On 18/11/06, Stephen Coleman <S.Coleman@leeds.ac.uk> wrote:
I don't share Wainer Lusoli's apparent delight at the arrival of the Ten Downing Street e-petitions tool. From a political perspective, one might ask why citizens are being urged to petition the Prime Minister, when the UK's system of government is not presidential, but parliamentary. More significantly, this technology has been built so that people are only allowed to sign petitions, but not discuss them. Unlike the Scottish Parliament's e-petitions, public deliberation is prohibited. This leads to a narrow notion of democracy without discussion in which petitions can claim neither representative nor deliberative legitimacy. >From the perspective of internet research, this is an interesting illustration of how political design can undermine technical potential.
Contrast this with the great tradition of political petitioning that has existed in Britain since the late thirteenth century. The Chartists of the mid-nineteenth-century did not make a political impact by collecting signatures, but by holding mass meetings to discuss the cause of their petition. Imagine iif the Chartists - or the disarmament movement of the 1960s - had been allowed only to plead with the Prime Minister rather than assemble, deliberate and develop their own convictions.
Citizens sending petitions via this new e-tool should be encouraged to subvert its intended restrictive use by setting up an alternative web space in which propositions can be openly discussed and revised.
No discussion, but presumably this is down to Downing Street, not MySociety (which has built many other systems that include a discussion element). I'm inclined to see the e-petitions site as just that: it sits alongside the traditional method of petitioning, performs the same function, and no more. Just improved efficiency and less drama (no standing outside 10 Downing Street to hand it over). Discussions do take place, but elsewhere. How else do you explain the thousands of signatures present within days and with little publicity, on what is still a Beta site? Specialised forums and discussion lists are where people interested in this and related issues 'congregate'. They don't tend to hang out on the Downing Street website. In the case of the 'right to private copy for personal use' petition (5th on the list the last time I looked), discussion has taken place at public events (e.g. a recent Conway Hall event), online through Open Rights Group public discussion lists... The petition is merely one element in a much wider discussion concerning intellectual property rights. I feel fairly cynical about the effect of such petitions, but that's another matter. Louise Ferguson