diffusion, development and democratization: enfranchisement in western europe

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Société québécoise de science politique Diffusion, Development and Democratization: Enfranchisement in Western Europe Author(s): John R. Freeman and Duncan Snidal Source: Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique, Vol. 15, No. 2 (Jun., 1982), pp. 299-329 Published by: Canadian Political Science Association and the Société québécoise de science politique Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3229987 . Accessed: 09/06/2014 19:56 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Canadian Political Science Association and Société québécoise de science politique are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 195.34.79.195 on Mon, 9 Jun 2014 19:56:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Société québécoise de science politique

Diffusion, Development and Democratization: Enfranchisement in Western EuropeAuthor(s): John R. Freeman and Duncan SnidalSource: Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique, Vol. 15,No. 2 (Jun., 1982), pp. 299-329Published by: Canadian Political Science Association and the Société québécoise de science politiqueStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3229987 .

Accessed: 09/06/2014 19:56

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Canadian Political Science Association and Société québécoise de science politique are collaborating withJSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne descience politique.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.195 on Mon, 9 Jun 2014 19:56:03 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Diffusion, Development and Democratization: Enfranchisement in Western Europe*

JOHN R. FREEMAN Massachusetts Institute of Technology DUNCAN SNIDAL University of Chicago

"A core element in nation-building," argues Reinhard Bendix, "is the codification of rights and duties of all adults who are classified as citizens."1 The suffrage is among those rights whose extension confers citizenship and concomitantly contributes to the emergence of nation-states. Enfranchisement represents a basic alteration in the relationship between the citizen and the state. The successful pursuit of voting rights by the lower classes marked the transition away from the paternalistic system of government of the eighteenth century towards a gradual acceptance of the concept of unit citizen in the Western nation-state.2

While there is agreement concerning the importance of enfranchisement in nation-building, there is little theoretical understanding of the logic by which the suffrage is extended or retracted. Consider Rokkan's insightful discussion of competitive mass politics in Western Europe.3 Recognizing the importance of the institutional constraints on participation-the "rules of the electoral game"-Rokkan constructs typologies of sequences of institutional change in 15 West European nations. He then offers several generalizations regarding the relationship between alternative "diachronies" and the initial conditions of democratization. In

* Revised version of a paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, 1980. We gratefully acknowledge the criticisms and comments of W. Phillips Shively, Adam Przeworski, Jacques Delacroix and Timothy Luke.

1 R. Bendix, Nation Building and Citizenship (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 90.

2 Three important landmarks in the vast literature concerning the role of the franchise in the development of citizen-state relations are J. S. Mill, Considerations on Representative Government (New York: Henry Holt, 1873); T. H. Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950); and S. Rokkan, Citizens, Elections and Parties: Approaches to the Comparative Study of Processes of Development (New York: D. McKay, 1970).

3 Ibid.

Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique, XV:2 (June/juin 1982). Printed in Canada / Imprime au Canada

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JOHN R. FREEMAN and DUNCAN SNIDAL

particular, Rokkan identifies a pattern between the style of rule a country inherits and the manner in which its elites regulate voting rights. However, Rokkan does not provide a meaningful explanation for this observed pattern. Therefore, his simple style-of-rule explanation is little more than a refinement of historical accounts of enfranchisement.

To account for such institutional-developmental sequences we must understand why elites find it in their interest to adopt particular sets of suffrage reforms. We also must explain differences and similarities in franchise decision making among various national elites and the relation of these differences and similarities to Rokkan's inherited styles of rule. For example, we must explain why Finnish elites who, like the British, enjoyed a history of continuous representation, moved in a single step to universal suffrage while their British counterparts required five separate reforms and a century to do so. We also must account for the fact that countries like Austria and Sweden moved gradually to universal suffrage despite inheriting quite dissimilar styles of rule. Again, Rokkan does not provide such explanations; his investigation is largely descriptive and exploratory. Yet, providing these explanations was one of Rokkan's ultimate goals,4 and it remains an important task for those interested in understanding the relation of the suffrage to nation-building.

In this article we explain the democratic development of Western countries in terms of the general relationship between the extension of citizenship and the desire of elites to legitimize the polity. Specifically, we argue that elites seek to legitimize the state's expanding role in society and that extension of voting rights serve as one means by which mass support (or acquiescence) to elite policies is secured. However, the growth of democratic expectations among the populace is such that the franchise gradually comes to be seen as a right rather than as a privilege, and the suffrage becomes progressively less efficacious for the elite's purposes of legitimization. At the same time, the legitimation needs of the state steadily increase. It is from the conjuncture of this series of events that universal suffrage eventually emerges.

Enfranchisement does not occur continuously; rather, the suffrage is extended in a series of discrete steps.5 This is because elites generally are reluctant to alter the makeup of their constituencies and so they avoid making changes in the electorate for as long as possible. Moreover, extension of the franchise involves adding to the electorate various social groups (typically defined by some combination of social

4 Ibid., 78. 5 Adam Przeworski has pointed out (in conversation) that the "lumpiness" of the

enfranchisement process can be attributed, in part, to the fact that suffrage extensions involve the political incorporation of social groups. For a discussion of the importance of exogenous threats to stability, see Przeworski's "Institutionalization of Voting Patterns, or Is Mobilization the Source of Decay?" American Political Science Review 69 (1975), esp. 58.

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Diffusion, developpement et democratisation: Le processus d'admission au droit de vote en l'Europe de l'ouest

L'extension du droit de vote est un point central de la democratisation. Mais il n'existe aucune explication < systematique > du processus d'admission au droit de vote. Cette etude expose l'amplitude de la riforme du droit de suffrage. Le tableau historique de l'admission du droit de vote se perfoit comme un besoin pour I'elite dejustifier sa legitimite gouvernementale, cette legitimite provenant du peuple en echange du droit de vote. Le besoin de legitimite de l'elite et le support populaire a cette legitimite sont touches, en retour, par I'expansion historique diu r6le de l'Etat et par l'dmergence des espoirs de democratisation.

