Martin, L. orcid.org/0000-0001-8928-430X (2025) E-petitioning Parliament: Understanding the connections between citizens and the UK Parliament. Parliamentary Affairs. gsaf003. ISSN 0031-2290
Abstract
2025 marks ten years since the UK Government and Parliament e-petitions system was established in a context of political dissatisfaction and disengagement with representative democracy. This article responds to calls for empirically grounded research about the mechanisms that connect citizens to their representative institutions by focussing on parliamentary e-petitions as a popular tool for citizen engagement with political processes. It presents findings from qualitative research with animal welfare e-petition creators, campaigners, and the MPs who supported them to highlight the role played by petitioners themselves in ensuring that their voices are heard. It also considers the ‘added value’ of e-petitions as a political campaigning tool from the perspective of petitioners by highlighting the spillover effects that arise from using an e-petition system that has formal ties to parliament. In doing so this article makes novel contributions to understandings of political participation via institutionally facilitated democratic innovations.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2025. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Hansard Society. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Politics and International Relations (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 17 Mar 2025 14:50 |
Last Modified: | 17 Mar 2025 14:50 |
Status: | Published online |
Publisher: | Oxford University Press (OUP) |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1093/pa/gsaf003 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:224517 |