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Petitioning Online. The Role of E-Petitions in Web Campaigning
Chapter · December 2009

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From:
Sigrid Baringhorst, Veronika Kneip,

Johanna Niesyto (eds.)
Political Campaigning on the Web
February 2009, 274 p., 29,80 €, ISBN 978-3-8376-1047-5
Drawing upon a common conceptual framework of political webcampaigning the book

offers theoretical reflections on Internet-based campaign politics. It provides a compa-
rative overview on the use of the Internet as a campaigning instrument by diverse in-
termediary political actors. Taking the empirical findings of Internet appropriations
into consideration, the book discusses the impact of political webcampaigning on
(transnational) democracy and the transformation of public spheres.
Sigrid Baringhorst (Prof. Dr. phil.) is working at the Department of Social Sciences in
the field of comparative political studies and political sociology. She is director of the
research project »Changing Protest and Media Cultures« at the Collaborative Research
Centre »Media Upheavals« (University of Siegen).
Veronika Kneip and Johanna Niesyto are research fellows in the project »Changing
Protest and Media Cultures«.
Further information:
www.transcript-verlag.de/ts1047/ts1047.php
© 2009 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld
2009-01-15 13-17-57 --- Projekt: transcript.anzeigen / Dokument: FAX ID 02c5199923953256|(S. 1 ) VOR1047.p 199923953288
Content
General Reflections on Political Campaigning on the Web
Sigrid Baringhorst
Introduction: Political Campaigning in Changing Media Cultures –
Typological and Historical Approaches............................................................ 9
Jeffrey Wimmer
The Publics Behind Political Web Campaigning.
The Digital Transformation of ‘Classic’ Counter-Public Spheres ...........31
Rainer Winter
Forms of Digital Resistance. The Internet and the Constitution
of a Transnational Public Sphere ......................................................................53
Appropriation of the Web
Sarah Zielmann/Ulrike Röttger

Characteristics and Developments of Political Party Web Campaigns
in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States
between 1997 and 2007..........................................................................................69
Johanna Niesyto
Virtualized Campaigning for Europe: Towards Reinvigoration
of European Public Sphere(s)? ..........................................................................93
Lorenzo Mosca/Daria Santucci

Petitioning Online. The Role of E-Petitions in Web Campaigning......121
Stuart Hodkinson
Internet Campaigning across Borders: The Virtual Revival
of Labour Internationalism? .............................................................................147
Veronika Kneip
Political Struggles within the Market Sphere –
The Internet as a ‘Weapon’? .............................................................................173
Alice Mattoni
Organization, Mobilization, and Identity: National and
Transnational Grassroots Campaigns between Face-to-Face
and Computer-Mediated Communication................................................... 199
Subsumption and Outlook
Ralf Lindner
Communication and Campaign Strategies of Intermediary
Organizations – A Comparative Analysis..................................................... 233
Geert Lovink interviewed by Johanna Niesyto

A Plea for More Experiments and Creativity
in Political Laboratories .................................................................................... 257
Contributors............................................................................................................ 273
Lorenzo Mosca/Daria Santucci
Petitioning Online. The Role of E-Petitions in Web

Campaigning
Web Campaigns and E-Petitions: An Introduction
Studies on web campaigning tend to focus on electoral campaigns and the role
of the Internet in influencing electoral behaviour. A growing field of study,
however, refers to political campaigning on the web by civil society. Research
on this topic outlines new opportunities created by information and communi-
cation technologies (ICTs) and the Internet for transnational communication
and the emergence of a web based global civil society (Bennett 2003;
Naughton 2001; Castells et al. 2006). Parallel to these new opportunities, new
limitations of the Internet are further highlighted in examination of resource-
poor groups (Mosca 2007). In this chapter, we will focus our attention on the
initiators of web campaigns, namely civil society organizations, such as non-
governmental organizations (NGOs) and individual citizens.1 With the aim of
illustrating a different dimension of Internet politics, our discussion and
analysis will consider e-petitioning activities, which are less often addressed in
studies concerned with web campaigning. In fact, while e-petitions have
become an important instrument in web campaigning, until now they attracted
little attention by scholars. This research will endeavour to fill this gap in the
literature by presenting and discussing some recent e-petitions that have been
used as part of wider web campaigns.
Before proceeding, it is worth mentioning that the practice of petitioning
goes back hundreds of years with its roots in the Anglo-Saxon world. In Eng-
land, the first known petition dates back to 1215, when the Magna Charta gave
barons the right to address complaints to the Crown. Many authors (among
them Higginson 1986; Zaeske 2003) also stressed the important role played by
petitions in the American anti-slavery movement. As Davenport et al. (2001:
1 Although the authors share responsibility for the whole chapter, Lorenzo Mosca
wrote the sections about conceptual and methodological challenges, citizens’ in-
volvement in the EU policy making, the use of the Internet by European institu-
tions, and conclusion. Daria Santucci wrote the introduction, the sections about
the EP Committee on petitions (PETI), and the role of e-petitions in European web
campaigning. The empirical material on e-petitions has been collected by Daria
Santucci for her PhD thesis at the University of Torino. We wish to thank the
editors of this book for useful comments on a previous draft of this chapter.
121
Lorenzo Mosca/Daria Santucci | Petitioning Online
18) note, “in many countries around the world, citizens have used petitions to
make their feelings known about issues that concern them”. With the spread
of the Internet and ICTs in Europe and worldwide, a new practice of applying
Internet technologies to petitions has recently developed. This has led to the
implementation of appropriate technical components, like websites displaying
the texts of initiatives to Internet audiences, tools to support campaigns, verify
signatures and submit petitions to the officials who certify them (Baer 2001).
It is important, however, to stress the dual nature of petitions as bottom
practices to intervene in the political process on the one side and as oppor-
tunities set up by institutions to enhance citizens’ participation on the other.
This research is based on a definition of online petitioning that includes any
petition consisting of the delivery of a claim or a recommendation to an insti-
tutional addressee, who is legally identified as responsible for petitions or not,
using: a) informal e-petitioning channels selected from the bottom-up, and b)
formal e-petitioning channels provided top-down. Concerning the former, it
has been noted how e-petitions are part of a broader set of mobilization op-
portunities provided by the Internet, among them websites, information por-
tals, mail, guest books, newsletters, online surveys, mailing lists, discussion
boards, chats, wikis, blogs, cyber-protest tools, and online protest campaigns
(Hanfling 2006: 44). Concerning the latter, we will discuss petitions as a means
used by institutions to enhance civic engagement by putting them in a wider
context. In fact, local, national and international institutions (particularly, the
EU) are actively promoting a plethora of e-participation tools, which include e-
petitions. Today citizens have, at least formally, more instruments to interact
with the institutions, to make their voice heard and, eventually, to take part in
the policy making process. Many national institutions across Europe provide
citizens tools to submit e-petitions. The Scottish Parliament has been the first
one to allow e-petitioning in Europe: after a trial period, in 2004 the e-petitioner
(epetitions.scottish.parliament.uk) was officially launched. In 2005, two British local
authorities, the Royal Borough of Kingston (epetitions.kingston.gov.uk) and Bristol
City Council (www.bristol.gov.uk/item/epetition), developed a new e-petitioning
system. During the same year, the British Prime Minister’s Office decided to
implement its own tool for submitting online petitions (petitions.pm.gov.uk),
which was launched in November 2006. More recently tools to submit online
petitions were set up in continental Europe by the Romanian Parliament
(www.cdep.ro/relatii_publice/site2.petitie), the German Bundestag (www.bundestag.de/
ausschuesse/a02/onlinepet), and fourteen Norwegian municipalities (einitiativ.hive.
no/Lorenskog).
After a brief discussion of conceptual and methodological challenges de-
rived from the study of e-petitions as part of web campaigning, we will con-
sider the broad spectrum of opportunities for citizens’ involvement in EU
122
policy making, showing how this terrain is yet to be explored and far from be-
ing institutionalized. We will then look at how the EU employed computer-
mediated communication (CMC) in order to involve citizens in its policy
making and as a way to address its democratic deficit. We will also focus on e-
petitions as a specific means to intervene in the EU democratic process.
Subsequently, we will discuss the functioning of the European Parliament’s
Committee on petitions (PETI) and its evolution over time, with a focus on its
online activities. In the following section we will present four emblematic
campaigns, which employed e-petitions to address European institutions, in-
cluding the PETI. For the sake of analysis, the selected e-petitions case studies
provide key empirical insights that may help to evaluate how e-petitions are
used as part of web campaigns. The last section of this chapter will conclude
with a discussion of some common features that have emerged from this re-
search in the relation to e-petitions and web campaigning in Europe.
Conceptual and Methodological Challenges in Studying E-Petitions

