DOCSLIB.ORG

Competition and Communication

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Competition and Communication Competition and Communication The development of campaigning in Britain from the Second Reform Act to the First World War by Laura Bronner A thesis submitted to the Department of Government of the London School of Economics for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Declaration I certify that the thesis I have presented for examination for the PhD degree of the London School of Economics and Political Science is solely my own work, with the exception of the data collection for Chapters 3 and 4, and Chapter 3 itself, both of which were a collaboration with Daniel Ziblatt. On the data collection, Daniel Ziblatt provided the funding for the digitization of the election addresses, while I managed and validated the process. On Chapter 3, I am solely responsible for the analysis and the writing, though Daniel Ziblatt did contribute to earlier iterations of this paper. The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. Quotation from it is permitted, provided that full acknowledgement is made. This thesis may not be reproduced without my prior written consent. I warrant that this authorisation does not, to the best of my belief, infringe the rights of any third party. I declare that my thesis consists of 37,551 words. 3 For my loved ones Thank you for putting up with me 4 Acknowledgments I am extremely grateful for the help of my supervisor, Cheryl Schonhardt- Bailey, and my advisor, Ben Lauderdale. Cheryl’s command of the literature, her scholarly intuition for framing and her sense for seeking out puzzles have made this a vastly better and more interesting piece of work than it would otherwise have been. Ben’s expertise, his unfailing methodological guidance and his generosity with his code – as well as his appreciation for beautiful plots – have made this thesis more rigorous, and much prettier (despite my eventual abandonment of base R for ggplot2). Though I had no way of knowing this when I started, Cheryl and Ben proved a very complementary pair of advisers, and this thesis benefited enormously from their help and support. I owe a huge debt to Daniel Ziblatt. This thesis would have been entirely different, and a lot worse, without his magnanimity in offering to work withmeon the data collection project underlying Chapters 3 and 4; his wide-ranging curiosity and genuine excitement about historical work have been a huge inspiration and great help. I thank Petra Schleiter, who started me off on this path when she introduced me to comparative political institutions in my first year at Oxford. It is thanks to her contagious enthusiasm for the subject that I got hooked, and thanks to her encouragement and astute guidance that I felt confident enough to try this whole scholarship thing in the first place. Special thanks also goto Arthur Spirling, who generously hosted me at both Harvard and NYU and thereby literally changed my life. His work has obviously been an inspiration to me, but his advice and his perspective have been even more important. The friends I made during this process not only materially improved the thesis 5 itself, but also made me a vastly happier person while writing it. I thank Øyvind, for frequently re-igniting my interest in my own work with his unrelenting passion, across institutions and countries. I thank Jack, for having all the same crises one step ahead of me, so I could see that they do, in fact, have an end. I thank Dave, for doing work that was sufficiently different from mine that we rarely talked about it, and for instead supplying decompression and snark at the pub at the end of both long and short days at LSE. This process would have been a far bleaker one without the kindness, humor, and alcohol the three of you provided. For advice, both professional and personal, and a lot of fun over coffee, food, and drinks, I thank Judith, Pablo, Nick, Fabian, David and Maud. I can safely say that when I set out on this PhD journey, I had no idea what I was in for. While there were a lot of good times – many involving the people mentioned above – there were also some extremely tough ones, and my greatest thanks go to the people that helped me push past those. I thank my parents, who didn’t always understand what I was trying to explain, but were always there to help, disregarding distance and time difference, and regardless of whether the crisis was work-related or not. I thank Lenny, who did understand what I was doing, though perhaps not always why. Your coding support was greatly appreciated; your moral support was invaluable. And I am enormously indebted to Drew, whose seemingly inexhaustible encouragement, help, patience, and love made finishing this thesis possible, and who was there for me unfailingly despite finishing his own before he was comfortable showing me his worst self. I couldn’t have done this without you. 6 Abstract This thesis traces the development of political competition in Britain by exploring the relationship between politicians and their constituents; in particular, it exam- ines the decisions