Reflexive Technopopulism: Podemos and the Search for a New Left-Wing Hegemony

Home , Podemos (Guatemala), Popular Unity (Spain), The Left (Italy)

Eur Polit Sci (2019) 18:24–36 https://doi.org/10.1057/s41304-017-0140-9

SYMPOSIUM

Reﬂexive technopopulism: Podemos and the search for a new left-wing hegemony

1 2 Alexandros Kioupkiolis • Francisco Seoane Pe´rez

Published online: 22 January 2018 Ó European Consortium for Political Research 2018

Abstract Its reliance on social media and television to mobilise supporters and popularise the figure of its charismatic leader, political science lecturer Pablo Iglesias, is one of the main characteristic features of Podemos, a new, left-leaning populist party that has shaken the political establishment of Spain since its irruption as a decisive political force in the 2014 European elections. Podemos could actually be defined as a ‘transmedia party’, as it combines the use of social media to reach young constituents with traditional TV talk show appearances to reach a wider, and also older, audience. This dualism (traditionalism and innovation) is also present in Podemos’ own configuration as a blend of a social movement and a vertically ruled political party, with a simultaneous presence outside and inside representative structures like parliaments and local governments. Far from hiding from recurrent accusations of populism, Podemos takes pride in being considered a populist movement. Actually, their leaders see their party-cum-movement as a practical implementation of the theories of the Argentinean philosopher Ernesto Laclau: their left-leaning populist formation is the necessary vanguard of a new democratic majority that will replace the current neoliberal hegemony. This unusual reflexivity is studied through a critical discourse analysis of published interviews with Podemos’ leaders.

Keywords Podemos Á Populism Á Spain Á Social movements Á Social media Á Laclau

& Alexandros Kioupkiolis [email protected] Francisco Seoane Pe´rez [email protected]

1 School of Political Sciences, Faculty of Economic and Political Sciences, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, University Campus, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece 2 Departamento de Periodismo y Comunicacio´n Audiovisual, Facultad de Humanidades, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Calle Madrid, 133, 17.1.08, 28903 Getafe, Madrid, Spain Reﬂexive technopopulism: Podemos and the search for a… 25

Introduction

The young Spanish party Podemos belongs to a new wave of left-wing populism which has recently swept through Europe, mainly in the crisis-hit South. After its irruption in early 2014 and its surprising success in the May 2014 European elections, Podemos experienced a meteoric rise in popularity until the end of 2014, when its appeal declined and then stabilised. In 2015–2016, in the Spanish local and general elections, Podemos contended with three other parties (PP, PSOE and Ciudadanos) for the lead in the polls. Unidos Podemos, its electoral coalition with the left-wing Izquierda Unida, came third in the repeat parliamentary elections on 26 June 2016, taking 21.1% of the vote. This article engages with Podemos as a variety of left-wing populism in contemporary European politics. While it has shared the anti-elitist discourse of other populisms and it is likewise a response to the ‘crisis of representation’ in liberal democracies and the more recent economic crisis, Podemos has also been distinguished by a set of distinctive features: its initial roots in ‘horizontalist’ social movements; its ‘technopolitics’; and a reﬂexive application of populist theory which is without known precedent in history. This analysis focuses on the incipient stage of Podemos’ political life, during which these distinctive traits were particularly pronounced (see also Kioupkiolis 2016). In the June 2016 general elections, a whole political cycle came to a close, solidifying the tendencies towards the ‘normali- sation’ and institutionalisation of the party. Podemos has gradually steered away not only from its origins in social movements but also from its populist discourse and strategy (Iglesias in Fort Apache 2016;Rı´os 2016).

