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Metrics, Analytics, and Parties in Digital Democracy

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Abstract

This chapter is dedicated to situating the moment in which we find ourselves in a larger historical perspective, especially in the period that spans from the immediate post-1945 period to the present. This includes the changes introduced by the new digital sociability and its structural constraints, enormously boosted by the isolation and social distancing imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The principles of representative government, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.

  2. 2.

    Bernard Manin, Principes du gouvernement représentatif. 2. ed. Paris: Flammarion, 2012. In this 2012 postface (p. 310), Manin reaffirms that parties, as understood since 1945, and this qualifier is decisive, as will be seen, continue to maintain the same central role they have always had. In his words: “My original analysis of ‘audience’ democracy and its difference from party democracy was sometimes interpreted as implying that political parties would today be an obsolete form of organization. Such was not the intention, however. If the initial formulations were ambiguous, this is the place to clarify them.”

  3. 3.

    Bernard Manin, The principles of representative government, op. cit., p. 234.

  4. 4.

    Ibid., p. 219.

  5. 5.

    The question that is important to emphasize here is: even having passed to “audience” democracy, which operates in structural conditions that are entirely different from the “party democracy,” Manin continues to use the concept of “party” as if, in practice, it continued operating in the same way as in the previous form of representative government. That is already a problem of reasonable magnitude for Manin’s position, not to mention the problem of the adherence of the notion of “audience” democracy to present conditions. On these points, see below.

  6. 6.

    Bernard Manin, The principles of representative government, op. cit., p. 220.

  7. 7.

    Ibid., pp. 220–221.

  8. 8.

    This is a particularly sensitive point for any materialist approach to politics, which is not Manin’s approach. If, says Manin, the information and communication infrastructure of “audience democracy” already involves the formation of oligopolies that effectively operate as gatekeepers to the public sphere, which is also a decisive economic element, the expansion of the state’s range of action further widens that deficit. After all, that expansion, especially in the period from 1945 to the end of the 1970s in central democratic countries, involved nothing less than the formation of a social welfare system that served as a buffer to the classic style of class struggle. As pointed out in Chap. 1, to a large extent democracy remained and even expanded from the 1980s onward, tied to the promises of that kind of social configuration. From the 1990s onward, democracy was maintained and even expanded despite the decline of the social welfare systems and the taking over of the institutions of the post-1945s by the neoliberal logic. The latter, incidentally, made similar promises, but already according to a new economic and social logic that weakened state intervention in its distributive and regulatory aspect rather than in its repressive and punitive apparatus. The most direct economic result was that described in terms of historical development by Thomas Piketty in his Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press, 2014), whose Chap. 8 is an emblem of such development.

  9. 9.

    Bernard Manin, The principles of representative government, op. cit., p. 220.

  10. 10.

    Ibid., pp. 223–224. It is important to note that this characterization does not mean that Manin subscribes to the economic metaphors of much political science, in which there would be a “political market” that could be understood in terms of “supply” and “demand.” Those metaphors are, according to him, especially inadequate when it comes to preferences that are formed in a process, but that are not “ready” when the electorate is faced with choices. See, for example, ibid., pp. 224–226.

  11. 11.

    In contrast to such an understanding of democracy merely as a political regime, Critical Theory sees democracy as a form of life. With no pretense of exhausting the references nor with the intention of affiliating myself to a particular position, see in this regard: Jürgen Habermas. Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1998; Axel Honneth. Das Recht der Freiheit: Grundriss einer demokratischen Sittlichkeit. Berlim: Suhrkamp, 2011; Rahel Jaeggi. Kritik von Lebensformen. Berlim: Suhrkamp, 2013; Robin Celikates. “Radical Democratic Disobedience.” In: William E. Scheuerman (Ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Civil Disobedience, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021; Nancy Fraser; Rahel Jaeggi. Capitalism: A Conversation in Critical Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018; William E. Scheuerman. “Critical Theory and the Present Crisis”, Constellations, Oxford, v. 26, n. 3, pp. 451–63, 2019. Günter Dux. Demokratie als Lebensform: Die Welt in der Krise des Kapitalismus. Berlin: Springer vs, 2019.

  12. 12.

