Saturday, March 15, 2014
Council (Omni Shoreham)
The challenges associated with many recent cases of democratization have helped to generate renewed interest in historical European passages to democracy. One tendency has been to break these extended democratization processes into episodes of partial democratization, and to stress the role of elites in offering self-preservative concessions. This is helpful, but we need to move beyond abstract elite calculation to a more profound understanding of the sort of political, social, and economic order they felt they were trying to sustain or regenerate. What did they feel was worth keeping, what was still solid enough for them to continue to build upon, and how did they shift in their understanding of democracy such that it could be reconciled with this? In the British case, which will be the focus of this paper, a pre-1832 Whig believed that reforming the worst abuses in the electoral system could reaffirm a fundamentally aristocratic polity based upon a mixed and balanced constitution. Both the 1832 Reform Act and the gradual decline of the monarchy changed the context for later elite reform struggles, compelling elites within different parties to adjust but not necessarily abandon their understanding of the social and institutional ground upon which they stood, and the role of democratic concessions in limiting its erosion. Through an exploration of the ideas that informed elite responses to democratizing pressures, and the interaction between structural shifts and elite interpretations, this paper will advance our understanding of how democratization actually comes about, both yesterday and today.
