Dr Felicity Matthews discusses her new Academic Fellowship researching how MPs engage with parliamentary e-petitions, and calls for abstracts on petitions for a themed panel at #PSA19
Driven by a desire to increase participation and improve trust in the institutions of representative democracy, parliaments throughout the world are experimenting with new ways of engaging the public. One such innovation is the petition, which – to varying degrees – enables members of the public to influence the legislative agenda. More specifically, many legislatures are experimenting with e-petitioning and are building their own online submission portals, in order to increase the reach of petitions and to allow petitioners to have a direct connection with parliament itself.
With regards to the above, the national parliament of the United Kingdom is no exception. On the back of earlier experiments, such as the Number 10 e-petitions website (launched 2006) and the remodelled Government petitions website (launched 2011), a new parliamentary e-petitions system was launched at Westminster in 2015. Jointly owned by the UK Government and Parliament, and overseen by a dedicated Petitions Committee, this e-petitions system is intended to enable members of the public to make their concerns heard by the UK Government and Parliament, and to press for action from the Government.
Since its introduction in 2015, parliamentary e-petitions have become an important channel of political participation. Indeed, the chances are that you’re already quite familiar with them: recent research by the Hansard Society suggests that more than one in five people had signed a parliamentary e-petition in the past twelve months; and the Petitions Committee’s own research reveals that in the first year alone, over 23,000 e-petitions were submitted, and the 6,000 that were subsequently published received over 20 million signatures from over 10 million unique email addresses.
However, whilst it is evident that parliamentary e-petitions have captured the public imagination, the extent to which they have enthused legislators and inspired policymaking is much less clear. My research therefore addresses this important gap in our knowledge, exploring the extent to which Members of Parliament have engaged with parliamentary e-petitions and the effects of e-petitions on MPs’ various activities.
There are three main strands to my research. The first strand focuses on the electoral connection. This is the essence of the project, and will investigate MPs’ perceptions of the parliamentary e-petitions process and the impact of e-petitions on their constituency and legislative workloads. The second strand builds on this, and considers the policy impact of e-petitioning in terms of their direct and indirect effects on policymaking. The final strand of the research centres on strengthening the system, and will entail the development of recommendations that are based upon the research above and upon comparative experience.
Over the next twelve months, I will be hosted by the Petitions Committee as a POST Academic Fellow, and I will be maximising my time in Westminster to undertake a range of field-based research activities. As well as providing a fantastic opportunity for me to work with MPs, their staff and parliamentary officials, the Fellowship also provides a fantastic opportunity for my research to have a direct impact on parliamentary knowledge and practice. In particular, this research will provide Parliament with important information about the variety of ways in which MPs engage with the e-petitions process. In turn, my research will provide a series of evidence-based recommendations regarding mechanisms to a) ensure MPs’ awareness of the e-petitions process; b) share information with MPs about popular e-petitions within their constituency; and, c) support MPs to make effective use of e-petitions as a tool of public engagement and policy influence.
If you’re interested in this research, or are conducting your own research on similar issues, it would be great to hear from you, or even to meet you at the 2019 Annual International Conference of the PSA, which will be held in Nottingham on 15-17 April. Indeed, under the auspices of the PSA Parliaments Group, I hope to bring together likeminded colleagues in a themed session to explore the intentions, effects and (sometimes unintended) consequences of petitioning in terms of public engagement, legislative influence and policy impact. If you are interested in presenting a paper at this themed session, please send me your abstract of no more than 200 words by 8 October 2018 (f.m.matthews@sheffield.ac.uk). The proposal for the themed session will then be submitted to the Parliaments Group for full consideration.
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Dr Felicity Matthews is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Politics at the University of Sheffield, and POST Parliamentary Fellow. Follow her on Twitter: @DrFlissMatthews or email f.m.matthews@sheffield.ac.uk