Enacting Candor: Podemos and the Analytical Potential of Ocular Democracy

Abstract

Ocular democracy refers to the observation that citizenship in contemporary representative democracies is incompletely characterized by vocal procedures such as elections. It argues that the everyday political experience of citizens is primarily conditioned by sight and hearing to follow the actions of political elites. However, political theory still marginalizes ocular democracy due to normative shortcomings. Rather than emphasizing these shortcomings, it is more productive to ask how ocular democracy complements and collides with conventional vocal forms of democracy. I propose to start by observing empirically how vocal institutions and ocular practices interact in the context of intra-party democracy by analyzing the Spanish party Podemos. This article illustrates the analytical potential of considering democracy’s ocular dimension.