Lobbying for Change

by Alberto Alemanno

  TIP 10 – Submit Your Observations

  Consider taking part in any public consultation, or policy dialogue that affects your issue.

  A consultation may give you an opportunity not only to shape the forthcoming proposal but also to meet and talk to the decision-makers. You can leverage your submission to obtain a meeting (or at least a brief exchange) about the issue you care about.

  Policy Amendments

  Generally, if you want to revise a bill or proposal, you need to put forward an amendment. But since this is the prerogative of decision-makers, you cannot act alone. You need to identify the key decision-makers able to amend that policy, or a new proposal, and put forward your own draft amendments. Recently, my students and I drafted an amendment to the existing EU Passengers’ Rights Regulation, which provides a minimum level of protection for air passengers when a flight that they intended to travel on is delayed or cancelled, when they are denied boarding due to overbooking or when the airline is unable to accommodate them in the class for which they had paid.

  Our amendment aimed to prohibit the use of ‘no show’ clauses in your flight ticket. This clause means that if you do not show up for the outbound flight – the first leg of your journey – you will be deemed a no-show, and all the connecting flights associated with this one, even a return flight, will be cancelled and no refund will apply. Many of us will have personal experience of a no-show clause!

  When you get involved in public consultations and/or in policy amendments, you may want to tell the public about your action. Submitting a set of observations or draft amendments can give you the chance to mobilise popular support. This can be done through various forms of external communication, including petitions.

  TIP 11 – Draft Your Amendment

  You might not be expecting your decision-maker to welcome practical and tangible help during the legislative process. However, it is common practice to prepare and share draft amendments or even full texts with decision-makers, with the aim of making their job easier during the legislative process.

  Indeed, there is nothing inherently improper about a person or entity outside the parliament or the government doing the main drafting for proposed legislation, provided two conditions are satisfied:

  the proposal must go through the normal legislative process of public consultations, debates, committee and floor votes, etc.;

  the public should know who wrote the draft amendment or proposal.

  Unfortunately, as the general public does not seem to appreciate just how often this occurs, no country seems to guarantee the latter condition. So I advise you always to let the public know what you are proposing to decision-makers. It is okay to be smart, but only if you are transparent!

  Policy Initiation

  Sometimes no-one, neither the public official nor the government, seems interested in taking action on your issue. And as a citizen, you cannot initiate (or block) the legislative process. Generally, this is the prerogative of elected representatives and governments acting both at a local and national level. In this situation, citizen lobbying is a different ballgame. In the absence of a policy or policy proposal, your action has to start earlier. You need to start from scratch.

  How? You can meet the decision-makers, pick up the phone or send a letter to share your idea for a new proposal with them. If you are in a position to do so, put forward an actual text for a legislative proposal.

  That’s what I did – together with my students and several colleagues – in the framework of a project with Transparency International and the Greens. We drafted the first legislative proposal aimed at protecting whistle-blowers across the European Union, engaging the legislators in our lobbying campaign as we did so. When you take this path, you essentially do the work of the decision-makers by showing them that:

  there is an issue;

  there is a solution;

  the solution is viable and they should embrace and support it.

  There’s no reason to take the credit: just put your work in the decision-makers’ hands. In less than a year’s time from the finalisation of our text, the policymakers – notably the EU Commission under pressure from the EU Parliament – have decided to step in and provide a minimum level of protection for whistle-blowers in Europe.19 That means that all European member states will be expected to afford protection to whistle-blowers acting in their territories.

  This story illustrates that while policymakers are typically the ones taking the legislative initiative, you have opportunities as a citizen to prompt the legislative process. A significant number of countries already give the public the opportunity to initiate policy by submitting ideas, proposals or requests to governments. Referendums, official (as opposed to commercial) petitions and popular initiatives are typical examples. Contrary to conventional wisdom, these citizen-initiated mechanisms of direct democracy are not meant to replace representative democracy, but to complement it.20 They enable citizens and other stakeholders to put issues on the political agenda that policymakers would prefer not to discuss.21 These types of mechanisms are available in the vast majority of countries,22 and can be regarded as an expression of participatory decision-making in contemporary democracy. Depending on how these pre-legislative mechanisms are governed within each legal system, they involve different forms of engagement.23

  Referendums

  A referendum is a form of direct democracy which involves an electorate-wide vote on an issue of public policy. Depending on the country’s legal system, referendums may be initiated by the citizens, generally through a citizens’ initiative, by a legislative act or by a governmental executive order. In different countries a referendum may be used to initiate policy or, more frequently, for consultative purposes. They can therefore enter the policy process at different levels and cover very different subjects. You could call for a referendum to promote or oppose a given action. In Italy, they have been successfully used by groups who wanted to adopt laws allowing divorce and abortion in the 1970s. They are still used today.