rank-and-file politicians made when choosing how to run election campaigns. Between the pre-Reform period and the First World War, three major developments changed campaigning. Firstly, campaigning shifted from clientelis- tic to programmatic. Secondly, competition became polarized along an economic left-right dimension. And thirdly, elections became a venue for holding incum- bents accountable by means of retrospective voting. Together, these three changes transformed political competition in Britain. Each of the three papers in this dissertation addresses one of these changes. The first paper shows how the Second Reform Act caused a shift in politicians’ preferences away from clientelistic campaigning. It uses a difference-in-differences strategy to estimate the causal impact enfranchisement had on how MPs spoke in the House of Commons, finding that reform increased the extent to which MPs – particularly Liberals – discussed corruption. It argues that this increase raised the salience of corruption so much that previously abstaining or opposing Liberals came around and passed the Ballot Act in 1872. The second and third papers get more directly at the relationship between politicians and constituents by introducing a new dataset of all ‘election addresses’ issued by all parliamentary candidates in the six elections between 1892 and 1910, which provide, for each candidate, a comparable text advertising their political positions and personal qualities. The second paper, joint work with Daniel Zi- 7 blatt, uses these manifestos to show how campaigning became concentrated on an economic left-right dimension, and increasingly polarized. It also addresses the long-running debate over whether the rise of Labour doomed the Liberal Party into third place, showing that while Labour did initially stake out a unique pro- grammatic identity, by 1910 the Liberals moved to occupy the same ideological space, positioning themselves as the natural party of progressivism going into World War I. Finally, the third paper shows the rise of retrospective accountability in cam- paigning. It uses a regression discontinuity design to show that the way candidates appealed to their constituents depended on their position: incumbent candidates’ campaign addresses are more positive than those of challengers, indicating that politicians appeal to their constituents on the basis of their record in govern- ment. I show that this effect developed around the turn of the century, andis particularly strong in those constituencies in which the Third Reform Act of 1884 enfranchised more people. Together, the papers capture these three distinct facets of the transformation of campaigning. By using quantitative text analysis to explore parliamentary speeches and campaign manifestos, I am able to examine how rank-and-file politi- cians spoke about – and to – their constituents, and how this changed. Focusing on rank-and-file politicians rather than party leaders, the thesis shows the impor- tance of the decisions made by backbench politicians in changing how they related to their voters. 8 Contents Declaration 2 Acknowledgments 5 Abstract 7 List of figures 14 List of tables 15 1 Introduction 16 1.1 British political development ..................... 20 1.2 Capturing political preferences .................... 24 1.3 Methods ................................ 29 1.3.1 Text analysis ......................... 29 1.3.2 Causal and descriptive inference . 32 1.4 The papers .............................. 34 1.5 Data contribution ........................... 37 1.5.1 Election addresses ...................... 37 1.5.2 The six elections. ....................... 42 1.5.3 Our dataset .......................... 44 1.6 Structure ............................... 50 2 Franchise extension and the Ballot: The effects of the Second Reform Act on parliamentary debate 51 9 2.1 Background .............................. 53 2.1.1 The Second Reform Act ................... 54 2.1.2 The Ballot bill ........................ 57 2.2 Data and Method ........................... 62 2.2.1 Data .............................. 62 2.2.2 Getting at corruption .................... 64 2.2.3 Identification strategy .................... 67 2.3 Results ................................. 72 2.3.1 Findings ............................ 72 2.3.2 Mechanism: changing party dynamics . 73 2.3.3 Alternative explanations ................... 79 2.4 Conclusion ............................... 87 3 The Rise of the Modern Election Campaign: The Peers, the People, and the Polarization of the British Party System 90 3.1 The decline of the Liberals; the rise of Labour . 95 3.2 Data .................................. 100 3.2.1 Campaign election addresses . 100 3.2.2 Other datasources . 101 3.3 Method ................................ 102 3.4 Results ................................. 104 3.4.1 Campaign dimensionality . 104 3.4.2 Validating the dimensions . 106 3.4.3 Polarization . 114 3.4.4 Replacement . 117 3.4.5 Robustness checks . 121 10 3.5 Conclusion ............................... 124 4 Candidates’ use of emotive language in campaigning 127 4.1 Strategic campaigning . 129 4.2 Data and Method .