Post-democracy and new left-wing populism

Since 2009–2010, Spanish society has been hit by a severe crisis of the liberal- democratic consensus that had prevailed in the previous two decades. The regime that was put in place after the fall of Franco’s dictatorship in 1978 has undergone a further ‘post-democratic’ shift, which reinforced already dominant tendencies of civic demobilisation and the two-party system.1 The ‘post-democratic’ crisis consists in the programmatic convergence of the centre-left and the centre-right parties on neoliberalism; the increasing unresponsiveness of political elites and institutions to social demands; widespread corruption; and the growing discontent of citizens with representative democracy and the entire 1978 regime. The change from dictatorship to liberal democracy in Spain was not a rupture but a transicio´n, by which the old regime gave way to new institutions. This apparently peaceful and successful change, hailed as one of Spain’s most remarkable achievements in recent history, was consolidated when the 1981 coup d’e´tat was averted; parties of the moderate left (the PSOE) and moderate right (the PP) led executives supported by parliamentary majorities in the two subsequent decades. However, this 1978 regime

1 On the notion of ‘post-democracy’ and ‘post-politics’, which captures features of the Spanish ‘1978 regime’ as outlined in the following, see Crouch (2014) and Mouffe (2005). 26 A. Kioupkiolis, F. S. Pe´rez

(taking its name from the Constitution passed that same year) was cemented on foundations that revealed their fragility after the unprecedented 2008 economic crisis. Suddenly, the monarchy, the model of state decentralisation and the reliability of the mainstream parties came into question. According to Carolina Bescansa, one of Podemos’ founders and key in-house analyst, up to 80% of the Spanish population had a negative opinion about political parties in 2012, whereas in the 1980s these same parties could boast levels of support above 60% of the electorate (Seoane Pe´rez 2014). In 2011, well before the irruption of Podemos but with the economic and political crisis already savaging the middle class in Spain, the proportion of the vote going to the two majority parties had fallen 11 percentage points. The ‘window of opportunity’ to test a ‘populist hypothesis’ was there (Podemos 2014a; Monedero et al. 2014a; Errejoń Galvań 2014; Seoane Pe´rez 2014; Sampedro and Lobera 2014). As in the case of Greece, also analysed in this symposium, the 2008–2010 crisis was the pivotal moment for a populist turn (Stavrakakis and Katsambekis 2018). The 15-M movement which spread across Spain in May 2011 thus voiced popular outrage at material impoverishment and the hollowing-out of democracy, leaving a strong imprint on political culture. The movement has failed to effectively change power relations and the main economic and political institutions, however; these have remained largely impervious to the demands for ‘real democracy’, economic fairness and the defence of social rights. As a result, since 2011, various social actors have started looking for new means of political representation that would overcome the fragmentation and the political impotence of social movements. Podemos emerged from this search (Podemos 2014a; Monedero et al. 2014a; Sampedro and Lobera 2014; Delclos 2014). Consequently, as happens frequently with populist politics (Roberts 2015: 149, 155), Podemos was a response to a crisis of political representation. Podemos’ politics were populist from the outset, if we construe populism in Ernesto Laclau’s formal-structural terms as (1) ‘the formation of an internal antagonistic frontier separating the ‘‘people’’ from power’ (Laclau 2005: 74); (2) the creation of a chain of equivalence among different popular demands that are loaded onto an ‘empty signifier’ (the populist leader him/herself or all-catch words like democracy); and (3) the representation of the people of populism as an excluded and underprivileged plebs which claims to be the only legitimate community of the people and the democratic sovereign (Laclau 2005: 74, 81, 94, 98). Hence, Podemos’ discourse has been populist from its inception in 2014, insofar as it placed at its centre the antagonistic divide between the social majority and a privileged minority. This displaced and replaced the divide between left and right. The social majority, designated variously as ‘el pueblo’, ‘la gente’, ‘la mayoria social’ and ‘la ciudadania’, is portrayed as suffering from impoverishment and exclusion from a democracy that has been ‘hijacked’ by elites, and it is opposed to the ‘casta’ that rules the regime (Podemos 2014a: 10–12; Iglesias in Fort Apache 2014). A plurality of social demands emerging from the economic crisis and the neoliberal policies of the state—the defence of social welfare and social rights; the end of austerity policies; popular sovereignty—are brought together in a single chain of equivalence around the ‘empty signifier’ of ‘democracy’ (‘construir la Reflexive technopopulism: Podemos and the search for a… 27 democracia’) and the charismatic figure of Pablo Iglesias (Podemos 2014b; Iglesias in Forte Apache 2014). The third moment of populism a`laLaclau is also present. Podemos strives to manufacture a ‘popular unity’ and to ‘recuperate politics’ for the disaffected majority, the plebs, in order to put public institutions in the service of the common good (Podemos 2014b: 10–12; Iglesias in Forte Apache 2014). Moreover, Podemos’ discourse seeks to connect with popular sentiments and common notions. It has articulated a diagnosis for the present crisis and has put forward policy alternatives by speaking in a plain, ‘ordinary’ language to which people can easily relate, in terms which are not those of the conventional left but are widely shared across social a variety of social groups. It represents, also, party activists as ‘ordinary people’ (Flesher Fominaya 2014: 4). In all these respects, Podemos is ‘populist in the purest sense of the term’ (Flesher Fominaya 2014: 6). Moreover, in order to reach a wider audience, the spokespersons of Podemos have made intensive use of popular media outlets, including traditional TV channels. The party is also deeply steeped in new digital networks, through which it echoes and reconfigures public opinion (Iglesias 2014a; Flesher Fominaya 2014:6,Sańchez 2014: 3). This populist strategy turned out to be very successful for at least a year after the May 2014 European elections, resonating powerfully with the youngest voters, students, the unemployed and urban and educated citizens. The latter are affected by the crisis but see themselves as middle class. They bear loose party and ideological identifications. They are immersed in digital social media and are concerned with specific issues (Sanz 2015; CIS 2015a, b). However, Podemos’ populism has been effectively left-leaning, since its original programme incorporated most demands of the contemporary social democratic left, as it has happened in Greece or Italy (Salgado and Stavrakakis 2018). Moreover, in contrast to right-wing populism, the feelings of anger and fear nourished by precarity are projected on to the domestic ‘casta’ rather than on immigrants. Finally, this anti-establishment sentiment is directed not only against corrupt political oligarchies but also against economic elites, and it is wedded to a project of social justice (Podemos 2014b; Delclos 2014; Zabala 2014).

