All on the same boat? Voting for pirate parties in comparative perspective

Abstract

The rise of pirate parties in Europe since 2006 has been tempestuous and uneven. One may question whether the reasons citizens vote for these parties are the same between different countries. This article identifies two reasons citizens may vote for these parties: political distrust and concerns about privacy. This article tests which of these two underlies support for pirate parties. It uses six surveys covering 11 countries with a total 43,786 respondents. These analyses show that political distrust primarily drives support for pirate parties.

Assured Newcomers on a Squally Sea? The Czech Pirate Party before and after the 2017 Elections

“…The phenomenon of pirate parties in Europe is reflected in the professional literature (see e.g. Erlingsson, Persson 2011;Uszkai, Vică 2012;Hartleb 2013;Demker 2014;Maškarinec 2014;Miegel, Olsson 2008;Novotný 2014 andBolleyer et al 2015;Otjes 2019or Svåsand 2019, especially in the context of Sweden and Germany.…”

Crossing the left-right party divide? Understanding the electoral success of the Czech Pirate Party in the 2017 parliamentary elections

“…Generally speaking, the pirates’ highly divergent programmatics and electoral appeals make their voter support difficult to pinpoint. Here, many authors (Bartels, 2009; Demker, 2014; Erlingsson and Persson, 2010; Onken and Schneider, 2012; Otjes, 2020) agreed that it is difficult to place pirate parties on the classical left-right ideological spectrum. Furthermore, while Zulianello (2018) argued that pirate parties are ‘an almost ideal-typical manifestation of the niche party phenomenon’ due to their ‘predominant focus on Internet-related issues’, and also other authors mentioned pirates as single-issues parties (Neumann, 2013), or ‘cyber parties’ (Hartleb, 2013), Otjes emphasized that ‘the core positions that pirate parties have on copyright, privacy, and democratic reform can lead them to positions on other issues’.…”

“…Furthermore, while Zulianello (2018) argued that pirate parties are ‘an almost ideal-typical manifestation of the niche party phenomenon’ due to their ‘predominant focus on Internet-related issues’, and also other authors mentioned pirates as single-issues parties (Neumann, 2013), or ‘cyber parties’ (Hartleb, 2013), Otjes emphasized that ‘the core positions that pirate parties have on copyright, privacy, and democratic reform can lead them to positions on other issues’. (Otjes, 2020: 42)…”

“…In the 2017 Czech parliamentary election, the Czech Pirate Party (Pirates) gained 10.79% of the vote – an unprecedented success, compared to most of the European pirate parties. Indeed, although Otjes (2020) speaks about a ‘remarkable’ growth of the pirate parties in contrast to a slower growth of other new party families, in reality, the rise of Czech Pirates, together with a continuing success of the Pirates in Iceland (9.20% in 2017), or a sudden rise of the Pirates in Luxembourg (6.45% in 2018), were rather exceptions that prove the rule in the context of ‘waning existence’ (Fredriksson Almqvist, 2016) of this party family.…”

“…It was perhaps precisely due to the limited success of pirate parties that studies of this party family still remain a relatively undeveloped discipline, although there already exist several studies that have attempted to map the electoral base of pirate parties (Baldini and Bolgerini, 2015; Demker, 2014; Erlingsson and Persson, 2011; Haas and Hilmer, 2013; Neumann, 2013; Niedermayer, 2013; Onken and Schneider, 2012; Otjes, 2020; Zulianello, 2018).…”