LAURA BRONNERLondon School of Economics and Political Science

Property and Power: MPs’ Assetsand Support for Democratization inthe 1867 Reform Act

Influential theories of democratization emphasize elites’ fear of the redistributiveconsequences of democratic reform as an important limit on democratization. They alsoargue that landowners are more likely than capital owners to fear redistribution, as theirassets are less mobile and thus more vulnerable to expropriation. To test these claims onthe micro level, this article uses the 1867 U.K. Reform Act, which doubled the enfran-chised population to include much of the urban working class, as a case study. Using anoriginal dataset on the members of the 1865–68 House of Commons, this article finds thatin fact, the most substantively important variable for votes on democratization waspartisanship, which has been neglected by the distributional conflict literature. Materialinterests, particularly landowning, do matter, but they are crucially mediated by strategicpartisan electoral concerns.

Introduction

Democratization in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe,which often occurred via legislation rather than revolution or pactedtransition (Cox 1987; Leeman and Mares 2011; Lizzeri and Persico 2004;Ziblatt 2008),1 has frequently been portrayed as having been driven largelyby elites. However, though theories generally agree on the importance ofelites, they disagree on the ways in which elites mattered; while sometheories, which privilege structural explanations, focus heavily on eliteresponses to structural changes, arguing that democratization was funda-mentally about redistributive conflict (Acemoglu and Robinson 2006;Boix 2003), others focus on the importance of partisan interests in drivinglegislative behavior (Ansolabehere, Snyder, and Stewart 2001; Cox 1987;Schonhardt-Bailey 1998, 2003; Firth and Spirling 2003; Spirling andQuinn 2010), including on issues related to democratization (Capocciaand Ziblatt 2010; Close 1977; Collier 1999; Hall, McClelland, andRendall 2000; Leeman and Mares 2011; Llavador and Oxoby 2005;McLean 2001; Moser and Reeves 2014; Ziblatt 2008).

bs_bs_banner

LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, XXXIX, 4, November 2014 439DOI: 10.1111/lsq.12054© 2014 The Comparative Legislative Research Center of The University of Iowa

This article tests the relative importance of these different theoriesby examining the voting behavior of members of parliament in passingthe Second Reform Act of 1867, a landmark case of legislative democ-ratization, thus making concrete the concept of “the elite” and allowingfor both theories’ core causal mechanisms to be tested on the individuallevel.2 By proposing a theoretical way to combine both material andpartisan incentives into a single framework, it argues that strategic par-tisan concerns moderated the effects of material interests and tests thisclaim using microlevel voting data. Providing microfoundations of leg-islator behavior not only acknowledges that different members of the“elite” may have different, and possibly even conflicting, motivations(Bermeo 2010), it also avoids an ecological fallacy by testing theirproposed individual-level mechanisms using appropriate individual-level data, which previous studies have failed to do (Robinson1950).

The 1867 U.K. Reform Act—called the “act that transformedEngland into a democracy” by Himmelfarb (1966, 107)—provides anideal case study for testing the empirical viability of distributional con-flict theories and their relative importance compared to approaches high-lighting partisan incentives. The Act was vastly consequential for electedrepresentation in Britain, almost doubling the franchise to allow house-hold suffrage in the boroughs, giving industrial working-class men theright to vote for the first time, and making the industrial working classthe majority of the electorate (Derry 1966, 46; Guttsman 1963, 75;Himmelfarb 1966, 107). Moreover, it has been explained both withreference to redistributive conflict (Acemoglu and Robinson 2000),according to which it is a key example of pressure from below leading toan elite response, and in terms of purely strategic competition betweenrival parties and, indeed, rival party leaders, Disraeli and Gladstone(Bendix 1964; Cowling 1967; Himmelfarb 1966; Seymour 1915; Smith1966). Using an original dataset on the members of the 1865–68 Houseof Commons, which includes their partisanship, material interests includ-ing landownership and manufacturing, finance and trade interests as wellas their votes on the 1866 and 1867 Reform Bills, this article turns toquantitative roll-call analysis to examine how these motivations shapedMPs’ behavior. It finds that despite Acemoglu and Robinson’s insistencethat the Second Reform Act was a key example of their theory of distri-butional conflict, partisan interest was in fact the main single factordriving MPs’ votes, both directly and by moderating the effect of mate-rial incentives.

The article is structured as follows: the second section reviews theliterature on historical democratization and outlines the theoretical

440 Laura Bronner

framework underlying this article. The third section briefly discusses thedata and methods used, and the fourth section presents the results of thequantitative analysis. Finally, the fifth section concludes.

Literature Review and Theory

While we can observe instances in which democratizing reform ispassed, it is much harder to infer actors’ motivations in passing it. Thissection outlines two distinct theoretical approaches which have been usedto explain the passage of the Second Reform Act in 1867: redistributiveconflict theories which posit the importance of material interests asmotivations and a threat from below as a trigger for democratization, andpartisan competition explanations which focus on parties’ strategic inter-actions as drivers of reform. This article proposes a way to combine thesetwo approaches, based on the idea that partisan incentives can be seen tomoderate the effects of material interests.

Material Interests and the Threat from Below

Acemoglu and Robinson (2006) and Boix (2003) argue that pres-sure for democratization tends to come from the disenfranchised, whowant redistribution. Without this popular pressure, these theories claim,democratization would not come about, as elites fear that franchiseextensions cause redistribution due to the changing preferences of themedian voter (Meltzer and Richard 1978, 117).3 According to their argu-ment, the establishment of democratic institutions is a credible commit-ment to future redistribution, and the chance of transition depends in parton the composition of wealth in a country (Acemoglu and Robinson2006, 25–26).4

Acemoglu and Robinson (2006, 32) theorize that landowners willbe more likely to resist democratization than physical and human capitalowners for two reasons. Firstly, land is less mobile and therefore easierto tax and potentially expropriate than human and physical capital, sowhile capital owners can hide or move their assets abroad to avoidtaxation or expropriation in a more democratic regime, landownerscannot (a theory which finds support for the post-1945 period inFreeman and Quinn 2012). And secondly, capital owners rely more onthe cooperation of the working classes to make a profit, so if the “threatfrom below” takes the form of domestic unrest of some sort, such asstrikes, demonstrations, or riots, they will have more interest in endingthis unrest than landowners, who are less reliant on workers and to

Property and Power 441

whom resisting democratization is therefore less costly (Acemoglu andRobinson 2006, 32).5 Such redistributive concerns are likely to havebeen particularly present in the context of the 1867 Reform Act, whichexpanded the suffrage so far that industrial working-class men becamea majority of the electorate (Derry 1966, 46; Guttsman 1963, 75;Himmelfarb 1966, 107). Indeed, Acemoglu and Robinson (2000) con-sider it an exemplary case for their theory, arguing that pressure frombelow, caused by the National Reform Union, the Reform League, andparticularly the Hyde Park riots in 1866, was crucial in prodding reluc-tant politicians into action.

More recent work also supports the idea that capital ownership canlead to more positive, or at least less negative, attitudes towards democ-racy (Ansell and Samuels 2010; Freeman and Quinn 2012). However,existing tests of these theories have used aggregate capital and landown-ing measures, or, for historical periods, proxies such as the averagepercentage of nonagricultural population and the urban percentage of thepopulation (Boix 2003, 90).6 Thus, this work does not test the theoryadequately; it tests only whether a change in the population as a wholefrom predominantly landowning to predominantly capital-owning bringsabout societal democratization, leaving out whether and how this tech-nically microlevel mechanism applies in the people actually making thedecisions. While historians have long assumed material interests tomatter—“with all the goodwill in the world,” Thomas wrote in 1925, “aparliament of Property Owners cannot but legislate with an eye on theirown property” (61)—political science research on legislator behavior hasneglected legislator assets in favor of focusing on how party, ideology,and constituency interest drive legislator voting (Cox 1987; Llavador andOxoby 2005; Leeman and Mares 2011; Schonhardt-Bailey 1998, 2003;Ziblatt 2008).

