A bit of history

Decidim is a technopolitical project that serves as a public commons infrastructure, combining institutional support with open and free code accessibility. By enabling cooperation between citizens, institutions, and civil society organisations, Decidim fosters more inclusive democratic systems and processes.

Over 450 cities and organisations globally have embraced Decidim. It finds application in diverse settings, whether public or private, large or small, city councils, associations, universities, NGOs, trade unions, neighbourhoods associations and cooperatives.

But, when did this ambitious project start?

Let’s go back to 2011 when the 15M movement kicked off with the convergence of earlier hacktivists, autonomous and democratic activism in Spain and the rise of the technopolitical cycle. The 15M was a networked social movement connecting digital spaces and squares which called for and experimented with alternative forms of democracy.

The new wave of democratic innovations, led by deliberative and participatory democratic processes, promises to give new life to citizen engagement and democratic systems more generally. Technology, a pervasive element in our daily lives, is also playing a key role in boosting and renovating democratic political participation.

In Barcelona, in early 2016, a fork of Consul, the participatory platform of the Madrid City Council, was used to power up the site decidim.barcelona, the new digital venue for participatory processes in the city council. Technopolitical differences in vision and practice between the city council democratic innovation teams brought about a split between the two cities; as a result, Decidim was launched in early 2017 as a brand-new software with a more modular and co-developable architecture.

When it comes to the development of the community, two key formal steps took place in 2019: the first was the constitution of the Decidim Association; the second was the signature of an agreement with the Barcelona City Council that gives the association the control of the Decidim trademark and the code base. This makes decidim a public-common project. 

If you want to go deeper into the Decidim history, technical and political perspectives, especially in today’s context of a crisis of democracy and the need of public digital infrastructures take a look at the Decidim Book. 

📚 Book:  https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-50784-7