La validite de l'explication s'etablit mathematiquement a travers l'etude des implications analytiques et statistiquement dans la comparaison entre le modeleformel et les experiences de neuf pays de l'Europe de l'ouest. Le resultat principal de ces recherches montre que meme si le taux de diffusion (developpement) des attentes democratiques est le meme dans ces neuf pays de l'echantillon, le processus d'extension du droit de vote depend des variations dans les conditions initiales de democratisation.

and economic criteria) rather than individuals per se. Hence elites tolerate some deviation from their "preferred" level of legitimation until internal and/or external circumstances threaten the viability of the state. When destabilization does occur, elites reform the suffrage by incorporating new segments of the population into the electorate and, in that way, secure the legitimacy they require to maintain extant political institutions. Thus the piece-wise patterns of enfranchisement observed in Western Europe can be viewed as a collection of sequential adjustments to varying conditions of legitimacy supply and demand.6 Diachronic variations such as those referred to above emerge from the interrelationship between a particular country's democratic heritage, the expansion of state functions and hence growing need for legitimation, and the rate of diffusion and development of democratic expectations among the citizenry.

Assessment of the empirical accuracy of this explanation reveals that nine major West European nations display a great deal of uniformity in the manner in which elites responded to suffrage demands. This suggests that democratic expectations developed at roughly the same rate in these countries. Differences among enfranchisement processes can be discerned. For instance, to some extent, the sequences of suffrage reforms differ according to the the initial conditions of democratization in each country. But there is a remarkable similarity in the logic through which voting rights were extended in West European countries.

6 A discussion of the piece-wise character of suffrage extension can be found in P. Converse, "Of Time and Partisan Stability," Comparative Political Studies 2 (1969), 139-71; and G. M. Trevelyan, History of England, Vols. 1, 2 and 3 (New York: Doubleday, 1953).

II ? '' L , I _I I

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JOHN R. FREEMAN and DUNCAN SNIDAL

In order to understand this similarity, we first develop the formal logic of the demand-supply argument. Drawing upon primary and secondary sources on elite and mass motivations, we demonstrate the substantive meaningfulness of the assumptions upon which the argument is based. We then assess the predictive power of the propositions which we derive from our model assumptions. It may be claimed for the model that certain suffrage extensions which, until now, have appeared anomalous-especially the 1867 British "leap in the dark" and the 1906 "explosive" Finnish reform-are readily explained in terms of it.

Although in a sense our explanation applies only to the relationship of enfranchisement and legitimacy, the logic within which it is cast has larger implications for understanding the problem of legitimation. For example, the logic of our argument suggests why the suffrage has become a necessary but no longer sufficient source of legitimacy for the state. It helps us understand why the welfare state has come to be a necessary requisite for state legitimacy in advanced industrialized countries, and it illuminates the dilemma of democratization in the Third World, where the diffusion of democratic expectations often rules out the possibility of incremental or gradual transitions to democracy.

Elite Demand for Suffrage Legitimacy

Elites' need for legitimacy grew throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in West Europe as a result of both economic and political developments. Industrialization had far-reaching implications for the nature of citizenship and, concomitantly, for the legitimation of the state. The scope of governmental intervention was systematically broadened and governmental authority was greatly centralized; the state responded to the demands of industrial entrepreneurs, opening new markets and dismantling local monopolies. The attempt to legitimize this expanded and more centralized role of the state initially resulted in the practice of enlightened despotism, that is, in "autocratic paternalism" whereby all citizens became subjects of a single ruler. With the spread of democratic ideals and expectations, paternalistic policies began to lose their effectiveness. Increasingly, acquiescence to the expansion and centralization of public authority could be achieved only through the extension of political rights, and in this regard no right was more impor- tant than the suffrage. The franchise provided the legitimacy elites required for continued institutional transformation of the state. Thus we find that for leaders such as Bismarck, "the motive for extending the suffrage to the workers was patently not to create a channel for the articulation of the interests of the economically dependent strata; the objective was to strengthen the policies of centralization by enlisting the

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Enfranchisement in Western Europe

support of the least articulate classes in German society."7 The gradual incorporation of citizens into the electoral system further increased demands for national security, for expansion of state activity and for compensation of economic inequality and so further amplified the need for state legitimacy. Thus, "modem political communities have achieved a greater centralization of government than either the medieval or the absolutist political systems, and this achievement has been preceded, accompanied, or followed by the participation of all adult citizens in political life (on the basis of the formal equality of the franchise)."8

Elites' task with respect to legitimation was complicated by the fact that industrialization magnified class inequalities and at the same time transformed attitudes toward public participation. Citizenship gradually became a less passive activity and there was increasing awareness of the possibility of participation in a political community. Consequently, inadequate levels of state legitimacy combined with social inequalities to produce an increasingly threatening situation for elites. Opposition now was more likely to result in overt political activity, including mass insurrection. In these circumstances, extension of the franchise and other elements of political citizenship became one of the most effective means by which social inequality could be given a stamp of legitimacy and political stability preserved in the face of increasing social inequities.

The demand for increased legitimacy also was rooted in the foreign-policy objectives of nineteenth-century regimes. The exigencies of the European balance of power system and the pursuit of colonial interests required states to create and maintain national armies. Popular acquiescence to conscription and prolonged military service therefore became a prerequisite for the security and territorial expansion of the nation-state. To legitimize conscription the state attempted to gain the allegiance of increasing numbers of citizens. Again, enfranchisement was one of the principal means through which this was accomplished. In Scandinavian countries, for example, the suffrage was directly linked to defense issues. Swedish elites made popular the slogan "one man, one vote, one gun." And in response to the franchise demands of their Norwegian neighbours, the same elites argued that individuals should not expect to receive political rights if they were not willing to perform various duties such as defending the Swedish-Norwegian homeland.9

Historically, then, there was a steady rise in the level of legitimacy which elites demanded and this increase in demands accelerated as more

7 Rokkan, Citizens, Elections and Parties, 31. 8 Bendix, Nation Building and Citizenship, 168-69. Emphasis added. 9 For a discussion of the Scandinavian cases see T. K. Derry, A History of Modern

Norway 1814-1972 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), 51; D. V. Vemey, Parliamentary Reform in Sweden 1866-1921 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957); and Bendix, Nation Building and Citizenship, 144, n. 56.

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JOHN R. FREEMAN and DUNCAN SNIDAL

and more citizens were granted the right to vote. But the extension of the franchise did not follow such a smooth pattern. While it is generally true that their preferred level of legitimacy increased rather steadily over time, the actual level of legitimacy which elites sought to achieve through enfranchisement changed in a much more discontinuous, step-wise fashion. A particular level of enfranchisement was maintained over a period of years and then, suddenly, the level increased only to settle at some alternative legitimacy-demand condition. Of course, this meant that typically there was a discrepancy between the actual level of governmental support elites achieved and the level which they preferred to achieve and, moreover, that the magnitude of this discrepancy was constantly increasing in the interlude between electoral reforms.

