War, Fiscal Constraint and the Welfare State: Evidence from British Parliamentary Debates, 1850-1929

• In Event: Poster Session: Comparative Politics III & Comparative Politics of Advanced Industrial Societies
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Comparative Politics of Advanced Industrial Societies

Abstract

The 1870 Elementary Education Act has long been recognized as a landmark piece of legislation in the expansion of the British welfare state. Its place in history, however, has been controversial: On the one hand, it has been presented as a successful example of the expansion of public goods provision following recent democratization and in response to the needs of industrialization. On the other hand, it has also been faulted for its limited scope, which---critics argue---contributed to Britain’s delay in developing compulsory national education and hence to its relative lack of an educated workforce during the Second Industrial Revolution. This paper studies the legislative compromises that gave the Act such two-sided characteristics. Using a newly collected dataset of member-level and constituency-level covariates, combined with textual analysis of contemporaneous media contents, this paper will analyze several key votes leading up to the passage of the Education Act to unravel the issue-bundling and coalition strategies behind the Act’s compromises. Particular attention will be paid to the interplay between industrial and commercial interests, religious groups and members of the state bureaucracy.

Author

• Ye Zhang, Maastricht University