as Part of Web Campaigning
In this research we have been confronted with some conceptual and meth-
odological problems. The first problem to be addressed concerns the defini-
tion of web campaigns. In social movement literature, campaigns have been
defined as “a thematically, socially, and temporally interconnected series of in-
teractions that, from the viewpoint of the carriers of the campaign, are geared
to a specific goal” (della Porta/Rucht 2002: 3). In this sense, campaigns have
been considered as something in between social movement networks and indi-
vidual activities (ibid.). Web campaigns would then be sets of interactions
mostly (but not exclusively) taking place online with a tangible and pragmatic
goal, set out within a defined and limited temporal frame, and involving adher-
ents, allies and opponents of a particular target. Thus, web campaigning activi-
ties involve and mobilize a set of actors for or against a specific target. As
Bennett (2003) noted, in comparison with traditional campaigns, web cam-
paigns tend to be ideologically thin, more protracted, less centrally controlled,
and more difficult to turn on and off.
With this working definition of web campaigns, the second problem con-
sists of selecting the number and range of web campaigns studied. This re-
search has chosen to narrow down the analysis by considering only web cam-
paigns carried out through e-petitions. Nonetheless, web campaigns related to
e-petitions can vary greatly depending on their initiators, their targets, their ter-
ritorial scope, their outcomes, etc. The decision was then taken to further re-
strict our focus by just selecting those web campaigns which employ e-peti-
123
tions directed towards one specific target: the European Union (EU). This
choice provides focus upon a particular form of web campaigning that implies
a relation between individuals and institutions at the European level. Further-
more, considerable attention is paid to the committee of the European Parlia-
ment (EP), the only representative institution of the EU and the only body of-
ficially in charge of receiving petitions at the European level.
The analysis draws from an extensive study on e-petitioning, which fo-
cused on twenty case studies,2 selected on the basis of their relevance to search
engines in predefined queries (Santucci 2008). The research is based on analy-
sis of petition’s websites, administration of a questionnaire and in-depth inter-
views with the promoters. Building on the results of this research, we will dis-
cuss the relation between e-petitioning and web campaigning, focusing on four
specific case studies that we consider particularly relevant. These were selected,
from amongst all the e-petitions analysed in the research, on the basis of a ty-
pology crossing two different dimensions (see table 1): the type of promoter (ei-
ther individual or organization) and the territorial scope of the action (either inter-
national from the beginning or moving from the national to the international
level in the course of the web campaign). The two dimensions have been cho-
sen considering two important streams of literature dealing with dynamics of
contention: the first one is based on the work of scholars of international rela-
tions studying the role of advocacy networks in domestic and international
politics (Keck/Sikkink 1998; Sikkink 2005); the second one is grounded on the
debate raised by resource mobilization theory underlining the role played by
social movement organizations in mobilizing resources (McCarthy/Zald 1973).
2 The e-petitions analysed range from ‘mass’ petitions (i.e. the Oneseat campaign for
the abolition of EP meetings in Strasbourg and the REACH petition on chemicals
and health) to less supported ones (i.e. the petition for more appropriate replies by
the EP Committee on petitions). They vary from initiatives concerning the local
level (i.e. a petition on problems connected with the proposal for a new high-speed
rail connection between Torino and Lyon), the national level (i.e. Petition on UK Life
Insurance Regulation in relation to Equitable Life) and the European level (i.e. Petition for
a European Parliament Initiative on European citizenship). For a comprehensive list see
Santucci (2008).
124
Territorial scope of Promoter