Why did elites tolerate these growing discrepancies? The answer lies in the nature of enfranchisement, specifically, in the fact that suffrage reforms fundamentally alter the makeup of constituencies and therefore represent very risky propositions for incumbent politicians. There is evidence of this in the historical literature where it is reported that most elected officials displayed extreme caution when contemplating franchise extensions.10 Unless the viability of the government was seriously threatened, they eschewed any opportunity for significant augmentation of the legitimacy level by means of enfranchisement. Moreover, the inherent "lumpiness" of the enfranchisement process-the fact that groups or classes of citizens must be enfranchised en masse rather than as individuals-meant that extension of the franchise necessarily occurred through a series of discrete steps. Elites typically accepted the slow growth in the deviations from their preferred legitimacy levels until that time when a legitimation crisis forced them to rectify the situation through suffrage reform.

In sum, elites preferred an increasing amount of legitimacy, but their effective demand for legitimacy was not fully responsive and so actual legitimacy levels usually were lower than preferred levels. Denote the preferred level of legitimacy at time t by L*(t). We can depict our characterization of elite preferences by the vertical lines in Figure la. The steady rightward movement of these lines through time reflects the steady growth in preferred legitimacy levels. However, the actual levels of legitimacy which elites demand, denoted by L(t), do not change continuously. Instead, demands for legitimacy remain constant for one or more periods before increasing in a step-wise fashion. This discontinuous movement in demands and the relationship between L(t) and L*(t) is shown along the horizontal axis in Figure la.

10 See E. G. Griffin, "The Adoption of Universal Suffrage in Japan" (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, 1965), 172-73; and D. E. Butler, The Electoral System in Britain Since 1918 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 35 and 135ff.

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305 Enfranchisement in Western Europe

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JOHN R. FREEMAN and DUNCAN SNIDAL

Citizenship and the Supply of Suffrage-Legitimacy Political participation is the cornerstone of mass support for democratic government.11 The wider the base of this participation, the greater the popular acceptance of the legitimacy of governmental activity. Since enfranchisement is a fundamental element of democratic participation, this translates into the simple and widely accepted proposition that when elites expand the franchise they accrue more legitimacy.12 Equivalently, the supply of legitimacy by the general population, L, increases with the amount elites are willing to pay in terms of the proportion of the (adult) population which possesses the right to vote, E. This supply condition is depicted in Figure 1 at time ti (i= 1, 2,...) as a line Si with slope si (i= 1, 2,...); the rate of return in terms of enfranchisement is 1/si. This quotient indicates how many units of legitimacy accrue to elites for a unit increase in the magnitude of a suffrage reform. Alternatively, si is the price of a unit of legitimacy in terms of enfranchisement. Formally then we have at time ti, dLi/dEi=l /si>0 for i=l, 2,....13

Legitimacy supply conditions were constantly changing in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries because of the diffusion and development of democratic expectations in Western Europe. The accounts of suffrage decision making contain numerous references to the diffusion of democratic ideals and institutions.14 For instance, politicians and citizens frequently cited contemporaneous reforms in pressing their demands for enfranchisement.15 The policy of gradualism (see below) also diffused through Western Europe, being debated in such bodies as the Swedish Riksdag.'6 11 Much of this section is devoted to a formalization of extant discussions of the role of

participation in augmenting legitimacy. Exemplary of this tradition is E. E. Schattschneider's argument in his book, The Semi-sovereign People: A Realist's View of Democracy in America (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960), 112: "A greatly expanded base of popular participation is the essential condition for public support of government. This is the moder problem of democratic government. The price for support is participation" (emphasis added). Other examples of the use of this economic metaphor may be found in C. Seymour and D. Friary, How the World Votes, Vol. 2 (Springfield, Mass.: C. A. Nichols, 1918), 56; and J. Board, The Government and Politics of Sweden (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), 31.

12 For a survey of the literature on the relation between legitimacy and enfranchisement see J. R. Freeman, "Franchisement and Political Stability: A Historical-Formal Analysis" (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1978).

13 The reason for formulating the supply condition in this way will become apparent momentarily. Each supply line in Figure 1 is of the form Ei=siLi,+ri where ri is the E-intercept at time ti, that is, the point where Si (theoretically) crosses the E axis. (In actuality, of course, L is never zero.) The equation can be rearranged to read Li=Ei/si-ri/si from which it follows that dLijdEi=lsi at time ti.

14 See Seymour and Friary, How the World Votes, Vol. 2, 61, 81; Bendix, Nation Building and Citizenship, 88; A. Lijphart, The Politics of Accommodation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968).

15 An instance of this is the discussion of Thrane's agitation in Norway, in Derry, A History of Modern Norway 1814-1972, 41.

16 Verney, Parliamentary Reform in Sweden 1866-1921, 64.

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Enfranchisement in Western Europe

With regard to the development of democratic expectations, statesmen such as Gladstone promulgated a belief in the inevitability of universal suffrage. In fact, he and other political elites appear to have adopted a conscious policy of gradualism in reforming electoral institutions.1 Such activities by elites encouraged the development of democratic expectations among citizens who came to believe that if they "were not admitted to the franchise in one reform they were bound in logic to obtain it sooner or later."18

We do not attempt to separate the effects of diffusion and development here.19 The fact that there was an augmentation of democratic expectations is what concerns us. Citizens came to expect the extension of political rights; hence receipt of the suffrage produced less and less legitimacy. In other words, the rise in democratic expectations increased the suffrage-price of a unit of governmental legitimacy. The changing consequences of enfranchisement are represented in Figure la as a series of supply lines corresponding to the prevailing conditions at successive time points t1, t ..... The increasing slope of these lines through time indicates the declining efficacy of the franchise for eliciting mass support for nation-building.

The Decision to Extend the Suffrage

The growth in democratic expectations came about rather gradually. In contrast, suffrage reforms were enacted in a discrete manner; "extensions of the franchise [were] quite limited in their number in the history of most countries.... [And, consequently,] it is necessary to develop a theory of franchise extension in which the threat to viability of the party system will only under some circumstances result in changes of [voter] eligibility."20 While we do not address the question of why particular circumstances precipitated extensions of voting rights,21 we do show how threats to the viability of governments are translated into

17 A detailed discussion of Gladstone's views on the suffrage is provided in J. Lambert, "Parliamentary Franchises Past and Present," Nineteenth Century 26 (1889), 954. For a description of elite attitudes on this issue see Butler, The Electoral System in Britain Since 1918.