Party Competition

Partisan interests, in particular, have been put forth by historians toexplain nineteenth- and twentieth-century European democratization.Party leaders are held to have extended the franchise for strategic politi-cal reasons, if they thought those they were enfranchising were likely tovote for their party (Bendix 1964; Close 1977; Collier 1999; Capocciaand Ziblatt 2010; McLean 2001; Seymour [1915] 1970; Smith 1966).Indeed, the tale of the 1867 Reform Act is often told as a triumph ofDisraeli’s party politics (Cowling 1967; Himmelfarb 1966; McLean2001), as Disraeli managed to get his Conservative minority government

442 Laura Bronner

to pass an even more radical version of the Liberal reform bill that hadnot only failed to pass, but had also brought down the majority Liberalgovernment the previous year.

Both sides have been ascribed strategic partisan motivations;some have argued that Disraeli was attempting to enfranchise lowermiddle-class voters who were thought to vote Conservative(Himmelfarb 1966) while others have focused on Liberals’ partisangain (Hall, McClelland, and Rendall 2000, 7–8). The artisanal andindustrial working class was expected to vote for the more left-wingparty—the Liberals in mid-nineteenth-century Britain—while agricul-tural laborers were seen as supporting more right-wing, or Conserva-tive, parties as they were expected to be under the economic and socialinfluence of their (largely Conservative) landlords (Himmelfarb 1966;Llavador and Oxoby 2005). In this case, as the franchise extension onthe legislative agenda was aimed at expanding the vote in the boroughconstituencies, which were mainly towns, the theoretical expectationfor MPs in the 1865–68 Parliament is that on the whole, Liberal partieswould support reform, while Conservatives should oppose it. WhileAcemoglu and Robinson (2000, 1187–89) criticize this approach,claiming it did not apply in most cases they consider and particularlydismissing it in the case of the 1867 Reform Act, the historical litera-ture highlights its importance. Thus, though this article assumes thatdistributive conflicts matter, it does not disregard the effect politicalinstitutions, particularly parties, may have on MPs’ incentive structures.

Party and Material Interests

There is no reason to assume that material interests and partisanconsiderations, both of which are theorized to have mattered in the1867 Reform Act, are mutually exclusive. The two causal mechanismsoutlined above as underlying the effects of material interests—fear ofexpropriation of land, and vulnerability to labour relations—result intwo separable effects; on the one hand, landowners are seen to be lessdemocratic than nonlandowners of all types, while on the other, capi-talists are seen to be more democratic than noncapitalists. At the sametime, partisan electoral incentives have a different source and differentpotential effects for MPs than material interests, so this article hypoth-esizes that cross-pressurization occurs when MPs’ partisan and materialincentives oppose one another. A Conservative landowning MP, forexample, is not hypothesized to be cross-pressured (as his partisanand material interests are both seen to incentivize him to vote

Property and Power 443

antidemocratically); similarly, a Liberal capitalist MP is also subjectto reinforcing rather than cross-pressuring motivations to vote pro-democratically. However, Liberal landowning and Conservative capital-ist MPs are both hypothesized to be subject to cross-pressurization; inthe former case, partisan considerations incentivize the MP to vote fordemocratization, which may threaten his material interests, while in thelatter case, partisan electoral strategies drive the MP to vote againstdemocratization, while the theory holds that material interests shouldincentivize him to support it. Partisan considerations are thus seen tomoderate MPs’ material incentives.7

Hypotheses

This article sets out to test three main-effect and two interactionhypotheses regarding how MPs voted on a total of 30 amendments to1866 and 1867 reform bills (see the next section).

PartyH1 (Party Hypothesis): All else equal, Liberal MPs will be more likely tovote for democratization than Conservative MPs.

Material InterestsH2a (Landowning Hypothesis): All else equal, landowning MPs will beless likely to vote for democratization than those MPs who do not ownland.

H2b (Capital-Owning Hypothesis): All else equal, capital-owning MPswill be more likely to vote for democratization than those MPs who donot own capital.

These two different types of main-effect hypotheses intersect withone another, leading to the formulation of two specific interactionhypotheses:

Cross-Pressurization of Party and Material InterestsH3 (Liberal Landowner Hypothesis): Liberal landowning MPs will beless likely to vote for democratization than Liberal nonlandowning MPs.

H4 (Conservative Capitalist Hypothesis): Conservative capitalist MPswill be more likely to vote for democratization than Conservativenoncapitalist MPs.

444 Laura Bronner

Data and Methods

Data

Data on individual MPs in the 1865–68 Parliament—particularlycontaining detailed biographical and property ownership information—was not available, so an original dataset was compiled from historicalsources. While the dependent and independent variables are outlinedhere, the control variables used are elaborated on in Appendix A2.

Dependent variables. The Liberal majority government of1865–66 attempted to pass a reform bill in 1866 and failed. The Con-servative minority government which subsequently came to power thenpassed a similar, but even more radical bill—the 1867 Reform Act.Though this second bill was passed without a recorded roll call at itsthird reading, posing a challenge for roll-call analysis, multiple divi-sions were called on amendments during both bills’ journeys throughthe House of Commons, including one amendment to the 1866 billwhich Gladstone declared a vote of confidence; the failure of thisamendment brought down the Liberal government. This article exam-ines how MPs voted on 30 amendments to these two bills—six on the1866 Liberal bill and 24 on the 1867 Conservative bill.8 The amend-ments cover multiple different issues, but the 30 selected were includedas they dealt clearly with issues surrounding democratization. For eachamendment, one side (the “ayes” or the “noes”) were identified withthe pro-democratic position, while the other was classed as antidemo-cratic, such that each participating MP was classed as having votedpro- or antidemocratically.9

For part of the analysis, a second dependent variable was con-structed out of MPs’ votes on these 30 amendments. For each MP, a“democratic proportion” was calculated by dividing their number ofpro-democratic votes by the total number of votes they cast. Each MPthus had a democratic proportion ranging from 0 to 1, which expressedhis cumulative “democraticness” over the course of the 1866 and 1867Reform bills.

Though 30 amendments are considered, some crucial amendmentsto the Reform Bill are not included in this dataset as they were neversubject to a division. This includes, most vitally, the Hodgkinson amend-ment of May 17, 1867, which effectively eradicated the heretoforecommon practice of compounding (which had entailed the payment ofrates together with the rent to the landlord) and thereby greatly expandedthe number of people who paid their rates directly and thus qualified for

Property and Power 445

the vote (Cowling 1967, 282; McLean 2001, 68), among other importantamendments. This was simply accepted by Disraeli without a division, aswere amendments which permitted the lodger franchise, dropped fancyfranchises, educational qualifications, and other regulations limiting thesuffrage (Himmelfarb 1966, 107; Smith 1966, 207).