  Referendums take many forms. They may aim to change institutions (such as rules about the length of presidential terms), to adopt new policies (such as the privatisation of public utilities in Uruguay or the approval by Costa Rica of a trade agreement with the US), or to make a constitutional shift (such as the Irish referendum on the EU’s Lisbon Treaty). Moreover, their legal status (mandatory vs voluntary), requirements (collection of signatures, etc.), as well as consequences (consultative or legally binding) vary considerably.

  Petitions

  Petitioning is a well-established form of political participation in most liberal democracies. A petition is a request to do something, most commonly addressed to a government official or public entity. Although historically it has never really been seen as anything more than a last-ditch personal effort to attract favour or attention from the highest authority, it has regained some popularity over the last decade thanks to the possibilities provided by the internet.

  A petition generally consists of a document addressed to some decision-makers, signed by numerous individuals. A petition may be oral rather than written, but nowadays is most often sent online. This is called e-petitioning. However, a key distinction exists between official online petitions and those submitted through commercial online petition platforms, such as Avaaz or Change. Only the former qualify as an ‘administrative avenue’, since these e-petition platforms operate within the rules that apply in your country. For instance, if you fail to ensure that everyone signing the petition is a national or resident of your country, it may be rejected. Likewise, failing to collect the required number of signatures may mean the authorities have no duty to act upon, or even respond to your request. An unofficial platform, such as Avaaz, lacks these constraints. Furthermore, no number of signatures collected on unofficial platforms necessitates that decision-makers respond to you. Generally, petitioners resort to Avaaz or Change when the official petition does not work out or when they want to obtain more signature
s than they could otherwise do. This, however, presupposes that the signatures collected on the commercial platforms are verified as valid by the official petition system. A petition on the wrong platform, to the wrong people, or signed by people who live outside the relevant jurisdiction, is a waste of time and effort, at least from the public authorities’ perspective.

  Although a petition is only as meaningful as its response, it allows blocks of public interest to form, harnessing power in ways that may lead to a legislative or administrative response. Whether you want to promote a new policy, to change a law or a behaviour, to get a decision made, or simply to raise awareness of an issue, petitions can be a relatively easy and inexpensive way to get the word out.

  Indeed, they have a long history of bringing about significant change. In the US, a petition demanding an end to slavery gathered 130,000 signatures and nudged Congress towards taking action. The digital revolution has transformed petitioning as an active instrument. In 2012, an informal Avaaz petition attracted 2.8m supporters and led MEPs to vote down the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). This treaty would have allegedly limited fundamental rights, including freedom of expression and internet privacy protections. (See page 209 for the full story.)

  How to Do It

  If you want to start a petition, all you have to do is to learn whether there are rules governing its registration (e.g. formal requirements, such as policy areas) and collection of signatures (number of signatures, residence requirements, etc.) in your country. In other words, stick to the rules set out by the governmental authority. For example:

  How many signatures will you need?

  Must all signatures be certified?

  How should people’s names be included (printed, signed, or both?)

  Should addresses be included?

  What other information must be included by the signatory, or by the submitter?

  Are there limitations you must stick to, or quotas you must meet (for example, signatures per district or region)?

  When must the petitions be returned by, and to whom?

  Once you know the rules of the game, you need to allow users to enter their names and other required information – and perhaps to opt in to hear more about your progress – and then store and report on this data. It can also be useful to display publicly the list of people who have signed (if signatories have agreed to share this data).

  Now that you’re aware of the relevant rules, you need to design your petition:

  prepare a short and attention-grabbing headline;

  tell people in the first two sentences why they should sign;

  explain why you are passionate about the issue;

  make an emotional connection with the reader.

  Starting an official petition is easier and more effective than ever before. Since 2000, a number of countries have introduced electronic petition systems (e-petitions). By now, e-petitions have moved beyond the experimental stage and both citizens and governments are familiar with them.

  The EU Petition System

  In the EU, citizens and residents of a member state enjoy the right to address a petition to the European Parliament. If you are lucky, you may be invited to attend a hearing of the petition committee. Indeed, any individual ‘has the right to address a petition to the European Parliament if it concerns a matter that comes within the European Union’s field of activity and affects them directly’.24

  You can also submit an EU petition in association with others, as an organisation or association (as long as it has its headquarters in the EU). Your petition may take the form of a complaint, a request, an observation on the application of EU law or an appeal to the European Parliament to adopt a position on a specific matter. It may relate to issues of public or private interest. Regardless, your petition must relate to a topic which falls within the EU’s fields of activity and which affects you directly.