18 M. Ostrogorski, Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties, Vol. 1 (London: Macmillan, 1902), 99.

19 For a discussion of this problem see D. Klingman, "Temporal and Spatial Diffusion in the Comparative Analysis of Social Change," American Political Science Review 74 (1980), 123-37.

20 F. Cort6s, A. Przeworski, and J. Sprague, Systems Analysis for Social Scientists (New York: John Wiley, 1974), 261. See also F. Cort6s and A. Przeworski, "Sistemas partidistas, movilizacion electoral y la estabilidad de sociedadas capitalistas," Revista Latinoamericana de Ciencia Politica 2 (1971), 220-41; and A. Przeworski, "Institutionalization of Voting Patterns."

21 The series of events which precipitated the five major British and three major Swedish suffrage reforms are discussed at length in Freeman, "Franchisement and Political Stability: A Historical-Formal Analysis."

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JOHN R. FREEMAN and DUNCAN SNIDAL

reforms of a particular size at any point in history. Our argument is that serious threats to viability lead to extensions of the franchise when there is sufficient buildup of discrepancies between the level of legitimacy elites prefer and that which they demand. The magnitude of the resulting reforms is directly related to the legitimacy-supply and preferred-legitimacy conditions which prevail at the time when such threatening circumstances obtain.

Figure I indicates the preferred level of enfranchisement (E*(t)) which elites would choose at any point in time given changing demand and supply conditions for legitimacy. The intersections of contemporaneous supply and demand conditions in Figure la provide for a rapidly increasing E*(t) over time; this is the solid line plotted in Figure lb. Note that as E*(t) approaches its maximum possible level of unity, a "ceiling effect" sets in and the rate of increase in E*(t) levels off. Thus, the solid S-shaped line in Figure lb is the theoretically expected time-path corresponding to elites' most preferred history of enfran- chisement. (This result is derived formally below.)

Now, if elites had been able and willing to enact the adjustments indicated by prevailing supply and preferred legitimacy conditions, the actual suffrage levels in each West European country would have grown slowly in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, increased rapidly in the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and then settled near unity as the entire adult population gained the right to vote. But this is not the pattern that we observe. Rather, there typically was a piece-wise approach to universal suffrage within countries whereby the enfranchisement of the adult population came about through a series of reforms or through several major revisions of voting rights.

The more discontinuous path to universal suffrage arose because of the unwillingness of elites to alter the makeup of their constituency continuously. Instead, elites accepted the ensuing buildup of deviations from the preferred legitimacy levels (L*) and so the position of their governments became increasingly tenuous. Hence when a severe crisis did occur, it was mandatory for the elites to correct the legitimacy discrepancy by enacting a comparatively large reform. Of course, the duration of the legitimacy-discrepancy buildup varied with the historical experience of each country. The point is that when a viability crisis occurred, elites were forced to enact a reform more in line with L*(t) and the existing legitimacy-price conditions; and since that price was constantly increasing, this usually meant that a reform of large magnitude was enacted.

To further illustrate this argument, suppose that the elites in a given country demanded their preferred legitimacy level at some time t and therefore enfranchised E(t)=E*(t), but then made no subsequent adjustments in the enfranchisement level. Assume further that no serious threats to the government were experienced until some t+e

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Enfranchisement in Western Europe

where c>0. By t+e, the enfranchisement level required to achieve the corresponding preferred level of legitimacy, L*(t+c), would be E*(t+e). However, since the elites had not altered the composition of their constituency, only the proportion E*(t) would possess the right to vote. A legitimacy discrepancy would exist and a reform of magnitude E*(t+E)-E*(t) would be required to correct it. Since E*(t) is continuously increasing through time, it follows that the later the initial, major reform of the suffrage (and the longer the time interval between subsequent reforms) the larger it will be. In other words, if two governments both are maintaining a legitimacy level equal to L(t) and each experiences a serious threat to its viability but at a different point in time, the reform promulgated by the government experiencing the later crisis will be of larger magnitude; or, formally E*(t+g)-E*(t)> E*(t+e)-E*(t) where .t>&>0.22

Two additional results can be derived from the diagrammatic analysis. First, close examination of Figure 1 reveals that, with the exception of the later period when most of the adult population already possesses the suffrage, reform magnitude increases even if crises and the elimination of legitimacy discrepancies occur on a regular basis. More specifically, because the suffrage-legitimacy price rises, the additional cost of achieving L* gradually increases even when elites correct the legitimacy deviation at each ti; formally we have E*(ti+2)- E*(ti+l)>E*(ti+l)-E*(ti) where i is of moderate size.

The diagrammatic analysis also suggests that even in the absence of a threat to the viability of the governments and with no increase in the demands for legitimacy, a rise in legitimacy price can produce marginal changes in the size of the electorate. Due to the continuing shift in the legitimacy supply condition (the upward movement of the supply lines in Figure la) which would otherwise reduce the amount of legitimacy achieved through enfranchisement, elites might continually make small adjustments in the suffrage level in order to maintain the prevailing level of legitimacy.23 This kind of enfranchisement could be labelled "short term" or "noncrisis" suffrage reform.

22 For example, suppose that at tl, elites demand L*(t) in Figure la and consider the magnitudes of reforms which would occur as a result of a crisis at some later time. If the next major crisis occurred at t4, it would result in an increase in the enfranchisement level to E* whereas if the crisis did not occur until t6, then a larger suffrage reform equivalent to E* would obtain. Clearly, then, we have (from the diagram) the inequality E -E*>E -E*. Thus the comparatively larger size of the 1906 Finnish reform can be understood in terms of the same underlying political process which accounts for the smaller reforms experienced in such countries as Britain. Legitimacy crises did not occur as regularly in the Finnish case as in most other West European countries.