the action
Individual Organization
Genuinely International
Oneseat ControlArms
Level
From the National to the Mobile phone recharge
REACH
International Level costs
Table 1: A typology of web campaigns developed through e-petitions.
The typology gives rise to four different idealtypes of web campaigns devel-
oped through e-petitions. The first idealtype refers to web campaigns pro-
moted by individuals and initiated directly at the international level. Illustrating
this idealtype, we selected the Oneseat campaign aiming at reducing the activi-
ties of the EP to a single venue. The second idealtype refers to web campaigns
initiated directly at the international level where organizations played an im-
portant role as promoters. Illustrating this idealtype, we selected the Con-
trolArms campaign calling for an international, legally-binding Arms Trade Treaty
to reduce the suffering caused by weapons transfers. The third idealtype
concerns web campaigns initiated by an individual at the national level, which
then shifted to the international one. This idealtype is exemplified by the
campaign to abolish recharge costs of mobile phones in Italy. The fourth
idealtype regards a web campaign initiated by civil society organizations at the
national level and then moved to the international one. The case study
illustrating this idealtype is the web campaign’s attempt to increase levels of
restrictions concerning the Regulation on Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and
Restriction of Chemicals (REACH).
The decision to focus on these web campaigns developed through e-peti-
tions is related to our interest in the democratic deficit of the EU and the de-
mocratic legitimization of European institutions. E-petitions can be seen as
one of the multitude of opportunities available to European citizens in order
to participate in the EU policy process. Citizens seem to be positively oriented
towards this instrument. Petitions are considered by Europeans as the best way
to make their voices heard in Europe (15 percent), second only to the electoral
vote (56 percent) but considered more important than political parties (13 per-
cent) and participation in popular events (10 percent) (Eurobarometer 2006).
125
Citizens’ Involvement in the EU Policy Making
Over the last decades, institutional opportunities to open the ‘black box’ of
EU policy making to the intervention of civil society actors have grown sig-
nificantly. Like other comparable institutions, European ones are always seek-
ing reliable information in order to elaborate policies and design them accord-
ing to the needs of the population affected by such decisions. As EU institu-
tions are, however, extremely resource-poor in terms of expertise, “the power
which comes from being able to gather, process, and disseminate reliable in-
formation may open more doors in Brussels than in any other mayor political
capital” (ibid.: 97). Due to the first-hand information NGOs gather through
their every-day activity, they can exert an important leverage over EU institu-
tions providing expertise in exchange for influence. Even though still signifi-
cantly limited (Geyer 2001), the role of non-state actors has been recognized
through the ‘civil dialogue’ between European institutions and ‘interested par-
ties’. Civil dialogue has, however, been described through the metaphor of
‘patchwork’, in order to stress the diversity of consultation practices that range
from informal lobbying to structured dialogue (Fazi/Smith 2006). This situa-
tion tends to favour those groups that are well-funded and able to set up a
physical presence in Brussels, opening their offices close to those of European
institutions. In contrast, however, EU institutions tend to employ selective
strategies when dealing with NGOs, only including a tiny minority of orga-
nized interests in their consultations (van Schendelen 2002).
Single individuals have even less opportunity to intervene in the EU policy
making process. The EP is, in fact, the only directly elected institution since
1979. While direct election has been introduced in order to make the EU
closer to its citizens, electoral turnout in EP elections steadily decreased from
63.3 percent in 1979 to less than 50 percent in 2004. This decline of participa-
tion in European elections has been interpreted as an indication of the EU
democratic deficit. Causes of a limited and decreasing legitimacy of the EU are
multiple, including
the lack of a European ‘demos’ or of a ‘thick’ collective identity, the

lack of a common political space, the lack of a common language and
of Europe-wide media of political communication, the lack of a
political infrastructure of Europe-wide political parties, the absence of
Europe-wide political competition, the low political salience of elec-
tions to the European Parliament, the limits of EP competencies, and
hence the lack of parliamentary or electoral accountability for Euro-
pean acts of government. (Scharpf 2007: 5-6).
126
This preoccupation with the democratic deficit of the EU pushes institutions

towards recognizing the potential beneficial effects of other democratic mo-
dels (i.e. participatory and deliberative) to complement representative democ-
racy. The first explicit recognition of citizens’ participation by the EU was
made in the White Paper on European Governance, wherein this value was included
among five principles underpinning good governance (openness, participation,
accountability, effectiveness and coherence). Participation was considered im-
portant as it was said to “create more confidence in the end result and in the
Institutions which deliver policies” (European Commission 2001: 10).
After the rejection of the European Constitution in French and Dutch na-
tional referenda in June 2005, the European Commission (EC) launched the
Plan-D (Democracy, Dialogue and Debate). This must also be understood with the
context of common worries related to the process of enlargement towards
Eastern Europe and, consequently, the decline in terms of trust and a relatively
less positive image of the European Union (Eurobarometer 2005: 101). This
plan intended to open a ‘period of reflection’ based on a broad and intensive
debate about the future of the EU. In the stated aims of the EC, the Plan-D is
part of “a long-term plan to reinvigorate European democracy and help the
emergence of a European public, where citizens are given the information and
the tools to actively participate in the decision making process and gain
ownership of the European project” (European Commission 2005: 2-3). The
main objectives of the Plan-D consist of restoring public confidence in the
European Union by stimulating a more accurate communication of its
activities, targeting specific audiences (i.e. minorities and young people),
engaging mass media in the debate, creating a new consensus on the European
project through a long term commitment, moving from listening towards
further involvement of citizens who “must have the right to have their voices
heard” (ibid.: 4). Through these aims, the EC directly addresses the need to
promote active citizenship under the subsection on ‘Promoting citizens’
participation in the democratic process’. The intentions of the Commission
state that this would be achieved with different strategies such as promoting
more effective consultation, supporting European citizens’ projects, increasing
openness and transparency, increasing voter participation in European
elections and national referenda on European issues.
More recently, the Treaty of Lisbon (European Communities 2007) implied
moving from abstract declarations to more binding provisions. The text states
that “The institutions shall, by appropriate means, give citizens and represen-
tative associations the opportunity to make known and publicly exchange their
views in all areas of Union action” (article 8b, 1). The treaty also recognizes
citizens must be granted the possibility to influence EU’s agenda as confirmed
by certain conditions: “Not less than one million citizens who are nationals of
127
a significant number of Member States may take the initiative of inviting the
European Commission, within the framework of its powers, to submit any ap-
propriate proposal on matters where citizens consider that a legal act of the
Union is required for the purpose of implementing the Treaties” (article 8b, 4).
While during the past decade participatory and deliberative democracy has
been considered by EU institutions as a way to counteract the democratic defi-
cit by complementing representative forms of democracy, only recently have
concrete efforts to involve citizens in EU policy making been developed,
mostly through the use of CMC.
Use of the Internet by European Institutions

to Widen Citizens’ Participation
As a direct consequence of the Plan-D, the Commission activated the Debate

Europe website (europa.eu/debateeurope), a forum to gauge public opinion
focusing on the main challenges currently facing Europe: climate change and
energy, future of Europe, intercultural dialogue. Related to the Debate Europe
website is EU tube (www.youtube.com/eutube), which is an official presence of the
European Commission on YouTube, allowing users to upload audiovisual files
related to EU issues.3 A significant recent development has been the creation
of a single point of access to EU institutions, through the creation of the web-
site Your voice in Europe (YViE, ec.europa.eu/yourvoice, see European Commission
undated), which has been developed as an output of the Interactive Policy Making
(IPM) initiative. The IPM was designed to allow citizens playing an active role
in the European policy making process (both ex ante and ex post) making it
more transparent, comprehensive and effective. Through YViE, one can ac-
cess debates (such as the Debate Europe website quoted above) and chats on
current EU affairs with European Commissioners. What is unclear is if and
how information gathered through these online forums has an impact on the
EU policy making. A recent analysis of a random sample of discussion
postings on YViE found that experts tended to dominate the discussion while
the impact on actual policies remains unclear (Winkler/Kozeluh 2005). This
evidence seems to confirm similar studies which show that while public au-
thorities are expected to react formally to the outcomes of public discussions
“in many cases participants have been disappointed by the lack of feedback”
from elected representatives (Smith 2005: 93). Besides providing opportunities
to intervene in debates and chats, the YViE website opens consultations on
3 Niesyto’s qualitative analysis in this volume illustrates the affective aspects of the
appropriation of YouTube in EU campaigning.
128
virtually all policy fields in which the EU is engaged. Consultations, however,

