Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-11T13:43:47.980Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Shadow Cabinet in Westminster Systems: Modeling Opposition Agenda Setting in the House of Commons, 1832–1915

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Andrew C. Eggers  and
Arthur Spirling
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article considers the emergence of an informal institution vital to the functioning of Westminster polities: that the Shadow Cabinet is a ‘government in waiting’. It compares the evidence for two theoretical accounts of its timing: a ‘procedural’ theory wherein the Shadow Cabinet is a solution to internal organizational issues in the House of Commons prior to widespread working-class voting, and a ‘competition’ theory that predicts that suffrage extension acts as a key stimulus for Shadow Cabinet organization. Gathering a dataset of almost a million utterances in parliament between the First and Fourth Reform Acts, the study provides a novel method of identifying Shadow Cabinet members using the surges in term use from their speeches. It finds that the ‘competition’ hypothesis is the most plausible version of events, and that the opposition responded to the new ‘party-orientated electorate’ by strategically reorganizing in a way that mimicked the cabinet’s structure.

Type
Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , April 2018 , pp. 343 - 367
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford (email: andrew.eggers@nuffield.ox.ac.uk); Department of Politics, New York University (email: arthur.spirling@nyu.edu). Audiences at the American Political Science Association, Midwest Political Science Association, the Princeton Political Methodology seminar, New York University and Nuffield College, Oxford provided helpful feedback. Comments from Karen Jusko and JF Godbout are greatly appreciated. Data replication sets and online appendices are available at http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1017/S0007123416000016.