23 Say we set the demanded legitimacy at L1 in Figure la, that is, we extend the legitimacy demand line upward so that it intersects all nine legitimacy supply lines. We then see that the upward shift in the legitimacy supply lines means a small change in E(t) is needed to maintain Li even though elites do not demand greater legitimacy

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Noncrisis suffrage reform usually was effected through the relation of franchise statutes to ever-changing demographic and economic conditions. For example, inflation sometimes served to increase the nominal value of property and therefore to extend automatically the franchise where the suffrage was based on property qualifications.24 The argument that this kind of enfranchisement is of little or no import is unfounded.25 Noncrisis enfranchisement was an important element of suffrage decision making both because it did result in significant variations in the size of the electorate and because it embodies the basic logic underlying suffrage reform.

Study of eligibility data shows that significant alterations in the suffrage level came about in this manner. In Sweden, the franchise level increased from about 10 per cent to 16 per cent of the adult population between 1866 and 1908 while, in the first decade of the twentieth century, the percentage of the Dutch adult male population possessing the suffrage increased from 49 per cent to 69 per cent.26 More important, historical research reveals that elites took this natural dynamic into account when considering suffrage reform. In the debates on the 1867 British reform, political decision makers like Lowe and Grosvenor argued that "silent changes" were working to satisfy the franchise demands of artisans. Thus, the noted political historian Charles Seymour writes of the first British reform: "the importance of the Act of 1832 so far as it was concerned with voting rights, cannot be minimized. Besides opening up the close boroughs, a process which affected the balance of parties rather than of classes, it provided for an automatically increasing electorate, and in so doing sounded the knell of aristocracy."27 Noncrisis suffrage decision making is an important element of the democratization process, then, and one which the diagrammatic representation captures and clarifies.

Study of the dynamics of legitimacy demand and legitimacy supply establishes a benchmark from which to conduct diachronic

(L(t) is fixed at L2). Of course, the magnitude of these changes often will be quite small. Hence the marginal alterations in E are not likely to arrest the buildup of legitimacy discrepancies. A more thorough diagrammatic analysis of this phenomenon is carried out in J. R. Freeman and D. Snidal, "Franchisement and Legitimacy: A Diagrammatic and Empirical Analysis" (unpublished manuscript, July 1979).

24 Of course, demographic or economic forces (for example, deflation) also can work in the reverse direction, retracting the franchise. For a discussion of this possibility see Lambert, "Parliamentary Franchises," 948-49; and J. R. Pole, "Suffrage and Representation in Maryland from 1776 to 1810: A Statistical Note and Some Reflections," in J. H. Silbey and S. T. Sveeney (eds.), Voters, Parties and Elections (Lexington, Mass.: Xerox College Publishing, 1972), 61-71.

25 See Cort6s and Przeworski, "Sistemas Partidistas," 225. 26 Lijphart, The Politics of Accommodation, 107. 27 C. Seymour, Electoral Reform in England and Wales (Hamden, Conn.: Archon

Books, 1970), 486, emphasis added. See also Ostrogorski, Democracy, 45.

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investigations of enfranchisement in individual countries. The analysis suggests that elites adopted suffrage statutes which brought the size of the existing electorate into line with the optimal levels indicated by the time-path E*(t) in Figure lb. Examination of the process which gives rise to this curve reveals much about the relative magnitude of suffrage reforms. For instance, the diagrammatic investigation explains why later extensions like that promulgated by Finnish elites in 1906 were larger than earlier reforms (see footnote 22). Of course, the validity of both this result and the larger finding-the existence of an optimal time-path for enfranchisement-depends on there having been uniform rates of growth in legitimacy price and legitimacy demand. For if democratic expectations did not diffuse and develop evenly across countries and elite demand for legitimacy did not grow at approximately similar rates throughout the nineteenth century, the optimal path for suffrage reform would differ greatly from one country to another and the curve in Figure lb would not offer a useful description of enfranchisement in Western Europe. In order to ascertain whether the optimal enfranchisement path was essentially uniform across West European countries, we next develop a mathematical representation of the supply-demand argument. The more rigorous presentation of our explanation then is used to compare actual series of suffrage reforms in nine West European countries.

Analytic Implications

Elites' most preferred or optimal suffrage reform curve depends on three interrelated elements of the democratization process: elites' growing demand for legitimacy; shifts in the mass supply schedule for legitimacy; and the constraint that enfranchisement can never exceed 100 per cent of the adult population.28 Ultimately, as the upper bound on enfranchise- ment was approached, elites were forced to find other ways to secure legitimation such as transfer payments and employment guarantees. But especially in the nineteenth century, the franchise was an effective means of responding to the exigencies of industrialization and foreign relations.

Let L*(t) represent the preferred level of legitimacy that elites seek to obtain through the franchise. Then the constrained growth in L*(t) can be represented as

(Equation 1) L*(t)= po[- E(t)]exp{gt} po,g>0

where p, is the preferred level of legitimacy at some initial point in the democratization process when t=0 (see below), E(t) is the level of enfranchisement at time t, exp{gt}=egt where e is the base of the natural

28 Since E(t) is the proportion of the adult population eligible to vote at time t, the required constraint is OE(t)<l for all t.

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logarithms, and g is the rate of growth in elite demand for legitimacy.29 The middle factor on the right side of equation 1, [1 -E(t)], reflects the limited possibilities for augmenting legitimacy by means of the suffrage as E(t) approaches unity, while the third factor, exp{gt}, reflects the increase through time of the need for legitimacy. Once more, the preferred level of legitimacy which elites seek to secure through enfranchisement changes continuously while the actual amount of legitimacy demanded by elites changes discontinuously.30

The legitimacy which the populace supplies for a fixed level of enfranchisement decreases over time as a result of the fact that the diffusion and development of democratic expectations produce a rise in legitimacy price. This shift in the suffrage price of legitimacy can be modeled as

(Equation 2) Ls(t)=soE(t)exp{- rt} r,So>O

where Ls(t) is the legitimacy supplied at time t when the level of enfranchisement is E(t), exp{-rt}=e-rt where r is a parameter embodying the rate of diffusion and development of democratic expectations, and So is a constant corresponding to the initial