Podemos’ dualism, technopopulism and reﬂexivity

What singled out Podemos’ populism at its beginnings was, first, its intimate relation with social movements and direct collective participation. The rise of Podemos was facilitated and influenced by the 15-M movement and the shifts in political culture that it brought about: critique of elites; protagonism of the people; displacement of the left/right divide with an antagonism between citizens and the establishment; promotion of the open and plural participation of citizens. These critical elements account for the form and the language of Podemos’ politics as well as for its resonance with the population (Errejoń Galvań 2014; Podemos 2014a; Sampedro and Lobera 2014; Flesher Fominaya 2014; Stobart 2014a; Kioupkiolis 2016). The 15-M movement is seen by Podemos’ main theoretician, Iń˜igo Errejoń Galvań(2014), as a ‘populist moment’ that opened up a 28 A. Kioupkiolis, F. S. Pe´rez window of opportunity in which a politicised minority could represent and create a new popular majority. The 15-M movement was cross-class and horizontal, that is, it had populist features. Moreover, Podemos also partly imitated the direct democratic practice of the 15-M movement by fostering the participation of ‘lay people’ in its grassroots at the time of its foundation in early 2014. The new party set up local and sectorial ‘circles’ of members and sympathisers, who debated politics and formulated policy proposal. It facilitated online forms of involvement accessible to all and it undertook a collective construction of its programme and its electoral lists for the European elections in May 2014 (Podemos 2014a, c; Espinoza Pino 2014; Tenhunen and Rodriguez 2014). On the other hand, there are limits to Podemos’ identification with horizontal social movements (del Barrio 2014). To begin with, Podemos was launched from the top, at the initiative of a ‘leading figure’—Pablo Iglesias—and an affiliated group of intellectuals and activists, who have always maintained their grip over the politics of the new formation. Second, against the anti-electoral animus of 15-M, the leadership of Podemos has highlighted the importance of the electoral route and it set out to ‘conquer the state’ (Podemos 2014a; Errejoń Galvań 2014; Espinoza Pino 2014; Delclos 2014). The persistence of hierarchy, hegemonic representation, state politics and ‘traditional’ mass media communication attests to the survival of ‘old- style’ representative politics and a strong ‘vertical’ dimension in the midst of Podemos. This clashes with the ‘horizontal’ layer of egalitarian participation and the 15-M spirit, leading social activists to denounce Podemos as old politics in a new garb (Flesher Fominaya 2014; Taibo 2015). In effect, the ambiguities and complexities of Podemos’ populism reflect the complexity, ambiguity, fluidity and heterogeneity of the sociopolitical context in contemporary Spain. While recurrent democratic mobilisations since 2011 have fashioned a new ‘common sense’ that challenges conventional representative politics, state institutions remain in place, relatively unaffected by social protest and repressing political contestation. Moreover, social diversity and fragmentation, along with minoritarian participation in popular assemblies, have prevented the development of an alternative democratic process that would displace established institutions (Monedero et al. 2014b; Podemos 2014a; Errejoń Galvań 2014). The technopolitical aspect is a second, unique innovation of Podemos’ populism. Social media and new digital technologies are highly popular in contemporary Spain, and they were deployed on a massive scale by 15-M activists. Two days after its surprising results in the 2014 European elections, Podemos became the most- followed Spanish party on Twitter, and Pablo Iglesias