Tilly Parlamentarization

Parliamentarization of Popular Contention in Great Britain, 1758-1834
Author(s): Charles Tilly

Source: Theory and Society, Vol. 26, No. 2/3, Special Double Issue on New Directions in
Formalization and Historical Analysis (Apr. - Jun., 1997), pp. 245-273
Published by: Springer
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Parliamentarization of popular contention in Great
Britain, 1758-1834
CHARLES TILLY
Columbia University
During his trip to Manchester in July 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville

jotted in his carnetde routea note on politicalcentralization:
There is a great deal of centralisationin England;but of what sort? Legis-
lativeand not administrative;governmentalratherthanadministrative; but as
with us it sometimesextends down to very small,pueriledetails.The mania
for regimentation,whichis not a Frenchmania,but one of men and of power,
is found here as elsewhere.But it can only have a single,passingeffect, and
can only very imperfectlyachieveits object.That is because the centralising
poweris in the handsof the legislature,not of the executive.l
Three yearspast the ReformAct of 1832, Tocquevillesaw clearlyhow

much the United Kingdom's political life swirled not around the
government'sadministrativeoffices but around parliament,and in-
creasinglyaround the House of Commons. He remarkedthat great
magnatesand the crownvied vigorouslyfor power,but ultimatelycon-
ceded authorityto the nationally-electedassembly.He did not recog-
nize, however,how much more centralto Britishpublic life parliament
had become duringthe previoushalf-century.
From the time of Magna Cartaand even before, regularlyconstituted

assembliesof notableshad playedsignificantpartsin Englishpolitics at
local, regional,and nationalscales.As Englishinfluenceextendedover
Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, the English parliament and parallel
bodies assumedprominencein those regions'politicallives as well. By
comparisonwith France or Russia, the British Isles had accumulated
long, broad experiencewith deliberativebodies representinglocal and
regionalpowerholders,if not the generalpopulation.
Nevertheless, Great Britain (England,Wales, and Scotland) had also

gone through extended periods of executive centralization.Britain's
Theory and Society 26: 245-273, 1997.

? 1997 KluwerAcademic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

246
seventeenth-centurycivil wars and revolutions pivoted on relations

between a power-seekingcrown and a resistantparliament,but ended
with plenty of executivepower in royal hands. During the eighteenth
century,moreover,Hanoveriankingsused theirpatronageeffectivelyin
limitingparliament'sautonomy.The aristocraticpolitics that consoli-
dated duringthe eighteenthcenturyleft little room for popular inter-
vention at a national scale. Indeed, as Edmund Burke argued strenu-
ously, the eighteenth-centuryparliamentoperated as an agent of vir-
tual,not direct,representation;authoritiesstronglyresistedany sugges-
tion that membersof parliamentspoke for their constituencies,much
less that constituenciescould instruct their votes.2 They prosecuted,
moreover,efforts to organize assemblies, associations, or campaigns
they deemed to usurp parliament'sexclusive right to speak for the
nation. A hypothetical predecessor of Tocqueville who journeyed
throughEnglandfifty years earlierwould have noticed manymore po-
liticalresemblancesto Old RegimeFrancethanTocquevillesaw.
Between the 1780s and the 1830s, British politics parliamentarized

dramatically.Parliamentarizationhad three major components: 1)
increase in the central government'sinfluence over decisions and
resources within Great Britain as a whole; 2) within central govern-
ment, relative and absolute increase of parliament'scommand over
decisions and resources;3) in political life outside the centralgovern-
ment, increasingcentralityof parliamentand its membersto struggles
for power.Britishparliamentarization mattersboth for itself and for its
effects. For itself, Britishexperienceof parliamentarization constitutes
an early,visible, and very influentialmodel of a process that eventually
shaped governmentsthroughout the western world and in western
colonies as well. In its effects, it defined an importantpossible path to
democraticgovernment- to broad, relativelyequal citizenshipafford-
ing citizens considerableprotectionfrom arbitrarystate action as well
as significantcollective control over the personnel and decisions of
government.3Possible,not even probable:many oligarchiesand tyran-
nies have coexisted with supine or venal parliaments;but as compared
with their absence the presence of powerfulrepresentativeinstitutions
facilitatespopularstrugglefor directvoice at a nationalscale.
Farfrom seekingto documentor explainBritishparliamentarization in

general,this articletakesup only one portion of the massiveprocess.It
shows how the increasingcentralityof parliamentin national affairs
affected popular politics, especially its discontinuous forms: not so
much the day-to-dayplay of favors, preferment,discussion, and cul-

247
tural expression as the more intermittent,public, collective voicing of

demands,complaints,enmities,solidarities,and humblepetitions.Par-
liament'sgreatexpansionof powers duringthe Frenchwars of 1792 to
1815 durablyshapedthe forms and objectsof popularcontention.
Figure 1 suggestswhat a long-termobserver of British politics could

have seen happeningbetween 1758 and 1834, the year before Tocque-
ville's own observation.The graph comes from an inventoryof occa-
sions on which people outside the governmentmade collective claims
on other people, including agents or segments of the government,
duringscatteredyears from 1758 through 1820 in SoutheasternEng-
land and all yearsfrom 1828 through1834 in GreatBritainas a whole;
separate results for SoutheasternEngland from 1828 to 1834 show
essentiallythe same trend.It displaysa massiveif irregularincreasein
the proportionof all such claims takingas their objects either parlia-
ment as a whole or individualmembersof parliament.The shareof the
two combined rose from a typical 5 or 10 percentbefore the 1790s to
over 40 percent in the 1830s. Britain experienced a massive parlia-
mentarizationof popularpolitics - a greatincreasein the centralityof
parliament,especially the elected House of Commons, over a wide
rangeof issues and actors.
Contentious Gatherings, 1758-1834

50
<n "-V
o *?~~-~-~~~~~~~~Individual
40- Members of
'_Q' Parliament
0_
- 30-
c
( -.
a_ 20-
-
co
10-
o
Figure 1. Objects of claims.

248
By collective claim-making (synonym: contention) I mean the public,

joint expression by word and deed of desires that concrete other
parties act in certain ways, ways that would affect their interests.
In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Great Britain, the relevant
"desires" ranged in heat from humble petitions or pledges of alle-
giance to boisterous demands or complaints backed by violent attacks.
Participants, observers, and critics gave the various interactions in
question such names as Rough Music, turnout, strike, riot, disturbance,
demonstration, meeting, procession, deputation, and march. Popular
contention is deeply cultural, in the sense that it relies on and trans-
forms shared understandings concerning what forms and ends of
action are desirable, feasible, and efficacious; collective learning and
memory strongly limit the claims that people make, and how they make
them.
Whatever its labels and forms, contention pivoted (as it still pivots)
on rights and justice, often on conflicting definitions of rights and
justice. Contention links doubly with rights, first because rights
consist of claims whose enforcement third parties regularly sup-
port, second because collective claim-making commonly asserts
or defends rights against challenges to them. Although at a given
moment we may only notice one actor making claims, over the longer
run contention always involves rights-tinged relations among political
actors.
British parliamentarizationof contention had four overlapping elements,

increases in the frequency with which:
1. parliamentbecamethe objectof ordinarypeople'scontention;

2. parliamentaryaction incited ordinarypeople's claim-making,whether
directedto parliamentor elsewhere;
3. issues currentlybeing consideredby parliamentbecame more centralto
popularcontention;
4. connections with parliamentbecame more central in a wide range of
claim-making.
This article documents the parliamentarization of British popular con-

tention between the 1750s and 1830s, offers tentative explanations for
the momentous bundle of changes, then goes on to sketch the signifi-
cance of parliamentarization for political life as a whole.
Figure 2 summarizes what happens during an idealized course of par-

liamentarization: popular politics undergoes a net shift from a local

249
National
Natin( Royalty, Nobility, Parliament

Great Patrons
SCALE:
Fellow Members
Local Powerholders of Communities
Local
Indirect
ndirect Direct
FORMOF REPRESENTATION
Figure 2. Parliamentarization as changing objects of claims.
toward a national scale, while representationof ordinarypeople be-

comes more direct. Instead of orientingtheir claims chiefly to fellow
members of local communities or local powerholders(and, through
local powerholders,to great patrons including the nobility and the
crown) ordinarypeople increasinglyband togetherfor claims on par-
liament.Meanwhile,parliamentacts increasinglyin response to mobi-
lized segments of the general population. In the process, landlords,
priests, and other local powerholders lose some of their influence
as brokers and mediators, while established national patron-client
chainsbecome less effective.Politicalentrepreneurswho can organize
national constituencies - party leaders, social-movement activists,
reformjournalists,and others - gain significantadvantagesfor their
causes.
Such a scheme describes major political trends not just in England,