    Ibid., p. 175. In spite of all the major pertinent objections that Manin addresses to Schumpeter, I believe that not only does he fail to criticize him on the fundamental point concerning the uniform characterization of what a party is, but he himself presupposes the existence of that uniformity and its persistence over time. On this, see further Sect. 3.3.

  13. 13.

    Ibid., p. 179.

  14. 14.

    As in the case of “consent” (see next note), so the notion of “verdict of the people” (jugement public) in Manin would also require a separate treatment, not possible here. Let us just mention its affinity with the centrality conferred by Jürgen Habermas on the “public sphere” in the case of non-state-centered social theories, Critical Theory in particular. See his The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry Into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991.

  15. 15.

    The theme of “consent,” in Manin, is extremely complex, requiring a separate treatment, not possible here, not even its broad outlines. Yet, it is a strategic theme to indicate a possible use of Manin’s approach to a revision of the boundaries between what can be considered “endogenous” and “exogenous” in the theory and empirical research of institutionalist inspiration in the present conditions. Manin’s work represents a great opening for a more profound social depth in this research orientation. In this context, it is also of great importance to remember that “trust” is always linked to consent. That is especially evident in the author that Manin mobilizes to ground his own position, John Locke, always attentive to the social depth of politics. Illuminating clarifications on the intricate character of the notion of “trust” in Locke can be found in the classic text by J. W. Gough, John Locke’s Political Philosophy: Eight Studies (London: Oxford University Press, 1956).

  16. 16.

    Bernard Manin, Principes du gouvernement représentatif, op. cit., p. 249. The English version says only “representation.” The principles of representative government, op. cit., p. 194. As in the aforementioned cases of “verdict of the people” (jugement public) and “consent,” also “lien représentatif” (“representative tie,” translated to English just as “representation”), as Manin elaborates it, is a notion that would require separate treatment.

  17. 17.

    Ibid., pp. 219–220, is an example of the changes and similarities of the “representative tie” when Manin compares from such a perspective the forms “parliamentarism,” “party democracy,” and “audience democracy.”

  18. 18.

    Ibid., p. 226.

  19. 19.

    On the formation of the Brazilian public sphere, see Fernando Perlatto. Esferas públicas no Brasil: Teoria social, públicos subalternos e democracia. Curitiba: Appris, 2018.

  20. 20.

    Bernard Manin. The principles of representative government, op. cit., p. 228.

  21. 21.

    Ibid.

  22. 22.

    In her Me the People: How Populism Transforms Democracy (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2019), Nadia Urbinati makes a similar point. Her argument, however, reposes, not on a “digital democracy,” but rather on a “populist democracy” (“an antiparty democracy …. not necessarily rearranged so as to be a more direct and participatory democracy,” p. 25). Instead of using fascism as a reference point, Urbinati argues that “the massive usage of the internet – which is an affordable and revolutionary means of interaction and information sharing by ordinary citizens – has supercharged the horizontal transformation of the audience and made the public into the only existing political actor outside institutions born from civil society.” There are many differences between the approach proposed here and Urbinati’s, but perhaps the main one lies in the fact that it is anchored in the reference to “populism” (albeit in a peculiar sense). As indicated previously, I seek here to escape the alternative “crisis of democracy/populism” or “authoritarian regression/fascism” that I identify as structuring the debate around the current moment in a reductionist way.

  23. 23.

    On some of the nodes related to this topic present in the framework of progressive neoliberalism, see, for example, Judith Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Perfomative (New York: Routledge, 1997).

  24. 24.

    Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, op. cit.; Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” Social Text, Madison, n. 25/26, pp. 56–80, 1990. For a succinct presentation of the notion of “counterpublics” as used here, including discussion with the works mentioned but also going beyond them, see the “Introduction” of The Bolsonaro Paradox: Public Sphere and Right-Wing Counterpublicity in Contemporary Brazil (Berlin: Springer, 2021), by Camila Rocha, Esther Solano and Jonas Medeiros; also Rúrion Melo, “Contrapúblicos e os novos conflitos na esfera pública.” In: Ednaldo Aparecido Ribeiro, Rogério Bastos Arantes and Mariana Batista da Silva, As teorias e o caso. Santo André: Editora UFABC, 2021). This point will be resumed and developed in Chap. 4.

  25. 25.