have been done by the EU since the beginning of the 2000s, before the activa-
tion of YViE. This website, in fact, brings together all European consultations
on one website, providing links to consultative processes promoted by the sin-
gle Directorate Generals (DG). It has to be noted that this common gateway
to EU consultations certainly represents an improvement compared to the
fragmentation prevalent earlier. However, there has not been any attempt to
systematize the way information is collected and provided. This makes the
instrument less useful than it could be, especially if one wants to focus on past
consultations. For example, the time frame is not always clear as it should be,
target groups are often defined differently, and some links are not available
anymore.
If we consider all consultations undertaken by the EU in the past decade,
we can notice interesting trends (see Table 2). Firstly, the EU developed a
great number of consultations in a wide variety of policy fields. In some cases,
full reports concerning the outcome of the consultation process are available.
Secondly, we notice that the number of consultations increased constantly
over time in the period 2000-2006 while we can observe a slight decrease in
2007.4 Thirdly, consultations are distributed differently across different policy
fields. There are some policy domains concerning external activities of the EU
(i.e. foreign and security policy, humanitarian aid) that do not employ this type
of instrument. Issues at the core of EU agenda such as enterprise and internal
markets (which have historically represented the drivers of EU integration) as
well as the environment (which recently gained a great relevance at the EU
level) are the policy fields displaying the greater number of consultations.
Above average are issues related to information society, competition, food
safety, public health, justice and home affairs, and transport. Well below aver-
age we find such diverse fields as regional policy, agriculture and fishery, exter-
nal relations, culture and education, development, employment and social af-
fairs, trade, and trans-European networks.
4 Data on 2008 are still uncompleted as this research was developed at the end of
April 2008.
129
Policy field Open Closed Total

(08) 00- 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
01
General & 0 3 1 0 1 1 2 3 1 12
institutional affairs
Agriculture 1 0 0 1 1 1 3 0 2 9
Audiovisual/ 3 0 0 6 11 8 13 6 0 47
Information society
Budget* - - - - - - - - - -
Competition 2 0 0 0 6 4 21 12 2 47
Consumers 0 2 3 4 1 0 1 3 0 14
Culture/ 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 5 1 6
Education/Sport/
Youth
Customs 0 0 0 0 2 3 0 0 0 5
Development 4 0 0 0 0 1 0 2 0 7
Economic affairs* - - - - - - - - - -
Employment & 2 1 0 1 2 1 1 2 0 10
social affairs/
Equal opportunities
Energy 3 0 0 0 2 4 5 3 2 19
Enlargement* - - - - - - - - - -
Enterprise 3 12 15 13 9 16 11 10 6 95
Environment 3 2 2 10 9 15 13 15 6 75
External relations 0 0 0 0 2 2 1 0 0 5
Fisheries & 3 1 0 1 0 1 0 3 1 10
aquaculture
Food safety 0 10 5 1 1 4 7 4 0 32
Foreign & 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
security policy
Humanitarian aid 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Internal market 1 1 8 9 19 10 19 11 3 81
Justice & 1 0 0 6 11 9 7 5 0 39
home affairs
Public health 1 2 0 1 3 3 7 10 6 33
Regional policy 0 0 0 3 1 1 1 0 2 8
Research & 1 0 0 2 4 1 2 4 0 14
technology
Taxation 1 0 0 5 3 1 3 4 0 17
Trade 0 0 0 2 3 3 0 1 0 9
Trans-European 0 0 0 2 1 1 1 0 0 5
networks
Transport 1 0 1 3 4 7 7 9 5 37
Total 30 34 35 70 96 97 12 11 37 636
5 2
Table 2: Consultations undertaken by the EU since 2000 (European Commission un-

dated). * Data not available because of broken link.
While table 2 gives us information on the number of consultations undertaken

by the EU across different policy fields in the last decade, table 3 presents the
same information focusing, however, on the type of consultations. In order to
130
make data more understandable and to overcome problems of inconsistency in

labelling target groups, we distinguished between open consultations and re-
stricted ones. What one immediately notices is that less than one-third of the
consultations (30.5 percent) are open to the general public. This could be ex-
plained by the fact that sometimes issues under discussion are very technical
and require specific expertise and experience in the field. Regardless, some dis-
cussions only address specific stakeholders (i.e. unions, enterprises, etc.).
Notwithstanding the total number of consultations, it is interesting to notice
that in some policy fields (i.e. general and institutional affairs, information
society, competition, consumers, and development) the number of open con-
sultations is greater than those of closed ones. In other cases, closed consul-
tations represent the most important category. If we consider the three policy
fields with the highest number of consultation processes discussed above, we
notice that while approximately one-third of consultations on the environment
and internal markets are open, those concerning enterprise are generally
closed. This is not surprising as the environment is nowadays at the top of the
EU agenda and also represents a major concern of European citizens. The di-
verse degree of openness of consultations on internal market policy and enter-
prise policy is probably related to the fact that the former concerns primarily
the free movement of people, goods, services and capital while the latter is
primarily concerned with industrial competitiveness.
100%
80%
60%
Restricted*
Public
40%
20%
0%
Em lop ms
c h io He e
an ks
TO ort
ca rs
al nm e
rm e r Saf s
L
Ex E nte rgy
/ E um n
E nt
la nt
tu o etit e
te S irs
tw e
Te Po h
xa y
oy nt
a t al ety
EU T on
De Cu ion
Fo ish ns
M ty
no y
se Re l us t
r n i ro ri s
ar g ic t ic
TA
P u J rke
re ns io
p r
ne rad
Ta log
& nal a lt
c h lic
du e
Re e
Tr or
m ltu
In Ge od eri
pl me
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o
sp
In n fa
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ti
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m
t
te nv rp
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io Af
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Figure 1: Types of consultations undertaken by the EU. * Member states, regional and
local authorities, stakeholders, NGOs, industrial and academic research community,
interested parties, etc.
It must be noted that our assessment of EU consultations is only based on

quantitative data and this makes it difficult to do any type of assessment of the
131
quality of consultation processes. Still, we see this as a useful exercise to pro-

vide a general overview of how the EU is acting to consult citizens. In the
following sections, we will contrast this image of consultation with an activity
requiring a more active role from part of citizens: web campaigns developed
through formal and informal e-petitions.
Compared with online consultations, e-petitions sent to the EU represent
a step forward in citizen participation. While citizen consultations are based on
a set of predefined issues, web campaigns based on e-petitions represent a pos-
sibility to introduce ignored issues in the EU agenda. This implies a more ac-
tive role from part of the citizens.
Submitting Petitions to the EP: The Committee on Petitions (PETI)
Before focusing on formal and informal e-petitions practices, it is worth con-