Independent variables. MP occupation data were collected using awide variety of historical reference works, most importantly Debrett’sIllustrated House of Commons, and the Judicial Bench, compiled byRobert Henry Mair (1868); the Who’s Who of British Members of Par-liament, compiled by Michael Stenton and Steven Lees (1976/1978); andthe online Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, among others. MPswere coded as having Manufacturing interests if they owned or managedfactories or manufacturing businesses, including breweries, glasswarefactories, and the like. They were coded as having Financial or tradeinterests if they held occupations such as banker, merchant, or director ofinsurance companies.10

The main variable used to test whether landholding matters forMP voting is a dummy variable, Landowner.11 Landholding data weretaken from The Great Landowners of Great Britain and NorthernIreland, by John Bateman (1883; also used by historians, e.g.,Guttsman 1963); this includes a comprehensive list of all landownerswho held at least 3,000 acres of land worth at least £3,000 in grossannual value, a boundary Bateman argues lets us “distinguish the sheepfrom the goats, amongst those who would have us believe them to becream upon the milk of English society” (1883, xvi). These data were,in most cases, verified at least cursorily by the individuals themselves(xxvii).12

MPs’ party affiliations were obtained from Mair (1868), Stenton(1976), and Stenton and Lees (1978); the variable in the models, Party, isa dummy for Liberal MPs, with Conservatives used as the base categoryas they formed the government for most of the amendments under con-sideration. When MPs were listed in these sources as Liberal-Conservatives, due to party switching, the party was selected whichCraig (1977) or Walker (1978) claimed the MP ran for in the 1865election, regardless of prior or subsequent affiliations.

Method

This article uses roll-call analysis on the votes of 707 MPs in the1865–68 British House of Commons on 30 amendments to the 1866 and1867 reform bills. These votes are tested in order to see whether

446 Laura Bronner

individual-level characteristics of MPs, in particular their party and assettype, were correlated with their votes on democratization. According tothe procedural rules of the House of Commons, a division (both in theHouse itself and in committees; May 1855, 291) requires two tellers oneach side, usually the party whips, who count the votes rather than votingthemselves.13As these men had to be associated with the side they counted(May 1855, 287), they have been categorized, for the purposes of thisanalysis, as having voted for that side. There is no need for major concernregarding selection bias due to selective calling of roll calls (Carrubbaet al. 2006), as recorded roll-call votes (“divisions”) were necessary whenvocal votes are not decisive enough for the speaker or committee chair todeclare it for one side or if MPs challenged a call for one side in the Houseof Commons (Evans 2002, 90; May 1855, 234–35).

The model used predicts pro- and antidemocratic votes usingindividual-level variables. For each MP, the dataset includes multipleroll-call vote observations, ranging from 0 for MPs who never voted to30 for MPs who voted on all amendments. MPs’ likelihood of votingpro-democratically was predicted using a logit model; as it seems likelythat an MP’s separate votes are similar to one another, standard errorswere clustered by MP. Though there is variation at the level of eachindividual amendment, it is difficult to include variables in the model topredict these differences, as there were no a priori expectations about theamendments’ effects. Therefore, in order to be able to prevent unex-plained variation at the amendment level from biasing the model, fixedeffects for each amendment were included.14

The model used is thus of the form:

Logit Democratic voten- n-

( ) = + ++ + +

β β ββ β

0 1 2

30

Landowning PartyX… 229 28Amendment Amendment

Amendment1 2

30+

+ + +β

βn-

n… ε,

where β1 to βn-30 are the coefficients of all the independent and controlvariables in the model, βn-29 to βn are the coefficients of all individualamendments, and ε is the error term. The second dependent variable,MPs’ overall “democratic proportion” over the course of the twobills, is also used; both as a robustness test and to allow for moreclarity in the postestimation illustration of the results obtained, this pro-portion is predicted using a generalized linear model (GLM) with abinomial distribution and a logistic link function, incorporating thesame variables as in the logit model (model A7 in Table A4.2 in theonline appendix).

Property and Power 447

Results: The Impact of Party and Material Interests onDemocratic Votes

Statistical analysis of the factors driving MP voting shows thatwhile both party and material interests matter, party is by far the mostsubstantively important variable, directly contradicting Acemoglu andRobinson’s (2000) argument that party was irrelevant to the passage ofthe 1867 Reform Act in the United Kingdom. Logistic regressions withamendment fixed effects and clustered standard errors at the MP level areshown in Table 1. Both party (model 1) and material interests (model 2)support Hypotheses 1, 2a, and 2b when considered separately in models;that is, being a Liberal has a substantively large and statistically highlysignificant pro-democratic effect compared to being a Conservative, andowning land has a negative effect on MPs’ likelihood of voting pro-democratically on amendments to the 1866 and 1867 reform bills, whileowning either manufacturing or finance or trade interests has a significantpositive effect.15

However, combining the independent variables (model 3) tells usthat while both types of interests matter, the effect of partisanship ismuch larger substantively. Controlling for party diminishes the size ofthe effect of material interests; in fact, holding a financial or trade inter-est now no longer has a significant positive effect on MPs’ likelihood ofvoting pro-democratically, and the size and significance of holdingmanufacturing interests has also diminished. Despite the correlationbetween material interests and party likely arising from politiciansselecting into different parties based on their interests, the effect ofparty remains highly significant once material interests are controlledfor. Moreover, measures of fit also show the importance of party: notonly is the pseudo R2 much higher when party is included (0.514)alongside material interests than when it is left out (0.092), but calcu-lating the percentage of cases that were correctly predicted, both for thepro-democratic (sensitivity) and the antidemocratic votes (specificity),shows that model 3 predicts 88% of pro-democratic votes and 86% ofantidemocratic ones correctly, compared to model 2, which excludesparty and predicts only 66% of pro-democratic votes and 72% ofantidemocratic votes correctly. This makes clear that a model whichdoes not take party into account dramatically underpredicts the pro-democratic vote in these amendments.

Partisan and material interests are interacted in model 4, which alsoadds control variables. Importantly, interacting the material interests withparty shows that as expected by the cross-pressurization theory, wheninteracting party and material interests, party membership does indeed

448 Laura Bronner

TABLE 1Logit Regressions with Clustered Standard Errors to

Predict Pro-Democratic Vote

[1] [2] [3] [4]

Party and Material Interests

H3 Party (Liberal) ×Landowner

0.637 (0.145)*

H4 Party (Liberal) ×ManufacturingInterest

1.438 (0.418)

H4 Party (Liberal) ×Finance/TradeInterest

1.133 (0.353)

Party

H1 Party (Liberal) 88.325 (12.347)*** 82.317 (11.474)*** 90.839 (17.551)***

Material Interests

H2a Landowner 0.661 (0.105)** 0.819 (0.091)† 1.061 (0.185)H2b Manufacturing

Interest2.300 (0.580)** 1.461 (0.226)* 0.969 (0.209)

H2b Finance/TradeInterest

1.675 (0.355)* 1.157 (0.150) 1.081 (0.290)

Constituency-LevelControls

No No No Yesa

No. of Observations 9263 9263 9263 9263No. of Clusters 486 486 486 486Pseudo R2 0.511 0.092 0.514 0.521Correctly predicted

(positive) (Sensitivity)87.29% 57.04% 88.19% 88.33%

Correctly predicted(negative) (Specificity)

86.62% 72.10% 86.37% 86.41%

Wald Tests for Additional Variables

Compared to Model 1 — — 3DF; χ2 15.88** 13DF; χ2 34.21**Compared to Model 2 — — 2DF; χ2 1001.32*** 12DF; χ2 689.77***

Note: In all models, MPs are only included when 6 or more votes (20% of the total possible votes) are recorded forthem in the dataset. This is to minimize noise due to those MPs for whom a reasonably comprehensive assessmentof their views on democratic reform was not presented (other roll-call analyses also impose a minimum voterestriction, e.g. 25 out of 186 possible votes in Schonhardt-Bailey, 2003). This was also done to increase thecomparability between this logit model and the other models estimated (see below), which use proportions asdependent variables and are thus particularly sensitive to reliability issues if proportions calculated on such fewobservations are included. 53 MPs, or 7.5% of the sample as a whole, were thus excluded from the analysis.Included, but not reported for clarity: dummy variables for each amendment (all models); dummy variables formembers of the Cave of Adullam (models 1, 3, and 4), dummy variable for High Political Office (Conservative)and High Political Office (Liberal) (model 4); dummy variable for prior low political office (model 4).aTable A4.3 in Online Appendix A4 shows the effects of all control variables, as well as a brief discussion of theireffects, which are all largely consistent with existing literature.Odds ratios reported; standard errors in parentheses; two-tailed tests; †p < 0.1; *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.