29 A few comments should be made about the substantive interpretation of the interactive term in this equation, [1-E(t)]. Consider the factors which play a role in determining the relative rate of growth of L* which can be expressed as (dL*/dt)/L*. On the one hand, those factors contributing to the increasing need for state legitimacy can be assumed to be exogenous to the process of enfranchisement and are embodied in the parameter g which captures the overall growth in required legitimacy. On the other hand, the factors which inhibit elites from relying on enfranchisement as a means of gaining legitimacy are more closely tied to their perceptions of the costs of extending the franchise. First, elites were concerned that alterations in voting rights would destabilize their base of electoral support. The importance of this concern varied directly with the relative rate of growth in the franchise at any point in time (that is, (dEt/dt)/Et). Second, elites believed that successive franchise extensions incorporated progressively less qualified and less desirable elements of the population into the electorate (groups of people who were less likely to support the prevailing order at the polls). This concern about the "allegiance" of newly enfranchised voters can be represented by the ratio of enfranchised to disenfranchised adults at time t, E/(1-E), so that as this quotient increases so does elite concern about the political reliability of new groups of voters. Combining these dual concerns regarding the relative size and allegiance of newly enfranchised groups of voters into the overall cost of legitimacy through enfranchisement, we can reformulate the demand for increasing suffrage legitimacy net of these same costs as (1') (dL*/dt)/L* =g - [E/(l - E)][(dE/dt)/E]

Solving for L* in (1') gives (1) which together with (2) and (3) implies (5). Hence this substantive interpretation of elite preference preserves the upper bound corresponding to universal suffrage; (1') introduces the growth constraint in a logically equivalent fashion.

30 This discontinuous movement of L(t) (even as L*(t) moves continuously) was represented in Figure la. However, the present formulation differs from that depicted in Figure la since L*(t) does not continue to grow without bound but rather the rightward shift of the L*(t) lines slows as E(t) approaches unity.

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legitimacy-supply condition.31 Since the factor exp{-rt} on the right side of equation 2 decreases exponentially with t, the supply condition shifts over time in the same way as the supply curves in Figure la. The equilibrium preference supply condition for optimal legitimation through enfranchisement occurs when

(Equation 3) Ls(t) =L*(t)

By substituting equations 1 and 2 into 3 and collecting terms, we learn that the most preferred time path for suffrage reform is:

(Equation 4) E*(t)= [1 + Ce-(r+g)t]-l

where C=s,o/p is a constant embodying the "initial conditions of democratization" at time t=O when the process of enfranchisement commences. The parameters g and r represent the changing conditions for optimal legitimation over time due to growth in elite demands and the consequences of the diffusion and development of democratic expectations, respectively.32 The sigmoidal (S-shaped) character of the time function in equation 4-which corresponds to the shape of the curve in Figure lb-is the result of the fact that with r, g, and C positive, E*(t)--O as t--- and E*(t)--l as t--oo. Finally, we linearize equation 4 by deriving the "logit" of E*(t):

(Equation 5) P(t)=ln[E*(t)/(l- E*(t))]=- ln(C)+(r+g)t.

31 Just as equation 1 was shown to embody the causes of growth in L* (footnote 29), equation 2 can be shown to capture the factors which are responsible for the growth in Ls. To see this, consider the expression for the relative rate of growth in legitimacy supply: (2') (dL,/dt)/Ls= -r+ [(dE/dt)/E] The first term on the right side of (2'), -r, represents the steadily declining rate of legitimacy supply due to the diffusion and development of democratic expectations. And the second term embodies the increase in legitimacy supply that is an outgrowth of the relative magnitude of suffrage reform. Thus, it is possible to interpret our representation of the shift in legitimacy supply schedules in terms of factors which determine citizen's willingness to support the state in return for voting rights.

32 The representations in equations 1 and 2 assume constant rates of increase in both the legitimacy level which elites prefer and also in the decline in the slopes of the legitimacy-supply lines. Since we have no a priori reason to believe these are the best assumptions, the empirical accuracy of some alternative formulations of L* and Ls were studied in conjunction with a variant of the present model (see J. R. Freeman and D. Snidal, "Franchisement and Legitimacy"). These alternative representations allowed for both a time variant rate of growth in legitimacy preference and a time variant rate of decline in the slope of the supply lines. Two of these representations were found to yield implausible results while statistical criteria permitted us to determine that the model used in the text was the best of the two remaining candidates. This result held up under the various refinements of the model discussed below. Although the model based on constant rates of growth and time invariant decline has shortcomings (for example, it is not possible to identify the r and g paramters individually), we can be relatively certain that (4) is a reasonable repre- sentation of the processes of enfranchisement in our sample of West European countries.

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It is equation 5 that we use to assess the empirical accuracy of our account of West European enfranchisement.33

It is important to emphasize that equations 4 and 5 do not describe the time path of enfranchisement per se but rather the path of the equilibrium (most preferred) level of enfranchisement. As pointed out earlier, elites do not continuously manipulate the franchise level to preserve this equilibrium. Only when the ensuing legitimacy discrepancies become threatening and suffrage reform is deemed necessary do elites adjust the franchise to the (optimum) level indicated by P(t). Thus equation 5 describes the level of enfranchisement which should obtain immediately after major reforms.

Before proceeding to the empirical portion of the investigation, one important caveat should be mentioned about the returns to elites from enfranchisement. By the end of the nineteenth century, citizens had begun to demand social as well as political rights and the latter increasingly constituted only a necessary basis for governmental legitimacy.34 Equivalently, the expanding role of the state ruled out legitimation by suffrage reform alone; the diffusion and development of democratic expectations among citizens necessitated the inauguration of the welfare state and all its means for ensuring governmental viability. In terms of our diagrammatic argument (Figure 1), at some point in time, tg, governments came to prefer a level of legitimacy, L*(t9)= L*, which could not be achieved through suffrage reform since the prevailing supply condition, S9, would require the (logically) impossible circumstance in which enfranchisement exceeded unity.

This is captured by the mathematical formulation in equation 1 in the following way. As the suffrage becomes universal, elites recognize that enfranchisement is a less efficacious source of legitimacy relative to other mechanisms like transfer payments. Accordingly, the rate of change in L* eventually diminishes (see footnote 30). The substantive implication is that, as compared to nineteenth-century reforms, twentieth-century suffrage extensions, and especially post-First World War reforms, were less an outgrowth of elite demands for legitimation. These more recent reforms probably are better explained by other considerations such as the policy of gradualism and/or elites' desire to maintain partisan advantage. In sum, because of the possibility that the

33 Technically speaking, (5) is not identical to the standard logit formulation because here P(t) is defined only for positive time, t>0. This particular transformation is employed so as to allow linear estimation of the coefficients. Our use of least squares regression and various statistical tests requires assumptions of normally distributed and independent errors on P(t). Given the transformation from P(t) back to E*(t), this is equivalent to assuming that deviations from the equilibrium path of enfranchisement will be greatest at intermediate values of time (for example, 1850-1920).