sidering how complaints can be submitted to the EU. The right to petition al-
lows citizens to “individually or in association with other citizens or persons”
(European Parliament 2008: art. 191) present a complaint directly to the politi-
cal body of the Union, the EP. The route to manage petitions is foreseen by
the EP rules of procedures: according to them, the PETI is responsible for
examining citizens’ requests and giving a follow up in the more appropriate
way. This committee was created well before a formal legal acknowledgement
of the right to petition (in 1992, with the Maastricht Treaty).5 Today, the PETI
is headed by a chairman and four vice-chairmen and is composed by fourty
MEPs on a voluntary basis. Its main task is to examine whether the petitions
fulfil the admissibility conditions. If this is the case, the PETI declares the
petition eligible to be examined and decides which measures should be taken.
When a petition is considered to be outside the area of activity of the EU, it is
declared inadmissible.
The PETI is not a judicial body, but a political one: its main mission is to
publicize the abuse of citizens’ rights, sensitize the EP and the other European
institutions (especially the Ombudsman and the EC) and monitor the progress
made by these bodies according to the given suggestions. The PETI regularly
consults other parliamentary committees. Moreover, following the principle of
subsidiarity, it tends to steer the cases to national or local authorities when
5 In March 1953, the ECSC parliamentary assembly included in its rules of proce-
dure a provision giving individuals the opportunity to send petitions. The concept
of ‘right’ to petition was strengthened in 1981 during the general revision of the
settlement of the EP. Finally, in 1989, the presidents of the EP, the Council and
the Commission signed a cooperation agreement stressing the importance of peti-
tions for the EU (European Parliament 2001, Allen Study).
132
these are directly involved in the complaints. In the latter case, the PETI is
allowed neither to ignore nor to override the decisions taken by the competent
authorities at the national level.
A petition directed to the PETI may take the form of a complaint or a
request and it may refer to matters of public or private interest. It might
contain a personal comment about the application of the European Com-
munity legislation, or it might invite the EP to regulate a specific issue. Sending
a petition to the EP requires neither any form to fill, nor obligation for formal
drafting. The only conditions that the authors must respect are that they men-
tion the name of the promoter as well as its nationality, profession, address,
and signature (if several petitioners are supporting the initiative, all signatures
have to be presented), and that they write in a clear text. The petition has to be
addressed to the president of the EP. Depending on the topic of a petition, the
PETI can suggest the petitioner to target other institutions, such as a non-
Community one (i.e. the European Court of Human Rights) or a national one
(i.e. the national Ombudsman or, when present, the national parliament’s com-
mittee on petitions). Issues concerning bad administration of EU institutions
or bodies have to be sent to the Ombudsman.
By the means of an investigation on the submitted petitions, the EP should be
able to assess the gaps in legislation and problems related to practical
implementation of EU policies and, when necessary, to provide a remedy. If
petitions highlight concrete violations committed by member states, the EP
should take action to find a solution. The institutionalization of the PETI fits
with recent EU activities, discussed earlier, intended to promote e-participation
and bidirectional communication with citizens using ICTs: e-petitions are
considered as a tool to achieve the twofold aim of improving citizens’
perception of European institutions and increasing their participation.
For a few years, European citizens have been given the possibility to sub-
mit petitions to the PETI both on paper as well as online.6 In the latter case,
this can be done connecting to the EP website (europarl.eu) and filling out a
form. The electronic tool provided by the EP allows European citizens
wishing to send an online petition to enter personal details, the title, and the
text of the complaint. After sending the petition through the web, the
promoter receives an email receipt of acknowledgment. Nevertheless, it has to
6 On 11 July 2000, PETI issued an opinion on the implementation of a fully elec-

tronic procedure for receiving and registering petitions on a public register. It sta-
ted to be in favour of presenting and signing petitions by email or through other
electronic means; publishing a list of filled petitions and their summaries on the
EP website; signing petitions by email or any other means through the same web
page (European Parliament 2001, Allen Study: 160).
133
be noticed that all further correspondence between the PETI and the
promoter is held through conventional mail. Compared to other existing e-
petitioner systems quoted in the introduction of this chapter, the one provided
by the EP offers citizens fewer opportunities to operate electronically. The
promoter can neither enter additional information, nor start collecting
signatures online or consulting updates about the petition progress. Shifting
towards strong ICTs use in public administrations, in July 2005 the EP
developed a system for petitions’ internal management, the so-called e-Petitions,
which “functions both as a database and as a management tool providing
information about the petitions workflow” (PETI 2006: 7), and is accessible by
the members of the PETI as well as the officials of political groups. Its goal
consists of “further strengthen[ing] the transparency and effectiveness of the
Committee’s activities” (ibid.).
As stated in the PETI report by British MEP Michael Cashman on the
committee’s deliberations during 2004/2005, petitions arose from 908 in 2000
to 1,032 in 2005. During 2006, Parliament received 1,016 petitions, a slight de-
crease compared to the previous year (PETI 2007a: 9); the same year, the most
active citizens were representatives of countries such as Germany (274 peti-
tions), United Kingdom (177), Spain (127), France (69), Greece (68), Italy (68),
and Poland (56). The number of admissible petitions is around two-thirds of
the amount; the rest is declared inadmissible, as not related with EU activities
(PETI 2007b). Discussing this data, the PETI stressed that better un-
derstanding of the function of petitions “is closely connected to the quality of
the information available to the general public in Europe about EC legislation,
policies and objectives” (PETI 2007a: 6).
As it has been noted in one report issued by the PETI,
[m]ost of the petitions pointed to difficulties related to the implemen-

tation of EC legislation in the fields of environment, social security,
recognition of diplomas, and other aspects related to the functioning
of the internal market. The most concerned pieces of EU legislation
were directive 85/337/EEC as amended by 97/11/EC and 2003/
35/EC on Environmental Impact Assessment and directive 2003/
4/EC on public access to environmental information (PETI 2006:
18).
Some petitions generated motions by the EC and, consequently, obliged mem-