GreatBritain,or the United Kingdombut over a wide rangeof western
statesfrom the eighteenthto twentiethcenturies.4Nationalrepresenta-
tive institutionsgenerallybecame more prominentas political actors
and thereforeas objects of popularclaims.Direct rule by agentsof the
central state displaced indirect rule through relatively autonomous
regional and local powerholders.Meaningful citizenship developed:
enforceable rights and obligations between state agents and whole
categories of people defined chiefly by their relationshipto the state.
Broadening of citizenship included extensions to (some) ordinary

250
people of claims on parliamentaryinstitutions- for example,rightsto

vote and to run for election - ruling classes had previously enjoyed
alone.
As a result of these changes,democracy- relativelybroad and equal

citizenshipcoupled with binding consultationof citizens in regardto
state personnel and policy as well as with protection of citizens from
arbitrarystate action - likewise became possible at a national scale.
(Possible,not necessary:the installationof direct rule and citizenship
also made new varieties of tyrannypossible.) These changes,in turn,
promotedthe expansionof paraparliamentary politics:politicalparties,
citizens'associations,pressuregroups, and social movements.Visibly,
parliamentarizationplayed a crucial part in the creation of mass
national politics such as many twentieth-centurystates have known,
such as no large states knew before the nineteenthcentury.Although
the path, context, and consequences of parliamentarizationdiffered
substantiallyfrom one country to another, popular contention and
legislativeactivityacquiredcloser bonds throughmost of Europe and
areasof Europeansettlement.
In GreatBritain,parliamentarization alteredrelationsamonga number

of non-parliamentaryactors.It weakenedthe autonomyand power of
the crownand of greatlords, reduceddirectinvolvementof troops and
other repressiveforces in claim-making,and diminishedthe import-
ance of local dignitariesboth as objects of contention and as vehicles
for the relayingof claimsto higherauthorities.Surprisingly,however,it
also fortifiedthe positions of local assembliessuch as wardmotesand
vestries, which became major bases for the mobilizationand expres-
sion of sharedclaims on parliament.Increasinglycontention centered
on the deliberateorganizationof meetings,demonstrations,and other
public manifestationsof political preferences;more and more, those
gatheringstransmittedcollective complaints,demands,proposals,and
expressionsof supportor disapprovalto parliamentby means of peti-
tions, resolutions,and publicity.All this activity,in its turn,augmented
the involvementand influenceof politicalentrepreneursat the national,
regional,and local levels in the coordinationof claim-making.
Why did it happen?So far as I can tell, threemajorcausalstrandsinter-

twined to produce British parliamentarization.First, the rising scale
and cost of war - with other Europeanpowersin the Seven YearsWar,
with the Americansand then, far weightier,with Franceof the Revolu-
tion and Napoleon - expanded the power of parliament,which then

251
intervenedin a greatlyincreasedrangeof economic and politicalactiv-

ity. Second, increased capitalizationof industry and agriculture(the
latter acceleratedby wartimelabor and import shortages)augmented
the demandon both capitalistsand proletarianizingworkersfor politi-
cal representationby other means than establishedwebs of patronage.
Third,in the presence of a system that alreadymade parliamentthe
central locus of political decision-makingand that protected several
forms of speech, association, and public deliberation, innovations
withinthe forms of contentiondrivenby collectivelearningand politi-
cal entrepreneurshipthemselves tightened the connections between
parliamentaryaction and popular claim-makingby means of local
assemblies.The evidence for these causalinfluencesremainsmore elu-
sive than the documentationof changes in the forms and relationsof
claim-making,but it indicates that all three chains contributedto par-
liamentarization.
Whathappened
My centralbody of evidence comes from a catalogof 8,088 "contenti-

ous gatherings"(CGs) that occurred in SoutheasternEngland (Kent,
Middlesex, Surrey, or Sussex) during 13 years spread from 1758
through1820 and in GreatBritainas a whole duringthe 7 years from
1828 through 1834.5 A CG is an occasion on which a number of
people (in the instance,ten or more) outside the governmentgathered
in a publiclyaccessibleplace and made visible collectiveclaimsbearing
on the interestsof at least one person outside their own number.The
machine-readablecatalog contains truncated,edited textualtranscrip-
tions of such events reported in Gentleman'sMagazine,the Annual
Register,or the London Chroniclefor 1758, 1759, 1768, 1769, 1780,
and 1781; in those publicationsas well as Timesof London for 1789,
1795, 1801, 1807, 1811, 1819, and 1820; and in Gentleman'sMagazine,
Annual Register,Morning Chronicle, Times, Mirror of Parliament,
Hansard'sParliamentaryDebates or Votesand Proceedingsof Parlia-
ment for 1828-1834. We also scanned these sources over the first six
months of 1835 for retrospectivereports on 1834 and earlier years.
Although for purposes of comparisonmy group prepareda separate
chronologyof CGs for GreatBritainas a whole over the entire period
1758-1834 from a wide variety of historical works, and although I
have frequentlyconsulted archivalmaterial and historical works for
further detail and context, the enumeration analyzed here consists
exclusivelyof qualifyingeventsreportedin the periodicals.

252
Each time a bundle of reports drawn from our basic periodicals quali-
fied an event as a CG, my collaborators and I prepared a machine-
readable record containing these parts:
1. a general description of the event, one per CG, for a total of 8,088
records;
2. a descriptionof eachformation- each person or set of personsactingin

a distinguishablemanner- withineach CG (27,184 records);
3. a descriptionof each action - any participatingformations'smovement

or change with respect to the claims being made, includingnew utter-
ances, cheers, or displays of sentiments - within each CG (50,875
records);when two or more formationschangedaction simultaneously,
as in the outbreakof a fight, we transcribedtheir doings as separate
actionswithinthe sameaction-phase;
4. an identificationof each source(includingsources supplementaryto our

standardperiodicals)we consulted in preparingthe event for coding
(21,030 records);
5. an identificationof each locationin whichany partof the CG took place

(11,054 records);
6. an enumerationof additional names the sources gave any formation

(28,995);
7. an enumerationof individualsmentionedas membersof any formation

(26,318 records);
8. supplemantaryinformationon the geographicalor numericalsize of any

formation(18,413 records);
9. the detailed textsfrom which we drew summarydescriptionsof actions

(76,189 records);
10. commentson anyaspectof the CG or its description(5,450 records).
Except for straightforward items such as day of the week or county

name, these records do not contain codes in the usual sense of the
term; on the whole, we transcribed words from the texts or (when that
was not feasible) paraphrases of those words, tagging those para-
phrases so they would always stand out from direct quotations. Instead
of coding names given to formations into broad categories, for exam-
ple, we transcribed the actual terms used in our sources. Thus, the
transcription of each action includes the actor's name as reported in the
source, a verb characterizing the action, and (where an object ap-

253
peared)the name givenfor the action'sobject.For purposesof analysis,

however,I generallyregroup some of these elements into categories.
This article employs highly aggregatedcategories for actions, forma-
tions, and types of event.
My research group minimized inferences and syntheses concerning

events and their contexts, with the idea that it was better to leave the
machine-readablerecord as a reducedbut relativelyfaithfultranscrip-
tion of the texts, and to encourageusers of the records to make their
inferencesor syntheses systematicand self-conscious.We divided the
record into reported actions before, during,and after the CG itself -
that is, before any two participatingformationsbegan interactingon
that occasion, and after the last two stopped interacting.("Before"
actions included announcementsof meetings, advance planning,pre-
cipitatingevents, and the like, while "after"actions sometimes extend
to arrests,retaliation,and prosecution long after the central action.)
This reporttreats"during"actionsonly.
Splicingtogetherevidence from scatteredyearsfrom 1758 to 1820 for

SoutheastEnglandalone with a continuousseriesfor GreatBritainas a
whole from 1828 to 1834 might seem a perilous enterprise risking
spuriousindicationsof change.On average,events in the rest of Great
Britaindid differ in distributionfrom those in London and its hinter-
land, notablyin the largerpart playedby workers'strugglesin Britain's
industrialregions.But trendsinside and outside the Southeastranquite
parallelto each other, as we can establishdirectlyfor 1828-1834 and
by comparisonwith other sourcesfor earlieryears.6In the analysesthat
follow, I often lump together evidence from Great Britainas a whole
with that from the Southeastalone, but treat the Southeastseparately
wherethe riskof confusionappearssignificant.
Elsewhere, much of my inquiry concerns how and why the arrayof

means for claim-making - the available repertoires of contention -
altered so greatly betweei the 1750s and the 1830s.7 Table 1 gives
some indicationof the alteration'smagnitude.It presentsa roughclas-
sification of the occasions on which CGs occurred, consolidating
observations for Southeast England (1758-1820) and all of Great
Britain(1828-1834). The categoriesrun as follows:
Violent Gathering:attacks on poorhouses, affrays of hunters with game

wardens,public shamingof renegadeworkers,pullingdown of dishonored
or dangeroushouses, beatingsof informers,and other directapplicationsof
force.

