Elections and Party Organization in Victorian England

Abstract

Political parties play a central role in British politics and the main modern parties can trace their roots to the nineteenth century. Disraeli’s comment implies that parties have at least two characteristics — they are organizations, and they are based on the opinions of their supporters. Today they are also agencies of mobilization and politicization through which individuals and groups channel their political and policy preferences to collective ends. They are multi-level structures with three major elements — electors who vote for or support a particular party (the ‘party-in-the-electorate’, the organized opinion), the leadership of a party who form an administration when in government (the ‘party-ingovernment’) and the machinery that links these two elements (the ‘party organization’, the organizers of opinion).1 Voters identify with the national party, and vote for party candidates at general elections and the parties themselves are defined by differences on major issues. In 1832 electors voted for local candidates, locally selected, on predominantly local issues and the national or parliamentary parties were coalitions of MP’s that shifted from issue to issue. In the first case governments are defined by voters, in the second by MP’s.KeywordsVote BehaviourElectoral BehaviourParty OrganizationElectoral CommunityLocal PartyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.