Decidim: A Brief Overview

This chapter provides a synoptic approximation to the Decidim project as a public-common, free and open, digital infrastructure for participatory democracy. It briefly introduces the features of the platform, the social contract that guides the project, the instances of the platform, its collaborative ecosystem and how the project can be divided in three key planes: the political, the technopolitical and the technical. We also outline the most relevant political, economic and technological context of Decidim, including the crisis of liberal democracy, the rise of cognitive and digital capitalism and their networked, participatory, common alternatives. We provide an overview of the international extension of Decidim to date and then explain, as a foundational case study, how Decidim was born around a participatory strategic planning process in Barcelona, which involved thousands of citizens and social agents to define the priorities and 80% of the expenses of a whole 4-year mandate in the city. The chapter finishes introducing several Decidim use cases happening worldwide across a wide variety of organisations: European scale conferences, national assemblies and senates, whole countries, regional governments, municipalities, universities, cooperatives, experimental communities and multiscale associations.