Property and Power 449

moderate the effect of material interests. This moderation effect is,however, true only for landownership. Landowning has a negative effecton MPs’ likelihood of voting pro-democratically for Liberals, but it doesnot have the same effect for Conservatives, supporting Hypothesis 3.This is in accordance with the argument that Conservative MPs’ partisanand land-based pressures work in the same direction, while it is only forLiberal MPs that owning land creates a situation of cross-pressurization,in which their partisan incentives pressure them to support democraticreform while their concern about the potential expropriation of their landcauses pressure in the antidemocratic direction.16 At the same time, partyremains highly significant and substantively important, an effect that isrobust to the inclusion of all controls. Party is not simply a stand-invariable for material interests, but rather generates crucial incentives inits own right.17

However, this model also shows that Hypothesis 4 is not borne outby the data; the effect of capital—both manufacturing and finance/trade—interests is not as expected according to the theoretical frame-work. Based on Acemoglu and Robinson’s (2006) argument that capitalowners, particularly owners of manufacturing interests, are willing todemocratize due to concerns about the cost of conflictual labor rela-tions, Hypothesis 4 set out the expectation that owning manufacturinginterests in particular would cause a similar cross-pressurization forConservatives as owning land does for Liberals; however, this does notseem to be the case. In fact, model 4 shows that neither manufacturingnor finance/trade interests appear to have a significant negative effect onConservative MPs’ likelihood of voting pro-democratically.18 Thisfinding casts doubt on theories which focus on the positive effect ofcapital owning on democratic attitudes, while supporting those theories,like Boix’s (2003) and Acemoglu and Robinson’s (2006), who provideplausible explanations for why owning land has a negative effect ondemocratic attitudes.

The strong partisan effect raises a puzzle, however. While Liberalswere much likelier to vote pro-democratically, it was in fact the Conser-vatives who were in government when the Act was passed. Thus, whilethe Conservatives initially proposed the 1867 bill, this analysis revealsthat Liberals were largely the ones responsible for the addition of amend-ments making it more democratic.19 This detail explains in part whyAcemoglu and Robinson (2006) missed party’s importance here; theyargue that one reason party cannot have been important is that theConservatives, who passed the bill, lost the next election, while in fact itwas Liberals who made the bill as democratic as it eventually became.20

But while the Liberals were the pro-democratic force in the amendments,

450 Laura Bronner

it was the Conservative government’s prerogative to decide, at any point,that the bill had become too radical to support. The fact that they did notdo so reveals that though they would have preferred a less radical bill, itdid not cross the line of acceptability. This initially seems to contradictthe conclusions arrived at here with regard to Conservative preferences,but on closer examination it can be explained with recourse to BenjaminDisraeli’s unique ideological and strategic position; as both contempo-raries and scholars of the period have found, Disraeli, who was theChancellor of the Exchequer and the leader of the government in theHouse of Commons, seemed willing to accept any amendment so long asthe Reform Bill itself passed (Hall, McClelland, and Rendall 2000, 8;McLean 2001, 70).21 This counterintuitive finding makes up a large partof the puzzle of the 1867 Reform Act.

In order to aid understanding of the differential effect of landown-ing by party, predicted democratic proportions have been generatedwhich vary theoretically from 0 (every registered vote is antidemocratic)to 1 (every registered vote is pro-democratic).22 Owning land had anantidemocratic effect for Liberals which it did not have for ConservativeMPs. Figure 1 (below) shows this effect among Liberal MPs in the rawdata; the two graphs are the frequency of different democratic propor-tions for nonlandowners (left) and landowners (right). Though both setsof MPs tend to have democratic proportions over 0.5, as they are allLiberal, particularly democratic proportions over 0.9 are much morecommon among nonlandowners than among landowners.

This moderated effect of landowning is also shown in Table 2. ForConservatives, the difference between a landowner and a nonlandowneris only 0.01, and in this case Conservative landowning MPs are actuallymore democratic than nonlandowners, though this effect is not statisti-cally significant. However, for a Liberal MP, being a landowner gives hima predicted democratic proportion of 0.75, compared to one of 0.82 fornonlandowners. Though the confidence intervals overlap, a t-test showsthis difference to be significant at 95% confidence (p-value of 0.029).Thus, all else equal, a Liberal nonlandowner is predicted to vote demo-cratically 82% of the time, compared to 75% for a comparable land-owner. Again, it is clear that party is the most important single factor(among nonlandowners, a Conservative MP is predicted to vote demo-cratically only 8% of the time, compared to 82% if he is Liberal), but thecross-pressure created for Liberal MPs by the ownership of land seems tomake those individuals significantly less democratic than nonlandownersof various types.23 This seemingly antidemocratic effect of landowner-ship among Liberals is consistent with the argument that landowners areless democratic than nonlandowners because they fear the redistributive

Property and Power 451

FIGURE 1Difference in “Democratic Proportion” Among Liberals,

by Landownership

0 .5 1 0 .5 1 Democratic Proportion

Num

ber o

f MPs

60

40

20

0

Non-Landowners Landowners

TABLE 2Predicted Democratic Proportions by Party and Landownership

(using GLM)

Predicted DemocraticProportion

StandardError

95% ConfidenceIntervals P-value

Liberal Nonlandowner 0.816 0.028 0.762 0.871Liberal Landowner 0.754 0.0394 0.676 0.831T-test 0.029Conservative Nonlandowner 0.0799 0.0135 0.0534 0.106Conservative Landowner 0.0933 0.0148 0.0644 0.122

Note: Democratic proportions predicted for MPs from county constituencies without dominatinginterests, with mean voting percentages, mean landholding inequality, who did not lose their seats1868 and did not have high or low political office, nor manufacturing or finance/trade interests, andwere not members of the Cave of Adullam.

452 Laura Bronner

consequences of democratization more than those whose income comesfrom other sources. However, there is no support for the theory thatowning financial, physical or human capital makes MPs any more likelyto support democratization than non-capital owners, casting doubt ontheories which focus on the supposedly more democratic nature or eco-nomic incentive structure of capital owners.24

Conclusion

The first wave of democratization has been one of the primarytargets for redistributive conflict theorists, who have claimed that theirarguments explain the expansion of the suffrage in nineteenth- and earlytwentieth-century Europe. Using an original micro-level dataset on thelegislators in the 1865–68 House of Commons, this article has found thatwhile there is some support for redistributive conflict theories, exclusivefocus on material interests neglects the single largest substantive factoraffecting how MPs vote—partisanship. Parties are not merely conduits ofindividual or constituency interests, but generate incentives for self-preservation; while Liberals saw the expansion of the urban working-class vote as benefiting them electorally, Conservatives opposeddemocratizing amendments on the bill because they were worried aboutthe future performance of their parties at the polls. “The Conservativeparty, whose opinions have had my most sincere approval,” ViscountCranborne, who later became Prime Minister Lord Salisbury, declared atthe Reform Act’s third reading, “have, to my mind, dealt themselves afatal blow by the course which they have adopted.” (HC Deb, 15 July1867, vol 188, col 1539).

