Political Entrepreneurship, Institutional Innovation, and State Capacity: The Case of the 1847 Ten Hour Act in Britain

My paper makes use of the new institutional literature on political change and path dependence in order to examine the role that political entrepreneurship, institutional factors, and political coalition-building played in the passing of the 1847 Factory Act—a key social policy that enhanced the state’s capacity to investigate labor conditions and enforce a 10-hour workday via a centralized factory inspectorate. The argument proceeds through the analysis of three path-dependent sequences that led to the policy outcome: 1) the administrative conflict phase marked by intra-organizational conflicts among the inspectorate about rule enforcement; 2) the investigative-deliberative phase that produced a strategic alliance between select politicians and inspectors; 3) the political-legislative phase when new policy proposals and extra-political lobbying led to a compromise solution that partially reflected the different preferences of enlightened paternalists, civil servants, and Whig political elites. My case study reveals that the building of state capacity in times of uncertainty is a multidimensional process in which bureaucratic and political elites insulate themselves from pressures from below; make important concessions to workers; and re-legitimate state-society relations in novel and unexpected ways.