ber states to adapt their legislation to European standards. For example, ac-
cording to the UK Office of the EP (www.europarl.org.uk/publications/petitions/
singlepage.htm), France changed its laws about the recognition of physiotherapist
qualifications obtained in other member states; Belgium amended laws on
134
VAT taxation; and the Greek authorities had to ensure European citizens the
same conditions as Greeks to access museums. Moreover, benefits (such as
pensions, family allowances, etc.) obtained by EU immigrant workers are now
recognized thanks to petitions. Due to several petitions received in these fields,
legislation on animal welfare and environmental protection has also been im-
proved (ibid.).
The Role of E-Petitions in European Web Campaigning
While analyzing ‘formal’ petitions addressed to the EP, one cannot ignore the
mass of ‘informal’ petitions that are initiated and developed online as part of
broader web campaigns by grassroots movements using the support of NGO
websites. In fact, while assessing the role of online petitions in the EU, one
cannot forget that citizens may send e-petitions to different receivers, or using
other electronic tools than the official ones. Several petitions are sent every
year by European citizens and groups to other addressees than the PETI:
many are the requests, or claims, submitted straight to European Com-
missioners, or Directorate Generals, or even to the Council Presidency of the
EU. These are specific targets that do not have any legal obligation to take a
position. As previous research (Santucci 2008) shows, this might happen
because citizens are not aware of the existence of the PETI, but also because
they do not feel using formal petitions as a strategic or an effective means in
order to reach their goals. Several of these e-petitions, however, are sent to
both the PETI and other European institutions, using both formal and
informal channels. Moreover, since the 1990s a wide range of actors (private
individuals, NGOs, international organizations, etc.) have increasingly used e-
petitions as means of online campaigning. Several NGO or private websites
have been designed in order to promote political initiatives. PetitionOnline.com,
which is one of the more popular, recently reached sixty million one-click
signatures of support. Keeping in mind the distinction between formal and
informal petitions, we will now briefly illustrate four web campaigns where e-
petitions played a significant role.7
The Oneseat campaign is the e-petition to stop the EP meetings in Stras-
bourg and create a single venue for the legislative body of the EU in Brussels
7 Data concerning the four web campaigns were retrieved between January and
October 2007, through in-depth interviews (mainly carried out via Skype or by
phone) with the main promoters. For each campaign one person has been inter-
viewed, with the exception of the ControlArms case where three campaigners were
interviewed.
135
(www.oneseat.eu), which was launched on May 2006 by the Liberal Member of

European Parliament (MEP) Cecilia Malmström. This petition was part of a
wider Campaign for Parliamentary Reform supported by almost every political
group in the EP. In four months, 1,000,000 electronic signatures were col-
lected. The web campaign gained great media attention by means of both
electronic signatures and the direct involvement of MEPs. The promoters
worked hard to involve press, TVs and radio journalists, giving them the
opportunity to ‘tell a story’. This was achieved by making the web campaign
very tangible, i.e. showing journalists all the trucks bringing boxes filled with
MEPs documents to Strasbourg. The web campaign became highly visible as it
gained relevance in national agendas, thus receiving support in the form of
testimonials at the national level (i.e. a Parliament spokesman in Finland, a stu-
dent union in The Netherlands and a comedian-blogger in Italy).
Since it was started by a group of MEPs, the promoters could rely on a
great expertise on both the theme of the web campaign and the EU decision
making process. As stressed by one of the initiators, the text of the petition
symbolically refers to article 47 of the (at that time) proposed Constitution “in
order to change the system with the existing means”.8 While recognizing citi-
zens’ right to legislative initiative via petition, the same article (as well as its
functional equivalent in the Lisbon Treaty) did not provide concrete indication
on how to manage such an input. Despite being a petition born within the
Parliament and about the Parliament, it was not addressed only to the EP, but
also to the EC and the Council. Nonetheless, according to the campaigner,
European institutions are not very open to e-petitions as proved by the fact
that the EC simply replied by stating that it could not act on such topic. This
negligence could be explained by the fact that European institutions other than
the EP have no bodies exclusively devoted to petitions but, more so, by the
very sensitive issue at stake (for a discussion see Hein 2006). Whatever the rea-
son, the inactivity of the EC was confirmed by the PETI, which seemed to be
knowingly indifferent to the petition.
Being genuinely European, the web campaign was based on a website
translated in every official language of the European Union. The Internet was
crucial to generate a huge mobilization, because, as the petitioner noted, “the
website was very easy to access and its name was easy to remember” (ibid.).
The mass mobilization was not, however, homogeneous throughout Europe;
according to the promoter, the difference lies in the varying interests in the
theme for each member state, which was greater in northern European coun-
tries.
8 Interview with a political advisor, assistant of a Swedish MEP (30 March 2007).
136
The petition for the abolition of mobile phone recharge costs sought to ban expenses
to recharge mobile phones in Italy and was launched by an enterprising politi-
cal science student. The web campaign was started in early April 2006 through
an e-petition. Signatures were gathered via the Internet, using the PetitionOnline
platform (www.petitiononline.com/costidir/petition.html); the initiative was soon in-
cluded among the success stories of the website as well as in the e-petitions
top ten. Moreover, the promoter set up a campaign website (www.aboliamoli.eu)
where supporters could buy t-shirts about the campaign, consult documents,
and press releases.
At the very beginning, the promoter found journalists’ contacts on the
Internet and sought to involve the media. After initial indifference, an online
magazine and a local newspaper covered the petition. The web campaign
gained high visibility and attracted media coverage from newspapers and tele-
vision right after the intervention of the popular comedian-blogger Beppe
Grillo.9 The e-petition was in fact re-launched on his very popular blog and in
a few days signatures raised from 3,000 to 50,000. When 300,000 signatures
were reached, the petition was sent to the Directorate General on Competition
of the EC. The DG immediately replied, and urged Italian authorities to set up
an investigation. In the meantime, the promoter sent the EC a second package
of signatures (600,000 on 24 October 2005) and a third one (810,000 on 25
January 2006). On 4 March 2007, the Italian government obliged mobile
phone operators to ban the recharge costs.
The promoter decided to address the European institutions after unsuc-
cessful pledges submitted to national targets like the Anti-trust Authority, the
Communications Regulatory Authority and consumer protection associations. The
petition was addressed directly to the EC because the promoter did not know
about the existence of the PETI. In this case, the EC replied quickly and
ensured an immediate intervention. According to the promoter, Italian institu-
tions “did not respect their institutional duty, while European ones did so.”10
European institutions are, then, considered closer to citizens and receptive to
their requests.
The Internet made it possible to generate a word of mouth and a real
‘virtual guerrilla’ made of electronic spamming. As the promoter reminds, “we
9 Beppe Grillo is a famous Italian comedian well known for political satire, he also
created a very popular blog at the beginning of 2005 (www.beppegrillo.it). According
to Technorati, the blog is ranked among the most visited blogs in the world.
Grillo’s blog launched some significant campaigns like Clean up the Parliament and
Citizen Primaries (see Navarria 2007).
10 Interview with an Italian student in political science from Naples (21 January
2007).
137
bombed members of a government commission to avoid the postponement of