34 See Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class; and Butler, The Electoral System in Britain Since 1918, xxiii.

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model is less applicable in the case of franchise extensions which (essentially) accomplished universal enfranchisement, in the empirical analysis which follows we examine the empirical accuracy of P(t) when "late suffrage reforms" are and are not included in the sample.

Empirical Analysis

The descriptive accuracy of equation 5 was assessed against the experiences of nine West European countries. The experiences of two other countries-Germany and France-also were examined in terms of the diagrammatic argument. The suffrage reform sample was drawn from Rokkan's historical characterization of West European democratization.35 Of the franchise extensions promulgated in conjunction with constitutional reforms, only those associated with major post-revolutionary reorganizations were included.36 Where possible, adjustments were made for electoral inequalities such as plural voting (for example, the Belgian reform of 1893); franchise statutes which dealt solely with these inequalities were omitted (for example, the Austrian Reform of 1907).37 Because of certain ambiguities surrounding the definition of universal suffrage and the fact that the analysis possibly is less applicable as E approaches unity, care was taken to assess the status of "late suffrage reforms"-those reforms not included in Rokkan's typology.38 A list of the franchise extensions which make up the sample is contained in the Appendix. Finally, both the use of electoral participation as a means of achieving governmental legitimation and the diffusion and development of democratic expectations were assumed to commence in the period of the French and American Revolutions. To be specific, in the data analysis, time was measured from the year 1789 (that is, t=0 corresponds to 1789).39 35 See Rokkan, Citizens, Elections and Parties, 84-85. 36 For example, the 1849 Dutch reorganization was omitted because no major revision of

the 1815 Dutch Constitution was enacted; elections simply were made direct rather than indirect. See Lijphart, The Politics of Accommodation, 77.

37 For a detailed discussion of these and other measurement issues, see J. R. Freeman and D. Snidal, "Franchisement and Legitimacy."

38 Rokkan' s discussion suggests that universal suffrage is the situation in which men and women are enfranchised on an equal basis. Our diagrammatic argument defines universal suffrage as the circumstance where the entire adult population possesses the right to vote (E=E*=1). If we analyzed only those extensions included in Rokkan's typology, then, we would limit ourselves to an examination of major suffrage reforms and ignore the numerous revisions of the suffrage enacted between 1920 and 1970. However, as we noted at the end of the previous section, it is possible that our model is not applicable in this period when franchise extensions alone would not eliminate legitimacy discrepancies. For this reason, we investigate the validity of the model both when these late reforms are and are not included in the sample. The fact that the parameter estimates are essentially the same in each case suggests that the model accounts for late reforms as well as for earlier ones.

39 The French Revolution, in particular, represents a major turning point in the

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316 JOHN R. FREEMAN and DUNCAN SNIDAL

Table 1 reports the results of the regression analysis for the logit representation in equation 5. As indicated in column one, the fit of the optimal enfranchisement curve is very close. The demand-supply model is able to account for the actual time paths of enfranchisement in the nine countries.40 In reference to the problems surrounding "late suffrage reforms," two samples were studied. The larger of these included all of the suffrage extensions in the nine enfranchisement histories; a second, smaller example excluded the post-1920 reforms that were absent from Rokkan's typology. The extension of the franchise to Italian women in 1945 consistently was found to be an outlier. Therefore that reform was excluded from both samples.41 A check of the statistical results indicated that there was a relatively good fit between the model and all the remaining franchise reform date points.42

Rokkan's typology distinguishes four different initial conditions regarding "inherited style of rule" in West European countries. How important are these initial conditions? To examine this question, we introduced three dummy variables which together with the constant term in the regression equation allow us to represent Rokkan's four kinds of inherited styles of rule; these results are reported in column two of Table 1.43 The estimates for countries with an absolutist heritage (Italy and Austria in our sample) and with city oligarchic styles

development of West European democracy. For instance, Bendix argues that "the French Revolution brought about a fundamental change in the conception of representation: the basic unit was no longer the household, the property, or the corporation, but the individual citizen..." (Nation Building and Citizenship, 114).

40 It is well known that a diffusion curve like that in equation 4 will always fit a single country's history quite well (for example, see W. Feller, An Introduction to Probability Theory and Its Applications [2nd ed.; New York: John Wiley, 1966]). But there is no reason why the combined sample of nine different suffrage reform histories should conform to the theoretical expectation as well as they do. Thus the striking empirical result is that the model is able to explain the histories of enfranchisement in all nine countries simultaneously.

41 There is evidence that the Italian war experience constituted a very strong and peculiar interruption of the democratization process. See P. Converse, "Of Time and Partisan Stability."

42 Residuals were scrutinized by visual inspection of plots, by a quasi-jacknifing method of checking the stability of coefficients when the model is reestimated excluding each data point in turn and by the use of the "hat matrix" to investigate the influence of particular data points. Excepting the Italian reform of 1945, no data point was found by any of these methods to markedly affect the estimates reported here. The robustness of the model estimates (with respect to outliers) is evidenced by the fact that when any one of the other forty points is excluded, none of the coefficients change by even as much as two-thirds of its associated standard error. For a discussion of these methods see F. Mosteller and J. Tukey, "Data Analysis Including Statistics," in G. Lindzey and E. Aranson (eds.), The Handbook of Social Psychology, Vol. 2 (Menlo Park, Calif.: Addison-Wesley, 1968); and D. Hoaglin and R. Welsch, "The Hat Matrix in Regression and ANOVA," The American Statistician 32 (1978), 17-22.

43 The constant in the regression equation now represents the initial conditions in the "protracted absolutist" countries and the coefficients for the dummies represent deviations above or below this level.

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(Netherlands and Belgium) were virtually identical, statistically significant, and quite distinct from the estimates for countries with continuous representation (Britain, Finland and Sweden) or protracted absolutist heritages (Norway and Denmark) which were themselves essentially indistinguishable. Column three presents this more simple, dichotomous categorization. The more negative of the estimated constants correspond to lower levels of enfranchisement at any point in time.44 Therefore, countries with either an absolutist or city oligarchic heritage started from a lower level of enfranchisement, and hence a lower level of democratic legitimation, than the other West European countries in the sample. On the basis of the diagrammatic account of suffrage reform, we would hypothesize that the lower initial level of (optimal) enfranchisement is a consequence of elites' initial preference for a comparatively lower level of legitimacy and/or comparatively lower expectations and demands on the part of citizens. Thus in the Italian case, for instance, we might expect that the late consolidation of that country meant that the legitimacy requirements there were less stringent than those of, say, Britain.

