This panel was one of three in the first round of panels and has been focusing on ePetitions. Two contributions from Germany and two contributions from the UK brought a useful comparative perspective to the debate. ePetitions are an interesting research object because not only is petitioning a rather popular political participation activity offline but also online. It is also one of the few eParticipation activities quite a number of governments have been implemented by now, namely the UK, Germany and Scotland.<\/p>\n
Andreas Jungherr was providing a largely quantitative analysis of co-signature dynamics on the ePetitions website<\/a> of the German Bundestag, providing some background on how many petitions attract a lot of signatures (only a few) and how many petitions a user signs (usually only one).<\/p>\n This provided a background for the\u00a0summary of a comprehensive study on ePetitioning in the German parliament<\/a> by Ralf Linder. He offered a somewhat downbeat assessment in that the online system has failed to engage traditionally underrepresented groups of society to petitioning even though it has had impacted on the public debate.<\/p>\n Giovanni Navarria was much harsher in his\u00a0criticism of ePetitioning on the Downing Street site<\/a>based on his analysis of the petition\u00a0against the road tax<\/a>. He concluded that the government was actually wrong in putting such a service onto its website as it had created unrealistic expectations a representative government could not meet.<\/p>\n