ABSTRACT
Podemos is one of the most emblematic new left-wing parties in Western Europe: formed in 2014 by professors of political science and social activists, it emerged as a political response to the Spanish economic crisis, the Indignados movement and popular mobilizations against austerity. It is a perfect case for studying the potential and the limits of democratic innovations in a context of partisan distrust. It has fostered on-line engagement, direct participation and a variety of bottom-up procedures through an assembly-based model. Primary elections, the potential revocation of party representatives and direct votes by party bases are used, even though internal organizational dynamics also show classical tendencies like the centralization of power around a charismatic leader or the evolution towards a type of plebiscitary democracy. Thus, Podemos illustrates the combination of an innovative deverticalization process with traditional centralization and presidentialization tendencies.