  You can submit it electronically or in ‘paper’ form, with no standard format to be followed. Your petition may include attachments, including copies of any supporting documents you may have. You can start your own petition or support other people’s. Such petitions give the European Parliament the opportunity to draw attention to any infringement of a European citizen’s rights by a member state, local authorities or another institution. Your petition allows Parliament, through its Petitions Committee, to conduct an ongoing reality check on the way in which European legislation is implemented, and to measure the extent to which European institutions are responding to your concerns. The objective of the Petitions Committee is to provide a response to all petitions and, when possible, to provide a non-judicial remedy to legitimate concerns.25

  In 2014 the European Parliament received 2,714 petitions, of which about 60 per cent were admissible and acted upon. This is about a thousand more than were received five years earlier and confirms a growing public interest in the petition system, which has been further facilitated by the electronic platform, social media and the live-streaming of parliamentary sessions. Moreover, in certain cases, the Petitions Committee may refer a petition to other European Parliament committees for information or further action, thus acting as a catalyst to bring parties together to respond to citizens’ concerns. As a result, a committee might take a petition into account in its legislative activities, which essentially consists of examining the European Commission’s proposals for adoption, or persuading the EU Commission to initiate an infringement proceeding against the relevant EU country. The petition system therefore offers an indirect way for you to go down the legislative avenue by presenting a draft amendment, or down the judicial avenue, by making arguments that may lead the EU Commission to take your country to court.

  The US Petition System

  The White House has set up a platform for citizen petitions called We the People. US citizens may initiate a petition by submitting a short abstract. If it gathers more than 25,000 signatures in 30 days, the White House identifies an expert in the government to respond to the petition. The responses are then published on the White House website.

  The UK Petition System

  Similarly, UK residents can petition the government and the parliament on a dedicated platform.26 Petitions that reach 10,000 signatures get a response from the government. At 100,000 signatures, they are considered for debate in Parliament. So far, out of the 21,000 petitions that have been started on the platform, 276 petitions have drawn a response from the government, with 30 having been debated in the House of Commons. The day after the Brexit vote – the referendum in which the UK voted to leave the European Union – a petition calling for a second referendum was so popular that the website crashed for several hours.

  The Westminster Parliament has also ensured that petitioners can contact people who have supported them, to inform them of the response in a very efficient way. This site superseded the Number 10 web portal, over which Parliament had no authority. A Hansard Society report on the petitions process paved the way for this significant new development.

  The Irish Petition System

  The Republic of Ireland established the Oireachtas Committee on Investigations, Oversight and Petitions in 2011, implementing a manifesto commitment of the main coalition parties. It has since been pivotal in enabling greater citizen involvement in political affairs. The petitions process connects, in this context, the citizen to a parliament, which, in turn, has a duty and a responsibility to respond and provide answers and explanations – even remedies – to the petitioner.

  The Canadian Petition System

  In Canada, the House of Commons now hosts an e-petitions platform on its website. For an e-petition to be posted to the website for signing, the main petitioner has to find five signatories. They also have to find an MP who agrees to sponsor it in the House. Only once this has happened will the petition appear online (assuming everything else about it is in order). An e-petition remains open for signatures for 120 days. To receive final certification and be presented in the House of Commons, an
e-petition must receive a minimum of 500 valid signatures during this period. If it fails to gather the minimum number of valid signatures, it proceeds no further, but remains visible online.

  To sum up, when used and managed effectively, a petitions process can enhance the parliamentary process and strengthen its representative function.

  For an overview of unofficial online petition platforms, see the Public Campaigning avenue (page 202).

  Initiatives

  Another instrument that can be used to get policymaking started is the ‘initiative’, sometimes called an ‘agenda initiative’.

  Only a few countries provide for citizens’ initiatives. Australia and New Zealand do by enabling citizens who collect a minimum of 10 per cent of signatures in support of their petition to compel governments to hold a referendum on that issue. Supporters of a particular citizens’ initiative have one year in which to collect their signatures. Note that the results of the citizens’ initiated referendums are ‘indicative’ only: they are not binding on Parliament or government.

  The EU has recently established its own mechanism: the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI). The ECI is the first transnational instrument of participatory democracy in the world. It allows 1 million citizens from at least seven EU Member States to invite the European Commission ‘to submit a proposal on matters where citizens consider that a legal act of the Union is required for the purpose of implementing the Treaties’. There are several steps before an ECI can be submitted to the Commission. To launch an initiative, a citizens’ committee has to be set up. The committee must be composed of at least seven EU citizens, who must live in at least seven different EU countries. Before it starts collecting signatures, this committee has to register its proposal on the Commission’s website. Then, upon the Commission’s validation of the initiative (admissibility review), the initiators have to collect 1 million signatures from across the EU – face-to-face or online. The time limit is a year from the date of registration. On top of this, organisers need to have a minimum number of signatories from at least seven EU countries.