References

Adelman, Paul. 1997. Gladstone, Disraeli and Later Victorian Politics. New York: Longman.Google Scholar
Aidt, Toke, Daunton, Martin, and Dutta, Jayasri. 2010. The Retrenchment Hypothesis and the Extension of the Franchise in England and Wales. The Economic Journal 120 (547):990–1020.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alt, James. 1975. Continuity, Turnover and Experience in the British Cabinet, 1868–1970. In Cabinet Studies: A Reader, edited by Valentine Herman and James Alt, 33–54. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Aydelotte, William O. 1963. Voting Patterns in the British House of Commons in the 1840s. Comparative Studies in Society and History 5 (2):134–163.Google Scholar
Bagehot, Walter. 1873/2011. The English Constitution, 2nd Edition. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. Available from http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/bagehot/constitution.pdf, accessed 6 June 2011.Google Scholar
Bai, Jushan, and Perron, Pierre. 2003. Computation and Analysis of Multiple Structural Change Models. Journal of Applied Econometrics 18:1–22.Google Scholar
Bateman, Joel. 2009. In the Shadows: The Shadow Cabinet in Australia. Canberra: Parliament of Australia, Department of Parliamentary Services.Google Scholar
Benedetto, Giacomo, and Hix, Simon. 2007. The Rejected, the Ejected and the Dejected: Explaining Government Rebels in the 2001-5 British House of Commons. Comparative Political Studies 40 (7):755–781.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berlinski, Samuel, and Dewan, Torun. 2011. The Political Consequences of Franchise Extension: Evidence from the Second Reform Act. Quarterly Journal of Political Science 6 (34):329–376.Google Scholar
Berlinski, Samuel, Dewan, Torun, and Dowding, Keith. 2007. The Length of Ministerial Tenure in the United Kingdom, 1945–97. British Journal of Political Science 37 (4):245–262.Google Scholar
Berrington, Hugh. 1968. Partisanship and Dissidence in the Nineteenth Century House of Commons. Parliamentary Affairs XXI:338–374.Google Scholar
Binder, Jeff. 2012. Bursts: Markov Model for Bursty Behavior in Streams. R package version 1.0.Google Scholar
Bogdanor, Vernon, and Butler, David. 1983. Democracy and Elections: Electoral Systems and their Political Consequences. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Brazier, Julian. 1997. Ministers of the Crown. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Brazier, Rodney. 1999. Constitutional Practice: The Foundations of British Government. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Butler, David, and Stokes, Donald. 1969. Political Change in Britain. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Butler, David, and Butler, Gareth. 1994. Twentieth Century British Historical Facts, 8th Edition, London: MacMillan Press.Google Scholar
Cain, Bruce, Ferejohn, John, and Fiorina, Morris. 1987. The Personal Vote: Constituency Service and Electoral Independence. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Camp, Edwin, Dixit, Avinash, and Stokes, Susan. 2014. Catalyst or Cause? Legislation and the Demise of Machine Politics in Britain and the United States. Legislative Studies Quarterly XXXIX (4):559–592.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chester, Norman, and Bowring, Nona. 1962. Questions in Parliament. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Clark, Tom, and Lauderdale, Benjamin. 2010. Locating Supreme Court Opinions in Doctrine Space. American Journal of Political Science 54:871–890.Google Scholar
Clarke, Harold, Sanders, David, Stewart, Marianne, and Whiteley, Paul. 2004. Political Choice in Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cobb, Roger, Ross, Jennie-Keith, and Ross, Marc Howard. 1976. Agenda Building as a Comparative Political Process. American Political Science Review 70 (1):126–138.Google Scholar
Cook, Christopher, and Keith, Brendan. 1975. British Historical Facts 1830–1900. London: Palgrave-MacMillan.Google Scholar
Cowley, Philip. 2002. The Rebels. London: Politicos.Google Scholar
Cox, Gary. 1987. The Efficient Secret: The Cabinet and the Development of Political Parties in Victorian England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cox, Gary. 1992. The Origin of Whip Votes in the House of Commons. Parliamentary History 11 (2):278–285.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cox, Gary, and McCubbins, Mathew. 2005. Setting the Agenda: Responsible Party Government in the US House of Representatives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Craig, Frederick. 1974. British Parliamentary Election Results, 1885–1918. London: MacMillan Press.Google Scholar
Craig, Frederick. 1989. British Parliamentary Election Results, 1832–1885. London: Macmillan Press.Google Scholar
Crisp, Leslie. 1983. Australian National Government. Melbourne: Longman.Google Scholar
Desposato, Scott. 2006. How Informal Electoral Institutions Shape the Brazilian Legislative Agenda. In Informal Institutions and Democracy: Lessons from Latin America, edited by Gretchen Helmke and Steven Levitsky, 125–142. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Dewan, Torun, and Myatt, David. 2010. The Declining Talent Pool of Government. American Journal of Political Science 54 (2):267–286.Google Scholar
