191122 - The Political Economy of Suffrage Reform: The Great Reform Act of 1832

Seminar POPAR "The Political Economy of Suffrage Reform: The Great Reform Act of 1832" (PDF, 75Ko)

Friday 22 November 2019, 12.30 – 2.30 pm, Sciences Po, Salle du Conseil, 13 rue de l’Université, 75007 Paris

Prominent scholars have viewed the Great Reform Act as a concession made by incumbent elites in order to defuse a revolutionary threat. In this essay, we argue that the threat from below did not entail a significant risk of regime overthrow and was addressed by establishing professional police forces in all provincial towns and half the counties. Such forces had been stoutly opposed by the gentry since the Glorious Revolution, on the grounds that they would increase Crown power too much. To make professional police forces palatable to the middle class required first reforming both budgets and elections at all levels of governance (national, municipal and county), so as to ensure taxpayers that their representatives would control the finances of the new forces.

Speaker: Gary W. Cox, William Bennett Munro Professor of Political Science

 In addition to numerous articles in the areas of legislative and electoral politics, Gary W.Cox is author of The Efficient Secret (winner of the 1983 Samuel H Beer dissertation prize and the 2003 George H Hallett Award), co-author of Legislative Leviathan (winner of the 1993 Richard F Fenno Prize), author of Making Votes Count (winner of the 1998 Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award, the 1998 Luebbert Prize and the 2007 George H Hallett Award); and co-author of Setting the Agenda (winner of the 2006 Leon D. Epstein Book Award). His most recent book is Marketing Sovereign Promises (2016).  A former Guggenheim Fellow, Gary W.Cox was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1996 and the National Academy of Sciences in 2005

Discussant: Olivier Rozenberg, Sciences Po, CEE

Chair: Cyril Benoît, Sciences Po, CEE, CNRS

Compulsory registration - For the external people to Sciences Po: You will have to arrive 10 minutes before the beginning of the seminar and to provide you with your identity papers)