Plurality in Italy

In Italy, volunteers began translating the book *Plurality* into Italian on GitHub, but the work has stopped at 14 of 36 files. Ties with Taiwan go back further than the book: they have been discussed through a civic group that modeled itself on Taiwan's g0v, and in contrast with the Five Star Movement's voting system.

Party members voting on the internet to decide a party's direction and its candidates: in Italy, a large political party has actually done this. In a country like that, how was a book about making democracy better with digital tools read? This article traces the Italian translation of the book Plurality and the connections between Italy and Taiwan.

In short

In Italy, volunteers began translating Plurality, the book by Audrey Tang and E. Glen Weyl, into Italian on GitHub (a website for writing documents together). Fourteen of 36 files have been translated, and there have been no updates since May 2025 [1]. This translation is not included in the list of translations on the book's guide page [2].

Ties with Taiwan go back further than the book. There is the work of an Italian civic group that modeled itself on "g0v", Taiwan's civic hacker movement [3], and there is the contrast with "Rousseau", the system that the party Five Star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle, M5S) used for internal votes [4].

For example

The Italian translation Pluralità (2024–2025). Thomas Kemps copied (forked) the book's repository on July 25, 2024, and the next day added a translation of chapter 3-0 and a glossary. In 2025 Maurizio Schifano added the front matter, the preface, chapter 2 and chapter 7, and Alessandro Merletti de Palo also contributed a revision of 0-1 and a translation of chapter 5-0. The last change was merged on May 29, 2025 [1].

g0v.it, which made the Chamber of Deputies' budget visible (2019). The civic group Copernicani built software for visualizing budget data, in a project named "g0v.it". According to an announcement on July 16, 2019, the Chamber of Deputies (Camera dei Deputati) launched a public budget website using this software [5].

In more detail

The translators and their word choices

The translation's repository (tommiiik/plurality-italiano) is published under CC0 (a form anyone may use freely). The parts translated are the front matter, the preface, chapters 2 and 3, chapter 5-0 and chapter 7 [1]. The first glossary had only two lines, deciding to translate Plurality as "Pluralità" and whole as "insieme". This glossary was later deleted [6].

Chapter 3-0 is titled "Che cos'è ⿻?" (What is ⿻?). The text describes "⿻ 數位 Pluralità" as "tecnologia per la collaborazione trasversale alle differenze sociali" (technology for collaboration across social differences) [7].

In explaining the revision of 0-1, Merletti de Palo wrote that the idea of writing image descriptions together had been checked with Tang [1]. The repository's records do not say why the translation stopped [1].

The book's official website also had an Italian announcement from early on. The 2022 announcement was titled "Plurality: Tecnologia per la Diversità e la Democrazia Collaborative", leaving the book's name in English [8]. In August 2024, Kemps retranslated the announcement within a personal copy (fork), and the title became "Pluralità: …" [9].

The word pluralità before the book

On September 19, 2016, the newspaper la Repubblica, in an article reporting that Tang would become Taiwan's minister for digital affairs, presented in Italian the words in the cover image of Tang's social media page. They end with the line that when you hear "la singolarità è vicina" (the singularity is near), you should remember "la pluralità è qui" (plurality is here) [10]. "Singularity" is the term for the point at which AI surpasses humans. This means that the phrase setting up "plurality" as a pair to that word had reached Italy before the book. → ⿻ Plurality

g0v.it and Copernicani

g0v (pronounced "gov-zero") is a movement in which civic programmers in Taiwan have made government data easier to use. In a conversation in September 2019, Tang said that people in Italy registered the domain g0v.it and were implementing a carbon copy of Taiwan's idea in Italy. She also said that Stefano Quintarelli, then a member of parliament and an experienced ICT entrepreneur, learned about the idea right before a change of cabinet, and that after he became a private-sector person again he shared the idea and "founded an institute or something" to push it forward [3]. Tang added, however, that it is an independent group, with no agreement or controlling relationship [3].

