The Process is the Reality: Perceptions of Procedural Fairness and Participatory Democracy

Abstract

To (re)connect and (re‐)engage citizens with their governing institutions, many advanced industrial democracies have adopted innovative reforms designed to ‘transform’ the way citizens interact with public institutions. This article assesses the extent to which the Scottish Parliament's petitioning system, a reform designed to connect the Scottish public with its parliament, influences broader trust in the political system. Using structural equations to model data from a survey of Scottish Parliament petitioners, the article finds that process evaluations far exceed outcome evaluations in influencing petitioner trust in political institutions. Hence simply adopting reforms that allow for ‘civic engagement’ is not enough to improve public support for the political system. Great care must be taken in adopting transformative reforms to ensure that those members of the public who do choose to ‘engage’ with political institutions see procedures as fair and politically neutral.

The Pursuit of Legitimacy as a Key Driver for Public Engagement: The European Parliament Case

“…One important consideration is whether public engagement actually reflects parliament's work, or whether it develops as a parallel activity, both of which depend largely on how these activities are developed and the extent to which they are integrated with parliament's overall work. Whilst a wealth of studies have focused on the features of specific outputs of public engagement, such as new media and petitions (for example, Setälä and Grönlund, 2006;Dai and Norton, 2007;Carman, 2009Carman, , 2010Fox, 2009;Miller, 2009;Joshi and Rosenfield, 2013), we know little about the actual process of implementation of public engagement activities. And yet, the process of implementation can be as important for the suitability of a public engagement output, as it may shape its format and contents.…”

An Overview Assessment of ePetitioning Tools in the English Local Government

“…It is also important that future research takes into account citizens' views on available public participation channels. As Carman suggests [15], the existence of online engagement opportunities, whether regulatory enforced or not, can have limited impact if citizens do not view engagement processes as fair and politically neutral. Especially with respect to local government petitioning, this aspect can be even more important than the technological artefacts themselves which, even when simply implemented, might still be able to demonstrate positive impact on local democratic processes.…”

“…Such petitions cover a variety of local decision-making topics, for example, recycling, parking, library closures, bus stops and so on (see e.g. [12][13] Complementary to the local government, there has been strong evidence of the ePetitioning popularity in the UK, starting from the pioneer work of Scottish Parliament's ePetitions [14][15]. From 2006 until its termination in 2010, the Labour government's ePetitioning website accumulated millions of signatures in thousand different topics; it generated extensive debate over its impact and future potential [16].…”

Process matters: petitions systems in Britain’s legislatures

“…It draws on theories of procedure which have been applied to a variety of different fields, including law (for example, Harlow and Rawlings, 2014;Craig, 2012;Thibaut & Walker, 1975, 1978; psychology (for example, Blader & Tyler, 2003;Folger, 1977;Lind et al, 1990); business and management (for example, Groth & Gilliland, 2001;Maguire & Lind, 2003); political science (for example, Carman, 2010;Grimes, 2006); social policy (for example, Riddell, 2003) including healthcare resource allocation (Tsuchiya et al, 2005); and criminology (for example, Hough et al, 2010). It encompasses a range of ideas and characteristics as discussed below.…”