254
Table1. Occasionsof contentiousgatherings,1758-1834
Year Vio- Other Elec- Author- Asso- Other Othera Total Num-
lent un- tion ized ciation public ber
gath- planned meet- assem- meet- meet-
ering gath- ing bly ing ing
ering
1758 85.7 0.0 0.0 14.3 0.0 0.0 0.0 100.0 14

1759 75.0 0.0 0.0 8.3 8.3 0.0 8.3 99.9 12
1768 69.4 21.6 0.9 1.8 0.9 1.8 3.6 100.0 111
1769 28.4 19.4 11.9 32.8 3.0 1.5 3.0 100.0 67
1780 74.3 2.9 0.0 20.0 0.0 1.4 1.4 100.0 70
1781 48.3 6.9 3.4 37.9 3.4 0.0 0.0 99.9 29
1789 15.4 19.2 3.8 51.9 5.8 1.9 1.9 99.9 52
1795 15.7 13.9 0.9 55.6 6.5 4.6 2.8 100.0 108
1801 25.5 36.4 0.0 16.4 10.9 9.1 1.8 100.1 55
1807 13.0 8.3 30.6 22.2 9.3 12.0 4.6 100.0 108
1811 16.7 10.4 2.1 31.3 18.8 18.8 2.1 100.2 48
1819 8.2 6.3 3.9 66.4 6.6 8.2 0.4 100.0 256
1820 8.0 15.3 4.4 40.1 8.8 13.9 9.5 100.0 274
1828 12.6 1.2 2.2 7.6 48.2 19.8 8.4 100.0 595
1829 19.8 6.4 0.8 20.1 22.9 24.6 5.3 99.9 641
1830 30.0 8.2 5.3 18.2 12.1 21.6 4.6 100.0 1164
1831 11.0 4.7 9.9 46.9 6.4 17.3 3.8 100.0 1645
1832 13.2 5.3 22.6 39.4 7.0 9.0 3.4 99.9 1111
1833 11.0 7.7 5.7 47.6 8.8 16.0 3.3 100.1 674
1834 8.3 4.0 5.9 42.0 6.4 26.9 6.5 100.0 1054
Total 16.4 6.6 8.2 34.9 11.9 17.3 4.6 99.9 8088
n 1327 532 663 2826 966 1399 375 8088
a
Celebration,delegation,parade,demonstration,strike,turnout.
Other UnplannedGathering:nonviolentmarketconflicts;responses to the

arrivals of dignitaries,heroes, or blackguards;popularly-initiatedpublic
celebrationsof major events and other instances of assembly and claim-
makingwithoutsubstantialpriorplanning.
Election Meeting: gatherings to endorse candidates, hear campaign

speeches,or attendelectionsthemselves.
Authorized Assembly: offering demands, complaints, or expressions of sup-

port with respect to others in regularly-constitutedbodies such as vestry
meetings,wardmotes (i.e.,ward and
assemblies), city councils.
Association Meeting: similar claim-making in official sessions of explicitly-

named associations, including religious, economic, and political organiza-
tions.

255
Other Public Meeting: previously-announceddiscussions of public issues

open to the generalcitizenry(or sometimesthe "respectableinhabitants")of
a locality.
Other: organizedcelebration,delegation,parade, demonstration,strike,or

turnout.
The rubricscover the main occasions on which ordinaryBritonsmade

collectiveclaimsduringthe eighteenthand nineteenthcenturies.
This way of presenting the evidence has significantlimits: the cat-

egories overlap, as in the small number of routine meetings forcibly
broken up by opponents, which appear here not as meetings but as
violent gatherings.The absence of breakdownsby location,group,and
issue hides the uneven selectivity by which changes occurred in dif-
ferentniches of the Britishpolity.The forms themselveswere evolving,
so that elements of what would become the demonstration- a perfor-
mance absent as such in the 1760s but fairly well delineated by the
1830s - actuallyshow up in elections, holiday celebrations,and turn-
outs of the 1760s. The catalog itself greatly underestimatesthe fre-
quency of turnoutsand strikes,therebyunderstatingworkers'overall
involvementin claim-making.All these features make the summary
quiteschematic.
Despite its limitations,the statisticalevidence establishesa substantial

decline in the proportion of violent gatheringsfrom roughly 1789
onward - from 75 percent or so of all events in the early years to an
order of 15 percent during the 1830s. Other unplanned gatherings
fluctuatedmore than violent incidents,with a weak, irregulardiminu-
tion after 1801. Collective acts of retaliation,resistance, and direct
physicalcontrol lost much of the prominencethey had assumedin the
1750s and 1760s. Except for a resurgenceof agrarianand industrial
conflict in 1829-1830 (especiallythe Swingrebellionof 1830), by the
end of the Napoleonic Ward in 1815 aggressive direct action had
recededto a minorshareof all CGs.
Nonviolent, indirect, annunciatory,and preplanned actions waxed

much more than violent events waned. Authorized assembliessuch as
wardmotes, elections, religious ceremonies, vestry meetings, and
scheduledgatheringsof ratepayersbecame mainstaysof claim-making
by 1769, and occupied even larger shares of all events from 1789
onward;they reacheda maximumtwo-thirdsof all CGs in 1819. Meet-

256
ings of named associations (e.g., Society of Supportersof the Bill of

Rights, Hampden Clubs, Catholic Association) grew more important
over time, althoughexcept for the CatholicEmancipationcampaignof
1828-1829 they never surpassedthe proportionsof local assemblies.
Other public meetings (often organizedby associations,but open to
the generalpublic)grew much more prominentafter 1800, and by the
1830s played a large part in claim-making.Meanwhile,elections fluc-
tuatedtrendlesslyas a functionof parliamentaryhistoryand royalsuc-
cessions. The crude figuresindicate a decisive shift from spur-of-the-
momentprovocationand violent retributiontowardplannedgatherings
aimedat declaringcollectivepositionswith regardto publicissues.
Table2 amplifiesthe picture.Using verybroadcategoriesand grouping

the twenty years into four periods, it presents the central verbs in all
25,239 actions having identifiable objects - a little over half of all
actions in the catalog. As Figure 1 indicates, the period 1758-1801
featuresslow, irregularparliamentarization,1801-1820 marksa great
acceleration of the trend, while the split between 1828-1831 and
1832-1834 roughlyrepresents"before"and "after"for passage of the
greatReformBill in June 1832.
The data in Table 2 show a marked decline in actions of attack and

control,includingboth physicaland verbalforms of abuse.Attack and
control declined in favor of pacific claim-making,deliberation,and
expressions of support. As the tabulationof occasions for CGs has
Table2. Frequenciesof majorverbcategories,1758-1834. Verbswith objectsonly
Category Percentof all verbs in period
1758- 1807- 1828- 1832- Total

1801 1820 1831 1834
Claim 8.8 7.6 21.9 14.1 17.2

Attack 26.0 9.1 15.3 14.9 15.5
Control 24.9 9.0 17.1 10.3 14.9
Cheer 7.0 16.5 14.6 16.4 14.7
Communicate 6.7 5.2 5.8 6.9 6.1
Deliberate 15.2 47.2 16.2 29.9 23.1
Enter 6.7 2.1 4.8 4.0 4.4
Other 4.8 3.4 4.3 3.5 4.0
Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

