If I asked you about what happens when you sign a petition, you might say that you provide a signature to show your support for a particular cause. I expect that you wouldn’t say that you were participating in an act of cooperative authorship to contribute to the constitution of a collective political authority. Even if you wanted to say that, you would find it difficult because it is quite a mouthful.
It is rare for us to see our world in terms of the relationship between authority and authorship. However, it is a relationship that I will attempt to explore and explain in this essay (and many future essays). I realised that petitions may serve as a helpful introduction into this relationship after reading an essay entitled The Ethics of Signature by Sean Burke. He argues that “the freedom to identify oneself as the author of a particular discourse is commonly assumed as the right of citizenship.” Petitions are a form of political discourse that enables citizens to register their support for various causes and express their discontent with current laws, practices and processes. Since signing petitions has grown into a major expression of political activity and engagement, the following essay will illustrate that petitions enable people to express their rights as citizens through authorship. Firstly, the relationship between authority and authorship will be introduced, explored and related to the process of signing a petition. In the second section, the help of a Georgian essayist will be enlisted to examine the typical political and social (com)position of most petitioners. The final part of the essay will present and solve a puzzle about the balance of authority and authorship between the signatories and the recipients of a petition.
On a side note, the essay’s focus on the electronic, digital form of petitions is simply because there has been more contemporary research about this form than its analogue predecessor.
On Whose Authority?
Anything that can be read and interpreted for ‘meaning’ is a text. Every text is the result of some kind of authorship. Before we try to attribute authorship to petitions, we need to define the textual elements that enable petitions to be read, interpreted and understood. Petitions typically feature a description of the petition’s cause, its designated recipient, the required number of signatures and the actual number of signatures. When you sign a petition, you alter a textual element (the actual number of signatures) which increases the petition’s chance of success. In short, signatures determine political significance. Contributing one’s signature turns you into an author of the petition because your signature adjusts the petition’s ‘meaning’ to develop it into a more authoritative document.
The particular manifestation of authority in petitions can be compared to Sydney Libertarian David Makinson’s concept of contra-authoritarianism, a political stance that justifies the use of coercive methods to influence government decisions. It is an attitude that empowers people to confront, oppose and overturn decisions that may have a negative impact on their lives. Petitions are a useful tool for people to express that attitude when they recognise the need to intervene in the decision-making process of institutions and organisations. A successful petition shows that the signatories have coerced an institution or organisation into making a decision that results in a beneficial outcome for a particular cause or community.
However, there is a shortcoming to the contra-authoritarian approach. From his analysis of strike tactics and strategies, Makinson observes that contra-authoritarians only plan “to deprive the owner or managers of power, they do not aim at abolishing that power”. Similarly, petitioners present a challenge to legislative and corporate bodies but they don’t propose an alternative. Petitions depend on the decisions of the very authorities that they are challenging and criticising. As a result, there is a gulf between the people who have the authority to decide and the people who feel that they have a responsibility to object. What divides these two groups? Which group has the most control over the outcome of the petition? And what motivates one group to use petitions against the other?
The Yellow Brick Road to Democracy
Petitions tend to be wrapped up in the rhetoric of the classic struggle between good and evil, the people versus the suits, the ordinary citizen versus the Man. They have gained a reputation for expressing the voice of the People*. However, one must ask, who are the People?
In his 1818 essay What is the People?, William Hazlitt focuses on the individuals within the abstraction of the People, evocatively describing them “with hearts beating in their bosoms, with thoughts stirring in their minds, with the blood circulating in their veins, with wants and appetites, and passions and anxious cares, and busy purposes and affections for others and a respect for themselves, and a desire for happiness, and a right to freedom, and a will to be free.”
In this lyrical passage, Hazlitt declares that the People consist of humans who possess a range of biological attributes and capacities, existential needs and rights of citizenship. Democracy, Hazlitt explains, should be committed to nurturing the People’s capacities, satisfying their needs and defending their rights. Petitions equip the People with the ability to ensure that democracy matches this job description. However, the petition is usually overshadowed by the conventional democratic tool of the vote.
Elections have been proclaimed to be the yellow brick road to democracy. However, representative democracies provide the voice of the People with a limited vocabulary. The People are forced to speak through the mouth of party leaders, whose interests may diverge from their own on certain issues. Furthermore, representative democracies tend to divide the People into separate constituencies so location takes priority over ideology. Alternatively, petitions enable the People to overcome the divisions that have been enforced and established by representative democracy. Petitioners can express their support for causes that emerge outside of their constituency and country. If democracy is supposed to be the rule of the People, petitions enable us to see that The People don’t end at the national border. The social composition of the petitioners may even provide a basis for us to contemplate and conceive notions of global citizenship or even a global code of ethics.