    On this see, Mariana Giorgetti Valente, “A liberdade de expressão na internet: Da utopia à era das plataformas” (In: José Eduardo Faria (Org.), A liberdade de expressão e as novas mídias. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 2020), pp. 25–36. On the more general issue of the “attention,” I mention here, just a few reference titles, with quite different positions, to give an idea of how vast this field of research is: Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads (New York: Knopf, 2016); James Williams, Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018); Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy (New York: Melville House, 2019).

  26. 26.

    In this sense, it is also necessary to be clearer about more specific issues, such as “disinformation,” for example. If the idea is to return to a model of society characterized by the oligopoly of information and opinion formation, different from the oligopoly of “opinion aggregation” that characterizes platforms and networks, then I think the project is doomed to fail. If, instead, however, we think of disinformation in terms of increased exposure to opinions contrary to those of the “bubbles” and “echo chambers,” perhaps a democratic regulation might have a chance, provided one thinks carefully about what one intends to regulate. I will return to this point in Chap. 6. For the moment, it is important to indicate how it would be possible to qualify metaphors such as “bubbles.” Without ignoring that this is a real phenomenon, it is nevertheless necessary to develop tools capable not only of proving this effect, but, above all, of dimensioning and explaining it in qualitative terms, which, as far as I know, is still an incipient field of investigation. To that end, a good starting point seems to me to be in the approach of William H. Dutton et al. “The Internet and Access to Information about Politics: Searching through Filter Bubbles, Echo Chambers, and Disinformation,” and Silvia Majó-Vázquez; Sandra González-Bailón, “Digital News and the Consumption of Political Information,” both in Mark Graham; William H. Dutton (Eds.), Society and the Internet: How Networks of Information and Communication are Changing our Lives. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2019.

  27. 27.

    I take here as a reference and successful synthesis of multiple aspects at play Ralph Schroeder’s, Social Theory after the Internet: Media, Technology, and Globalization (London: UCL, 2018). Schroeder analyzed the social changes (also in social theory) produced by the Internet in four countries: the United States, Sweden, China, and India. Schroeder’s identification of the scope, importance, and relevance of the changes he studied also serves to delimit the intended scope of the considerations made here. In his words: “The importance of the internet for social change and so for social theory can be put in its place by noting that there are at least three more significant macro-changes in these four countries that have little or nothing to do with the internet: climate change, financialization and the limits to social citizenship. Changes brought about by the internet can be seen as a fourth significant change, but which of these changes is more fundamental remains to be seen” (pp. 165–6). Schroeder’s work is not used here, however, in terms of agreement with his theoretical premises, which are broadly based on Max Weber’s objectivism, as well as on Ian Hacking’s driving ideas of realism in the philosophy of science, Randall Collins’ view of the migration of technologies from the laboratory to everyday life, and Weber’s own “disenchantment” or “rationalization” thesis, as well as an important nod to Ernest Gellner (see, for example, p. 19). The position I adopt is closer in this respect to that expressed by the notion of “bias” as formulated by Andrew Feenberg. “Bias” is for him the expression of a pre-formation that favors the introduction of a particular technology over other possible ones. In a typical justification circle, the introduction of that particular technology validates and legitimates the very bias that predetermined its choice, validating and legitimating the same pre-formed social order of which the bias is the expression. On this, see for example Andrew Feenberg, Between Reason and Experience: Essays in Technology and Modernity (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010).

  28. 28.

    Ralph Schroeder, Social Theory after the Internet, op. cit., p. 8.

  29. 29.

    David Karpf, Analytic Activism: Digital Listening and the New Political Strategy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.

  30. 30.

    Ibid., p. 29, where an overview of the use and the combined consideration of the terms “algorithms,” “analytics,” and “metrics” can be found: “When we talk about algorithms, we are talking about automated decision processes. When we talk about analytics, we are talking about particular metrics and reports -strategic objects that capture some slice of online traffic and reproduce it in an accessible format. Algorithms and analytics are not neutral. They are developed with a specific output in mind, and their calculations encode a series of value-decisions.”

  31. 31.

    Ibid., p. 42.

  32. 32.

    “An A/ B test is a simple experiment: Website visitors or email recipients are randomly assigned to two groups. Both groups interact with exactly the same message, featuring exactly one variation” (p. 12).