Dewan, Torun, and Spirling, Arthur. 2011. Strategic Opposition and Government Cohesion in Westminster Democracies. American Political Science Review 105 (2):337–358.Google Scholar
Doring, Herbert. 1995. Institutions and Policies: Why We Need Cross National Analysis. In Parliaments and Majority Rule in Western Europe, edited by Herbert Doring, 27–50. New York: St Martin’s Press.Google Scholar
Eggers, Andrew, and Spirling, Arthur. 2014. Electoral Security as a Determinant of Legislator Activity, 1832–1918: New Data and Methods for Analyzing British Political Development. Legislative Studies Quarterly 39 (4):593–620.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eggers, Andrew, and Spirling, Arthur. Forthcoming. Party Cohesion in Westminster Systems: Inducements, Replacement and Discipline in the House of Commons. British Journal of Political Science.Google Scholar
Erskine May, Thomas. 1864/1986. The Constitutional History of England Since the Accession of George Third, 1760-1860. Littleton, CO: F.B. Rothman.Google Scholar
Fader, Anthony, Radev, Dragomir, Monroe, Burt L., and Quinn, Kevin M.. 2007. MavenRank: Identifying Influential Members of the US Senate Using Lexical Centrality. Proceedings of the 2007 Joint Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing and Computational Natural Language Learning, 658–66.Google Scholar
Franklin, Mark, and Norton, Philip. 1993. Questions and Members. In Parliamentary Questions, edited by Mark Franklin and Philip Norton, 104–222. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Fraser, Peter. 1960. The Growth of Ministerial Control in the Nineteenth-Century House of Commons. English Historical Review 75 (296):444–463.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gash, Norman. 1952. Politics in the Age of Peel: A Study in the Technique of Parliamentary Representation, 1830–1850. London: Longmans, Green, and Co.Google Scholar
Godbout, Jean-Francois, and Hoyland, Bjorn. 2013. Parties and Voting in Parliament. Working Paper. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University.Google Scholar
Grimmer, Justin, and Stewart, Brandon. 2013. Text as Data: The Promise and Pitfalls of Automatic Content Analysis Methods for Political Texts. Political Analysis 21 (3):267–297.Google Scholar
Hall, Peter, and Taylor, Rosemary. 1996. Political Science and the Three New Institutionalisms. Political Studies 44 (5):936–957.Google Scholar
Hanham, Harold. 1978. Elections and Party Management. Hassocks, Sussex: Harvester Press.Google Scholar
Heath, Anthony, Curtice, John, Jowell, Roger, Evans, Geoffrey, Field, John, and Witherspoon, Sharon. 1991. Understanding Political Change: The British Voter, 1964–1987. Oxford: Pergamon.Google Scholar
Helmke, Gretchen, and Levitsky, Steven. 2004. Informal Institutions and Comparative Politics: A Research Agenda. Perspectives on Politics 2 (4):725–740.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holzhacker, Ronald. 2005. The Power of Opposition Parliamentary Party Groups in European Scrutiny. The Journal of Legislative Studies 11 (3–4):428–445.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howe, Anthony. 1998. Free Trade and Liberal England, 1846–1946. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Jackman, Simon, and Treier, Shawn. 2008. Democracy as a Latent Variable. American Journal of Political Science 52 (1):201–217.Google Scholar
Jenkins, Terence. 1996. Parliament, Party and Politics and Victorian Britain. New York: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Jenks, Edward. 1903. Parliamentary England: The Evolution of the Cabinet System. New York: G Putnam’s Sons.Google Scholar
Jensen, Jacob, Kaplan, Ethan, Naidu, Suresh, and Wilse-Samson, Laurence. 2012. Political Polarization and the Dynamics of Political Language: Evidence from 130 Years of Partisan Speech. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (Fall):1–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Nevil. 1997. Opposition in the British Political System. Government and Opposition 32 (4):487–510.Google Scholar
Kam, Christopher J. 2009. Party Discipline and Parliamentary Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kam, Christopher, and Indridason, Indridi. 2005. The Timing of Cabinet Reshuffles in Five Westminster Parliamentary Systems. Legislative Studies Quarterly XXX (3):327–363.Google Scholar
Kelley, Robert. 1960. Midlothian: A Study in Politics and Ideas. Victorian Studies 4 (2):119–140.Google Scholar
King, Anthony. 1994. Ministerial Autonomy in Britain. In Cabinet Ministers and Parliamentary Government, edited by Michael Laver and Kenneth Shepsle, 203–225. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kleinberg, Jon. 2002. Bursty and Hierarchical Structure in Streams. Proceedings of the Eighth ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, ACM, New York, NY, pp. 91–101.Google Scholar
Krehbiel, Keith. 1992. Information and Legislative Organization. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Krehbiel, Keith. 1998. Pivotal Politics: A Theory of US Lawmaking. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lauth, Hans-Joachim. 2000. Informal Institutions and Democracy. Democratization 7 (4):21–50.Google Scholar
