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Between everyday politics and political elites: transmission and coupling within Westminster’s parliamentary e-petitions system

Popular dissatisfaction with representative democracy has encouraged governments and legislatures worldwide to experiment with democratic innovations. However, despite calls for a ‘systemic’ approach to the study of democratic engagement and participation, empirical knowledge is limited about the di...

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Autor principal: Matthews, Felicity
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Palgrave Macmillan UK 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9123609/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37168140
http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/s41293-022-00208-9
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author Matthews, Felicity
author_facet Matthews, Felicity
author_sort Matthews, Felicity
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description Popular dissatisfaction with representative democracy has encouraged governments and legislatures worldwide to experiment with democratic innovations. However, despite calls for a ‘systemic’ approach to the study of democratic engagement and participation, empirical knowledge is limited about the diffusion of democratic innovations within civil society, and, in particular, about the connective mechanisms that bring the ‘voice’ of citizens to the ‘ears’ of political elites. This article responds to this gap, presenting original empirical research examining the UK House of Commons’ e-petitions system. This research maps public engagement with parliamentary e-petitions across a range of expressive spaces, and highlights the facilitative role of non-institutional intermediaries. However, it also underlines the predominant role of institutional actors in structuring public participation, and shows that effective transmission between the informal public and formal political spheres remains contingent on both ‘designed-in powers’ of institutional coupling and ‘developed practices’ of public engagement. Through this analysis, the article makes an important contribution to debates concerning democratic innovations, political participation, and institutional design. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1057/s41293-022-00208-9.
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spelling pubmed-91236092022-05-21 Between everyday politics and political elites: transmission and coupling within Westminster’s parliamentary e-petitions system Matthews, Felicity Br Politics Original Article Popular dissatisfaction with representative democracy has encouraged governments and legislatures worldwide to experiment with democratic innovations. However, despite calls for a ‘systemic’ approach to the study of democratic engagement and participation, empirical knowledge is limited about the diffusion of democratic innovations within civil society, and, in particular, about the connective mechanisms that bring the ‘voice’ of citizens to the ‘ears’ of political elites. This article responds to this gap, presenting original empirical research examining the UK House of Commons’ e-petitions system. This research maps public engagement with parliamentary e-petitions across a range of expressive spaces, and highlights the facilitative role of non-institutional intermediaries. However, it also underlines the predominant role of institutional actors in structuring public participation, and shows that effective transmission between the informal public and formal political spheres remains contingent on both ‘designed-in powers’ of institutional coupling and ‘developed practices’ of public engagement. Through this analysis, the article makes an important contribution to debates concerning democratic innovations, political participation, and institutional design. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1057/s41293-022-00208-9. Palgrave Macmillan UK 2022-05-21 2023 /pmc/articles/PMC9123609/ /pubmed/37168140 http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/s41293-022-00208-9 Text en © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited 2022 This article is made available via the PMC Open Access Subset for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic.
spellingShingle Original Article
Matthews, Felicity
Between everyday politics and political elites: transmission and coupling within Westminster’s parliamentary e-petitions system
title Between everyday politics and political elites: transmission and coupling within Westminster’s parliamentary e-petitions system
title_full Between everyday politics and political elites: transmission and coupling within Westminster’s parliamentary e-petitions system
title_fullStr Between everyday politics and political elites: transmission and coupling within Westminster’s parliamentary e-petitions system
title_full_unstemmed Between everyday politics and political elites: transmission and coupling within Westminster’s parliamentary e-petitions system
title_short Between everyday politics and political elites: transmission and coupling within Westminster’s parliamentary e-petitions system
title_sort between everyday politics and political elites: transmission and coupling within westminster’s parliamentary e-petitions system
topic Original Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9123609/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37168140
http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/s41293-022-00208-9
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