  33. 33.

    Ibid., p. 106.

  34. 34.

    Ralph Schroeder, Social Theory after the Internet, op. cit., p. 142.

  35. 35.

    Ibid., p. 63.

  36. 36.

    Markus Prior, Post-Broadcast Democracy: How Media Choice Increases Inequality in Political Involvement and Polarizes Elections. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

  37. 37.

    Ibid., p. 17.

  38. 38.

    Ibid., p. 14.

  39. 39.

    Ibid. pp. 34 ff.

  40. 40.

    For example, Manin’s fundamental assumption that a certain standard of journalism and objectivity was adopted along with the creation of TV itself appears in Prior’s argument as self-evident: “media environment of the broadcast era was characterized by homogeneity of content and limited opportunity to choose between genres” (ibid., p. 14).

  41. 41.

    Ibid. pp. 88 ff.

  42. 42.

    Ibid. pp. 94 ff.

  43. 43.

    To give a single example among many possible in the Brazilian case, see one of the results of the InternetLab/Rede de Conhecimento Social research, Os vetores da comunicação política em aplicativos de mensagens: Habits and perceptions of Brazilians in 2020: “In general, people who have a more defined political positioning, both right and left, also show themselves to be more present in WhatsApp groups. The survey found that 18% of respondents participate in political discussion groups since 2018.”

  44. 44.

    Oscar Westlund and Lennart Weibull. “Generation, Life Course and News Media Use in Sweden 1986–2011.” Northern Lights, Boston, v. 11, n. 1, pp. 147–73, 2013. On the generational component of the problem examined here, see later in this chapter.

  45. 45.

    Ralph Schroeder, Social Theory after the Internet, op. cit., p. 43.

  46. 46.

    That said, the greater effectiveness and efficiency of extreme right-wing forces in the use of new digital tools so far does not mean the end of the story. If democracy survives as a “digital democracy,” the “opportunity” Schroeder talks about can be used in very different ways, capable of effectively deepening democracy, not abolishing it. That, however, will certainly involve a regulation of the digital world, especially in relation to messaging apps and platforms that can allow such advancement instead of the regression that began in the 2010s.

  47. 47.

    Cathy O’Neil, for example, is an author who seems to tend toward a diagnosis of a complete replacement of the old forms of hierarchization by algorithmic logic, founded on big data and metrics. On this see her book Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. New York: Crown Publishing, 2017. I understand that Shoshana Zuboff goes in the same direction. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. New York: PublicAffairs, 2020.

  48. 48.

    Ralph Schroeder, Social Theory after the Internet, op. cit.

  49. 49.

    In this regard, see, for example, Giuliano da Empoli, Les ingénieurs du chaos (Paris: JC Lattès, 2019), especially Chap. 6. In order not to limit the debate to the manipulative register of this type of resource, see, for example, the proposals of Rodrigo Nunes in his Neither Vertical nor Horizontal: A Theory of Political Organisation (London: Verso, 2021), esp. pp. 256 ff.

  50. 50.

    On this, see Maurício Moura and Juliano Corbellini, A eleição disruptiva: Por que Bolsonaro venceu? (Rio de Janeiro: Record, 2019). In an entirely different context, but still in the same sense, it is worth remembering that the suspension of the Telegram app by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes on March 18, 2022, revoked by the same Justice less than 48 hours later, caused Jair Bolsonaro to gain at least 150,000 new followers on this messaging app/social network in that short period of time, going from about 1.09 million subscribers to more than 1.24 million. Just to establish a parameter of comparison, at the same time Lula had 51 thousand followers in the same app.

  51. 51.

    Elmer Eric Schattschneider, Party Government. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1977, p. ix.

  52. 52.

    Ibid., p. 35.

  53. 53.

    Ibid., p. 37.

  54. 54.

    The same year in which Joseph Schumpeter’s Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy was first published. It is also not coincidental that the minimalist definitions of party of both coincide to a great extent. However, unlike Schumpeter, Schattschneider has his focus directed towards peculiarities and particularities. On this minimalist character of the party definition, see below.

  55. 55.

    Ibid., p. 65.

  56. 56.

    Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Party Systems, op. cit., pp. 3 ff.

