Paths of Recruitment: Rational Social Prospecting in Petition Canvassing

Nall, Clayton; Schneer, Benjamin; Carpenter, Daniel

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2795336

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…On a more global scale, petitions to emperors, monarchs, and rulers are as old perhaps as human society itself. Petitions function in modern times as a central element in the development of a public sphere in the global East (Li, Liu, and O'Brien 2012) as well as the West (Tilly 1993; Miller and Huzzey 2020; Zaret 1993, 1996), while also playing a formative role in many transformative social movements (Carpenter and Moore 2014; Carpenter 2016a; Carpenter et al 2018; Chase 2013; McConnaughy 2013; Nall, Schneer, and Carpenter 2018; Portnoy 2005; Szymanski 2003; Zaeske 2003).…”

Section: Petitioning Representation and The Need For More Systematic Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Congressional Representation by Petition: Assessing the Voices of the Voteless in a Comprehensive New Database, 1789–1949

Blackhawk

Carpenter

Resch

et al. 2020

Legislative Studies Qtrly

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For much of American political history, the electoral franchise was restricted to only a portion of the population. By contrast, the right to petition was considered universal and enshrined in the First Amendment, giving voice to the voteless. Petitioning thus served as a fundamental mechanism of representation. Still, fundamental questions remain: How was petitioning used, how did Congress respond to petitions, and did the petition allow for partial representation of the marginalized and unenfranchised? We address these questions by analyzing the Congressional Petitions Database (CPD), an original endeavor tracking virtually every petition introduced to Congress from 1789 to 1949. Our analyses document how (1) two important groups of unenfranchised constituents—Native Americans and women—petitioned regularly and (2) Congress's initial treatment of Natives' and women's petitions was similar to that of all others, thus offering systematic evidence highlighting the petition's role as a mechanism for representation among otherwise unenfranchised groups.

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Section: Petitioning Representation and The Need For More Systematic Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Congressional Representation by Petition: Assessing the Voices of the Voteless in a Comprehensive New Database, 1789–1949

Blackhawk

Carpenter

Resch

et al. 2020

Legislative Studies Qtrly

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Analysis of the signatory lists of the anti-Dalhousie petition reveals important information lurking in the order in which names appear (Carpenter 2016;Nall et al 2018). On the first and second pages of Montréal signatures, English names appeared , such that (for instance), an odds ratio of 1.02 implies that with every one-name movement down in a given signature column, the odds of a surname cluster increase by two percent.…”

Section: Signature Patterns In Montréal: a Statistical Sample And Anamentioning

confidence: 99%

L’éruption patriote: The Revolt against Dalhousie and the Petitioning Explosion in Nineteenth-Century French Canada

Carpenter¹,

Brossard²

2019

Soc. sci. hist.

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As much as any other site in the nineteenth century, Francophone Lower Canada saw immense waves of popular petitioning, with petitions against British colonial administration attracting tens of thousands of signatures in the 1820s. The petition against Governor Dalhousie of 1827–28 attracted more than 87,000 names, making it one of the largest mass petitions of the Atlantic world on a per-capita scale for its time. We draw upon new archival evidence that shows the force of local organization in the petition mobilization, and combine this with statistical analyses of a new sample of 1,864 names from the anti-Dalhousie signatory list. We conclude that the Lower Canadian petitioning surge stemmed from emergent linguistic nationalism, expectations of parliamentary democracy, and the mobilization and alliance-building efforts of Patriote leaders in the French-Canadian republican movement. As elsewhere in the nineteenth-century Atlantic, the anti-Dalhousie effort shows social movements harnessing petitions to recruit, mobilize, and build cross-cultural alliances.

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Postmaterialist Particularism: What Petitions Can Tell Us About Biases in the Policy Agenda

Hersh

Schaffner

2017

American Politics Research

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Groups with financial resources dominate the pool of lobbyists and political donors. Scholars and reformers often point to the outsized influence of moneyed elites when they consider economic inequality that results from public policy. Here, we expand the scope of existing work by focusing attention on the types of policy proposals placed on the issue agenda in a venue where financial resources are not a prerequisite for participation—policy-oriented online petitions. Even in this more egalitarian sphere of participation, the policy agenda reflects some of the same biases that exist in other venues. Specifically, petitioners favor particularistic policy proposals over those with broader consequences and they are inclined toward postmaterialist issues rather than redistributive ones. In this open and popular venue for policy engagement, redistributive policy is off the agenda. Our theory of postmaterialist particularism offers a behavioral-psychological lens through which to understand this phenomenon.

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Paths of Recruitment: Rational Social Prospecting in Petition Canvassing

Cited by 3 publications

References 17 publications

Congressional Representation by Petition: Assessing the Voices of the Voteless in a Comprehensive New Database, 1789–1949

Congressional Representation by Petition: Assessing the Voices of the Voteless in a Comprehensive New Database, 1789–1949

L’éruption patriote: The Revolt against Dalhousie and the Petitioning Explosion in Nineteenth-Century French Canada

Postmaterialist Particularism: What Petitions Can Tell Us About Biases in the Policy Agenda

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