Lijphart, Arend. 1999. Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Lowell, Abbott. 1908. The Government of England. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Lowell, James. 1902. The Influence of Party on Legislation in England and America. In Annual Report for the American Historical Association for the Year 1901, 319–542.Google Scholar
Mahoney, James, and Thelen, Kathleen. 2010. A Theory of Gradual Institutional Change. In Explaining Institutional Change: Ambiguity, Agency and Power, edited by James Mahoney and Kathleen Thelen, 1–37. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Marriott, John. 1925. English Political Institutions: An Introductory Study. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray. 1997. Gladstone 1809–1898. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
McLean, Iain. 2001. Rational Choice and British Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ostrogorski, Moisei. 1902/1964. Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.Google Scholar
Pemstein, Daniel, Meserve, Stephen A., and Melton, James. 2010. Democratic Compromise: A Latent Variable Analysis of Ten Measures of Regime Type. Political Analysis 18 (4):426–449.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pollack, Mark. 1997. Delegation, Agency, and Agenda Setting in the European Community. International Organization 51 (1):99–134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Potter, Allan. 1965. Great Britain: Opposition with a Capital ‘O’. In Political Oppositions in Western Democracies, edited by Robert Dahl, 3–33. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Powell, Bingham. 2000. Elections as Instruments of Democracy: Majoritarian and Proportional Visions. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Power, Charles. 1966. A Party Politician: The Memoirs of Chubby Power. Toronto: Macmillan of Canada.Google Scholar
Punnett, Robert. 1973. Front-Bench Opposition: The Role of the Leader of the Opposition, the Shadow Cabinet, and Shadow Government in British Politics. London: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Quinn, Kevin, Monroe, Burt, Colaresi, Michael, Crespin, Michael H., and Radev, Dragomir. 2010. How to Analyze Political Attention with Minimal Assumptions and Costs. American Journal of Political Science 54:209–228.Google Scholar
Quinn, Thomas. 2012. Electing and Ejecting Party Leaders in Britain. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
R Core Team. 2013. R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing.Google Scholar
Redlich, Josef. 1908. The Procedure of the House of Commons: A Study of its History and Present Form. London: Constable & Co.Google Scholar
Rhodes, Rod, Wanna, John, and Weller, Patrick. 2009. Comparing Westminster. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rhodes, Rod, and Weller, Patrick. 2005. Westminster Transplanted and Westminster Implanted: Exploring Political Change. In Westminster Legacies: Democracy and Responsible Government in Asia and the Pacific, edited by Haig Patapan, John Wanna and Patrick Weller, 1–12. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press.Google Scholar
Richards, Peter G. 1988. Mackintosh’s the Government and Politics of Britain. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Rush, Michael. 2001. The Role of the Member of Parliament Since 1868: From Gentlemen to Players. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Schonhardt-Bailey, Cheryl. 2003. Ideology, Party and Interests in the British Parliament of 1841–1847. British Journal of Political Science 33:581–605.Google Scholar
Schumpeter, Joseph. 1942. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. New York: Harper.Google Scholar
Slapin, Jonathan, and Proksch, Sven-Oliver. 2008. A Scaling Model for Estimating Time Series Party Positions from Texts. American Journal of Political Science 52 (3):705–722.Google Scholar
Stokes, Susan. 2006. Do Informal Rules Make Democracy Work? Accounting for Accountability in Argentina. In Informal Institutions and Democracy: Lessons from Latin America, edited by Gretchen Helmke and Steven Levitsky, 125–142. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Svolik, Milan. 2014. Which Democracies Will Last? Coups, Incumbent Takeovers, and the Dynamic of Democratic Consolidation. British Journal of Political Science 45 (4):735–738.Google Scholar
Turner, Duncan. 1969. The Shadow Cabinet in British Politics. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Volden, Craig, Wiseman, Alan, and Wittmer, Dana. 2013. When are Women More Effective Lawmakers Than Men? American Journal of Political Science 57 (2):326–341.Google Scholar
Walker, Brian. 1978. Parliamentary Elections in Ireland, 1801–1922. Dublin: Royal Irish Academy.Google Scholar
Wawro, Gregory, and Schickler, Eric. 2006. Filibuster: Obstruction and Lawmaking in the US Senate. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Zeileis, Achim, Leisch, Friedrich, Hornik, Kurt, and Kleiber, Christian. 2002. Strucchange: An R Package for Testing for Structural Change in Linear Regression Models. Journal of Statistical Software 7 (2):1–38.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Eggers and Spirling supplementary material

Eggers and Spirling supplementary material 1

Download Eggers and Spirling supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 50.2 KB
Supplementary material: Link

Eggers and Spirling Dataset

Dataset

https://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/U8NMJZ
Link