  57. 57.

    Les Partis politiques. Paris: Armand Colin, 1967, p. 1.

  58. 58.

    Ibid., pp. 2–14. “The distinction between parties of external creation and parties of electoral and parliamentary creation is not a strict one: it characterizes general trends rather than well-defined types, so that their practical application is sometimes difficult” (p. 8).

  59. 59.

    Angelo Panebianco, Modelli di partito: Organizzazione e potere nei partiti politici. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1982, pp. 103 ff.

  60. 60.

    All the premises enunciated so far are akin to those of Richard S. Katz and Peter Mair, “Changing Models of Party Organization and Party Democracy,” Party Politics, London, v. 1, n. 1, pp. 5–28, 1995.

  61. 61.

    The following premises are the result of my interpretations of the work of Leonardo Martins Barbosa, both in his doctoral thesis (Conflito partidário e ordem política, op. cit.) and in his ongoing project, “Social democracy and democratic stability: A study of the cases of the SPD (1919–1933) and the PT (1988–2016)” a postdoctoral fellowship developed in the framework of the thematic project “Crises of democracy: Critical theory and diagnosis of the present time’’ 2021–6.

  62. 62.

    Another fundamental aspect to effectively and not only formally achieve this approximation is the consideration of similarities and differences between the first half of the twentieth century and the current moment in terms of the figure of “leadership” itself. To that end, it is essential to consult Yves Cohen’s Le Siècle des chefs: Une histoire transnationale du commandement et de l’autorité (1890–1940) (Paris: Amsterdam, 2013). Having conducted comparative research in four countries, Germany, the United States, France, and the Soviet Union, Cohen identifies, in all these cases, the emergence of the idea of the “need for a leader” (besoin du chef), which is at the very basis of the idea of “leadership” in the period studied, and this should be a necessary starting point for studying central issues such as that of “charisma,” for example. Further on, I will tentatively approximate the idea of “charismatic party” to the notion of “digital party” as I understand it here. In that context, I will raise questions about the very nature of charisma and of leadership in the present moment. I will not, however, go beyond raising such questions within the limits of this chapter or even this book.

  63. 63.

    The only alternative characterization to this one with some repercussion in empirical research was that of the “catch-all-party,” by Otto Kirchheimer: “The Transformation of Western European Party Systems.” In: J. LaPalombara and M. Weiner (Eds.), Political Parties and Political Development. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1966.

  64. 64.

    Modelli di partito, pp. 478 ff.

  65. 65.

    Ibid., op. cit., pp. 130 ff.

  66. 66.

    Ibid. pp. 263 ff.

  67. 67.

    Angelo Panebianco, “Organizzazione e potere.” In: Angelo Panebianco (Ed.), L’analisi della politica: Tradizioni di ricerca, modelli, teorie. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1989, p. 281.

  68. 68.

    Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Political Systems, op. cit, pp. 117–118. As far as I know, the term “antipolitics” has its origin in Suzanne Berger’s “Politics and Antipolitics in Western Europe in the Seventies,” Daedalus, Cambridge, v. 108, n. 1, pp. 27–50, winter 1979. It is possible that the term has entered the Brazilian debate after Bolsonaro’s election through Jan-Werner Müller’s reading of the term, molded on the “crisis of democracy/populism” key. See, in this regard, Jan-Werner Müller, What Is Populism? (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), especially p. 41. This point will be equally important in Chaps. 4 and 5, where we will try to present Bolsonaro not only as an anti-establishment candidate, but also as an anti-establishment president.

  69. 69.

    The bureaucratic party is “endowed with a hierarchical-pyramidal structure, composed of full-time officials and dominated by a cohesive élite, an oligarchy in Michels’ sense.” Angelo Panebianco, “Organizzazione e potere,” op. cit., p. 281.

  70. 70.

    The patrimonial party, “with a ‘star’ structure, occupied at various key points by politicians specialized in the exchange of public resources for votes and consensus; the dominant coalition is a polyarchy whose components are the leaders of organized factions.” Ibid.

  71. 71.

    Paolo Gerbaudo, The Digital Party, op. cit., p. 13.

  72. 72.

    Ibid., p. 5.

  73. 73.