Numberof verbs 2021 2365 13333 7520 25239

257
already forecast, the major shift from attack and control occurred
between 1801 and 1820 - more precisely, during the later, more
intense years of the Napoleonic Wars.The minor resurgenceof attack
and control in 1828-1831 resultedchieflyfrom the Swingrebellionof
1830, duringwhich landless laborersmarched,burned,smashed agri-
culturalmachinery,and demandedwage rises throughmuch of South-
easternEngland.
Networksof contention
Rather than tracing fluctuationsin the forms of contentious action,

however,this reportfocuses on changingrelationsamong actors.Each
claim, indeed each transitiveaction, constituteda transactionthat we
can conveniently think of as cumulating into ties defining social
networks among claimants and objects of claims. In this sort of
network, relations to "self"have meaning, since workers often made
claims on other workers,local officials on other local officials,and so
on. Whatis more, relationsoften ranin both directions:assembledciti-
zens made claims on local authorities,but local authoritiesresponded
with claimsof theirown. Our evidence about claim-makingnetworksis
of course truncated,both a) because claim-makingoccurredoutside of
CGs and b) because we excludednot only legislativeassembliesas such
but also the few gatheringswe encounteredin which agentsof govern-
ment acting in their governmentalcapacity made the only reported
claims. Yet the catalog provides rich information about the claim-
makingnetworksconnectingordinarypeople to each other and to vari-
ous centersof power.
More precisely,we can conceive of each verb category as defining a

separatematrix,a somewhatdifferentset of relationsamongcategories
of actors.To make such an analysispractical,I aggregatedthe catalog's
roughly12,000 differentformationnamesinto 64 categoriesaccording
to my judgmentof formations'similarityin political position as of the
early nineteenthcentury.I then grouped the 64 categoriesinto larger
blocks accordingto the same sorts of judgment,tested those judgments
by means of blockmodelingwith Ronald Burt's STRUCTURE pro-
gram,revisedthe blocks in accordancewith blockmodelingresults,and
on a third round arrivedat the 15 blocks listed in Table 4: Church,
Constables, Crowd, Electors, Government, Inhabitants, Interest,
Locals, Officials, Other, Pariahs, Parliament, Repressive, Royalty,
Trade, and Workers.Blockmodelingtests the hypothesis that a given

258
partition of all actors divides them into structurallyequivalent sets:

variously-namedactors maintainingessentiallysimilarrelationsto all
other actors.8After two rounds of minor adjustmentsto category
boundaries,thathypothesisfits the dataextremelywell.
In the course of blockmodeling,for example,withinrepressiveforces I

discoveredan unexpectedsplit between the gamekeepers,militia,New
Police, sheriffs, and constables I have labeled Constables and the
troops and older police forces I have dubbed Repressive.I likewise
responded to discrepancies in the first models by realigning the
boundaries among Inhabitants(e.g., residents of ), Locals (e.g.,
churchwardens,clergy, beadles, mayors, parishioners,vestries), and
Officials (essentially London's deliberativebodies and high-ranking
royal officers outside the ministry).The analysesreportedhere, then,
concern 64 by 64 matricesover four distinctperiods and 1758-1834
as a whole. Earlier matricesdistinguishamong majorverb categories
and the 64 classes of formations,while later ones sum over all verbs
and aggregateinto 15 blocks of structurally-equivalent
actors.
Figures3 and 4 illustratewhat the matricesshow.For majorverb cat-

egories they displaythe more frequentrelations- those constitutingat
least 0.5 percent of relations defined by all verbs - during our first
(1758-1801) and last (1832-1834) periods.As Table2 indicates,verb
categoriesCLAIM,ATTACK,CONTROL,CHEER, and DELIBER-
ATE accountfor about 85 percentof all actions over the entireperiod
under study, althoughtheir proportionsshift markedly.The network
diagramsdocument large alterationsin the social relations of claim-
making.
In the case of CLAIM (depute, petition, appeal, address, and so on),

only the demandsof crowds(assemblage,crowd,mob, gang,multitude,
boys, someone, etc.) on other formations(notablysingle persons iden-
tified by name)reachedthe thresholdof 0.5 percentin 1758-1801. By
1832 to 1834, on the other hand, similarverbs connected churches,
interests,electors, and assembliesof inhabitantsto royaltyand, espe-
cially, to parliament, while assemblies of inhabitants also made
demandsof local officialsand other nearbyconstitutedbodies. Within
the zone of CLAIM,parliamentarization clearlyoccurred.
ATTACKbehaved differently.As we might now expect, many more

relativelyfrequent relations appeared in this zone during the period
1758-1801, but in both periodscrowdsstood at the centerof action.In

259
the earlier period, relations of crowds with repressiveforces, on the

one hand, and of crowds with "other"formationsran stronglyin both
directions. Crowds also attacked other crowds, and workers other
workers, with considerable frequency.The diagram for 1832-1834
shows a thinned set of relations,changedmost notablyin the addition
of attacksby pariahs (poachers, smugglers,Irish, prisoners,vagrants,
and so on) on constables, gamekeepers,militia, and similaragents of
law-enforcement.
A parallelthinningoccurredwith respect to CONTROL:apprehend,

arrest,donkey,oppose, defy,et cetera.Althoughthe mutualtie between
repressive and crowd formations that characterizedattacks likewise
appeared in actions of control for 1758-1801, "other"formations-
again, especially named individuals- figures centrally.Officials and
repressiveforces, furthermore,initiatedmanymore controllingactions
than they did attacks. By 1832-1834, only the triangle repressive-
crowd-othersurvivedamong the more frequentrelations,and none of
those relationswas reciprocal.By thattime, a sort of politicalsymbiosis
had emerged:crowds and others attackedrepressiveforces, who acted
to controlcrowdsand others.
(Relationsincluding0.5%or more of all claims in period) T = withinsame category
832-1834 1
[1758-1801
Church
Parliament- . Interest Locals
CLA1M
| Crowd .. Other
\yt
'
Electors /v
Royalty. Inhabitants
R?yayq Inhabitants
Repressive
Crowd------ - Other Crowd *- Other
Locals
Locals
[ATTACK| Workers \\ <
.ocals 1
Constables Repressive
Trade \
Electors
Pariahs
Government
*A Officials
Other \ Crowd - Other
{CONTROL Crowd Repressive
V
Workers / Repressive
Pariahs
Figure 3. Relationsdefined by "claim,""attack;'and "control,"1758-1801 and 1832-

1834.

260
(Relationsincluding0.5%or more of all claims in period)

Y = withinsame category
11758-1801
Government
Locals _ Officials
Electors-- Parliament
Crowd * Royalty Itrt I nbtLocals
Interest Inhabitants
Interest Electors
Interest Electors
\
Parliament
w/ A
I
IDELIBERATE Parliament - Trade
Royalty
Royalty iA ,
Inhabitants --- - Locals

Inhabitants- Locals
Government
Officials
Officials
Figure4. Relationsdefinedby "cheer"and "deliberate,"

1758-1801 and 1832-1834.
CHEER (applaud,approve,thank, and so on) moved from lesser to

greatercomplexity.In 1758-1801 Figure 4 shows us two small, sepa-
rate relations:locals cheer officials, crowds cheer royalty.In 1832-
1834 parliament(not only the body as a whole or one of its chambers
but also individualMPs) stood at the system'scenter,receivingexpres-
sions of support from electors, members of defined interests,assem-
blies of inhabitants,and governmentdignitaries- nobles, gentry,minis-
ters, and so on - acting outside their governmentalroles. In the later
period we also see governmentdignitariesand local bodies, but not
royalty,receivingfrequentexpressions of support from assemblies of
inhabitants.Broadlyspeaking,the evolutionsof CLAIMand CHEER
paralleledeach other, moving from relativelylocal and isolated rela-
tions to recurrentsituationsin which an interested group of citizens
(notably an assembly of inhabitants)gathered to send a message to
parliament.
Relationsdefinedby DELIBERATE(chair,address,meet, resolve,and

so on) changed less. Between 1758 and 1801, general meetings on
inhabitantsfrequentlyformed and addressedclaimsto the crown,high
officials,local bodies, or parliament.Local officers and bodies such as

261
vestries,wardmotes,mayors,and churchwardenslikewiseassembledto
address each other; by 1832-1834 their claims on parliamenthad
become frequentas well. Two thingshappened to deliberativeactions:
1) they popularized,drawingin a much wider rangeof citizens;2) they
came to center even more definitivelyon single-topicmeetings orga-
nized to convey a collective desire to some branch of government,
especiallyto parliament.
Summingover all verbs, Table 3 shows the effect of these changes on

connections defined by claim-making."Three-steprelation strength"
refers to the ratio of all a given formation'sexisting connections with
other formationsvia one, two, or threesteps, weightedfor proximity,to
all such connectionsthat could, in theory,exist.Thus in 1758-1801 the
formation"mob,"whichforms partof the largerblock CROWD,shows
a high relation strength of 0.378 - more than a third of its theo-
Table3. Proportionaterelation strengths for selected actors, 1758-1834. All cat-

egoriesof actorshavingrelationstrengthsof 0.025+ for the periodas a whole
Actor 1758- 1807- 1828- 1832- Total