But one shouldn’t be too naïve about the power of petitions. There is a tendency for the advocates of petitions to assume that everyone has the ability to sign one, a claim based on a wide speculation about computer ownership, literacy and usage. It is unlikely that there is the necessary technological or socio-political groundwork for petitions to be genuinely representative of a global notion of the People. Consequently, one must be wary about the restrictions that have been unwittingly placed on petitions. One can only access them online through specific websites, which limits the authorship of petitions to the computer literate. Petitions are univocal documents for which you can only express support, but not disapproval.
Despite their structural limitations and faults, the form of the petition can be redeemed. Investment in technological infrastructure and tuition in every country would enable participation in petitions, validating their reputation as the voice of the People. Additionally, the layout and structure of petitions could be revised to allow petitioners to share their disagreement as well as their support. The required number of signatures may need to be debated and adjusted for each individual petition, accounting for the number of people who can access the petition and the amount of support that is required to be considered a valid contra-authority**.
A higher number and a greater diversity of authors can transform a petition into a formidable authority, converting it from a relatively bureaucratic document into a profoundly human and ethical statement. The contra-authoritarian nature of these statements reflects Simon Critchley’s description of ethics as “the continual questioning from below of any attempt to impose order from above.” Since most petitions are typically addressed to organisations and institutions that impose an order from above, we are going to turn to these recipients to uncover their influence on the authority and authorship of the petition.
The Answer to the Continual Questioning
Burke asserts that every text is mutually determined “by the ethics with which one signs and the ethics of the audience which countersigns a discourse.” Every text is suspended between intention and interpretation, representation and reception, call and response. As we discovered in an earlier section, the signatories require the support of the recipients to implement the changes or satisfy the demands that are outlined in the petition. Consequently, the authorship of the petitions cannot just be distributed among the various signatories; it has to be shared with the authorities that countersign it. It illustrates that the historical conception of authority as a relationship between command and obedience has evolved into a dynamic where different forms of authority confront and interact with one another. Although there are types of authority (institutions, corporations, governments) that are more powerful than others, it doesn’t mean that the whole notion of authority can still be defined as a simple unilateral – or even bilateral – relationship***.
The whole matrix of authority/authorities raises questions about support, solidarity and seclusion. If one petition equals one form of authority, would you be barking up the wrong tree to say that petitions can facilitate the unity of the People? Would you even be barking at a tree? You might just be barking a broken branch. Thankfully, these worries are abated when you consider the possibilities of a positive participation cycle.
Experts have observed that if there is no perceived response or outcome to a petition, the signatories are less likely to contribute to any future petitions. Yet even if there is just a formal acknowledgment of a petition’s existence, the petitioners can see their voice has been recognised and they feel more confident about signing other petitions. The evidence seems to show that the authority and authorship that is developed in one petition can be passed forward to an endless number of other petitions, as long as there is a guaranteed response.
Although the big finale of any petition is placed in the hands of the designated authorities, it doesn’t mean that we are stuck in a state of unilateral authority. The recipient actually uses their authority (maybe deliberately, maybe inadvertently) to validate and strengthen the authority that emerged through the authorship of the petition. However, this authority doesn’t perish with the petition, nor does it hover over the fulfilled demand like a restless spirit. As we have seen from the positive participation cycle, the authority is preserved by the authors of the petition (the People!) who feel encouraged to participate in democracy more actively, securing the petition as a branch of political ethics, an act of continual questioning that helps to close the gap between the authorities above and the authorities below.
Notes
*: The People is one of the great duckrabbits of politics: educated public or uncultured rabble, respectable citizens or dangerous mob, the General Will or the recipe for mayhem? Although democracy is ostensibly the rule of the People, politicians and experts are keen to point out the pitfalls of populism. For instance, an article in the Scholarly Kitchen derides online petitions as a perfect embodiment of the myth “that populism is superior to expertise.” There is a sense of misplaced priorities, especially when a petition to renew Jeremy Clarkson’s contract at the BBC can attract more signatures than a petition for the end of FGM. Perhaps the situation could be improved through more robust public education programmes about politics and society. I’m not sure what form these programmes would take. However, the debate of populism versus activism is an intriguing one and it is often unclear about whether petitions can be called one or the other. Maybe they is both.
**: The commentator Tiago Peixoto proposes a series of adjustments and improvements that could turn the e-petition into a more transparent and effective democratic model here. However, he suggests that we should clearly define the possible processes and results of petitions so people will have realistic expectations of what can be achieved through political participation. For instance, some petitions may only prompt a perfunctory committee discussion, taming a political demand into an item on a meeting agenda.
***: I acknowledge that I’ve structured the essay in a way that implies that authority is still a two-way street; less command/obedience, more request/permission. There is a strangely adversarial yet collaborative aspect to the practice of petitions, a possible symptom of the societies in which they take place. Bourgeois/liberal/capitalist/representative democracy descended from the whole command/obedience seesaw of authority that typified earlier societies so it is inevitable that petitions would have that kind of tone or purpose. If you want to read more about the development of command and obedience in authority, I advise reading Marcuse’s Study on Authority.
The Authority of Authorship 