Load more

Recommended publications
  • A Postmortem on the Midterm Elections CLE Materials Packet
    Democratic Distortions: A Postmortem on the Midterm Elections CLE Materials Packet Wednesday, November 14 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Democracy’s Deficits Samuel Issacharoff† Barely a quarter century after the collapse of the Soviet empire, democracy has entered an intense period of public scrutiny. The election of President Donald Trump and the Brexit vote are dramatic moments in a populist uprising against the post- war political consensus of liberal rule. But they are also signposts in a process long in the making, yet perhaps not fully appreciated until the intense electoral upheavals of recent years. The current moment is defined by distrust of the institutional order of democracy and, more fundamentally, of the idea that there is a tomorrow and that the losers of today may unseat the victors in a new round of electoral challenge. At issue across the nuances of the national settings is a deep challenge to the core claim of democracy to be the superior form of political organization of civilized peoples. The current democratic malaise is rooted not so much in the outcome of any particular election but in four central institutional challenges, each one a compro- mise of how democracy was consolidated over the past few centuries. The four are: first, the accelerated decline of political parties and other institutional forms of pop- ular engagement; second, the paralysis of the legislative branches; third, the loss of a sense of social cohesion; and fourth, the decline in state competence. While there are no doubt other candidates for inducing anxiety over the state of democracy, these four have a particular salience in theories of democratic superiority that make their decline or loss a matter of grave concern.
    [Show full text]
  • History of Woman Suffrage Vol.V
    History of Woman Suffrage Vol.V By Elizabeth Cady Stanton History of Woman Suffrage Vol.V CHAPTER XLVI WISCONSIN. Progressive Legislation—The Rights of Married Women—The Constitution Shows Four Classes Having the Right to Vote—Woman Suffrage Agitation—C. L. Sholes' Minority Report, —Judge David Noggle and J. T. Mills' Minority Report, —State Association Formed, —Milwaukee Convention—Dr. Laura Ross—Hearing Before the Legislature— Convention in Janesville, —State University—Elizabeth R. Wentworth—Suffrage Amendment, , '81, '82—Rev. Olympia Brown, Racine, —Madame Anneke—Judge Ryan— Three Days' Convention at Racine, —Eveleen L. Mason—Dr. Sarah Munro—Rev. Dr. Corwin—Lavinia Goodell, Lawyer—Angie King—Kate Kane. For this digest of facts in regard to the progress of woman in Wisconsin we are indebted to Dr. Laura Ross Wolcott, who was probably the first woman to practice medicine in a Western State. She was in Philadelphia during all the contest about the admission of women to hospitals and mixed classes, maintained her dignity and self-respect in the midst of most aggravating persecutions, and was graduated with high honors in from the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, of which Ann Preston, M. D., was professor for nineteen years, six years dean of the faculty, and four years member of the board of incorporators. After graduation Laura Ross spent two years in study abroad, and, returning, commenced practice in Milwaukee, where she has been ever since. By an act of Congress approved May , , Wisconsin was admitted to the Union. Its diversity of soil and timber, the healthfulness of its climate and the purity of its waters, attracted people from the New England and Middle States, who brought with them fixed notions as to moral conduct and political action, and no little repugnance to many of the features of the old common law.
    [Show full text]
  • The Descendants of John Pease 1
    The Descendants of John Pease 1 John Pease John married someone. He had three children: Edward, Richard and John. Edward Pease, son of John Pease, was born in 1515. Basic notes: He lived at Great Stambridge, Essex. From the records of Great Stambridge. 1494/5 Essex Record office, Biography Pease. The Pease Family, Essex, York, Durham, 10 Henry VII - 35 Victoria. 1872. Joseph Forbe and Charles Pease. John Pease. Defendant in a plea touching lands in the County of Essex 10 Henry VII, 1494/5. Issue:- Edward Pease of Fishlake, Yorkshire. Richard Pease of Mash, Stanbridge Essex. John Pease married Juliana, seized of divers lands etc. Essex. Temp Henry VIII & Elizabeth. He lived at Fishlake, Yorkshire. Edward married someone. He had six children: William, Thomas, Richard, Robert, George and Arthur. William Pease was born in 1530 in Fishlake, Yorkshire and died on 10 Mar 1597 in Fishlake, Yorkshire. William married Margaret in 1561. Margaret was buried on 25 Oct 1565 in Fishlake, Yorkshire. They had two children: Sibilla and William. Sibilla Pease was born on 4 Sep 1562 in Fishlake, Yorkshire. Basic notes: She was baptised on 12 Oct 1562. Sibilla married Edward Eccles. William Pease was buried on 25 Apr 1586. Basic notes: He was baptised on 29 May 1565. William next married Alicia Clyff on 25 Nov 1565 in Fishlake, Yorkshire. Alicia was buried on 19 May 1601. They had one daughter: Maria. Maria Pease Thomas Pease Richard Pease Richard married Elizabeth Pearson. Robert Pease George Pease George married Susanna ?. They had six children: Robert, Nicholas, Elizabeth, Alicia, Francis and Thomas.
