Arthur Spirling, March 19, 2014

British Political Development: A Research Agenda
Introduction to LSQ Special Issue
The development of the modern Westminster system, between the First Reform Act of 1832
and Fourth Reform Act of 1918, is remarkable for at least three reasons. First, because its
emergence was swift and yet peaceful. While massive suffrage extensions ushered in cohesive
legislative parties along with large changes to the operation of government and a pronounced
decline in corrupt practices, blood-shed was virtually absent. Second, the system that resulted from these earlier reforms exhibits notable stability: today, the UK continues to use
institutions—including its electoral arrangements and parliamentary procedure rules—set inplace by the Victorians. The third reason for attention, clear from cursory study of comparative politics, is the successful widespread implantation of the developed Westminster
system to other polities, with Canada, Australia, New Zealand and India being perhaps themost obvious examples.

Typically inspired by some combination of the above, historians’ treatments of institutional
development in the period start at least with Bagehot’s The English Constitution of 1867.
More recently, political scientists have become interested in the same set of issues, and thelandmark contribution is Gary Cox’s 1987 “The Efficient Secret”, which laid the theoreticalgroundwork for the next generation of scholars in the area. Current efforts are complementary to his, and BPD as an intellectual endeavor has three distinct features:
1. micro-narratives. Broadly, the application of rational choice theories to specific, important decisions undertaken by actors of the day (an approach pioneered by Iain
McLean).

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2. new data and methods. Recent times have seen the official release and/or gathering ofvast new datasets of speeches, electoral returns, legislative and other political activity.
These data call for appropriate techniques of measurement and inference.
3. a ‘comparative’ perspective on development. BPD is not an insular movement: rather,it turns to literatures across political science (including American politics) and otherdisciplines to provide hypotheses and methods for the data at hand.
Ultimately, BPD is concerned with two things: causes of particular episodes of fundamental
change and the consequences of those changes. In keeping with the fact that the Westminster
system evolved as a series of legislative responses to internal and external stimuli, note thatthe ‘change’ that must be explained and explored—such as the passing of anti-corruption
statutes—is generally the product of a parliamentary decision. This is the case with thepapers in this volume.

They begin with Laura Bronner’s article “Property and Power: MPs Assets and Support forDemocratization in the 1867 Reform Act.” Bronner gathers an impressive new data set from19th Century sources on economic interests to show that, contrary to much recent social
science theory, land owners were not more hostile to a widening franchise and the potential
expropriation it might cause.

Scott Moser and Andrew Reeves are similarly intrigued by the Second Reform Act, andsimilarly skeptical that ‘interests’ mattered for MP decisions. They begin their analysis bynoting that it became law under a minority Conservative administration, despite the factthat an earlier Liberal bill—in a majority Liberal chamber—had failed. Moser and Reeves
point to a change in rhetorical strategy, whereby discussions of the bill were more limited
and less technical in scope. They test their argument in a methodologically innovative way,2

using ‘topic models’ for analyzing speeches.

Concerned with a different though equally fundamental piece of legislation of the era, Christopher Kam considered the Ballot Act, that made voting secret in the constituencies. Like
Moser and Reeves, Kam “Enfranchisement, malapportionment, and Institutional Change inGreat Britain, 1832–1867” notes that bills with identical intent to the one that passed had
previously failed. Kam collects individual level data on MPs for the period and shows thatthe most likely explanation for the success of the 1872 bill was the strategic retirement ofmore conservative (i.e. more anti-secret ballot) MP types, induced by the expanded franchiseof the Second Reform Act.

In “Franchise Extension and the British Aristocracy”, Samuel Berlinski, Torun Dewan andBrenda Van Coppenolle turn their attention to the consequences of the Second Reform Act.
They ask whether the types of members who appeared in the House of Commons, and in theCabinet, changed as a result of suffrage extension. To do this, they compile a dataset of MPs’
backgrounds, including membership of the British aristocracy. The result is a resounding
negative, and speaks to the “stickiness” of social power: while Britain became more democratic, the composition of its elite did not go through an immediate change. They reportsimilar findings for the later franchise extension of 1884.

Edwin Camp, Avinash Dixit and Susan Stokes take BPD, especially the decline in corrupt practices, in a comparative direction with “Catalyst or Cause? Legislation and theDemise of Machine Politics in Britain and the United States”. They consider the decreasing effectiveness of election agents—men employed to bribe locals into voting for particular
candidates—as electorates got larger and wealthier. Using a formal model, they show thatas suffrage expansion and economic growth began to ‘bite’, legislation banning agents from3operating became increasingly likely to be passed and obeyed.

In the final article, “Electoral Security as a Determinant of Legislator Activity, 1832-1918:
New Data and Methods for Analyzing British Political Development” Andrew Eggers andI report on a large new database of MPs and their actions for the period on which BPD
focusses. We put this to use by examining members’ behavior over time as they balanced
cross-cutting loyalties: the interests of their parties in the Commons, and their constituentsat home. We demonstrate that modern theories—emphasizing that more marginal members
tend to play to their home crowd voters—hold for our data.

Understanding the advent and results of fundamental reforms is a ‘first order’ endeavor;
the ‘second order’ literature that grows out of this will deal with longer term consequencesthat may be harder to measure. These include new pressures to reform, brought about bycircumstances that Westminster systems are typically thought to avoid: for example, at thetime of writing, Britain is governed by a coalition of parties, while Canada and Australia
have experienced minority governments in the recent past. Alternatively, scholars might seek
to understand how well the Westminster experience of, for example, anti-corruption drives
would apply to non-Westminster systems in developing democracies. Having built a firmbase, we leave such efforts for future research.

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