revealed himself as one of Europe’s most successful politicians on the same platform (Go´mez and Viejo 2014). Podemos’ organisers did not simply endorse this technopolitics but they enhanced digital participation with new tools (Rubinõ 2015; Pizarro and Labuske 2015). Podemos constructed its own platforms and technologies, through which thousands of members can ‘do politics’ by proposing, debating and voting on party policies (Pizarro and Labuske 2015: 98–99). By using the mobile application Appgree, Podemos managed to identify the most widely supported ideas in its groups, squaring the circle of massive participation and reasonable deliberation (Del Ser Reflexive technopopulism: Podemos and the search for a… 29

2014). Podemos set up a permanent online ‘agora’, called ‘Plaza Podemos’, a reddit channel through which all party members could take part in its life. Because Podemos adopted new software for anonymous online voting (called Agora Voting), thousands of people managed to participate in Podemos’ primaries for the May 2014 European elections and in the Citizens’ Assembly in November 2014, which decided the party’s structure (Pizarro and Labuske 2015: 101–102; Clavell 2015: 115; Del Ser 2014; Medina 2015: 131). Podemos has thus manufactured a ‘machine of political communication’ which ‘hacks’ public opinion and reconstructs it, multiplying its social impact through diffuse networks and thousands of connections. The embrace of digital media to facilitate information, mobilisation and interaction results in a hybrid party structure that displays features of digital networks and social movements. Hence, through its technopolitical instruments, Podemos has given rise to a new brand of technopopulism, whereby the people can construct itself in and through new social media and more conventional modes of participatory party politics.2 Moreover, the combination of older and new media (TV broadcasts and so on) has made Podemos a transmedia party. While its active use of Twitter connected with the youth, frequent appearances on TV talk shows made their leaders uniformly known across Spanish demography in record time. Podemos’ effective use of diverse media to communicate its own political messages and to act as relays between politics on ‘the streets’ challenges a media-centric thesis that overemphasises the role of the media themselves in the construction of political discourse (Casero-Ripolle´s et al. 2016). Finally, Podemos’ populism evinces a reflexivity without known precedent in populist politics. Although, as in the case of Portugal (Salgado 2018), mainstream media discourse has a simplistic understanding of populism as an oversimplification of political discourse that panders to voters’ basic instincts, Podemos’ leaders have quietly tried to portray their project as an implementation of Laclauian populism. Indeed, Ernesto Laclau’s hegemonic theory of populism is not merely an apt framework for analysing Podemos’ politics; along with the 15-M political culture and the Latin American experiences of left-wing populism in the last fifteen years, it has been one of the key intellectual influences on the political project of Podemos (Errejoń Galvań 2011b, 2014; Fort Apache 2014; Alemań 2015; Martıńez Alier 2014; Stobart 2014b; Kioupkiolis 2016). Podemos’ leaders are true believers in the performative power of language, in the ability of new linguistic framings to effect social change. In effect, one could argue that Laclau’s thought has informed the political strategy of the intellectual leadership of the new party, academics based in the Department of Politics at the Complutense University of Madrid, who study and cite his work. Podemos can be seen to this extent as an implementation of Laclau’s theory of populism (Errejoń Galvań 2011a, 2014; Fort Apache 2014; Stobart 2014b).