Indeed, the fact that the Conservative party passed the bill at all issurprising, given its members’ voting records and the vocal oppositionduring the debates; Disraeli’s achievement as a leader lay in preventingthe bill from reaching the point at which his members would havewithdrawn their support for the government. The passage of the act canonly be understood with reference to the dilemma outlined by Conser-vative lawyer William Balliol Brett. “The very introduction of such a Billwas a great point gained from the Conservative party. . . . Still,” heargued, “he must remind those Gentlemen among his own party, whowere discontented, that they ought steadily to contemplate the alternativebefore them. If they threw out the Bill before the House, . . . they wouldhave to submit to a Bill which would be brought in by the right hon.Gentleman [Gladstone, the likely leader of any subsequent Liberal gov-ernment], the effect of which would, he could not doubt, be the entireannihilation of the Conservative party in the House and in the country”

Property and Power 453

(HC Deb, 9 May 1867, vol 187, col 280).25 Brett, and many otherConservatives, ultimately opted for tacit support of their government and,thus, of a bill that most would rather have rejected. These unusualcircumstances do, however, make this case somewhat idiosyncratic,which should limit how generally applicable we take this article’s find-ings to be.

Partisanship was not only crucial in its own right; it also moderatedthe effect of landowning. While there is support, on the micro level, forBoix’s (2003) and Acemoglu and Robinson’s (2006) argument that land-owners were particularly resistant to democratization,26 lending credenceto their argument on the importance of landholding inequality and itschanges for democratization, such redistributive concerns do not operatein a vacuum. Rather, political institutions integrally shape MPs’ incentivestructures as well; partisanship, in particular, crucially affects MPs’ cal-culations.While landowning does not appear to make a difference for howConservative MPs vote, as they tend to support the antidemocratic side ofthe amendment regardless, Liberal landowners are less democratic thantheir nonlandowning counterparts: they are less likely to vote for thepro-democratic side in amendments to the 1866 and 1867 bills thancomparable nonlandowners. This article has proposed that these findingsare due to the fact that electoral concerns and redistributive fears rein-forced one another for Conservative MPs, while they created cross-cuttingpressures for Liberals; here, partisan electoral considerations pushed MPsto support democratization, but for landowners, concerns about redistri-bution created a dilemma.Theories which ignore these political incentivesin favor of exclusively structural or material explanations are thus overlysimplistic and fail to capture the complexity of MPs’ decision making onan issue as important and wide-reaching as democratization.

On another level, this article has also attempted to distinguishbetween two separate causal mechanisms proposed in the literature forthe purported difference in democratic attitudes between landowners andcapitalists. While the evidence shows that Liberal landowners are lessdemocratic than nonlandowners, there is little support for the hypothesisthat among Conservatives, capital ownership is associated with a moredemocratic attitude. This null finding calls into question Acemoglu andRobinson’s (2006) other suggested causal mechanism, that capitalowners are more amenable to democracy as they have more to lose frombad labor relations. It also casts some doubt on other theories focusing onthe allegedly democratic nature of the capitalist class, such as the frame-work put forth by Ansell and Samuels (2010), who suggest that capitalowners support democracy to avoid the predatory state. However, morework needs to be done before dismissing such mechanisms outright; in

454 Laura Bronner

particular, it is possible that the effect of capital ownership is expressedvia the selection into parties, making this relationship an interesting oneto attempt to disentangle.

Laura Bronner <l.bronner@lse.ac.uk> is a Ph.D. candidate in theDepartment of Government at the London School of Economics, Con-naught House, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE.

APPENDIX A1

Dependent Variable Coding

TABLE A1Dependent Variable Coding

Type of Amendment FrequencyIntent Coded as

Democratic Example Amendment

Determining the voterqualification threshold(suffrage)

12 Increasing the number ofpeople who could votea

Division no. 39, 2nd May1867: Amendment toprevent the reduction ofthe residency requirementfrom 2 years to 12 months

Reapportioning thenumber of seats todifferently sizedconstituencies

5 Making the seatapportionment moreproportional to population

Division no. 70, 31st May1867: Amendment toreduce the number ofseats for boroughs with apopulation of under10,000 from 2 to 1

Regulating vote-buying 6 Making vote-buying moredifficult to perpetrate, easierto detect, or subject toharsher penalties

Division no. 120, 4th July1867: Amendment toretain a clause banningelectioneering inalcohol-dispensinglocalities

Introducing thecumulative vote system inconstituencies with threeseats, such that votersshould only have twovotes

4 Preventing such measures,as they were meant toundercut the voting powerof the newly enfranchisedworkers in theseconstituencies (McLean2001, 69; Smith 1966, 212)

Division no. 124, 5th July1867: Amendment tointroduce cumulativevoting in 3-memberconstituencies

(continued on next page)

Property and Power 455

TABLE A1(continued)

Type of Amendment Frequency Intent Coded as Democratic Example Amendment

Reducing candidateexpenditure duringelectoral campaigning

1 Reducing expenditure, as itwas intended to allow lesswealthy candidates to run(Smith 1966, 208)

Division no. 103, 27thJune 1867: Amendment toprovide expenses to covercampaigning costs

Adding dimensionsstrategically to the bill

1 Intending for the addeddimensions to prevent itspassage through the House

Division no. 51, 7th June1866: Amendment topostpone the Reform Billuntil after the passage of aseat redistribution bill

Introducing women’ssuffrage

1 Introducing women’ssuffrageb

Division no. 52, 20th May1867: Amendment toretain the word “man” inthe bill’s clause and avoidits replacement with“person”

Note: Frequency refers to the number of amendments, out of 30 in total, belonging to each category.Intent coded as democratic refers to the side of the amendment which, if triumphant, would have hada democratic outcome (i.e., the proposition side for pro-democratic amendments, and the oppositionside for amendments which were antidemocratic in intent). For the last three categories, the exampleamendment is the only amendment in the category.aThis is subject to one important caveat.At the time, it was possible for citizens to vote multiple timesif they qualified through separate property ownership. Several amendments were identified whichwould have expanded the suffrage, but rather than enfranchising previously unenfranchised citizens,the effect was or would have been to thereby substantially increase the number of voters who hadmultiple votes. This was difficult to classify as it seems, according to current standards, severelyundemocratic for the same citizen to have multiple votes; however, this is a somewhat anachronisticinterpretation, as contemporaries, even those generally on the side of democratization, did not seethis as a problem (see e.g., the debate on copyhold owners, HC Deb, 24 June 1867, cols 458–61), inwhich it is clearly held that while MPs rejected the notion that one man could vote twice on the basisof ‘one qualification’, the same property in the same constituency, they ought to be able to vote inevery constituency in which they held a property qualification). Due to this difficulty of classifica-tion, these amendments (13 in total) have been dropped from the analysis.bThere is only one amendment in this category, introduced by John Stuart Mill, who was the MP forWestminster in this parliament. Though it is a suffrage amendment, it was not included with the othersuffrage amendments because existing literature supposes a somewhat different mechanism at work(e.g., Acemoglu and Robinson 2000, 1186; Przeworski 2008, 294).

456 Laura Bronner

The 30 amendments considered were grouped into different categories by type, asthey dealt with suffrage questions, seat redistribution, corruption and other issues relevantto democratization; Table A1 shows these categories, an example amendment for each,and the criterion according to which each amendment was coded as pro- orantidemocratizing in intention.

Figure A1 shows all the amendments considered and the extent of each party’ssupport for the prodemocratizing outcome in each amendment. Further, the graph is splitaccording to the two cabinets in the parliament considered; the set of six amendments onthe left took place in 1866, under the Liberal cabinet, while the 24 amendments on theright were voted on under the Conservative cabinet in 1867. As the figure shows, Liberalsheavily outweighed Conservatives in supporting the prodemocratizing side of almost allamendments; this trend is obvious in 1866, but remains clear even in 1867 despite the factthat the Conservative government was the driving force behind the bill. Indeed, there areonly three amendments in which the majority of Liberals did not vote pro-democraticallyand only three in which the majority of Conservatives did.

