European Parliament Report on Technology in Parliaments

European Parliament Report on Technology in Parliaments is about the one of the latest changes in the ‘technology of democracy’ and how it may impact on some of our core institutions of democratic representation: parliaments and parties. As in the past, whenever something new was injected into the processes of election and representation pundits have emerged to argue that the nature of democracy would be transformed. This is no less true for one of the latest potential changes in the ‘technology of democracy’, namely the introduction into the democratic realm of information and communication technologies (ICT).

House of Commons Standard Note on e-Democracy  

This Standard Note examines the ways in which the new information and communication technologies (ICTs) can be harnessed to enhance the participation of the citizen in the electoral process and in the work of Parliament and other elected assemblies. The focus of the paper is democracy, not technology. It concentrates on external relationships between Parliament and the citizens it represents and does not examine technology issues within the House, for example in connection with voting in divisions or the supply of IT equipment to Members.

The paper traces some of the more important steps taken by parliamentarians, by the Government and others in recent years to encourage the development of e-democracy. It then goes on to look at the various forms of e-participation by citizens in the work of Parliament.

Finally, it traces developments in electronic voting. There are separate standard notes on electronic government (SN/SC/1202), electronic government usage (SN/SC/1291) and on the Internet in general (SN/SC/1296).

Parliamentary Affairs: A Public Service Ethic and Political Accountability 

The Government's proposals to engage the private sector more in the delivery of public services has given rise to a great deal of concern and alarm. This article focuses on the idea of a public service ethic in an attempt to determine whether it has anything other than rhetorical value.

Parliamentary Affairs - A Tale of Two Houses: The House of Commons, the Big Brother House and the People at Home 

A Tale of Two Houses looks at the issues of political democracy being in a "cultural ghetto" and the potential for new technology to liberate political democracy from this place.

Parliamentary Affairs: Citizenship in the Age of Liberalism 

Citizenship in The Age of Liberalism seeks to expand the scope of research on citizenship in political behaviour and political psychology, and to expand the range of methodologies that are used to study this subject.

Parliamentary Affairs: Civic Attitudes & Engagement in Modern Britain  

Civic Attitudes & Engagement in Modern Britain looks to:
- examine individuals' views regarding their civic rights and obligations.
- consider the nature of people's civic enagement.
- draw general conclusions regarding British citizenship and civic life at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Parliamentary Affairs: Crisis Management, Influences, Responses and Evaluation 

Allan McConnell looks at the role of the British Government in handling crisis situations.

Parliamentary Affairs: Exploring the Limits of Public Participation in Local Government  

Drawing primarily on the world of local governance, this article asks whether the large number of participatory initiatives, both traditional and modern, has done much to change power relationships or whether they have simply served to reinforce existing patterns of power and influence.

It examines both old and new participatory methods, including the changing role of local pressure groups, and offers some reflections on patterns of citizenship in the light of the ‘social capital’ debate. It emphasises that more participation is not the same thing as more democracy and that much still needs to be done to broaden the base of decision-making.

Parliamentary Affairs: Governing Alone 

Robert Putnam, in his much discussed book 'Bowling Alone', argues that American Society is characterised increasingly by individual rather than collective activity. People are now bowling alone rather than in teams. What I shall argue is that the same applies in respect of British Government. What we are witnessing is a fragmentation of the system by which the United Kingdom is governed, with the government itself increasingly governing alone. The mutual respect and interdependence that previously characterised the British system of goverment has been undermined and is close to the point of collapse.

Parliamentary Affairs - Great Britain: From Dicey to Devolution 

"As presently constituted, the UK is some way removed from the sort of imbroglio that requires the dramatic accommodation between its constituent nations represented by a federal compact." Michael O'Neill examines the historical and current issues.

Parliamentary Affairs: How Citizenship got on the Political Agenda  

Trevor Smith probes the question of how and in what ways citizenship has emerged from the obscurity of academic theorising to become an increasingly important feature of public policy.

Parliamentary Affairs: Local Electoral Participation in Britain  

Local electoral participation is addressed in this paper by:
- use of aggregate and survey data to review knowledge of local turnout.
- assessing the success of efforts to boost participation.
- asking how it is possible to account for electoral units whose turnout is consistently much higher or lower than would be expected.
- asking if it is possible to distinguish between voters that vote a both local and general elections and those who only do so at one type.

Parliamentary Affairs - New Fashions in Public Participation: Towards Greater Democracy? 

Lawrence Pratchett provides an analysis of public participation on the themes of:
- whether the latest fashions in public participation complement, replace or undermine existing institutions of representative democracy.
- consideration of whose interests public participation serves.

Parliamentary Affairs: Online Campaigning 

Stephen Coleman consider the role of the internet in the 2001 elections:
- the e-marketing of political parties.
- online resources for voters.
- on-line news media.
- the establishment of a new participatory style of politics.

Parliamentary Affairs - On-line Participation and Mobilisation in Britain: Hype, Hope and Reality 

Stephen Ward, Rachel Gibson and Wainer Lusoli draw together research on how a range of political organisations use the internet and how thier members, and the wider UK public, respond to online participatory opportunities.

Parliamentary Affairs - Parents as Volunteer Citizens: Voice, Deliberation and Governance  

Parents as Volunteer Citizens firstly critically examines the dominant neo-liberal strategy for enhancing accountability and trust in education and public services. It then describes three studies that illustrate parents wanting to enhance their voice, take part in deliberative forums, and participate in the collective governance of schools. Next steps to improve parent participation are suggested.

Parliamentary Affairs: Political Participation, Mass Protest and Representative Democracy

David Beetham examines representative democracy in particular with respect to the level of public opposition to the UK Governments support of the war in Iraq.