    On this, see Ralph Schroeder, Social Theory after the Internet, op. cit., p. 141.

  74. 74.

    Paolo Gerbaudo, The Digital Party, op. cit., pp. 4–5.

  75. 75.

    On this, see Paolo Gerbaudo, The Digital Party, op. cit. For example: “In older organizations, such as traditional political parties, the use of digital technology tends to concern intra-organizational processes and the external communication of parties to their targeted publics. These organizations tend to be very prudent in absorbing digital technology in their operations and continue to view television and the press as their main grounds of campaigning” (p. 13).

  76. 76.

    If I understand Rodrigo Nunes’ argument in Neither Vertical nor Horizontal (op. cit.) correctly, the idea of “hyper-leader” as proposed by Gerbaudo would be limited by not taking into account the relative organizational position of the leadership, ignoring the distinction between “weak” and “strong” leaderships and thus amalgamating, in an erroneous way, media visibility and organizational power. Put more concretely, Gerbaudo would not have taken into account differences between, for example, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Jeremy Corbyn, on the one hand, and Luigi Di Maio or Jean-Luc Mélenchon, on the other (p. 232 and also pp. 257 ff.). It is possible that Nunes is right in his criticism, if what he has in mind is the idea that it is necessary to broaden the typology of party formations at the present time and the different possible configurations of leadership, accordingly. However, notwithstanding the necessary caveat regarding the often one-sidedly manipulative register of his approach, I understand that Gerbaudo’s position follows a trend verified by him and resulting from the very structure of the new forms of organization, namely, the specific power of initiative that the leadership is endowed with, which allows the connection with Manin’s theoretical framework that was the starting point of this chapter. In that sense, I believe that Gerbaudo’s conclusions accurately describe the concrete functioning of the new digital political structures. It should be noted that Nunes’s book goes far beyond this discussion, seeking not only to systematize debates on organizational possibilities today, but also proposing ways to realize them. An approach to the discussion at hand in a more comprehensive framework would also have to consider the different forms of “soft leadership” (or invisible leadership), as proposed by Gerbaudo in his Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism, London: Pluto Press, 2012. Yet, it is not surprising that Nunes has not done so, since Gerbaudo himself has not taken up this very fundamental notion of the 2012 book in his 2019 work, contrasting, for example, “soft leadership” and “hyper-leadership.”

  77. 77.

    This will be one of the leading ideas that will guide the analyses in Chaps. 4 and 5.

  78. 78.

    Paolo Gerbaudo, The Digital Party, op. cit., p. 51.

  79. 79.

    It would be interesting to investigate the possible affinities of this category with that of “subproletariat” as mobilized by André Singer from the formulation of Paul Singer in his Os sentidos do lulismo, op. cit.

  80. 80.

    Available at https://www.cetic.br/en/tics/domicilios/2020/individuos/. Accessed July 12, 2022.

  81. 81.

    Available at https://cetic.br/en/pesquisa/domicilios/indicadores/. Accessed July 12, 2022.

  82. 82.

    Available at https://cetic.br/en/pesquisa/domicilios/indicadores/. Accessed July 12, 2022.

  83. 83.

    Laura Stoker, “Reflections on the Study of Generations in Politics,” The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics, v. 12, n. 3, p. 392, 2014.

  84. 84.

    Yascha Mounk, The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2018.

  85. 85.

    Ibid., p. 108. In asking about support for a military government, Mounk found the following figures: 1 in 16 Americans favored it in 1995, 1 in 6 when the question was last posed, in 2011. He concludes that this “means that the number of people who support army rule is now about as high in the United States as it is in countries with such turbulent histories of civil-military relations as Algeria (where 17 percent favored military rule in 2013) or Yemen (where 20 percent favored it” (p. 108). Mounk also shows that this picture goes far beyond the countries mentioned to include Chile, Germany, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and especially India (p. 109).

  86. 86.

    Paolo Gerbaudo, The Digital Party, op. cit., p. 113.

  87. 87.

    Ibid., p. 152.

  88. 88.

    Ibid., p. 176.

  89. 89.

    Ibid., p. 186.

  90. 90.

    Ibid.

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Nobre, M. (2022). Metrics, Analytics, and Parties in Digital Democracy. In: Limits of Democracy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16392-0_3

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