    [Show full text]
  • APPENDIX I the Carlton Club Meeting, 19 October 1922
    APPENDIX I The Carlton Club Meeting, 19 October 1922 This appendix lists the vote at the Carlton Club Meeting of all Conservative M.P.s It is based on a list in the Austen Chamber­ lain Papers (AC/33/2/92), and has been checked against public statements by the M.P.s of their votes at the meeting. In two cases the public statements disagreed with Chamberlain's list. They were Sir R. Greene (Hackney North) and C. Erskine-Bolst (Hackney South). Chamberlaine's list said that Greene supported the Coalition, while Erskine-Bolst opposed it. The two men indicated that they had the opposite opinion, and their votes may have been transposed in Chamberlain's list. The appendix gives information on the attitude of Conserva­ tive M.P.s towards the Coalition before the Carlton Club Meet­ ing, and it also lists some M.P.s who were present but who according to Chamberlain did not vote. R. R. James, using a different source, published a list of the M.P.s voting at the Carlton Club (Memoirs Of A Conservative, 130-3). He gave the total vote as 185 opponents of the Coalition, and 88 supporters, and he lists 184 opponents of the Coalition. M.P.s who were listed differently from Chamberlain's accounting were: H. C. Brown (Chamberlain, anti; James, absent) C. Carew (Chamberlain, absent; James, pro) G. L. Palmer (Chamberlain, absent; James, anti) H. Ratcliffe (Chamberlain, absent; James, pro) 222 THE FALL OF LLOYD GEORGE N. Raw (Chamberlain, absent; James, anti) R. G. Sharman-Crawford (Chamberlain, anti; James, absent) R.
    [Show full text]
  • Download Thesis
    This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Aspects of British Electoral Politics 1867-1880 Bennett, David Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 25. Sep. 2021 Aspects of British Electoral Politics 1867-1880 by David C Bennett Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History, School of Arts and Humanities King’s College London, University of London March, 2014 © David C Bennett, 2014 1 Abstract This dissertation examines the development of electoral politics in Great Britain between 1868 and 1880.
    [Show full text]
  • December 2014 English Bridge 53 Phil Palmer and Jenny Flood
    CCOOUUNNTTYY NNEEWWSS You will find your County’s ‘Local Results’ (if submitted) and obituaries (in our ‘In Memoriam’ column) in the online magazine (page 72 onwards). These pages are also available as a stand- alone pdf in the English Bridge Section of the website and at www.ebu.co.uk/ click documents/magazine/county-extra.pdf . We would also encourage you to visit your County link website for up-to-date news and results. The websites are given in each county report. Henry Lockwood, Matthew Johnson, Phillip Crout and Paul Avon Russell were 7th in the Essex & Herts One-Day Green-pointed www.avoncba.org.uk Teams. At the Junior Teach-in, Liam Fegarty finished 4th in AT the West of England Congress Mike the Friday Pairs. Huggins – Irene Robinson were 4th in the In the Premier League Division 1, Fegarty, Curtis, Barden, Championship Pairs. In the Swiss Teams Sue Mestel, Kendrick, Milman were lying 4th after four out of O’Hara – Nelson Stephens were 5th, and seven days of play. Fegarty, Curtis, Kendrick, Milman also Robert Covill, Mike Huggins, Irene Robinson reached the final of Crockfords. and Jack Terry were 6th. Mike Huggins – Diary dates: Feb 7, Garden Cities Qualifier. Feb 22, County Irene Robinson also had a good result in the Montenegro Individual Final. Mar 7-8, East Anglian Bridge Weekend. Mar Congress heat of the British Sim Pairs, finishing 2nd. Jan 21, Novice Pairs Tournament. Mar 22, County Pairs Final. Apr Duncan – David Jones finished third in the Swiss Pairs. 26, County Swiss Pairs. In the Western Leagu e match versus Dorset, the Avon A team won 18-2 but the B and C teams both lost.
