat-votes-organises-pendant-convention. Accessed 10 Jul 2020.
LFI. (2017c). Résultats de la consultation sur le second tour de l’élection présidentielle. https://lafranceinsoumise.fr/2017/05/02/resultats-de-consultation-second-tour-de-lelection-presidentielle. Accessed 10 Jul 2020.
LFI. (2018a). Résultats des votes sur les campagnes du mouvement pour 2019. https://lafranceinsoumise.fr/2018/12/08/resultats-des-votes-sur-les-campagnes-du-mouvement-pour-2019. Accessed 10 Jul 2020.
LFI. (2018b). Résultats du vote sur le texte programmatique pour les élections européennes. https://lafranceinsoumise.fr/2018/12/08/resultats-du-vote-sur-le-texte-programmatique-pour-les-elections-europeennes. Accessed 10 Jul 2020.
LFI. (2019a). La France insoumise, un mouvement évolutif. https://lafranceinsoumise.fr/2019/06/23/un-mouvement-evolutif. Accessed 10 Jul 2020.
LFI. (2019b). Les insoumis·es valident les propositions de l’assemblée représentative. https://lafranceinsoumise.fr/2019/07/08/les-insoumis-valident-les-propositions-de-lassemblee-representative. Accessed 10 Jul 2020.
LFI. (2019c). Municipales 2020: Le peuple aux commandes! https://lafranceinsoumise.fr/2019/06/23/municipales-2020-le-peuple-aux-commandes-2. Accessed 10 Jul 2020.
LFI. (2020a). Contribuer a l'elaboration de la premiere session de l’agora. https://agir.lafranceinsoumise.fr/formulaires/contrib-agora-etat-urgence-ecologique. Accessed 19 Aug 2020.
LFI. (2020b). L’Agora: nouveau lieu de débat et de réflexion de la France insoumise. https://lafranceinsoumise.fr/2020/07/01/agora-politique-nouveau-lieu-debat-reflexion. Accessed 10 Jul 2020.
LFI. (2020c). ‘La boétie’: le nouvel institut de La France insoumise. https://lafranceinsoumise.fr/2020/07/01/france-insoumise-institut-la-boetie. Accessed 10 Jul 2020.
LFI. (2020d). Retraites: organiser un arpentage du contre-projet de la France insoumise. https://lafranceinsoumise.fr/2020/01/22/retraites-organiser-un-arpentage. Accessed 10 Jul 2020.
LFI. (2020e). Un budget national participatif pour financer ses actions d’auto-organisation et de solidarité. https://lafranceinsoumise.fr/2020/07/02/groupes-action-budget-national-participatif-financer-actions. Accessed 10 Jul 2020.
March, L., & Keith, D. (Eds.). (2016). Europe's radical left: from marginality to the mainstream? Rowman & Littlefield International.
Margetts, H. Z. (2006). Cyber parties. In R. Katz & W. Crotty (Eds.), Handbook of party politics (pp. 528–535). Sage.
Margetts, H. Z. (2019). Rethinking democracy with social media. Political Quarterly, 90, 107–123.
Marlière, P. (2019). Jean-Luc Mélenchon and France Insoumise: The manufacturing of populism. In G. Katsambekis & A. Kioupkiolis (Eds), The populist radical left in Europe (pp. 93–112). Routledge.
McKelvey, F., & Piebiak, J. (2018). Porting the political campaign: The NationBuilder platform and the global flows of political technology. New Media & Society, 20(3), 901–918.
Mélenchon, J. L. (2010). Qu’ils s’en aillent tous! Flammarion.
Mélenchon, J. L. (2014). L’Ere du peuple. Fayard.
Mélenchon, J. L. (2016). Discours de Jean-Luc Mélenchon à la convention de la France insoumise à Lille. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iC9UDYir8c&t=689s.
Mouffe, C. (2018). For a left populism. Verso Books.
Mudde, C. (1996). The paradox of the anti-party party: Insights from the extreme right. Party Politics, 2(2), 265–276.
Panebianco, A. (1988). Political parties: Organization and power. Translated by M. Silver. Cambridge University Press.
Plancq, C., Després, Z. & Longhi, J.(2018). ‘L’avenir en commun’ des Insoumis. Analyse des forums de discussion des militants de la France Insoumise. Atelier Fouille de Données Complexes, EGC 2018. Paris: France.
Premat, C. (2019). Le positionnement anti-système et le dégagisme dans la campagne présidentielle du mouvement La France insoumise. In F. Sullet-Nylander, M. Bernal, C. Premat, & M. Roitman (Eds.), Political discourses at the extremes. Stockholm University Press.
Ramiro, L., & Gomez, R. (2017). Radical-left populism during the great recession: Podemos and its competition with the established radical left. Political Studies, 65(1_suppl), 108–126.
Scarrow, S. E. (2015). Beyond party members: Changing approaches to partisan mobilization (1st ed.). Oxford University Press.
Smith, T. G. (2017). Politicizing digital space: Theory, the internet, and renewing democracy. University of Westminster Press.
Vaccari, C. (2014). Digital politics in western democracies: A comparative study. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Vaccari, C. (2017). Online mobilization in comparative perspective: Digital appeals and political engagement in Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Political Communication, 34(1), 69–88.
Viviani, L. (2019). Populist anti-party parties. In P. Blokker & M. Anselmi (Eds.), Multiple populisms: Italy as democracy’s mirror (pp. 106–121). Routledge.
Zulianello, M. (2019). Anti-system parties: From parliamentary breakthrough to government. Routledge.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Guglielmo, M. (2021). Anti-party Digital Parties Between Direct and Reactive Democracy. The Case of La France Insoumise. In: Barberà, O., Sandri, G., Correa, P., Rodríguez-Teruel, J. (eds) Digital Parties. Studies in Digital Politics and Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78668-7_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78668-7_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-78667-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-78668-7
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)