Transnational Pirates

The recent success of the Pirate Party in the Saarland state election in Germany is remarkable. The Pirates received 7.4 percent of the votes. Just days after the election, the party has even increased its acceptance on the federal level. Current opinion polls measure their support at 12 percent of German voters. In addition to its success in regional elections, the German Pirate Party also operates consciously within a transnational context. For example, the transnational perspective of the German pirates has been mentioned explicitly by Bernd Schlömer, at the time vice chair of the Pirate Party Germany, who pointed out that his party is part of a global movement. This movement, Schlömer added, might help to develop international positions, for example, regarding Foreign Affairs and Security Policies issues, which could then be reintroduced into national politics. This recent example illustrates the two perspectives of the Pirate Party movement’s transnational context, which Leonhard and I aim to examine further in a study pursued in January 2012, which will appear as a book chapter in the German edited volume “Unter Piraten”. We would like to present our empirical findings in three short posts, starting with a general description of the project, the data collection, and the first results concerning the state of the global Pirate Party movement.