APPENDIX A2

Control Variables

Control variables include some individual-level characteristics that are not directlylinked to our theoretical framework and an array of constituency-level variables. A

FIGURE A1Pro-Democratic Vote by Party and Amendment

100

90

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0Perc

enta

ge S

uppo

rt fo

r the

Pro

-Dem

ocra

tic O

utco

me

Liberal Cabinet Conservative Cabinet 1866 1867

Amendment Number and Date

Liberal Conservative

Property and Power 457

dummy variable for Adullamite was created in order to control for membership of theCave of Adullam, a faction of rebellious, antireform Liberal MPs who voted against theirown party leadership on the 1866 Reform Bill and thereby brought down the Liberalgovernment. Though this dummy is included to catch variation driven by the ideologicalcommonalities of these MPs and their coherence as a rebellious parliamentary faction, itis necessary to emphasize that selection into this group was not random, and in factpositively correlated (moderately, but significantly) with landowning. Heckelman andDougherty (2013) discuss how previous political experience at a local or other level mayhave influenced members of the 1787 Constitutional Convention in the United States, soa dummy variable for low-level (local) political positions was included in the analysis.

To control for the impact of landholding inequality in MPs’ constituencies (Ziblatt2008), I constructed a rudimentary approximation of a landholding Gini index forEnglish and Welsh counties (though not those in Scotland and Ireland) from data pro-vided by Bateman (1883) on the number and respective total landownership of differentsocial groups in each county. Following Ziblatt (2008), due to the nonlinear relationshipbetween inequality and democracy sometimes predicted by scholarship (especiallyAcemoglu and Robinson 2006), squared and cubed landholding inequality terms wereadded to the model. Qualitative literature also emphasizes that as the 1867 Act redistrib-uted seats among constituencies, MPs whose constituencies would lose seats—“dyingswans” in the words of Julian Goldsmid, MP for Honiton27—may have voted against thebill for that reason. Dummy variables have been created to measure whether constituen-cies were to lose seats in 1868 (Seat lost 1868). Though the dependent variable hereprecedes the independent variable, those constituencies that lost seats largely did so forreasons of corruption and/or population size, so including a dummy variable for seat losscan be seen to measure underlying undemocratic attributes of a constituency (it was eithercorrupt or vastly overrepresented given its population size). Further, other constituency-level variables were used as controls as they may well have had certain systematic effectson the MPs elected and their views on democracy. This includes a dummy variable if theconstituency was a borough as opposed to a county seat.28 This inclusion was because,firstly, the occupation structure of the voting population is assumed to be different, suchthat county MPs are sometimes held to be representatives of the landed interest (e.g.,Cacroft 1867, 120), and secondly, the bill expanded the borough franchise more than thecounty franchise, so this may have been important to MPs’ decision making for directreasons.29 Further, a dummy variable was created for constituencies in which Mair (1868)reported that a locally notable individual or family-dominated elections (dominant inter-est), as this might lead to reliance on accountability to this dominant notable rather thanon their own or constituency interests.

APPENDIX A3

Descriptive Statistics

A3.1 Party and Material Interests

MPs’ material interests and partisanship are correlated in the 1865 parliament, asintuition would suggest. As Figure A3.1 and Table A3 show, 42% of Liberals are land-

458 Laura Bronner

owners, compared to 57% of Conservatives who are; at the same time, 15% of Liberalsown manufacturing and 26% own finance or trade interests, compared to 7% and 11% ofConservatives who do so, respectively. The correlations between party and materialinterests are relatively low (0.15 for landownership, 0.13 for manufacturing, and 0.19 forfinance or trade interests), but in all cases highly statistically significant. This relationshipbetween material interests and party membership is likely based on the reasons for MPs’selection into the different parties, an issue which would benefit from closer investigation.

The full breakdown of parties into material interests is shown in Table A3. Aminority of MPs (49 Liberals and 17 Conservatives) had more than one material interest;rather than excluding these potentially important people, or making a judgment call as towhich category was more appropriate based on sometimes scant historical sources, it waspermitted for such multiple interests to coincide.

FIGURE A3.1The Distribution of Material Interests by Party

Prop

ortio

n O

wne

rshi

p

Landowner Manufacturing Finance/Trade Material Interest

0.6

0.5

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1

0

LiberalConservative

TABLE A3Parties by Material Interests

Interest (nonexclusive) Liberals Conservatives

Landowner 162 (42.1%) 183 (56.8%)Manufacturing 56 (14.6%) 21 (6.5%)Finance or Trade 100 (26.0%) 36 (11.2%)None 119 (30.9%) 99 (30.7%)Total 385 322

(including 49 holding more thanone interest)

(including 17 holding more thanone interest)

Property and Power 459

A3.2 Partisanship and Support for Democracy

The importance of party is illustrated in Figure A3.2, which shows MPs’ “demo-cratic proportion” in the raw data; that is, the proportion of their total votes which waspro-democratic, by party. Clearly, Conservative MPs’ democratic proportions are con-centrated below 0.25, while Liberal MPs’ proportions show more variation, but areoverwhelmingly over 0.5, with particular concentration over 0.75.

NOTES

Many thanks to Arthur Spirling, Petra Schleiter, Ben Ansell, Lanny Martin, twoanonymous referees, Øyvind Skorge, Jonathan Mellon, Olukunle Owolabi, EmanuelComan, Valerie Belu, Ben Shaw, Luigi Marini, Chima Simpson-Bell, and participants atthe Nuffield College Graduate Research in Progress Seminar and at the MPSA AnnualMeeting 2013 for helpful comments and suggestions, as well the Weatherhead Center atHarvard University for its generous hospitality.

1. This was not always the case; sometimes, an unelected executive (such asBismarck) made such decisions (Collier 1999, 3). However, in many cases, suchdemocratizing or autocratizing bills were sanctioned by parliament.

2. MPs undoubtedly formed part of Britain’s political elite, and as the positionwas unpaid and the costs of both contesting elections and supporting oneself while in

FIGURE A3.2The Distribution of MPs’ ‘Democratic Proportions’ by Party

Num

ber o

f MPs

Conservatives Liberals80

60

40

20

00 .5 1 0 .5 1 Democratic Proportion

460 Laura Bronner

Parliament were higher than ever before (Guttsman 1963, 18), it is reasonable to assumethat they were in the economic elite as well.

3. This argument does not rely on whether democracies actually are moreredistributive than nondemocracies, but merely on whether the actors involved anticipatethat it may be and that this may affect their own assets.

4. This “threat from below” argument has found empirical support in Przeworski(2008).

5. Ansell and Samuels (2010) also argue that ownership of capital drivesdemocratization, though they take a different theoretical approach, using contractarianrather than redistributive logic. They claim that a rising class of capital owners want toprotect their assets from expropriation by the potentially predatory government byinstating the property rights that come with democracy. Though this article retainsAcemoglu and Robinson’s (2006) redistributive logic, the theorized impact of land andcapital should be the same even if Ansell and Samuels’ (2010) theory is adopted.

6. Both Boix (2003) and Acemoglu and Robinson (2006) also make argumentsabout the effect on democratization of income inequality, with the former arguing thatdecreasing inequality should increase chances of democratization while the latter proposean inverted U-shaped relationship, with chances of democratization highest at middlinglevels of inequality. Przeworski (2008) finds support for the former thesis in his test ofsuffrage reforms. However, the effect of income inequality will not be tested here, as it isnot clear how it is purported to matter on the individual level; rather, it is controlled forcross-regionally.

7. This theoretical framework thus ignores how an MP’s constituency’s interestsmight affect his incentive structure. Though an attempt is made to control for manyconstituency-level variables, as they are likely important and their effects ought to beaccounted for, it is yet unclear how these variables moderate the incentives created bymaterial and partisan electoral concerns.

