5 minute read
Petitions: Do They Work?
Since the beginning of my involvement in animal advocacy, I have been aware that petitions have been used in aid of this and that cause, and also that their use - in terms of effectiveness - is contested.
Pictured: A group collecting signatures for the ban of leather in Russia. Source: Wikimedia Commons
Does petitioning “work” is a long-standing inquiry. Before the internet, petitions were often used to gain the attention of the mass media, as well as public support, despite the fact that petitioning, and other forms of legal peaceful protesting, were of little interest to the media, certainly the national press; and especially if there were illegal and less-than-peaceful events to be reported on instead. The petition-related version of “if it bleeds, it leads,” if you will.
Sociological research, dating back to the 1960s, revealed that the things least interesting to the mass media were nevertheless popular with the public, generally speaking. For example, a study of “unconventional political action” from 1979 suggested that the circulation of petitions enjoyed the support of 85% of members of the public surveyed.
This compares to a score of 37% of “product boycotts”, while “rent strikes”, “occupying buildings”, “blocking traffic”, “painting slogans”, and “damage to property” were all supported by less than 20% of the research sample.[1]
Campaigning groups such as Compassion In World Farming (CIWF) would attempt to bridge the gap between what was supported by the public and what interested the mass media by having their farmed animal welfare petitions presented to Downing Street, for example, by the vegetarian celebrities of the day, such as Spike Milligan and Joanna Lumley.
The World Wide Web has changed all of this and now “e-democracy” is the thing. This simply means, by-andlarge, that the collection and delivery of petitions has moved online. The debate about whether they are effective remains, it seems, and it doesn’t look like the arguments have changed much. I’ve known animal activists totally opposed to petitions on the grounds that it “allows people off the hook”, or “gives them an easy way out”. This view is predicated on the idea that people may effectively think “job done” by the simple act of signing a petition. No further action needed, so to speak and that, for the vegan activist, just will not do. There seems to be a new word to describe all of this - “slacktivism.” Those who oppose the use of e-petitions, for example, point to articles such as Amelia Tait’s 2017 New Statesman piece [2] which reports that the top 10 mostshared petitions of 2017 completely failed in terms of their intended outcomes. However, Tait also reports that the world’s largest e-petitioning site, Change.org., has a “victories” tag, listing their petition successes, including some animal welfare ones.
Scott Wright suggests in a 2016 paper on “Downing Street E-petitions” [3] that it may be a mistake to limit the assessment of the success of an e-petition in terms of its primary goal. Wright says that, “people’s perceptions of success are complicated and at times conflicting.” From this, although policy change that is driven by the creation of a petition may be the ultimate goal, other aspects are regarded as important too, such as “the campaign impact of the petition”. It turns out that many petition creators and even those who sign them had pretty low expectations of achieving actual policy change, but look for secondary outcomes as successes in themselves.
Such people apparently claim that they never really expected their petition to succeed. Wright claims that this is a “nuanced understanding of the impact of participation”, and calls for more research into it. He further claims that e-petitions can reveal a “failure of democracy.” For example, Wright notes that in 2005 the Institute of Public Policy Research claimed that the “public has come to believe that governments don’t know how to listen”. However, Wright claims that they do not know how to speak either, and this is revealed by government responses to e-petitioning.
Pictured: Ernest Bell & Jessey Wade’s banner for The Animals Friend – parading through London in July 1909, with John Ruskin’s (1819 – 1900) words on it – “He who is not actively kind is cruel.” – during the Anti-Vivisection International Congress July 6–10, 1909.
He claims that his respondents were “scathing” about how the government had replied to e-petitions. People might not expect governments to take action in exactly the way that they
would wish - but they do expect them to at least listen. People’s anger was expressed in terms of the way they felt the government had responded: the very tone and content of replies was seen as falling way below what was expected. Replies were, “perceived to be late, dismissive, impersonal, and unengaged”. In something of a twist, some people concluded that their petition had hit a mark - had made some impact after all - but that the government were downplaying its impact. People thus felt let down and ignored. Activists who decide to take those forms of actions listed above that are unpopular with the general public often cite the fact that they had, sometimes for many years, abided by the “official way to protest”, seen that it does not work, and had moved on to a more direct action approach.
The ultimate failure of petitioning may, ironically, radicalise people to take action outside of that which is conventionally sanctioned.
[1] Barnes, S., Kaase, M. et al (1979) Political Action: Mass Participation in Five Western Democracies, Beverley Hills: Sage.
[2] Tait, A. (2017) “Do online petitions actually work? The numbers reveal the truth,” The New Statesman, 30th January.
[3] Wright, S. (2016) “‘Success’ and online political participation: The case of Downing Street E-petitions,” Information, Communication & Society, 19:6, 843-857.