1801 1820 1831 1834
Aldermen 0.041 0.068 0.031 0.054 0.025

Crowd 0.027 0.116 0.049 0.039 0.049
Electors 0.010 0.025 0.038 0.124 0.057
Freeholders 0.065 0.015 0.061 0.026 0.047
House of commons 0.039 0.031 0.008 0.074 0.031
Individualname 0.145 0.038 0.116 0.062 0.124
Inhabitants 0.151 0.449 0.271 0.317 0.296
Local officials 0.039 0.107 0.066 0.079 0.051
M.P.s 0.008 0.105 0.055 0.135 0.093
Ministers 0.023 0.025 0.027 0.059 0.035
Mob 0.378 0.080 0.140 0.114 0.176
Other 0.033 0.033 0.026 0.037 0.029
Parliament 0.067 0.112 0.212 0.200 0.193
Persons 0.094 0.033 0.062 0.026 0.045
Police 0.031 0.022 0.039 0.066 0.031
Protestants 0.002 0.004 0.025 0.014 0.027
Royalty 0.107 0.261 0.117 0.090 0.110
Society 0.010 0.031 0.031 0.057 0.029
Supporters 0.032 0.058 0.019 0.022 0.028
Trade 0.146 0.038 0.048 0.045 0.060
Troops 0.074 0.005 0.012 0.021 0.026
Workers 0.098 0.005 0.012 0.040 0.033
Proportionaterelationstrength:Ratio of existingthree-stepconnections,weightedfor
proximity,to all possiblethree-stepconnectionswith specifiedactor,range0-1.

262
reticallypossible one-, two- and three-steprelations.(Reminder:"mob"

is not my term,but the label my groupfound in our sources.)Over the
same period, the House of Commons shows a relation strength of
0.039, roughlya tenth of the mob's reading.Between 1758 and 1801,
claim-makingcrowdsconnected much more closely with other partici-
pantsin popularcontentionthandid the House of Commons.
As the diagramsof claims, attacks,control, cheers, and deliberations

might lead us to expect, the formations that lost significantrelation
strength over time include Mob, Trade, and Troops. Large gainers
include Inhabitants,MPs, and Parliament.During the eighteenth-cen-
tury years, the claim-makingsystem clustered around Freeholders,
Inhabitants,Mobs, Persons, Trades, Troops, Workers, Parliament,
Royalty,and named individuals.In the 1830s, the system centered on
Electors, Inhabitants,Local Officials, Police, MPs, and Parliament
itself, althoughnamed individuals,mobs, and royaltyhad not disap-
pearedfromthe scene.
Table4 indicatesthatformationsfell into largerstructurally-equivalent

blocks, with one significantchange. "Structuralequivalence"means
similarityof a given actor'sexternalrelationsto those of other actors;
whetherdirectlyconnected or not, strictlyequivalentactorshave iden-
tical relationswith others. Reliabilityin the table (correlationsamong
the outside relations of individualblock members expressed as per-
centage of the maximumcorrelationspossible) show impressivelyhigh
and stable values. From period to period members of the fifteen de-
signated blocks occupied nearly identical positions in the overall
networkof claim-making.The majorexceptionis the block called Par-
liament,composed of MP,Parliament,House of Commons,and House
of Lords.Unlike any other block, that block'sreliabilitydeclined from
93.9 to 89.5 to 73.4 to 51.6.
Whathappened?As Table5 records,the relativelyhomogeneousposi-

tion of parliament'selementsfell apartduringthe vast mobilizationfor
parliamentaryreformin 1830 and 1831, when concerted pressureon
the resistantHouse of Lords became reformers'central strategy.The
Lords managedto preventpassageof the ReformBill until June 1832,
when they finallybuckledunder the popularly-inspiredministerialand
royal threatto pack the House with new peers. The Lords' resistance
then isolated them from the country'sclaim-makingbusiness as never
as it developed in GreatBritain,included
before. Parliamentarization,
a majorshiftof powerand centralitywithinparliamentitself.

263
Table4. Reliabilities of three-step blockmodels for subject-objectrelations, 1758-

1834
Block 1758-1801 1807-1820 1828-1831 1832-1834 Total
Interest 98.9 99.6 98.2 98.5 99.3

Church 99.6 100.0 97.6 99.1 97.4
Workers 95.4 100.0 98.7 99.0 99.6
Trade 75.6 99.6 98.8 99.0 98.8
Crowd 85.2 96.3 92.7 95.9 91.9
Constables 99.3 100.0 97.8 99.1 99.4
Repressive 92.6 99.4 96.0 94.4 99.6
Locals 98.5 96.1 98.3 98.2 99.3
Officials 92.2 92.9 99.1 88.7 98.4
Electors 96.5 99.5 97.4 86.6 95.9
Government 97.6 98.6 99.2 97.8 98.6
Parliament 93.9 89.5 73.4 51.6 73.2
Pariahs 99.2 99.8 99.9 99.4 99.8
Inhabitantsa 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0
Royalty 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0
a
Singlecategory,therefore100%reliablyby definition."Other"excludedfrom block-
models.
Membersof blocks:
Interest:farmers,firm,friendlysociety,interest,procession,society; Church:catholics,
church,protestants;Workers:blackleg, labourers,weavers,workers;Trade:masters,
trade;Crowd:crowd,mob, numbers,persons, someone; Constables:constables,game-
keepers,militia,new police, sheriff;Repressive:police, troops; Locals:churchwardens,
clergy,committee,local officials, mayor,opponents, parishioners,party,select vestry,
supporters,wardmote;officials:aldermen,common council, judge, official; Electors:
deputation, electors, freeholders; Government:gentlemen, government, ministers,
nobles; Parliament:House of Commons, House of Lords, MP, parliament;Pariahs:
hunters,irish, poor, prisoners,wrongdoers;Inhabitants:inhabitants;Royalty:royalty;
Other:individualname,other.
Timing
In two distinctsenses of the word, parliamentarization

entailed a pro-
found alterationin contention'stiming.First, ordinarypeople moved
awayfrom forms of action that often accomplishedtheir objectivesin
the very course of claim-makingtowardother forms of action having
peculiarproperties:

264
a) they could almost never,even in principle,accomplishtheir proclaimed

objectivesin the shortrun;
b) they depended for effectiveness on extensive anticipation,cumulation,
and coordinationof efforts by multipleactors, often substantiallyremoved
fromeachotherin time and space.
Eighteenth-centuryshaming performances such as donkeying and

RoughMusic,for example,often drovena non-conformingworkerout
of his trade or broke up a disapprovedsexual liaison almost immedi-
ately.Althoughthey usuallysprangfrom informalconsultation,rumor,
and strategic planning by local organizers,furthermore,they drew
heavilyon establishedlocal routinesof assemblyand circulation.
Publicmeetings,authorizedassemblies,associationalmarches,demon-
strations,and similaractions,in contrast,displayedsharedsupportfor
demands, complaints,programs,and persons, but requiredintensive
prior organizing,involved skilled political entrepreneurs,frequently
depended on clandestinenegotiationwith police or other powerhold-
ers, and rarelyhad any hope of achievingtheir aims in a single action.
As paraparliamentaryactions, indeed, they conveyed news not so
much about what people were doing now as about what they mightdo
if parliamentdid not behave properly- how the electors among them
mightvote, how they mightblock governmentalaction,how they might
support the government'senemies' action, at the extreme how they
mighteven rise in rebellion.All this meantan enormousexpansionand
forwardmovementof contenders'time-horizons.
Timing's second alteration concerned relationshipsbetween claim-

makingand parliamentaryactivity.Duringthe nineteenthcenturyboth
1758-1834; based
Table5. Reliabilitiesof actor positions within block "Parliament,"
on three-steprelations
Actor SoutheastEngland Other Britain Total
1758- 1807- 1828- 1832- 1828- 1832- 1758-

1801 1820 1831 1834 1831 1834 1834
House of Lords 0.954 0.884 0.977 0.138 0.960 0.282 0.823

MP 0.972 0.993 0.845 0.971 0.923 0.947 0.917
Parliament 0.974 0.828 0.400 0.764 0.814 0.834 0.606
House of
Commons 0.922 0.977 0.725 0.830 0.825 0.866 0.896
Total 93.94 89.48 73.37 51.56 79.67 56.04 73.20