8. However, if the 1866 amendments are excluded, the results remain robust.9. The coding of the dependent variable is explained in more detail in Appendix

A1.10. It was decided that a minimum of two directorships was necessary for an MP

to be classified as having financial or trade interests, as it was possible that a single placeon a board of directors was more about status than about actually engaging with thefinancial/trading world (36 MPs held only one directorship).

11. Note that this category of landowners partially overlaps with the precedingcategory of MPs holding manufacturing or finance/trade interests; these interests werenot mutually exclusive. Table A3 in Appendix A3.1 shows the distribution of interests byparty.

12. Some MPs were, in 1867, not yet in possession of lands, but were heirs to theirfamilies’ estates. As these individuals lived in expectation of future land-ownership, andas fear of redistribution and expropriation should not distinguish between whether theland was held currently or whether it was to be held in the future, the analysis in thisarticle treats landowners and land-heirs equally. This does include a few individuals whowere, in 1867, the heirs to landed estates, but died before they inherited them. As theywould not have known about their imminent death prior to the event, however, it isreasonable to assume that they would have acted as if they were, eventually, to inherit.

Property and Power 461

13. http://www.parliament.uk/site-information/glossary/tellers/ (accessedDecember 1, 2013).

14. However, the results are robust regardless of whether amendment fixed effectsare included.

15. As party and the control variables are conceptually subsequent to economicinterests, leaving out these secondary variables shows that material interests thus affectdemocratizing votes in the raw, pre-“treatment” data. Appendix A3.1 elaborates on thecorrelations between party and property interests in this dataset.

16. Due to the limitations of the data on landholding inequality, models 1–4 arelimited only to MPs from English and Welsh constituencies. In order to test whether theeffect holds once Scotland and (pre-independence) Ireland are included as well,TableA4.3in online Appendix A4 compares model 4 (showing the full set of controls) with a modelA4 which excludes our measure of landholding inequality and instead includes dummyvariables for Irish, Scottish, and Welsh constituencies, to account for systematic regionaldifferences. This model shows that both the importance of party and the negative effect oflandowning for Liberals remain in place even when these other nations are included, so itis clear that the results in model 4 were not driven by English and Welsh MPs alone.

17. These findings are robust for two different dependent variables, individual votechoice and a constructed democratic proportion, as well as to the type of regression modelused.They are also robust to various different specifications, including testing of each typeof material interest separately so as to avoid collinearity masking significance; they alsoremain accurate when the 1866 votes are excluded, when Irish and Scottish MPs areincluded in the sample, or when fixed effects for each amendment are not included in themodel. See online Appendix A4 for more details.

18. Since there is some (minor) collinearity between those who hold land, manu-facturing, and finance/trade interests, it is somewhat conceivable that manufacturing orfinance/trade interests would have a significant effect if they were considered on their ownin a model. However, this is not the case; neither manufacturing nor finance/trade interestshave a significant effect on MP behavior—either by themselves or in interaction withparty—even when the other ownership variables are excluded (see Table A4.1 in onlineAppendix A4).

19. This is true even for amendments under the Conservative cabinet in 1867; seeFigure A1 in Appendix A1.

20. Acemoglu and Robinson (2000) also disregard the fact that Conservatives maysimply have miscalculated, which likely also played a role.

21. As the Conservative MP Sir Rainald Knightley indignantly argued in parlia-ment, “He thought the policy of the right hon. Gentleman [Disraeli] had been that ofcatching whatever he could get. Let the House look at the course which he had taken withregard to the compound-householder. . . . On that [May 17th] morning, hon. Members onthe Conservative side of the House received the usual intimation from the Secretary to theTreasury earnestly requesting their attendance, as anAmendment of great importance wasabout to be proposed—an Amendment of vital importance. He would venture to say thatevery Gentleman who read that circular imagined that he was pressed to come down to theHouse for the purpose of opposing the Amendment of the hon. Member for Newark (Mr.Hodgkinson.) . . . He believed that was the universal feeling on his own side of the House.During the discussion he retired for a short time; and on his return was perfectly astonished

462 Laura Bronner

to hear that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had embraced the proposition of the hon.Member for Newark with joy and gratitude, stating that it was in perfect accordance withthe conclusions to which the Government had originally arrived, and that it was also inperfect harmony with what he still had the assurance to call the principle of the Bill” (HCDeb 20 May 1867, vol 187, cols 803–04). Later on, from the other side of the parliamentaryaisle, Gladstone had a similar assessment, claiming that Disraeli’s “governing idea . . .seemed to be not so much to consider what ought to be proposed and carried, as to makesure that, whatever it was, it should be proposed and carried by those now in power” (quotedin Himmelfarb 1966, 110).

22. In the postestimation illustration of effects, a GLM model (model A7, TableA4.2) was used, as it makes more sense to consider predicted democratic proportions basedon all 30 amendments than the predicted probability of going from an anti- to a pro-democratic vote on an arbitrarily chosen individual amendment.

23. For another illustration of the relative importance of party and landowning, seeonline Appendix A5 for a simulation.

24. The results here show that for the most part (for each party, in all but threeamendments considered), the Liberal party line was pro-democratic while the Conserva-tive party line was antidemocratic. This means that it is conceivable that the results in thefourth section may be driven by differences between MPs in party discipline, regardless ofthe actual content of the bills. In order to distinguish between MPs who simply have ahigher rate of defection overall, and those whose defection is dependent on the content ofthe amendment, I have further analyzed defections more closely, estimating the likelihoodof MPs to defect depending on whether the amendment under consideration is pro- orantidemocratic. This analysis is available on request and shows that among Liberal MPs,landowners are significantly more likely to defect when the party line is pro-democratic andsignificantly less likely to defect when the party line is antidemocratic; that is, in both cases,they are more likely to vote for the less democratic option, in accordance with Hypothesis3. By contrast, Liberal MPs with manufacturing or finance and trade interests do not appearto defect significantly differently from those without such interests, meaning that Hypoth-eses 2a and 2b lack empirical support. For Conservatives, neither owning land normanufacturing or finance and trade interests made a difference to defection patterns,contrary to the expectations generated by Hypothesis 4.

25. In fact, this echoes arguments Wellington used to convince the House of Lordsto support Corn Law Repeal in 1846; to get the reluctant landowning peers to supportPeel’s bill, he threatened that if it failed, they would be faced with Cobden’s undoubtedlymuch more radical one (McLean 2001, 40, 44).

26. This was also made explicit by several MPs during the course of the parliamen-tary debate on this bill. Thus, the landowner Alexander Beresford Hope claimed that the1867 bill would result in having to bid “farewell to the old halls rising over the tall trees, andthe spacious deer parks, for the peasantry in their ignorance and cupidity would soon be setfancying that these broad acres would best serve their purpose if cut up into freeholdallotments” (HC Deb 20 May 1867, vol 187, cols 812–13), while the Liberal Robert Loweasked, “Do not you see that the first step after the enfranchisement of the unskilled labourclass must necessarily be to turn indirect taxation into direct taxation, so assessed as to fallmainly upon the upper classes?” (HC Deb 20 May 1867, vol 187, cols 788–90).

27. HC Deb 31 May 1866, vol 183, col 1554, cited in McLean (2001, 65).

Property and Power 463

28. A separate dummy was included in some analyses for university seats, which,however, did not affect many MPs.

29. The effect of boroughs is not always expected to be uniform; however, due to thefact that boroughs were a different category of constituency which was affected in asystematically different way by the bill, a dummy is seen as appropriate even though it maynot catch all of the variation.

REFERENCES

Acemoglu, Daron, and James A. Robinson. 2000. “Why Did the West Extend the Fran-chise? Democracy, Inequality, and Growth in Historical Perspective.” QuarterlyJournal of Economics 115 (4): 1167–99.