2 For an earlier, critical account of ‘technopopulism’ in contemporary parties, see Lipow and Seyd (1995). 30 A. Kioupkiolis, F. S. Pe´rez

At this stage, we can make four claims regarding the impact of Laclau’s theory on Podemos’ populism. The first point is that Laclau’s influence is bound indeed to assign a primary place to the ‘people’ over class or other collective subjects (Laclau 2005: 232–250). In this regard, the success of Podemos’ populism seemed initially to confirm the pertinence of such a strategic choice under conditions of social fragmentation, in which there are no other broadly shared and stable social identities beyond the ‘people’ or the ‘nation’. Furthermore, the Gramscian conception of hegemony and Laclau’s recasting of it through discourse theory accord a decisive role to political communication, the construction of (new) meanings and the struggle to influence and reform the ‘common sense’ that enables a political force to gain hegemony. This can account for the emphasis on discourse, mass media communication and the interaction with ‘common sense.’ Podemos’ discursive-communicative strategy has led critics to claim that it has worked to the detriment of specific and well-grounded programmatic proposals. Programmatic vagueness and volatility can be associated with Laclau’s interest in ‘empty signifiers’, words and symbols that facilitate convergences and the making of collective identities (Casero-Ripolle´s et al. 2016: 6; Antentas 2016). Empty signifiers (e.g. ‘democracy’, ‘justice’, ‘change’) are divested of specific content, and this ‘emptiness’ enables various constituencies with different demands and perspectives to identify with them despite their differences. On the other hand, the contention that Laclau’s populist hegemony ‘moderates’ political radicalism is rather ill founded. The politics of hegemony is all about the constitution of social orders themselves, installing new orders or defending established regimes (Laclau and Mouffe 1985). The most interesting implication seems to be, rather, that a certain reading of Laclau’s thought is likely to have reinforced vertical and centralising tendencies in Podemos.3 A reception of Laclau’s hegemony which emphasises the catalytic role of individual leadership is likely to have been affirmed by the experience of Latin American left-wing populism, which also weighs heavily on the political directors of Podemos (Errejoń Galvań 2011b; Delclos 2014; Machado 2014). Although with a different style, due to cultural differences between Spain and Latin America, Pablo Iglesias acts as both politician and communicator. He is a political leader and a TV presenter with professorial overtones. Before the European elections of 2014, Iglesias was far more widely known than Podemos, so the party strategists decided to replace the party logo in the ballots with the face of Iglesias himself. Charismatic leadership, a fixture of populist movements, is also evident in the Italian case (Bobba 2018). After the launch of Podemos by Pablo Iglesias and an affiliated group in early 2014, followed by the growth of horizontal grassroots involvement, the Citizens’ Assembly in November 2014 marked, according to critics, a vertical turn in the actual workings and constitution of Podemos, which was laid down in this convention (Garcıá 2015; Jurado 2014). The leadership of Pablo Iglesias and his

3 For this reading of Laclau and populist theory more broadly, see Errejoń Galvań(2011b), Fort Apache (2014) and Kioupkiolis (2016). For the role of the leader—Pablo Iglesias—in Podemos, see Flesher Fominaya (2014) and Lloriente (2014). For the claim that ‘verticalism’ or authoritarianism is an effect of the populist logic as fleshed out by Laclau, see Stobart (2014b). Reflexive technopopulism: Podemos and the search for a… 31 nucleus sought to consolidate its command over the party. In contrast with the open primaries and the participatory framing of the programme for the European elections, the tactic of voting for pre-drafted lists and programmes in the constituent assembly of Podemos seemed to enact a plebiscitary relationship between the leader and his followers, who were invited to simply ratify his decisions (Espinoza Pino 2014). Since early 2015, verticalism and bureaucratisation may have taken their toll on Podemos’ popularity. No doubt, the increased centralisation has significantly demobilised party supporters and the Circulos (Casero-Ripolle´s et al. 2016: 12).