265
contentiousissues and the actualperiodicityof collectiveclaim-making

came to depend much more closely on rhythmsof parliamentaryelec-
tions and decision-making.Political entrepreneursbecame adept at
coordinatingpublic campaignsof support or disapprovalwith parlia-
mentary consideration of bills concerning such matters as the slave
trade, rights of religiousminorities,workers'associations,and parlia-
mentaryreform.By the 1830s these campaignshad crystallizedinto
social movements,with their meetings, marches,demonstrations,slo-
gans, banners, colors, pamphlets, and special-interest associations
orbiting around one major issue at a time. Parliamentaryelections,
furthermore,increasinglyattractedactive expressions of support and
opposition from broad segments of the non-voting public - support
and oppositionoften linkedto social-movementissues such as workers'
rightsand parliamentaryreform.
We can see a blurredreflection of this increasingtemporal coordina-

tion in Table 6, which relates the timing of differentsorts of CGs to
presence/absence of elections and parliamentarysessions in a given
month. It presents mean monthly frequencies of events by period
accordingto whetherin a givenmonth a) parliamentsat for at least one
day, b) an election campaignwas underway,as indicatedby the pres-
ence of at least one CG whose majorissue concerned an election. (In
general,election campaignstook place when parliamentwas not in ses-
sion, but parliamentcould recess and a campaigncould begin in the
same month.)Using Eta squaredas a test of mean differences,the table
shows that on the whole differencesbetween months of parliamentary
sessions or electoral campaignsand other months increased substan-
tiallyafter 1800, more substantiallyfor varioussorts of public meeting.
Before 1832, even violent CGs occurredmore frequentlyin months of
parliamentaryactivity;that relationshipreversed in 1832-1834. The
connection between parliamentaryactivityand associationalmeetings
intensifiedin 1828-1831, when the issues of Catholic Emancipation
and parliamentaryreformbroughtout such organizationalbehemoths
as the Catholic Association, the anti-CatholicBrunswickClubs, and
the MetropolitanPoliticalUnion.
Throughoutour period, authorizedassembliessuch as vestrymeetings

and wardmotesplayed importantparts in claim-making.Yet they be-
came much more frequent:from 2 or so per month in SoutheastEng-
land during 1758-1801 to 20 or so per months in 1832-1834. After
1800 they also concentratedincreasinglyin periods of parliamentary
activity.Similarly,the deliberately-calledsingle-issue public meeting

266
Table6. Monthlymeanfrequenciesof selectedtypes of eventby presenceor absenceof

electionsand parliamentarysessions, 1758-1801. Answersto questions:1) Did at least
one CG thismonthinvolvean electoralcampaign?2) Did parliamentsit at leastone day
thismonth?
Type of Period No elec- No parlia- No elec- Both elec- Eta

event tion or ment but tion but tion and squared
parlia- election parlia- parlia-
ment ment ment
Violent 1758-1801 2.30 1.94 0.60 3.83 0.01

1807-1820 0.78 1.48 1.33 1.75 0.03
1828-1831 2.67 4.59 4.67 10.00 0.07
1832-1834 5.63 4.15 3.20 2.30 0.25a
Total 2.59 2.42 2.50 5.55 0.03
Assoc. 1758-1801 0.03 0.25 0.00 0.50 0.07
Mtg. 1807-1820 0.78 1.28 1.17 2.50 0.09
1828-1831 1.58 6.35 2.67 11.85 0.22b
1832-1834 4.00 4.62 3.40 4.70 0.03
Total 1.00 1.76 1.82 6.48 0.14b
Auth. 1758-1801 0.87 1.53 2.60 3.00 0.03
Assembly 1807-1820 7.00 5.38 8.83 23.75 0.20a
1828-1831 4.25 11.47 10.83 17.46 0.07
1832-1834 15.88 17.69 37.00 20.20 0.16
Total 4.53 5.43 14.36 16.42 0.11b
Other 1758-1801 0.07 0.19 0.00 0.17 0.03
meeting 1807-1820 0.67 1.83 1.79 4.75 0.23b
1828-1831 4.17 8.65 8.50 10.62 0.11
1832-1834 2.50 4.31 16.60 5.80 0.41b
Total 1.32 2.13 6.59 6.55 0.14b
a p< 0.05; b P< 0.01.
culminatingin some form of message to parliament,government,or

kingnot only multipliedafter 1800 but also adheredmuch more close-
ly to parliamentaryactivity.We see takingshape the dialoguebetween
linked, planned local gatheringspublicizingpositions on public issues
and the decision-makingof parliamentitself.
Ramificationsand implications
In a context of state expansion and capitalization,the cumulativehis-

tory of contention itself promoted parliamentarization.9 From much
earlier than 1750, ordinarypeople's rights, opportunities,and incen-
tives for contention depended on parliamentarywrit in the form of
guaranteesfor assembly,association,and petition within the limits set

267
by such legislationas the Riot Act and VagrancyAct. Protectedlocal

institutionssuch as parish governments,religious congregations,and
ratepayingbodies likewisecontainedbut also authorizedpublic claim-
making.Elections - likewiseprotectedoccasions for public assembly-
increasinglygave even non-voters opportunitiesto voice support or
oppositionfor governmentalactionsand personnel.
As of the 1750s, wealthierand powerfulcitizensenjoyedthe privilegeof

formingnon-religiousspecial-interestassociations,a privilegegenerally
denied to workersand other ordinarypeople. But between the 1750s
and the 1830s a double movementoccurred:1) privilegedopponentsof
the governmentsuch as John Wilkesand Lord George Gordon sought
allies and supportersamongthe less privileged,and promotedassocia-
tionallife amongthem, then governmentaldefenders,(e.g., anti-revolu-
tionariesof the 1790s) took up similarstrategiesto counter the dissi-
dents; 2) in the course of struggleswith authoritiesand powerholders,
ordinarypeople and reformist-to-radical politicalentrepreneursmade a
seriesof innovationsin claim-makingthateventuallycumulatedinto the
creationof the mass meeting,the popularpoliticalassociation,the peti-
tion march,the demonstration,and a series of relatedforms that had
not existed in the 1750s, at least not in anythinglike their nineteenth-
century versions. These forms of action connected ordinarypeople
muchmore directlyto the nationalgovernmentand to parliament.
Parliamentarization describes a net movement,not an irreversibleuni-

linear trend; the Swing rebellion of 1830, for example, temporarily
moved claim-makingaway from parliamentand the national govern-
ment as SoutheasternEngland'slandlesslaborerattackedlargefarmers
and local powerholdersin an attempt to defend themselves against
decliningjob securityand income. The rebelliononly ended, neverthe-
less, when the governmentsent troops to quell ruralworkers.In 1831
and 1832, furthermore,parliamentacted to illegalizethe sequestering
of farmersthat had occurred during Swing and to make the general
populationsof local areas collectivelyresponsiblefor damagesdue to
machine-breaking.Thus even a non-parliamentarycampaignof claim-
makingeventuallyinvolvedparliament.
Parliamentarizationof contention involved little legislation and even

less constitutional change; it chiefly entailed judicial and practical
accommodationson the side of authorities,organizationaland tactical
innovationson the part of popular claim-makers.Yet it did lead past
some legislativelandmarks:abolition of the CombinationActs (1824

268
and 1825), repeal of Test and CorporationActs (1828), passage of

CatholicEmancipation(1829) and, incomparably,the Reform Act of
1832. These parliamentaryactions served as both causes and effects:
facilitatingnew relationsbetween segments of the general population
and parliament,but also responding in part to augmented popular
pressureon parliamentand the government.
British contention'sparliamentarizationjoined with and facilitated a

number of other changes in popular politics: generalizationof mass
associations as the basis of claim-making,parallel establishmentof
nationaltradeunions coordinatingboth local contentionand demands
on the government,formationof durable,election-mongeringpolitical
parties,routinizationof electoralcampaigningon the issues ratherthan
simplyin termsof candidates'personalqualities,expansionof political
reportingin the nationalpress, creationof social movementsas waysof
organizingpressure on the government,demands for popular sover-
eigntyinsteadof indirector virtualrepresentation.
These conjoinedchangeshelp explainone of the greatironiesof British

history between the 1750s and the 1830s: that the government'svery
effort to block infringementof parliament'sprivilege as sole voice of
national will generated antiparliamentaryand paraparliamentary
action in the form of popularattemptsto establisha Mass Platform,a
National Convention, nation-wide associations, and simultaneous
meetings throughoutthe land. They also help explain the anomalyof
Chartism,a mass workers'movementwhose demandsconsistedentire-
ly of furtherparliamentaryreform:manhood suffrage,salariesand no
property qualificationsfor MPs, annual elections, secret ballot, and
equal electoral districts.In short, parliamentarizationconstitutedone
element of expanded demands for democraticrule, and actuallyfor-
wardeddemocraticrulein some respects.
Parliamentarization did not spell unmitigatedgainfor all popularinter-

ests. In moving toward claims on parliament,ordinarypeople aban-
doned a whole arrayof claim-makingmeans that had produced sub-
stantial results in the short run and on the local scale; price-fixing
seizuresof grain,public shamingof workerswho acceptedless thanthe
goingwage,directattackson poorhouses,and similarenforcingactions
accomplishedtheir objectivesin many cases. Social-movementtactics,
in contrast,alwaysdepended on cumulationfrom action to action and
place to place, requireddifficultplanning,coordination,entrepreneur-
ship, and anticipatorynegotiation with authorities,frequentlyfailed,
and even when successfuloften demandedyearsof sustainedeffort.