Parliamentary Affairs - Pressure Politics: From 'Insider' Politics to Direct Action  

The pressure politics 'event' of 2000 was undoubtedly the direct action by farmers and road hauliers againt fuel prices in September...The September protests and the government's subsequent reaction are symptomatic of the tension that has developed between conventional forms of insider pressure group activity and the increasing use of various forms of direct action. The traditional model of pressure politics is being seriously challenged.

Parliamentary Affairs - 'The Preferred Way of Doing Things': The British Direct Action Movement

What kind of movement is this and where does it fit into the wider picture of political participation in the UK? We will try to answer these two questions by providing evidence from an ethnographic study of local direct action groups in the UK direct action movement and the less visible activist communities that sustain them. This is followed by an assessment of the place of this movement in the political life of the UK.

Parliamentary Affairs - The Constitution: Rolling Out the New Settlement 

A look at constitutional shifts in the first three years of the Labour Government.

Parliamentary Affairs: The Dynamics of Protest in Britain, 2000-2002 

We investigate the phenomenon of protest in this article, not by focusing on participation in particular events but by considering the overall preparedness of the British public as a whole to engage in protest activity.

Parliamentary Affairs: The State of Participation in Britain  

This articles questions why political participation in Britain has dropped so dramatically over the past half-century.

Wiring-up the Deck-Chairs? 

'The purpose of this special issue has been to see if ICTs could provide a catalyst for reinventing parliamentary democracy: that the new capabilities associated with ICTs, especially those associated with interactive networks and internet technologies, could help to reinvigorate our present institutions, for example by opening up government to public scrutiny, widening interest and participation in electoral politics, revitalising communications between electors and their representatives, and strengthening the efficiency and influence of parliament itself. Whilst not rejecting such scenarios out of hand, we offer a note of scepticism. ICTs could probably play a significant role in enhancing the information and communication infrastructures of contemporary politics, but this role has yet to be convincingly established in its day-to-day life.'

Political Influentials Online in the 2004 Presidential Campaign 

Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet

A new community of citizens online is defining the 2004 presidential campaign. These citizens are Internet-oriented and politically energized, and they support their candidates by visiting their Web sites, joining Internet discussion groups, reading political Web logs and making political contributions over the Internet. Even before the first primary, they played a pivotal role in the campaign, and they may be harbingers of permanent change in American politics.

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?
To answer that question, the Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet of the Graduate School of Political Management at The George Washington University, together with RoperASW and Nielsen//NetRatings, conducted an innovative study of these people, whom we call Online Political Citizens (OPCs). We conducted two parallel surveys, an online survey to look in-depth at this unique community, and a national telephone survey to confirm the findings.

Political Organisations and the Internet: Towards a Theoretical Framework for Analysis 

Stephen Ward's of the European Studies Research Institute, presented Political Organisations and the Internet to the ECPR Joint Sessions, Grenoble April 6-11th 2001.

The paper has two broad aims:

• To examine the potential impact of Internet on political organisations both from an inter-organisational and intra-organisational perspective. To what extent is the Internet actually adding anything new to organisational development? Here, the paper draws on the more developed business-management literature for possible pointers about innovative developments such as virtual organisations;
• To analyse what factors shape the extent of, and strategies behind, political organisations ICT usage. Since ICTs can be used for a variety of different purposes, ranging from information storage to promoting interactive participation, the paper seeks to develop an explanatory framework from which expectations of organisational behaviour can be derived, i.e. what types of political organisation will use the technology most extensively and to what ends.

Political Representation in the Network Society: The Americanization of European Systems of Responisble Party Government 

Thomas Zittel at the University of Mannheim analyses the technical opportunities for political representatives to communicate and interact with constituents using new technologies, and poses the question: will this obviate the political party?

Politicians' Use of ICTs - A Canada Study 

Politicians' Use of ICTs: A Survey of Federal Parliamentarians is a November 2003 report commissioned by the Canadian Crossing Boundaries Nation Council, which is charged with acting as a champion for the transformation and improvement of governance and government for the 21st century.

Real-time Politics: The Internet and Political Parties 

Philip E Agre
Please do not quote from this version, which probably differs slightly from the version in print.

Research on the Internet's role in politics has struggled to transcend technological determinism -- the assumption, often inadvertent, that the technology simply imprints its own logic on social relationships. An alternative approach traces the ways, often numerous, in which an institution's participants appropriate the technology in the service of goals, strategies, and relationships that the institution has already organized. This amplification model can be applied in analyzing the Internet's role in politics. After critically surveying a list of widely held views on the matter, this paper illustrates how the amplification model might be applied to concrete problems. These include the development of social networks and ways that technology is used to bind people together into a polity.

Report Urges MPs to use the Democratic Potential of the Internet: Hearing Voices Press Release 

“The public is speaking but who’s listening?” asks the Hansard Society in a new report. The press release for this can be found here. 

The Party's Over: Manifesto for a Very English Revolution 

The Party's Over: Manifesto for a very English revolution is a book by Keith Sutherland, published in April 2004, which questions the fiction of the Party in a liberal market consensus, and makes recommendations for citizen's juries. This document is the 24 page Overview chapter.

UK Political Participation Online: The Public Response 

UK Political Participation Online - The Public Response summarises and comments on a survey of citizens' political activity via the Internet undertaken by Rachel Gibson, Wainer Lusoli and Stephen Ward of the European Studies Research Institute at the University of Salford.

Vote Winner or a Nuisance? Email and British MPs' Relationship with their Constituents 

Vote Winner or a nuisance: email and British MPs relationship with their constituents is a paper by Nigel Jackson, Senior Lecturer in Public Relations at the Bournemouth Media School, given at PSA 2003 in April 2003, describing the use of email, and impact on MPs and their interaction with constituents.