Copernicani's announcement about the Chamber of Deputies' budget says that it is carrying forward in Italy a g0v project born from cooperation with Taiwan's minister. With the same software, it also visualized data from the Ministry of Economy and Finance, the pension agency (INPS) and the communications regulator (AGCOM) [5]. A Copernicani document from January 2018 says the group adopted the methods of vTaiwan (a forum where citizens and the government of Taiwan discuss bills) for its own opinion gathering and was rebuilding that software for Italy [11]. On October 29 of the same year, it presented the "Libro Bianco della partecipazione politica digitale" (White Paper on Digital Political Participation) in Rome, and Tang was among the listed speakers at that event [12].

Contrast with Rousseau

Rousseau is the platform the Five Star Movement used for internal votes and other purposes until 2021. According to Italian Wikipedia, it was proprietary software, not open to inspection, built by a company called Casaleggio Associati [4]. According to the same article, Rousseau's operators and the party split in May–June 2021 [4].

In a 2017 paper, the researcher Marco Deseriis argued that while Rousseau makes members appear directly connected with their representatives, the stage of discussing and forming options stays in the hands of representatives and party leaders, so that members only choose among options decided elsewhere [13].

In December 2019, Filippo Santelli, a reporter for la Repubblica, put it to Tang that the Five Star Movement had been strongly criticized for how it used a privately owned participation system. Tang began her answer with "Without criticizing anyone". The gist was that Taiwan's government technology is based on civic technology and is all open source (software whose blueprints are published), and that with privately owned technology it is difficult to build together with other countries [14]. → AI and digital parties

The government's participation platform

"ParteciPa", the government's platform for gathering opinions, was officially presented in Rome on December 5, 2019. It is built on Decidim, an open-source participation tool born in the city of Barcelona [15]. Decidim's lineage is described in more detail in Plurality in the Spanish-speaking world.

What is debated

Rousseau's votes cannot be verified (2019). In a decision of April 4, 2019, Italy's personal data protection authority (the Garante) found that because the system for keeping logs of operations was inadequate, it could not guarantee that votes had not been tampered with, that they were really cast by the members themselves, or that their secrecy was protected. The decision also wrote that whether votes were conducted correctly was left to the personal integrity of the technical staff. It concluded that Rousseau lacked the properties required of an electronic voting system and ordered Associazione Rousseau, which ran it, to pay 50,000 euros [16].
Is pressing a button democracy? (2019). Giuseppe Conte, then prime minister, said that staying at home and pressing a button is a simplification. The gist was that online forums can strengthen parliamentary democracy, but cannot reproduce the mediation that takes place in parliament (understanding the other side's arguments and deciding through discussion) [17]. This remark has nothing to do with the book Plurality.
Taiwan does not make online votes legally binding either (2018). The chapter on voting in Copernicani's white paper says that Taiwan's participatory lawmaking does not give legally binding force to the results of digital opinion gathering. The white paper sees this separation (disgiunzione) as having value in protecting system operators and politicians from responsibility for electronic votes [18].
How effective are citizens' assemblies? (2026). According to the magazine Italia che Cambia, Bologna is the city that decided at the end of 2022 to hold Italy's first citizens' assembly on climate (a forum where citizens chosen by lot discuss policy). The article reports, as the views of activists of the movement Extinction Rebellion and of participants, that many of the proposals were accepted with reservations (con riserva), and that there was too little time for the size of the agenda [19].

Common misunderstandings

That a complete Italian translation has been officially published. The Italian translation is a partial one covering 14 files [1], and it is not included in the list of translations on the book's guide page either [2].

Where it fits in Plurality

Of the mechanisms that have run in Italy, the ones closest to the book are g0v.it, modeled on g0v, and Copernicani's opinion gathering, which adopted the methods of vTaiwan [3][11]. Both were attempts by a civic group, not national institutions.

The Five Star Movement and Rousseau are set alongside other parties in AI and digital parties, as a leading example of the idea that party members decide directly on the internet. The general discussion of delegation and voting is in the article on liquid democracy.

Reading this alongside other countries brings out the differences.