269
90000
80000-
- - '
70000- Total
0/:/ Govt
Icivil
X- 60000-
\ 50000-
' 40000-
c 30000-
0
20000-1
10000 -- N
o
1751 1761 1771 1781 1791 1801 1811 1821 1831 1840
Figure 5. Government budgets, 1750-1840 (deflated values).
Parliamentarycontention, furthermore,disadvantagedclients in pa-

tronage chains,workersin localized crafts, and people whose welfare
depended on communitymoral pressure.Landlesslaborers,for exam-
ple lost out badly until their numbers started dwindling and their
successors began formingnational unions duringthe later nineteenth
century.The Poor Law of 1834 - direct fruit of parliamentarization
and parliamentaryreform - greatly curtailed the claims of village
paupers,includingthe seasonallyunemployed.No one should confuse
parliamentarizationwith the adventof justiceand democracy.
In Great Britain, nevertheless, parliamentarizationgreatly increased

the involvementof ordinarypeople in nationalpolitics, and augmented
theircollectiveinfluenceover the nationalgovernmentas well.Remem-
ber the elementsof parliamentarization:increasesin the frequencywith
which:
1. parliament became the object of ordinary people's contention

2. parliamentary action incited ordinary people's claim-making, whether
directed to parliament or elsewhere
3. issues currently being considered by parliament became more central to
popular contention
4. connections with parliament became more central in a wide range of
claim-making.

270
As we have seen, all these changesoccurredin GreatBritainbetween

the 1750s and the 1830s, acceleratingdramaticallyduringthe years of
intense war with France. Together they accomplished a significant
transformationof popularpolitics.
Can we generalize British experience in these regards?No and yes.

Only to the extent that initial conditions and environing histories
resemblethose prevailingin eighteenth-and nineteenth-centuryGreat
Britain can we reasonably expect parliamentarizationelsewhere to
parallel the British path. But the causal processes at work in Great
Britain operate very generally.Everywherechanges in the character
and extent of state power, alterationsof economic organization,and
the cumulativehistoryof claim-makingitself interactto produce shifts
in relationsbetweencitizensand states.
Consideragainthe implicationsof parliamentarization for democracy,

conceivedof as:
1. broadcitizenship,
2. relativelyequalcitizenship,
3. binding consultationof citizens with respect to state policies and
personnel,and
4. protectionof citizens, especiallymembersof minorities,from arbi-
trarystateaction.
Speakingonly of the nationalscale, parliamentarization promotedeach
of the four democraticelements.It broadenedthe categoryof people
who had publicly-recognizedrights and obligationsvis a vis agents of
the state- thatis, who exercisedcitizenship.It effected a mild equaliza-
tion of those rights, although the Reform Bill's exclusion of most
workers and all women from the vote certainly limited equality.It
increasedthe extent and influence of popular consultationon parlia-
ment and the nationalexecutivenot only throughelections and contact
with MPs but also throughsocial movementsand the routineoperation
of special-interestassociations.With regardto assembly and associa-
tion, at least, it increasedthe protectionof citizens,includingreligious
minorities,againstarbitrarydeprivationof their rights.Parliamentari-
zationdid importantdemocraticworkin GreatBritain.
Still, in the world at large democracy rests on other conditions - for

example,subordinationof armedforces to civilianrule - which by no
means result reliablyfrom the establishmentof parliamentaryinstitu-
tions or the involvementof ordinarypeople in them.Manyan election-
holding military regime has proved otherwise. Parliamentarization,

271
furthermore,has occurredin many other ways than the intersectionof

state expansion,capitalization,and popularstrugglethat characterized
eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuryGreat Britain. During the same
period, Americans created parliamentaryinstitutions and popular
involvementin them throughrevolutionaryseizureor circumventionof
consultativecouncils designed for colonial rule, while French revolu-
tionaries wrought the very different Estates General into something
like a parliament,and used a vast web of committees and clubs to
connect ordinarypeople with it. In multiple regions of Westernand
Central Europe, varying coalitions of insurrectionarybourgeois and
workersseized power from existingrulersin 1848, then installedsud-
den, if generallytemporary,parliamentaryrepresentationand popular
participation.After the Ottomanempire'sdisintegrationin WorldWar
I, Kemal Ataturkand his partyinstalledwestern-styleinstitutionsand
enforced popular involvementin them from the top down. Following
World War II, as European colonies became independent,they gen-
erally created the forms of democraticparticipation,includingparlia-
ments and widespreadsuffrage,only to see themgive wayto militaryor
one-party regimes. These diverse experiences gainsay any idea of a
single path to parliamentarization,or of a necessary connection with
democracy.
Yet diversity makes its point. For in all these cases and more, the
relationbetweenparliamentaryinstitutionsand the expansionof popu-
lar participationin nationalpolitics defines the possibilitiesfor democ-
racy. Where popular struggle and hard bargainingloomed larger,it
seems, democracyhad a greaterchance.In any case, the diverseexperi-
ences of parliamentarization open the way to a promisingcomparative
inquiry.To ask how and why parliamentarizationoccurredin a parti-
cularnationalsettingtakesus to the heartof democraticpossibilities.
Acknowledgments
Both the Workshop on Language, Culture, and Social Structure

(ColumbiaUniversity)and the Proseminaron Political Mobilization
and Conflict (New School for Social Research) provided searching
critiquesof earlierdrafts.I am especiallygratefulfor criticismand edi-
torial advice to Roberto Franzosi, Dan Friel, Jeff Goodwin, Perry
Grossman,Jason Kaufman,John Mohr,TonyPereira,HarrisonWhite,
and VivianaZelizer.