The retreat from populism

In the May 2015 local and regional elections, Podemos did not run its own candidates but participated in broad-based, heterogeneous coalitions with other leftist parties and citizens’ platforms. These emerged victorious in various major cities, including Barcelona and Madrid (Rodon and Hierro 2016: 7–9). In the December 2015 general election, Podemos ranked third, after the ruling PP and the social-democratic PSOE, with 20.7% of the vote (Medina and Correa 2016: 9). In the repeat general election in June 2016, Podemos’ electoral coalition with Izquierda Unida again gained the third position, falling right behind PSOE. The results reinstated PP in power, but they also confirmed a new, fragmented, fluid and unpredictable political landscape in Spain, with three or four major political forces in the place of the two-party system (Medina and Correa 2016: 9–11; Rodon and Hierro 2016: 1–2, 15). However, Unidos Podemos not only failed to achieve its stated objective of surpassing PSOE, it also lost 1.1 million votes from the combined votes of the two parties in December 2015. Several critics attribute this to the gradual bureaucratisation of Podemos in its various respects: the absence of civic participation and mobilisation; the lack of an organised territorial base for the party; its highly hierarchical, centralised and conventional party structure; the moderation of Podemos’ anti-establishment and anti-casta discourse; its ideological ambiguity and political opportunism; the attendant lack of a convincing and specific political programme; the embrace of ‘social democracy’ since late 2015; the electoral coalition with the traditional left; and the gradual shift away from a radical-leftist populism. In effect, over the last months, Podemos’ leadership has rehearsed the old antithesis of left vs right, giving up on the populist antagonism of people vs casta (Franze´ 2015; Antentas 2016; Rodrı´guez 2016; Rodon and Hierro 2016:7; Monedero 2016; Pastor 2016). This was a marked diversion from the transversal and cross-ideological approach extolled by the movement’s main theoretician and campaign strategist, Iń˜igo Errejoń, who was not supportive of joining the post- communist left of Izquierda Unida in an electoral coalition. All these mutations can be traced back to Podemos’ institutionalisation. Podemos has been intent on attracting wider constituencies; it has become even more absorbed in parliamentary politics to the detriment of street politics; it has been increasingly incorporated into established institutions; and it has converged with forces of the casta, such as the PSOE, in order to accede to power. This growing 32 A. Kioupkiolis, F. S. Pe´rez institutionalisation has stripped Podemos of the aura of novelty and its appeal as the ‘outsider’ in a corrupt and unresponsive political system (Rubinõ 2015: 90; Lamant 2015: 85). On the other hand, the party leadership ascribes the disappointing results to a ‘campaign of fear’ on the part of the establishment as well as to Podemos’ failure to convince moderate voters that it is deserves more than a protest vote, as a responsible political party that is also capable of governing. Leaders have drawn thus the conclusion that the first, radical populist cycle of Podemos has come to an end and that, in the new and possibly long parliamentary phase, they need to strengthen its profile as a credible, reasonable, social-democratic political force (Iglesias in Fort Apache 2016;Rıós 2016; Antentas 2016). Most likely, then, Podemos is now entering a new, post-populist era. Overall, the intensive use of various digital technologies has increased political participation in the life, the politics and the campaigns of Podemos and it accounts for the meteoric electoral rise of the party. Podemos’ technopolitics has attracted young voters—students, unemployed, urban and educated citizens—who are immersed in digital social media (Pavıá et al. 2015; Sanz 2015), it has expanded already existing procedures, such as elections, to include thousands of citizens, and it has enabled unprecedented levels of debate and interaction (Clavell 2015; Medina 2015). On the other hand, the ‘transmedia’ politics of Podemos, most notably, the everyday presence of Podemos’ leaders on mainstream TV channels and talk shows in addition to their own TV programmes (‘La Tuerka’, ‘Fort Apache’), has enabled the party to reach out to older and more traditional sectors of the electorate. The victory of Pablo Iglesias over´ In˜igo Errejoń in the battle for the leadership of the party at the formation’s second major congress, known as ‘Vistalegre II’ and held in Madrid in February 2017, could be read as the death-blow to the inter-class and cross-ideological populist strategy extolled by Errejoń and, until then, tacitly followed by Iglesias (Pe´rez Dıáz 2017). This internal rupture exacerbated the differences between the two ‘souls’ of Podemos: the American-populist tradition brought by Errejoń and the European-leftist, alter-globalisation and Italo-post- operaist pedigree of Iglesias. These two traditions were themselves related to two distinctive political communication strategies: Errejoń bet on Laclau’s linguistic approach, creating a (populist) majority through language, while Iglesias was keener on occupying the streets to visualise (class) conflict. Errejoń’s defeat and Podemos’ eventual swallowing of post-communist Izquierda Unida could mark the end of the populist phase and the retreat to a more traditional radical-left repositioning under the indisputable leadership of Pablo Iglesias. This could imperil the support that Podemos has managed to gather from such unlikely radical-left supporters as highly skilled and highly ‘educated citizens who do not match the profile of globalisation losers’ (Ramiro and Go´mez 2017: 122). As Podemos leaves behind its social movement roots to adopt the lineaments of a more traditional party, their supporters show clear signs of participation fatigue, with only two in ten members casting a vote for the election of their leading candidates in the regional elections of May 2015 (Carvajal 2015). Still, the party is reluctant to leave behind the romanticism of the ever-deliberating street assembly. Likewise, in political communication terms, the party has become what Casero- Reflexive technopopulism: Podemos and the search for a… 33