the national decree” (ibid.). When the issue had become well known in public,
the petitioner also threatened to publish the names of politicians opposing the
petition on his website. Despite, however, giving an opportunity for visibility,
the Internet also exposed the web campaign to more or less unverifiable criti-
cism, with which the promoter had to deal.
The Million Faces petition is part of a wider campaign (www.controlarms.org)
launched in 2003 by Amnesty International (AI) together with Oxfam and the In-
ternational Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA).11 The goal of the campaign,
addressed to the United Nations (UN), is to make governments approve and
sign the first international treaty to control the transfer of weapons. To achieve
this goal, the promoters decided to employ different strategies. In the words of
one campaigner, “on the one hand we lobbied governments, and on the other
hand we undertook campaigning actions to make people understand the im-
portance the treaty”.12 While the final addressee of the petition is the UN, the
promoter considered leaders and parliamentarians, MEPs in particular, an in-
termediate but privileged target. The EP was selected as the target of specific
lobbying activities, but also as the main addressee of the effective Million Faces
‘visual’ petition. Relations with MEPs were easy, given the presence of political
activists within the parliament itself: the initiative was promoted by a MEP
who had worked before on the treaty promotion for a NGO based in Barce-
lona. Relations between the promoter and MEPs were the result of a long-
term lobbying activity. At the European level, MEPs were involved by the
means of the Intergroup for peace initiatives allowing parliamentarians to advance
the political debate on the issues of peace and conflict. On 22 and 23 March
2006, the Intergroup decided to become visible within the EU by setting up a
stand in the EP where people could be photographed for the ‘visual’ petition.
The event was successful, with more than 750 citizens agreed to be photo-
graphed. Yet, after the EP took a formal position, over ninety MEPs agreed to
be photographed like common people did. The promoter wanted faces of par-
liamentarians supporting the petition as he was aware that the legal resolution
was not enough to gain media coverage. For the same reason, the promoter
11 AI, Oxfam, and IANSA are NGOs equipped with a team of professional cam-
paigners. They can rely on staff with strong expertise both at the central and at the
local level. AI (www.amnesty.org) is a worldwide organization campaigning for inter-
nationally recognized human rights. Oxfam (www.oxfam.org) is a network of NGOs
from three continents working worldwide to fight poverty and injustice. IANSA
(www.iansa.org) is a global coordination against gun violence composed of 800 civil
society organizations working in 120 countries to stop the proliferation and misuse
of small arms and light weapons (Cukier/Sidel 2006: 225; see also Alcalde 2008).
12 Interview with the AI campaigner responsible for ControlArms (13 July 2007).
138
started to participate in ‘mass’ events, such as the World Social Forum, making
the campaign highly visible. As a consequence, according to the initiator, the
campaign “started to be frequently present in the media and consequently
known by the UN and national governments” (ibid.).
It should be noted that the promoter is very skilled in relating with EU
institutions. He, in fact, has a long history of relationships with the EP, con-
cerning past resolutions and joint activities about the ControlArms campaign.
He appears to be extremely willing to mix lobbying activities, which by defini-
tion are more ‘private’, with the public visual petition addressed to citizens and
MEPs, attracting great media attention.
The Internet dimension was very important for the petition – i.e. the Con-
trolArms campaign has its own website – although it was not the only decisive
element. As the initiator reminds “on the one hand there is technology, to go
quickly forward; on the other hand, there’s creativity” (ibid.). In fact, some
people developed strategies to upload pictures by cameras or mobile phones
and, when it was not possible, faces were drawn on paper. Beyond mobiliza-
tion, the Internet allowed the creation of a long-term connection with signato-
ries since the promoters created a database with 600,000 email addresses of
people who ‘gave their face’ to the visual petition to be recontacted monthly
via an e-newsletter. The website has also been used to collect governments’
support of the campaign: on the ‘Government submission’ section forty-nine
communications made by several countries to the UN Secretary-General are
published.
The REACH petition is a web campaign seeking to ban hazardous chemicals
(www.wwf.org.uk/chemicals). This web campaign was initiated on March 2003 by
the British section of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), together with the
Women Institute and the Co-operative Bank.13 The aim was to intervene in the
policy making process when the European directive on chemicals was about to
be updated. In order to make their action more effective, the promoters
started to collect signatures on a petition. Despite the campaign being initially
launched in the UK, the petition, which was supported by more than 88,000
letters, emails and signatures, was then sent to the EP since its aim was to in-
13 Created in 1961, the WWF UK (www.wwf.org.uk) was the first National Organiza-
tion in the WWF network. Today, it has offices in England, Northern Ireland,
Scotland and Wales. The Women’s Institute (www.womens-institute.co.uk) is the largest
voluntary organization for women in the UK, providing them with educational
opportunities and the chance to build new skills, to take part in a wide variety of
activities, and to campaign on issues that matter to them and their communities.
The Co-operative Bank (www.co-operativebank.co.uk) is a customer-owned UK bank
with an ethical focus, offering a range of banking services including online bank-
ing.
139
fluence an EU directive. On 13 December 2006, the EP voted in favour of the

compromise proposed by governments of member states. Although there was
an improvement in the legislation compared to previous regulations, the cam-
paign’s objectives were only partially achieved: it was agreed that all chemicals
that might remain in living organisms have to be replaced whenever possible,
some chemicals, however, which can cause cancer or deformities, affect DNA,
disrupt the hormonal system or generate other diseases, are still allowed in the
market.
The promoter of the REACH petition is a professional campaigner: he
contacted a large team of experts, including some professionals based in Brus-
sels. As mentioned, the petition was part of a larger campaign, and the signa-
ture collection activities were organized in conjunction with other initiatives.
Citizens were mobilized primarily through blood tests carried out in the streets
of different British cities. These tests showed toxicity in the body of each
citizen and, thus, the ‘motivation to act’ appealed to fears, to the fact of seeing
harmful and invisible substances inside their own bodies. The promoter also
tried to involve politicians in the campaign. In fact, MEPs were subjected to
analysis, making the campaign intimate and personal. As the promoter noted,
this created “a true empathetic bond between tested people and tested
MEPs.”14 Citizens also went to Brussels with their blood tests and asked the
EP for more security.
Although the campaign searched for “written support” through the peti-
tion, it also benefited from further initiatives, requiring a more active partici-
pation by citizens than a signature. According to the initiator, “if an action is
very easy, and people can make it online, then it remains only an opinion poll.
A campaign is very weak if you support something but you don’t act person-
ally” (ibid.). Blood tests and bio-monitoring activities, the promoter says,
helped by “giving the petitions a face”. This attracted media attention all along
the campaign, since they “could go into city centres, see ambulances and film
people while blood testing”, as stated by the initiator. Journalists were also
subjected to testing, together with some British television celebrities. As the
promoter reminds, “until then, chemicals were considered only from an eco-
nomical and industrial point of view; we presented it from another perspective,
letting grandmothers and their children talk” (ibid.).
The petition was considered by its initiator as a secondary element of a
broader campaign. He notes that “if we would have done only a petition,
without creating a larger campaign, I think this wouldn’t have worked. A peti-
tion alone cannot create the changes you want” (ibid.). The petition was pro-
14 Interview with the former WWF-UK campaigner responsible for REACH (7 Sep-
tember 2007).
140
moted electronically through the website of the UK branch of WWF. This was
certainly a strong means to disseminate information and gathering online sig-
natures. Most of the signatures, however, were collected offline.
Conclusion
What we stressed in this chapter is that European institutions are seriously

