The Pirate Parties’ Globality

Abstract

In the following, one transnational - and potentially global - phenomenon will be discussed by asking ‘how do the members of the Pirate Party perceive the Pirate Parties’ globality?’ In the first part of this paper, the structures surrounding the Pirate Party are described. It will be argued that the Pirate Party can be regarded as an allegory for globalization. Furthermore, it is asserted that the Pirate Parties constitute a network. Therefore, the network shape, as defined by Manuel Castells, will be scrutinized in order to investigate the appearance of a potentially new global player. Besides that, the Pirate Parties’ emergence will be embedded into the current geo-political context of the Information Age. In the second part, a stronger focus rests on the action that should be generated in the future. Here, the notions of democracy, as defined by the interviewed Pirate Parties members, serve as the basis for investigation. Liquid Democracy, a blend between representative democracy and direct democracy, will be explored and additionally compared to its template deliberative democracy. Furthermore, the obstacles, but also the possibilities of this notion are going to be debated, and in the end additionally layered on a global scale. Altogether, and as it can be detected in the setup of this paper, the ontological dispute between structuralism and constructivism will be an eminent feature of this research, arguing that not a bipolar opposition between individuals and structures enforces our reality, but the reciprocity between them.