    [Show full text]
  • Download Complete Issue
    THE JOURNAL of the UNITED REFORMED CHURCH HISTORY SOCIETY (incorporating the Congregational Historical Society, founded 1899, and the Presbyterian Historical Society of England, founded 1913) EDITORS: Revd. Dr. R. BUICK KNOX, M.A., B.D., and Dr. CLYDE BINFIELD, M.A. VOL. 2. NO.7. APRIL 1981 CONTENTS Editorial and Notes ... 203 Asquith: The Formation of a Prime Minister byClydeBinjield, M.A., Ph.D. 204 Puritan versus Separatist: A New Letter by Michael E. Moody, Ph.D. 243 Reviews by Anthony Fletcher, Clyde Binjield 245 Editorial and Notes The length of "Asquith: The Formation of a Prime Minister", of which a condensed version was delivered as the Society's Annual Lecture in May 1980, is not intended to set a precedent, neither is it entirely a symptom of editorial self­ indulgence. It assembles material, not previously displayed in this way, illustrating the context of a major politician - the Asquith hinterland. This context has been less ignored than discounted, hence its consideration in these pages. The Society's third Summer School was held at Bristol Baptist College from the 12th to 14th September 1980. It was outstandingly successful. Major papers by Dr. Nuttall and Dr. Orchard were balanced by sectional papers whose subjects ranged from Essex suburban Congregationalism to the Presbyterian Church in England before 1876, from William Jay of Bath to the Rod borough Connexion. Bristol, its city, chapels and Baptist college, was expounded by Mr. Grant, Mr. Moon and Mr. Stell, and there were expeditions on foot into Bristol al}d by motor car into Bath. Notes: The List and Index Society are to publish in 1981 Edwin Welch's catalogue of the Cheshunt College archives.
    [Show full text]
  • William Ewart Gladstone
    For the study of Liberal, SDP and Issue 75 / Summer 2012 / £6.00 Liberal Democrat history Journal of LiberalHI ST O R Y The making of ‘The People’s William’ Richard A. Gaunt William Ewart Gladstone A bicentary perspective Chris Wrigley The making of ‘The People’s William’ David Dutton The 1936 Preston by-election Coalition tensions Michael James John Sutton Nettlefold, Liberalism and the early town planning movement Ian Ivatt Liberal Party fortunes in the Isle of Wight 1900–1910 Liberal Democrat History Group ‘This new volume, taking a long view from the later seventeenth century to the Cameron-Clegg coalition of today, is a collective enterprise by many hands … This is an excellent book.’ Kenneth O. Morgan, Cercles ‘I had not expected to enjoy this book as much as I did, or to learn as much from it.’ William Wallace, Lib Dem Voice ‘The editors and their fourteen authors deserve congratulation for producing a readable one-volume history of Liberal politics in Britain that is both erudite but perfectly accessible to any reader interested in the subject.’ Mark Smulian, Liberator Written by academics and experts, drawing on the most recent scholarly research, Peace, Reform and Liberation is the most comprehensive and most up-to-date guide to the story of those who called themselves Liberals, what inspired them and what they achieved over the last 300 years and more. An essential source for anyone interested in the contribution of Liberals and Liberalism to British politics. Available at a special discounted rate for Journal of Liberal History subscribers: £24 instead of the normal £30.
    [Show full text]
  • Democracy's Deficits
    Democracy’s Deficits Samuel Issacharoff† Barely a quarter century after the collapse of the Soviet empire, democracy has entered an intense period of public scrutiny. The election of President Donald Trump and the Brexit vote are dramatic moments in a populist uprising against the post- war political consensus of liberal rule. But they are also signposts in a process long in the making, yet perhaps not fully appreciated until the intense electoral upheavals of recent years. The current moment is defined by distrust of the institutional order of democracy and, more fundamentally, of the idea that there is a tomorrow and that the losers of today may unseat the victors in a new round of electoral challenge. At issue across the nuances of the national settings is a deep challenge to the core claim of democracy to be the superior form of political organization of civilized peoples. The current democratic malaise is rooted not so much in the outcome of any particular election but in four central institutional challenges, each one a compro- mise of how democracy was consolidated over the past few centuries. The four are: first, the accelerated decline of political parties and other institutional forms of pop- ular engagement; second, the paralysis of the legislative branches; third, the loss of a sense of social cohesion; and fourth, the decline in state competence. While there are no doubt other candidates for inducing anxiety over the state of democracy, these four have a particular salience in theories of democratic superiority that make their decline or loss a matter of grave concern.
    [Show full text]
  • Aspects of British Electoral Politics 1867-1880
    This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Aspects of British Electoral Politics 1867-1880 Bennett, David Christopher Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to: Share: to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 06. Nov. 2017 Aspects of British Electoral Politics 1867-1880 by David C Bennett Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History, School of Arts and Humanities King’s College London, University of London March, 2014 © David C Bennett, 2014 1 Abstract This dissertation examines the development of electoral politics in Great Britain between 1868 and 1880.
    [Show full text]