concerned with their democratic deficit and in order to face it they have
started experimenting with other democratic models based on participatory
and deliberative principles. ICTs have, indeed, offered the opportunity to
broaden participation at the European level. Diverse instruments have been
put in place to strengthen the way Europeans experience and sense their su-
pranational citizenship: from discussion forums on topics at the top of the EU
agenda, to consultations on a wide range of policy fields, to the possibility to
submit petitions (both online and offline). Concerning the latter, we have de-
scribed how a special committee within the EP has been created. We also ob-
served, however, that petitions addressing European institutions are not for-
warded solely via this ‘formal’ channel set up ‘from above’ but also initiated
spontaneously ‘from below’ as part of wider web campaigns and directed to
different targets through ‘informal’ channels using the support of non-gov-
ernmental websites.
Exemplary of the different types of e-petitions targeting the EU, we se-
lected and illustrated four web campaigns varying in terms of the type of ini-
tiator (either individual or organized) and the territorial level of the action (ei-
ther genuinely international or shifting from the domestic to the international
level). Even if our results are only illustrative and could not be generalized,
some interesting similarities and differences emerge from our research. Firstly,
analysed campaigns tend to adopt a variegated repertoire of action, mixing dis-
crete talks behind close doors (lobbying) with visible performances in the pub-
lic sphere. Direct pressure is exerted on decision makers, but media coverage is
also actively sought through very creative and inventive means ranging from
visual petitions, showing a face behind an electronic signature (ControlArms
campaign), to blood tests to raise awareness and public discussion (REACH
campaign) and through the direct involvement of testimonials (Oneseat cam-
paign and the mobile phone recharge costs campaign). In many cases, MEPs
were directly involved in such mobilizations, opening channels and providing
concrete informal opportunities for interaction between citizens and European
institutions. Secondly, among the strategic options available for civil society,
campaigners at the EU level seem to prefer the ‘logic of numbers’ (creating a
critical mass supporting their claims) and the ‘logic of bearing witness’ (in-
141
volving well known people to discuss the very cause of the problem) than the
‘logic of damage’ based on performing disruptive actions to attract media at-
tention (della Porta/Diani 2006: 171-176). With regard to the logic of num-
bers, interviews generally recognized that signatures on a petition are not suffi-
cient to gain enough attention and specify that e-petitions represent only a
component of wider web campaigning initiatives. The online dimension is rec-
ognized as relatively important but normally developed parallel to other offline
activities.
Our study also confirmed the important role of organizations in mobiliz-
ing discontent and transforming it into action. When individuals initiate web
campaigns, we notice that promoters had to mobilize additional resources, as
in the case of the Italian petition where the role of alternative media (Grillo’s
blog) has been extremely relevant. The role of alternative media in this case is
reminiscent of the famous but inherently different web campaign against Nike
sweatshops initiated by Jonah Peretti, a graduate of the MIT Media Lab, which
created a short circuit between different types of media, subsequently forcing
Nike to take action and repair its damaged image (Peretti/Micheletti 2003).
Concerning another web campaign initiated by Oneseat, it is worth noticing that
it was promoted by a ‘special’ type of individuals (MEPs) with direct access to
European institutions and related resources (media access, institutional sup-
port, etc.).
When the domestic political opportunity structure is closed or national in-
stitutions are not perceived as having the power to intervene on a topic, a
‘scale shift’ takes place in order to move claims from one level to another (Tar-
row 2005: 32). Such scale shifts were evident in those campaigns that started at
the national level, such as REACH and mobile phone recharge costs cam-
paigns. With respect to the web campaign for the abolition of recharge costs
for mobile phones the promoter actively sought to produce a ‘boomerang ef-
fect’ (Keck/Sikkink 1998). By pressing EU institutions on the issue of compe-
tition, which is vital for the process of European integration, the campaign
sought to force domestic institutions to change national legislation.
Our analysis of web campaigns has shown the two-fold nature of e-peti-
tions as bottom-up processes spontaneously initiated by civil society, as well as
top-down practices promoted by institutions to involve citizens. The analysis
of online petitions sent to the EU, including e-petitions sent to the EP Com-
mittee on petitions, shows how e-petitioning potentially allows every citizen to
communicate with Brussels, connect to other European citizens, and influence
the policy making process. Online petitions also have the potential to better
bridge the decision making process of some European policies and their im-
plementation at the domestic level. Despite relevant limits in terms of ac-
cess/accessibility, public interest, effectiveness and expertise already pointed
142
out elsewhere (Santucci 2008), web campaigns based on e-petitions remain a

tool which allows direct participation about European issues bypassing mem-
ber states. Beyond the limited exploratory analysis presented in this chapter
more research is needed in order to understand which factors determine the
variable outcomes of web campaigns.
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Petitioning Online. The Role of E-Petitions in Web Campaigning

Chapter · December 2009

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

Sigrid Baringhorst, Veronika Kneip,

February 2009, 274 p., 29,80 €, ISBN 978-3-8376-1047-5

Drawing upon a common conceptual framework of political webcampaigning the book

© 2009 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld

General Reflections on Political Campaigning on the Web

Appropriation of the Web

Sarah Zielmann/Ulrike Röttger

Lorenzo Mosca/Daria Santucci

Subsumption and Outlook

Geert Lovink interviewed by Johanna Niesyto

Petitioning Online. The Role of E-Petitions in Web

Web Campaigns and E-Petitions: An Introduction

Conceptual and Methodological Challenges in Studying E-Petitions

Territorial scope of Promoter

Table 1: A typology of web campaigns developed through e-petitions.

Citizens’ Involvement in the EU Policy Making

the lack of a European ‘demos’ or of a ‘thick’ collective identity, the

This preoccupation with the democratic deficit of the EU pushes institutions

Use of the Internet by European Institutions

As a direct consequence of the Plan-D, the Commission activated the Debate

virtually all policy fields in which the EU is engaged. Consultations, however,

Policy field Open Closed Total

Table 2: Consultations undertaken by the EU since 2000 (European Commission un-

While table 2 gives us information on the number of consultations undertaken

make data more understandable and to overcome problems of inconsistency in

It must be noted that our assessment of EU consultations is only based on

quality of consultation processes. Still, we see this as a useful exercise to pro-

Submitting Petitions to the EP: The Committee on Petitions (PETI)

Before focusing on formal and informal e-petitions practices, it is worth con-

6 On 11 July 2000, PETI issued an opinion on the implementation of a fully elec-

[m]ost of the petitions pointed to difficulties related to the implemen-

Some petitions generated motions by the EC and, consequently, obliged mem-

The Role of E-Petitions in European Web Campaigning

(www.oneseat.eu), which was launched on May 2006 by the Liberal Member of

bombed members of a government commission to avoid the postponement of

fluence an EU directive. On 13 December 2006, the EP voted in favour of the

What we stressed in this chapter is that European institutions are seriously

out elsewhere (Santucci 2008), web campaigns based on e-petitions remain a

Alcalde, J. (2008) ‘Global Institutional Responses to the Peace Movement

——— (2001) European Governance. A white paper, COM(2001) 428 final,

dspace/bitstream/1814/7358/1/MWP-2007-23.pdf> (accessed 13 Octo-

Winkler, R and Kozeluh, U. (2005) ‘Europeans Have a Say: Online Debates

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