Ripolle´s et al. (2016) call a ‘hybrid’ organisation, which mixes the features of both traditional parties and social movements. Instead of deeming traditional media as enemies, parties like Podemos see them as relays to be inﬂuenced by the new agenda-setters: the Twitter campaigns that were the combined result of careful strategic management by party headquarters and the fandom-like enthusiasm of informal ‘molecular leaders’ (Katz and Lazarsfeld 2006 [1955]).

Conclusion

In sum, this article has shown the three instances of Podemos’ dualism: (1) its configuration as a social movement that wants to become a rigid political party; (2) its sage use of a combination of social media and traditional TV shows to enhance its appeal among digitally connected young voters and disenfranchised older voters who still rely on traditional media; and (3) its self-understanding as the practical implementation, within the Spanish and Southern European context, of the theories of Ernesto Laclau, that is, a combination of theory and praxis. Both traditional and new media have been instrumental in Podemos’ success, not because of the inherent benefits afforded by any technology, but because they were the means by which a performative discourse was enacted. As Howard Dean, one of the first candidates to make a significant use of the Internet during the 2004 US presidential campaign, has repeatedly said, the Internet will do nothing for those who have nothing to say. The Internet did something for Podemos because the key to its appeal was not in the media but in what was conveyed through them: a performative discourse, a discourse that both redefines and aims to change the social.

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Alexandros Kioupkiolis (B.A. University of Athens, M.A. Essex University, DPhil. Oxford University), is Assistant Professor in Contemporary Political Theory at the School of Political Sciences, Aristotle University, Thessaloniki. His research interests lie in modern philosophies of freedom, contemporary philosophies of justice, theories of democracy and the commons.

Francisco Seoane Pe´rez (B.A. University of Santiago de Compostela, M.A. University of Illinois at Chicago, Ph.D. University of Leeds), is Assistant Professor in Journalism Studies at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. His research interests are in the ﬁelds of political communication, European studies and literary journalism.