Acemoglu, Daron, and James A. Robinson. 2006. Economic Origins of Dictatorship andDemocracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ansell, Ben, and David Samuels. 2010. “Inequality and Democratization: AContractarian Approach.” Comparative Political Studies 43 (12): 1543–74.

Ansolabehere, Stephen, James M. Snyder, Jr., and Charles Stewart III. 2001. “The Effectsof Party and Preferences on Congressional Roll-Call Voting.” Legislative StudiesQuarterly 26 (4): 533–72.

Bateman, John. [1883] 1971. The Great Landowners of Great Britain and Ireland.Leicester, UK: Leicester University Press.

Bendix, Reinhard. 1964. Nation-Building and Citizenship: Studies of Our ChangingSocial Order. New York: John Wiley.

Bermeo, Nancy. 2010. “Interests, Inequality, and Illusion in the Choice for Fair Elec-tions.” Comparative Political Studies 43 (8–9): 1119–47.

Boix, Carles. 2003. Democracy and Redistribution. New York: Cambridge UniversityPress.

Cacroft, Benjamin. 1867. “The Analysis of the House of Commons, or Indirect Repre-sentation.” In A Plea for Democracy: An Edited Selection from the 1867 Essays onReform and Questions for a Revised Parliament, ed. W. L. Guttsman. London:MacGibbon & Kee.

Capoccia, Giovanni, and Daniel Ziblatt. 2010. “The Historical Turn in DemocratizationStudies.” Comparative Political Studies 43 (8–9): 931–68.

Carrubba, Clifford J., Matthew Gabel, Lacey Murrah, Ryan Clough, ElizabethMontgomery, and Rebecca Schambach. 2006. “Off the Record: Unrecorded Leg-islative Votes, Selection Bias and Roll-Call Vote Analysis.” British Journal ofPolitical Science 36 (4): 691–704.

Close, David H. 1977. “The Collapse of Resistance to Democracy: Conservatives, AdultSuffrage, and Second Chamber Reform, 1911–1928.” Historical Journal 20 (4):893–918.

Collier, Ruth Berins. 1999. Paths toward Democracy: The Working Class and Elites inWestern Europe and South America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cowling, Maurice. 1967. 1867—Disraeli, Gladstone and Revolution: The Passing of theSecond Reform Bill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cox, Gary. 1987. The Efficient Secret: The Cabinet and the Development of PoliticalParties in Victorian England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

464 Laura Bronner

Craig, Fred W. S. 1977. British Parliamentary Election Results, 1832–1885. London:Macmillan.

Derry, John W. 1966. Parliamentary Reform. London: Macmillan.Evans, Paul. 2002. Handbook of House of Commons Procedure. 3d ed. London: Vacher

Dod.Firth, David, and Arthur Spirling. 2003. “Divisions of the United Kingdom House of

Commons, from 1992 to 2003 and Beyond.” Working Paper, Nuffield College,University of Oxford.

Freeman, John R., and Dennis P. Quinn. 2012. “The Economic Origins of DemocracyReconsidered.” American Political Science Review 106 (1): 58–80.

Guttsman, W. L. 1963. The British Political Elite. London: MacGibbon & Kee.Hall, Catherine, Keith McClelland, and Jane Rendall. 2000. Defining the Victorian

Nation: Class, Race, Gender and the British Reform Act of 1867. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

HC Deb 31 May 1866, vol 183, col 1554.HC Deb 9 May 1867, vol 187, col 280.HC Deb 20 May 1867, vol 187, cols 788–813.HC Deb 15 July 1867, vol 188, col 1539.Heckelman, Jac C., and Keith Dougherty. 2013. “A Spatial Analysis of Delegate Voting

at the Constitutional Convention.” Journal of Economic History 73 (2): 407–44.Himmelfarb, Gertrude. 1966. “The Politics of Democracy: The English Reform Act of

1867.” Journal of British Studies 6 (1): 97–138.Leeman, Lucas, and Isabela Mares. 2011. “From ‘Open Secrets’ to the Secret Ballot: The

Economic and Political Determinants of Secret Ballot Reform.” Working paper,Columbia University.

Lizzeri, Alessandro, and Nicola Persico. 2004. “Why did the Elites Extend the Suffrage?Democracy and the Scope of Government, with an Application to Britain’s ‘Ageof Reform’.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 119 (2): 707–65.

Llavador, Humberto, and Robert J. Oxoby. 2005. “Partisan Competition, Growth, and theFranchise.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 120 (3): 1155–89.

Mair, Robert Henry. 1868. Debrett’s Illustrated House of Commons and the JudicialBench. London: Letts.

May, Thomas Erskine. 1855 (3d ed.). A Practical Treatise on the Law, Privileges,Proceedings, and Usage of Parliament. London: Butterworths.

McLean, Iain. 2001. Rational Choice and British Politics. Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.

Meltzer, Allan H., and Scott F. Richard. 1978. “Why Government Grows (and Grows) ina Democracy.” Public Interest 52: 111–18.

Moser, Scott, and Andrew Reeves. 2014. “Taking the Leap: Voting, Rhetoric, and theDeterminants of Electoral Reform.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 39: 467–502.

Przeworski, Adam. 2008. “Conquered or Granted? A History of Suffrage Extensions.”British Journal of Political Science 39 (2): 291–321.

Robinson, W. S. 1950. “Ecological Correlations and the Behavior of Individuals.” Ameri-can Sociological Review 15 (3): 351–57.

Schonhardt-Bailey, Cheryl. 1998. “Parties and Interests in the ‘Marriage of Iron andRye’.” British Journal of Political Science 28 (2): 291–332.

Property and Power 465

Schonhardt-Bailey, Cheryl. 2003. “Ideology, Party and Interests in the British Parliamentof 1841–47.” British Journal of Political Science 33 (4): 581–605.

Seymour, Charles. [1915] 1970. Electoral Reform in England and Wales: The Develop-ment and Operation of the Parliamentary Franchise, 1832–1885. Newton Abbot,UK: David & Charles.

Smith, F. B. 1966. The Making of the Second Reform Bill. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Spirling, Arthur, and Kevin Quinn. 2010. “Identifying Intraparty Voting Blocs in the UKHouse of Commons.” Journal of the American Statistical Association 105 (490):447–57.

Stenton, Michael. 1976. Who’s Who of British Members of Parliament, Vol. 1. 1832–1885: A Biographical Dictionary of the House of Commons Based on AnnualVolumes of Dod’s Parliamentary Companion and Other Sources. London:Harvester Press.

Stenton, Michael, and Stephen Lees. 1978. Who’sWho of British Members of Parliament,Vol. 2. 1886–1918: A Biographical Dictionary of the House of Commons Based onAnnual Volumes of Dod’s Parliamentary Companion and Other Sources. London:Harvester Press.

Thomas, J. A. 1925. “The House of Commons, 1832–1867: A Functional Analysis.”Economica 13: 49–61.

Walker, Brian Mercer. 1978. Parliamentary Election Results in Ireland, 1801–1922.Dublin: Royal Irish Academy.

Ziblatt, Daniel. 2008. “Does Landholding Inequality Block Democratization? A Test ofthe ‘Bread and Democracy’Thesis and the Case of Prussia.” World Politics 60 (4):610–41.

Supporting Information

Additional Supporting Information may be found in the online version ofthis article at the publisher’s website:

Table A4.1. The Impact of Separated Party-Mediated Material Interestson Democratic VoteTable A4.2. Robustness Check: Different Model Types Used to PredictPro-Democratic VoteTable A4.3. Control variables, and the inclusion of Ireland and ScotlandFigure A5. The distribution of loss margins of the amendment to intro-duce a secret ballot (Division 128, 12th July 1867) in 100 simulations ofthe vote if no Liberals were landowners

466 Laura Bronner