The Plurality movement in Japan — a case where a volunteer translation was completed and a Japanese edition came out
Plurality in the French-speaking world — another case where a translation stopped partway
Plurality in the Spanish-speaking world — the home of Decidim, on which ParteciPa is built
Plurality in Poland

Sources

Records of tommiiik/plurality-italiano (commits and pull requests) — https://github.com/tommiiik/plurality-italiano ［CC0］
pluralitybook/plurality ReadMe, "Official Translation Repositories" (as of 2026-10-02) — https://github.com/pluralitybook/plurality/blob/main/ReadMe.md ［CC0］
Conversation at NCAFP (2019-09-27) — https://github.com/audreyt/transcript/blob/main/2019-09-27-Conversation-at-NCAFP.md ［CC0］
Wikipedia (Italian), "Movimento 5 Stelle" — https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movimento_5_Stelle ［CC BY-SA 4.0］
Copernicani, "La Camera dei Deputati implementa budget.g0v.it per la divulgazione del suo bilancio" (2019-07-16, in Italian) — https://copernicani.it/la-camera-dei-deputati-implementa-budget-g0v-it-per-la-divulgazione-del-suo-bilancio/ ［CC BY 4.0］
Glossary of the Italian translation, "Glossario" (in Italian) — https://github.com/tommiiik/plurality-italiano/blob/262e04b/contents/italian/%21Glossario.md ［CC0］
Italian translation, 3-0 "Che cos'è ⿻?" (in Italian) — https://github.com/tommiiik/plurality-italiano ［CC0］
Italian announcement on plurality.net, 2022 (translated by Andrea Brena, in Italian) — https://github.com/alexrandaccio/plurality.net/blob/2703ae5/src/site/versions/italian.md ［CC0］
Italian announcement on plurality.net (retranslated 2024-08-03, in Italian) — https://github.com/tommiiik/plurality.net-italiano/blob/main/src/site/versions/italian.md ［CC0］
la Repubblica, "Audrey, hacker transgender diventa ministro: "Qui stiamo reinventando la democrazia"" (2016-09-19, in Italian) — https://www.repubblica.it/tecnologia/2016/09/19/news/l_hacker_transgender_di_taiwan_qui_stiamo_reinventando_la_democrazia_-148101656/
Copernicani, "3. Approfondimenti specifici di alcune funzionalità" (2018-01-24, in Italian) — https://copernicani.it/3-approfondimenti-specifici-di-alcune-funzionalita/ ［CC BY 4.0］
Copernicani, "Si apre il cantiere della democrazia digitale: presentato il Libro Bianco dei Copernicani" (2018-10-29, in Italian) — https://copernicani.it/si-apre-il-cantiere-della-democrazia-digitale-presentato-il-libro-bianco-dei-copernicani/ ［CC BY 4.0］
Marco Deseriis, "Direct Parliamentarianism: An Analysis of the Political Values Embedded in Rousseau" (JeDEM, 2017) — https://doi.org/10.29379/jedem.v9i2.471 ［CC BY］
Interview with Filippo Santelli (2019-12-12) — https://github.com/audreyt/transcript/blob/main/2019-12-12-Interview-with-Filippo-Santelli.md ［CC0］
Agenda Digitale, "ParteciPa: come funziona la piattaforma di Formez PA per la partecipazione civica" (2022-04-12, in Italian) — https://www.agendadigitale.eu/cittadinanza-digitale/partecipa-come-funziona-la-piattaforma-di-formez-pa-per-la-partecipazione-civica/
Decision of the Garante per la protezione dei dati personali (2019-04-04, in Italian) — https://www.garanteprivacy.it/web/guest/home/docweb/-/docweb-display/docweb/9101974
la Repubblica, "Conte: "Pericoloso accantonare la democrazia rappresentativa"" (2019-03-20, in Italian) — https://www.repubblica.it/politica/2019/03/20/news/conte_pericoloso_accantonare_la_democrazia_rappresentativa_-222100137/
Copernicani, "7. Tecnologia e sistemi di voto" (2018-10-24, in Italian) — https://copernicani.it/7-tecnologia-e-sistemi-di-voto/ ［CC BY 4.0］
Italia che Cambia, "L'assemblea cittadina è una risposta all'inazione climatica dei governi? Ecco cosa sta succedendo in Italia" (2026-02-17, in Italian) — https://www.italiachecambia.org/2026/02/assemblea-cittadina-risposta/

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