The Petition on the Early English Stage

This article is about petitioning scenes on the early modern English stage

The British Women's Suffrage Movement and the Practice of Petitioning, 1890-1914

Through an examination of the women's suffrage movement, this article reassesses the place of petitioning within late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British political culture. While critical of their Victorian predecessors’ reliance on petitions, the Edwardian women's suffrage movement did not abandon petitioning, but reinvented it. Rather than presenting a polarized view of relations between suffragettes and suffragists, the article shows how both operated on a spectrum of direct action politics through petitioning. Militants and constitutionalists pioneered new, although different, modes of petitioning that underpinned broader repertoires of popular politics, adapting this venerable practice to a nascent mass democracy. The article then situates suffrage campaigners’ reinvention of petitioning within a broader political context. The apparent decline of petitioning, long noted by scholars, is reframed as the waning of the classic model of mass petitioning parliament associated with Victorian pressure groups. The early twentieth century was a crucial period for the reshaping of petitioning as a tool for political participation and expression through myriad subscriptional forms, rather than primarily through the medium of parliamentary petitions

Re-imagining Petitioning in Spain (1808-1823)

This article examines collective petitioning in metropolitan Spain during the Age of Revolution, focusing on the practices and discourses that framed petitioning as a meaningful form of action. There was a deeply rooted tradition of petitioning in old regime Spain, which was part of the ordinary bureaucratic workings of the crown and also provided a legitimizing framework for rioting in specific contexts. The collective experimentation in popular participation after the 1808 Napoleonic invasion transformed petitioning. Petitioning was first reconceptualized in accordance with the emerging language of rights and popular sovereignty. Activists and commentators had some awareness of the use of public petitioning in Britain, and once the representative Cortes met in Cadiz in 1810, public petition drives on public issues became part of the political culture. At the same time, the need to legitimate unconventional forms of action in the context of a crisis in the state converted petitioning into an all-embracing right. The right to petition, not only encompassed signed protest texts, but legitimated the old tradition of petitioning by riot and further was used to justify provincial rebellions, juntas and military pronunciamientos. In comparative terms, this article highlights the elasticity of the language of petitioning during the Age of Revolution and cautions against narrowly associating it with one particular form of collective action or historical trajectory

Family Immigration: The Long Wait To Immigrate

Family immigration quotas are inadequate and result in separation and long waits for Americans, lawful permanent residents and close family members. Approximately 4 million people are waiting in family immigration backlogs, according to data obtained from the U.S. Department of State and Department of Homeland Security. The wait time for a U.S. citizen petitioning for a brother or sister from the Philippines exceeds 20 years. A U.S. citizen petitioning for either a married (3rd preference) or unmarried (1st preference) son or daughter (21 years or older) can expect to wait 6 to 17 years, depending on the country or origin. Research shows legal immigrants experience faster wage growth than natives, are more likely to start businesses and have higher median years of schooling. Raising family immigration quotas would serve both the humanitarian and economic interests of the United States

From customary to constitutional right: the right to petition in Scotland before the 1707 Act of Union

The confirmation of a constitutional, rather than customary, right to petition the monarch in Scotland and England in 1689 has been recognized as an important precedent for modern constitutions, but the underlying forces impelling this historical transition have been less well recognized. The assertion of a constitutional right to petition the Scottish crown appeared after of decades of conflict over increasingly bold forms of collective political petitioning to crown and parliament. These innovations involved ordinary people in organized political protest, stimulating Scotland’s monarchs to block what they considered seditious and tumultuous activity. Standing laws against lese-majesté and unauthorized meetings were deployed to restrict petitioning, despite claims by Scottish dissidents for a customary liberty and natural right to petition. Within the composite British monarchy formed in 1603, England experienced similar but not identical conflicts over participative petitioning, leading revolutionary assemblies in both realms to demand in 1689 a right to supplicate the crown without fear of prosecution. Though Scotland’s monarchs still sought to discourage and evade unwelcome petitions, this new right allowed assertive political petitioning to crown and parliament to re-emerge in Scotland, contributing to the prominence of petitioning in British political culture after the Union of 1707

Signatures of Citizenship: Petitioning, Antislavery, and Women\u27s Political Identity

Exercising their Rights Study reveals women\u27s roles in reform In her study of women\u27s petitioning in the antebellum period, Susan Zske quotes Samuel Johnson: This petitioning is a new mode of distressing government, and a mighty easy one. Indeed, Zske effectively portrays the ...

Electronic petitioning and modernization of petitioning systems in Europe

With the pilot project "Public Petitions", which started in September 2005, the German Bundestag included the internet in the petition procedure and thus achieved greater transparency of the petition process. Since then, petitions can be submitted electronically, signed on the internet and discussed. The Office of Technology Assessment at the German Bundestag (TAB) has accompanied this process scientifically and asked about the yields and consequences of the pilot project. Were more petitions submitted? Who participated in the electronic petitions? How were the petitions discussed in the online forums and how were the results of the discussions introduced into the political process of deliberation on petitions? This study provides answers to these and other questions for the first time on the basis of a comprehensive empirical study. The analyses of the pilot project of the German Bundestag are placed in the context of the development of petitioning and e-democracy as a whole. Case studies on the introduction of electronic petition systems in the Scottish Parliament, the British Prime Minister, South Korea, Australia (Queensland) and Norway complete the picture. This book is based on TAB report Nr. 146 "Elektronisches Petitionswesen und Modernisierung des Petitionswesens in Europa. Endbericht zum TA-Projekt"

Nudge, nudge, think, think: experimenting with ways to change civic behaviour

Peter John‘s recent book investigates how to get the best out of nudge theories, considering positive behaviour changes in recycling, volunteering, voting, and petitioning, and provides some unexpected insights about some interventions, finds Sander van der Linden. Nudge, Nudge, Think, Think: Experimenting with Ways to Change Civic Behaviour. Peter John, Sarah Cotterill, Alice Moseley, Liz Richardson, Graham Smith, Gerry Stoker and Corinne Wales. Bloomsbury Academic Publishing. September 2011

Motion of the Colville Confederated Tribes presenting to this court a summation of documentation supporting proposed findings of fact AND petitioning this court to enter judgements in favor of the Colville Confederated Tribes in these consolidated cases

Summation of Documents and Petitioning Court to Enter Judgmen

Tariff-jumping FDI and Domestic Firms' Profits

Studies of the welfare implications of trade policy often do not take account of the potential for tariff-jumping FDI to mitigate positive gains to domestic producers. We use event study methodology to examine the market effects for U.S. domestic firms that petitioned for antidumping (AD) relief, as well as the effect of announcements of FDI by their foreign rivals in the U.S. market on these U.S. petitioning firms. On average, affirmative U.S. AD decisions are associated with 3% abnormal gains to a petitioning firm when there is no tariff-jumping FDI, but no abnormal gains if there is tariff-jumping FDI. The evidence for this mitigating effect is strongest when announcements of the intended tariff-jumping FDI have already occurred before an AD decision takes place, which happened in a fair number of cases. We also find evidence that the announcements of plant expansions (and, to some extent, new plants) have significantly larger negative effects on U.S. domestic firms' profits than other types of FDI, including acquisitions and joint ventures.