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Online Activism and Dyadic Representation: Evidence from the UK E‐Petition System

Blumenau, Jack; (2021) Online Activism and Dyadic Representation: Evidence from the UK E‐Petition System. Legislative Studies Quarterly , 46 (4) pp. 889-920. 10.1111/lsq.12291. Green open access

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Abstract

By making it easier for citizens to communicate their preferences, online forms of political participation have the potential to strengthen the representational link between politicians and voters. However, we know little about the effects of online advocacy on politicians’ behavior. Using new data from an e‐petition system in the United Kingdom, I show that support for a petition among a Member of Parliament’s constituents is associated with a substantial increase in the probability that the MP advocates for the petition in parliamentary debate, even when compared to MP behavior in counterfactual non‐petition debates which focus on the same policy issues. However, MP responsiveness is conditioned both by party discipline and electoral competition. These findings have important implications for our understanding of dyadic representation in parliamentary systems.

Type: Article
Title: Online Activism and Dyadic Representation: Evidence from the UK E‐Petition System
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1111/lsq.12291
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12291
Language: English
Additional information: Copyright © 2020 The Authors. Legislative Studies Quarterly published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Washington University in St. Louis This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Keywords: House of Commons, parliamentary debate, petitions, representation
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Political Science
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10109455
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