272
Notes
1. Alexis de Tocqueville(J. P. Mayer,editor),Journeysto Englandand Ireland(Lon-

don:Faberand Faber,1958), 109, italicsin original.
2. PeterJ. Stanlis,editor,EdmundBurke:SelectedWritings and Speeches(GardenCity:
DoubledayAnchor, 1963); see also Conor Cruise O'Brien, The GreatMelody.A
ThematicBiographyand CommentedAnthologyof EdmundBurke(Chicago:Uni-
versityof ChicagoPress, 1992).
3. CharlesTilly,"Democracyis a Lake,"in George Reid Andrewsand HerrickChap-
man, editors, TheSocial Constructionof Democracy(New York:New YorkUniver-
sity Press, 1995), 365-387.
4. See, for example,MattiAlestalo and Stein Kuhnle,"TheScandinavianRoute. Eco-
nomic, Social and PoliticalDevelopmentsin Denmark,Finland,Norway,and Swe-
den,"ResearchReport no. 31, ResearchGroup for ComparativeSociology,Uni-
versityof Helsinki, 1984; GunnarArteus, Ulf Olsson, and KerstinStromberg-Back
"TheInfluenceof the Armed Forces on the Transformationof Society in Sweden,
1600-1945," Kungl.Krigsvetenskaps akademiusBihafte- MilitarhistoriskTidskrift
(1981), 133-144; Klaus-RichardBohnme, "SchwedischeFinanzbiirokratieund
Kriegsfiihrung1611 bis 1721," in Goran Rystad,editor, Europeand Scandinavia:
Aspects of the Processof Integrationin the 17th Century(Lund:Esselte Studium,
1983);HelgaHemes, "Scandinavian Citizenship,"Acta Sociologica31 (1988), 199-
215; Eiko Ikegamiand CharlesTilly,"StateFormationand Contentionin Japanand
France,"in JamesL. McClain,John M. Merriman,and UgawaKaoru,editors, Edo
and Paris.UrbanLife and the Statein the EarlyModernEra (Ithaca:CornellUniver-
sity Press, 1994), 429-454; Jan Lindegren,"The Swedish 'MilitaryState, 1560-
1720," ScandinavianJournal of History 10 (1985), 305-336; Sven Lundqvist,
Folkrdrelsernai det svenska samhallet, 1850-1920 (Stockholm: Almqvist and
Wiksell, 1977); Sven A. Nilsson, "ImperialSweden: Nation-Building,War and
Social Change,"in Sven A. Nilsson et al., The Age of New Sweden (Stockholm:
Livrustkammaren, 1988); Bo Ohngren,Folk i rdrelse.Samhallsutveckling,
flyttnings-
monsteroch folkrdrelseri Eskilstuna1870-1900 (Uppsala:Almqvist & Wicksell,
1974. Studia Historica Upsaliensia, 55); Dietrich Rueschemeyer,Evelyne Huber
Stephensand John D. Stephens, CapitalistDevelopmentand Democracy(Chicago:
Universityof Chicago Press, 1992); Charles Tilly, "The Long Run of European
StateFormation,"in Wim Blockmansand Jean-PhilippeGenet, editors, Visionssur
le developpementdes Etateeuropiens.Theorieset historiographies de l'Etatmoderne.
(Rome: Ecole Franqaisede Rome, 1993), 137-150. For Great Britain,see John
Brewer, The Sinewsof Power.War,Moneyand the EnglishState, 1688-1783 (New
York:Knopf, 1989); Norman Chester, The EnglishAdministrativeSystem,1780-
1870 (Oxford:ClarendonPress, 1981); Linda Colley, Britons,Forgingthe Nation
1707-1837 (New Haven:YaleUniversityPress, 1992); JamesE. Cronin,ThePolitics
of State Expansion. War,state and society in twentieth-century Britain (London:
Routledge, 1991); Eric J. Evans, The Forgingof the ModernState.EarlyIndustrial
Britain, 1783-1870 (London: Longman, 1983); Michael Mann, States, Warand
Capitalism(Oxford:Blackwell,1988); PeterMathiasandPatrickO'Brien,"Taxation
in Britainand France,1715-1810. A Comparisonof the Social and EconomicInci-
dence of TaxesCollectedfor the CentralGovernments,"Journalof EuropeanEco-
nomic History5 (1976), 601-650; PatrickK. O'Brien,"The PoliticalEconomy of
BritishTaxation,1660-1815," EconomicHistoryReview41 (1988), 1-32; Patrick
K. O'Brien, "PowerWith Profit:The State and the Economy, 1688-1815," in-

273
augurallecture,Universityof London, 1991; LawrenceStone, editor,An Imperial

Stateat War.Britainfrom 1689to 1815(London:Routledge,1994).
5. For technicaldescriptionsand other analysesof the evidence, see R. A. Schweitzer,
"A Study of ContentiousGatheringsin Early Nineteenth-CenturyGreat Britain,"
Historical Methods 12 (1979), 1-4; R. A. Schweitzer,and StevenC. Simmons,
"Interactive,Direct-Entry Approaches to Contentious Gathering Event Files,"
Social Science History 5 (1981), 317-342; Charles Tilly, Popular Contentionin
GreatBritain, 1758-1834 (Cambridge:HarvardUniversityPress, 1995); Charles
Tilly,"ContentiousRepertoiresin Great Britain,1758-1834," pp. 15-42 in Mark
Traugott,editor, Repertoiresand Cyclesof CollectiveAction (Durham:Duke Uni-
versityPress, 1995).
6. For detail on qualitycontrols,see appendicesto Tilly,PopularContentionin Great
Britain,and technicalreportslistedthere.
7. E.g., R. A. Schweitzerand CharlesTilly,"HowLondon and its ConflictsChanged
Shape, 1758-1834," HistoricalMethods 5 (1982), 67-77; Charles Tilly, "Reper-
toires of Contention in America and Britain,"in Mayer N. Zald and John D.
McCarthy,editors, TheDynamicsof Social Movements(Cambridge,Massachusetts:
Winthrop,1979); "Proletarianization and Rural Collective Action in East Anglia
and Elsewhere,1500-1900," PeasantStudies10 (1982), 5-34; "BritainCreatesthe
Social Movement,"in James Croninand JonathanSchneer,editors, Social Conflict
and the PoliticalOrderin ModernBritain(London:Croom Helm, 1982); "Lesori-
gines du repertoirede l'action collective contemporaineen France et en Grande
Bretagne,"VingtiemeSiecle 4 (1984), 89-108; "SocialMovements,Old and New,"
in Louis Kriesberg,BronislawMisztal, and Janusz Mucha, editors, Social Move-
mentsas a Factorof Changein the ContemporaryWorld(Greenwich,Connecticut:
JAI Press, 1982. Researchin Social Movements,Conflicts and Change,vol. 10);
"R6clamerViva Voce,"Cultureset Conflits5 (1992), 109-126; "SocialMovements
as Historically Specific Clusters of Political Performances,"BerkeleyJournal of
Sociology38 (1993-94): 1-30.
8. Stanley Wassermanand KatherineFaust, Social NetworkAnalysis:Methods and
Applications(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1994), ch. 9-10.
9. For detailedargumentand evidence, see Tilly,PopularContentionin GreatBritain,
whichdoes not, however,reportthe analysesof parliamentarization in this article.


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Parliamentarization of Popular Contention in Great Britain, 1758-1834

Author(s): Charles Tilly

This content downloaded from 200.52.255.53 on Mon, 16 Feb 2015 17:05:25 PM

During his trip to Manchester in July 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville

Three yearspast the ReformAct of 1832, Tocquevillesaw clearlyhow

From the time of Magna Cartaand even before, regularlyconstituted

Nevertheless, Great Britain (England,Wales, and Scotland) had also

Theory and Society 26: 245-273, 1997.

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seventeenth-centurycivil wars and revolutions pivoted on relations

Between the 1780s and the 1830s, British politics parliamentarized

Farfrom seekingto documentor explainBritishparliamentarization in

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tural expression as the more intermittent,public, collective voicing of

Figure 1 suggestswhat a long-termobserver of British politics could

Contentious Gatherings, 1758-1834

Figure 1. Objects of claims.

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By collective claim-making (synonym: contention) I mean the public,

British parliamentarizationof contention had four overlapping elements,

1. parliamentbecamethe objectof ordinarypeople'scontention;

This article documents the parliamentarization of British popular con-

Figure 2 summarizes what happens during an idealized course of par-

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Natin( Royalty, Nobility, Parliament

Figure 2. Parliamentarization as changing objects of claims.

toward a national scale, while representationof ordinarypeople be-

Such a scheme describes major political trends not just in England,

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people of claims on parliamentaryinstitutions- for example,rightsto

As a result of these changes,democracy- relativelybroad and equal

In GreatBritain,parliamentarization alteredrelationsamonga number

Why did it happen?So far as I can tell, threemajorcausalstrandsinter-

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intervenedin a greatlyincreasedrangeof economic and politicalactiv-

My centralbody of evidence comes from a catalogof 8,088 "contenti-

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2. a descriptionof eachformation- each person or set of personsactingin

3. a descriptionof each action - any participatingformations'smovement

4. an identificationof each source(includingsources supplementaryto our

5. an identificationof each locationin whichany partof the CG took place

6. an enumerationof additional names the sources gave any formation

7. an enumerationof individualsmentionedas membersof any formation

8. supplemantaryinformationon the geographicalor numericalsize of any

9. the detailed textsfrom which we drew summarydescriptionsof actions

10. commentson anyaspectof the CG or its description(5,450 records).

Except for straightforward items such as day of the week or county

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peared)the name givenfor the action'sobject.For purposesof analysis,

My research group minimized inferences and syntheses concerning

Splicingtogetherevidence from scatteredyearsfrom 1758 to 1820 for

Elsewhere, much of my inquiry concerns how and why the arrayof

Violent Gathering:attacks on poorhouses, affrays of hunters with game

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Table1. Occasionsof contentiousgatherings,1758-1834

1758 85.7 0.0 0.0 14.3 0.0 0.0 0.0 100.0 14

Other UnplannedGathering:nonviolentmarketconflicts;responses to the

Election Meeting: gatherings to endorse candidates, hear campaign

Authorized Assembly: offering demands, complaints, or expressions of sup-

Association Meeting: similar claim-making in official sessions of explicitly-

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Other Public Meeting: previously-announceddiscussions of public issues

Other: organizedcelebration,delegation,parade, demonstration,strike,or

The rubricscover the main occasions on which ordinaryBritonsmade