ParliLinc

In the twenty-first century petitioning is one of the most common forms of political participation. The UK now has a range of formal systems including in Westminster, the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales, and also in a number of local authorities.

Catherine Bochel has been researching petitions systems in the UK since 2009. Her research has been funded by the University of Lincoln and by the British Academy (SG101961). She looks at the popularity of petitioning as a tool for participation and explores whether they can contribute to representative forms of democracy, what people can achieve by submitting a petition, how success and failure might be judged in relation to petitions systems, and whether procedural justice is a useful tool for analysing petitions systems in representative political institutions.