Seeking comparative study of e-petitions

Janice Thomson

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Nov 6, 2014, 11:02:04 AM11/6/14

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Dear All,

I’m looking for an accessible comparative study of e-petitions. I’m particularly interested in e-petitions at the national level that result in a debate in parliament -- such as in the UK and Germany. By “accessible” I mean (ideally) not behind a paywall and comprehensible. I would love to find something that includes details like number of signatures and requirements for supporters (i.e., age minimums, personal data requirements, signature verification) and looks at e-petitions in several countries.

I’m asking this for my work with The ECI Campaign as we prepare our lobbying strategy for the 2015 reform of the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) implementing regulation. When the regulation was drafted in 2010, it was modelled on regulations for “citizens’ initiative” direct democracy tools in countries like Italy and Switzerland. Despite its name, the ECI is technically an “agenda setting initiative” and functions in practice like an e-petition. A successful ECI which collects 1 million signatures gets a public hearing in the European Parliament (similar to a British e-petition) and an official written response from the European Commission (similar to the American “We The People” site).

BTW. Because of the Tufts’ Summer Institute, The ECI Campaign is now really pushing to drop the age of ECI support to 16. Previously it was something we thought of as “nice” but not important. What I learned from civics educators changed my mind and led me to convince others that including high-school students was indeed important.;-)

Thanks in advance for anything you can share!

Janice

Janice Thomson

janice.ka...@gmail.com

P.S. If anyone would like to know more about the ECI, here’s a publication I co-edited on its first two years: http://ecithatworks.org/

Scheibel, Jim

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Nov 10, 2014, 10:30:54 AM11/10/14

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Hi Janice,

Good to hear from you and get a report on your fantastic work. I'm not able to help you identify a study, but I'm sure someone in the Tufts class will come through.

My freshman seminar is a course I would put in the civic studies category, really enjoy teaching it and looking forward to teaching a course on community organizing during the J-term.

Best,

Jim

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Jim Scheibel

Professor of Practice

Hamline University

School of Business

651-523-2545

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ldbo...@aol.com

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Nov 24, 2014, 11:55:37 AM11/24/14

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Hi Everyone,

I hope this email finds that you're all well! I was wondering if anyone is aware of any studies (past or ongoing) where civic education programs or courses were assigned randomly to one group of students/classrooms and not to others.

I've come across a number of studies showing the effectiveness of civic education programs on various outcomes, but because the assignment to these courses was not random, there's still possible selection or omitted variable bias. For example, other factors may be explaining why children at schools with civic education programs perform better on civic outcomes other than the civic education programs themselves if those schools are also doing other things better.

I am going to continue to search, but if anyone is aware of more robust studies using random assignment, I'd love to see them. I'm aware of one recent study in Mali (by Gottlieb) and I have found a few studies using quasi-random assignment in democracy/civics courses for adults in Africa. I found one US study where some political science students were randomly assigned a service learning component and others took the standard government courses alone.

I will continue searching, but thought this would be a good question for the mailing list.

Thanks so much either way and wishing you all the best,

Lori

Olivia Mitchell

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Nov 24, 2014, 2:48:30 PM11/24/14

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Lori:

Very interesting. Keep me abreast as you go forward. I believe in civic engagment - study and field. This is important.

olivia

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Olivia E. Mitchell

Asst Chief Grants Administrator

Operations Bureau

Housing + Community Investment Department
1200 West 7th Street, 6th Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90017
olivia....@lacity.org
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