We also looked for differences in the overall growth rate of the optimal enfranchisement level. Such differences would be reflected in variations in the estimate of the time coefficients for various countries. None of Rokkan's types differed in any statistically significant way from the estimates for all countries taken together. Thus countries starting at a lower initial (equilibrium) level of enfranchisement maintained that relative position over time. Column four of Table 1 shows this same relation estimated on the smaller sample to illustrate that these findings are not an artifact of including late suffrage reforms in the analysis.

The optimal time-path of enfranchisement is a useful baseline against which to evaluate the progress of democratizing countries. For example, the estimated model indicates that if a reform had been enacted in Britain in 1867, the proportion of the adult population possessing the franchise should have been adjusted to approximately .21. In fact, the Second Reform Act increased E(t) to .17. In terms of theoretical expectations, then, that reform was clearly not a "leap in the dark" as Derby and other members of the House of Lords alleged but was probably in line with the expectations of the British citizenry. More important, the estimated model allows us to place the willingness of British elites to transfer electoral power gradually to the masses-what Seymour calls the "leit-motif' of British democracy-in proper 44 In interpreting these coefficients, the reader should remember that the estimates are

- ln(C) not C. Accordingly, the more negative the estimated constant, the larger is the estimate of C in equation 5. Again, it is important to keep in mind that the estimate of the constant for each group of countries is the sum of the overall regression constant and the dummy for that particular "inherited style of rule." For example, in the case of city oligarchic and absolutist heritage countries in column three, - ln(C)= -5.96+(-1.19)= -7.15.

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TABLE 1

REGRESSION ESTIMATES OF P(t)

Coefficient for 1 2 3 4 5 6

-lIn(C) -6.79** -6.11** -596** -575** -474** -459** (.58) ( .58) ( .50) ( .57) ( .45) ( .45)

time .062* .060** .059** .058* .044** .044** (.005) ( .004) ( .004) ( .005) ( .004) ( .004)

continuous .208 representation (.371)

absolutist -1.09* heritage (.41) -1.19** -1.02** -1.07** 12*

city (~~~~ ~ ~~~~~~ ~ ~~~~.26) (.30) (.20) (.23)

oligarchic (.37)

POST1919 1.56** 1.54** (.31) (.30)

SWEDEN/NORWAY - .45 ( .27)

R 2 ~~~~.814 .882 .881 .820 .931 .936

n 40 40 40 31 40 40

F-*

0 z

z

z0

z

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TABLE I-Continued

* Significant at the .05 level. ** Significant at the .01 level.

Note: Numbers in parentheses are standard errors. Time is measured in years with 1789=0. Samples of size n = 40 include all suffrage reforms listed in the Appendix. Samples of size n = 31 exclude all "late suffrage reforms." The dependent variable is P(t) = ln[E*(t)/(l -E*(t))]. Therefore, to determine the predicted level of enfranchisement, t*(t), from P(t) we calculate t*(t) = [exp({(t)]/[1 +exp{P(t)}] where exp{x} = ex and e is the base of the natural logarithms.

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perspective, that is, in the larger context of European democratization.45 And when we do so, it appears that only an amount of electoral power commensurate with the prevailing legitimacy-supply condition was dispensed by British politicians in 1867.

A number of other important findings emerge from the regression analysis. Earlier we argued that there is a direct relation between the foreign-policy objectives of the state and the need for legitimation; enfranchisement was one of the means by which elites sought to mobilize citizens into the ranks of national armies. Of the major foreign policy confrontations which took place in Europe after the French Revolution, none was more important than the First World War. The international politics of the early twentieth century culminated in a conflict which brought almost every adult citizen into the national defense effort. We therefore should expect that European states were particularly sensitive to the buildup of legitimation discrepancies in this period and hence elites would extend political rights when faced with any serious threat to the viability of national institutions.

An examination of the residuals of the optimal enfranchisement model reveals that the post-First World War data points indeed are qualitatively different from earlier observations. This confirms our expectation about the significance of the First World War and also vindicates our concern about the nature of late suffrage reforms. In fact, this result suggests that the widespread occurrence of major reforms after the First World War came about in anticipation of, or in response to, this qualitative change in the enfranchisement process. (Eight of the nine countries in the sample experienced a major suffrage reform in the 1918-1920 period.) Not surprisingly, the correct dividing point appears to be the year 1919, although the reforms of that year do not appear to fall neatly into one category or the other. On the basis of an inspection of the residuals, the 1919 reforms in Belgium and Italy have been placed with the pre-1919 group while those of the Netherlands, Norway, and Austria have been placed with the latter category denoted by the dummy variable POST1919. This seems reasonable since the Belgian and Italian reforms of 1919 resulted in enfranchisement levels of only .45 and .51 respectively, whereas the lowest enfranchisement level resulting from a reform in the POST1919 group is .84 (Netherlands, 1919).

The results for the regression analysis including the POST1919 dummy are presented in column five of Table 1.46 The fit of the model has been improved, the standard errors of the coefficients are smaller for all variables except the time variable which obviously is moderately 45 C. Seymour, Electoral Reform in England and Wales. 46 Some minor heteroskedasticity was detected in the residuals against time but was

judged not to pose a problem. The results were also checked for autocorrelation (between present error and the error at the last major reform for the same country) but none was detected.

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collinear with POST1919. The impact of the POST1919 variable is quite dramatic: it results in the equilibrium level of enfranchisement E*(t) jumping from .46 to .80 for the city oligarchic and absolutist states and from .71 to .92 for the other nations.47 The discontinuity may reflect the impact of the First World War in making near-universal enfranchisement a necessary prerequisite for legitimacy in Western Europe. Alternatively, since we are dealing with adult enfranchisement and this was the period of rapid enfranchisement of women, the shift may represent the entry of women as a significant factor in maintaining democratic legitimacy. As Morgan points out, "If the impact of war on party politics and necessities was the principal cause of Suffrage success in 1918, it is as well to note that Women Suffragists had brought their issue to the point where it became one of those necessities. The threat of renewed militancy-even during the war-was not to be dismissed lightly."48 Thus the discontinuity appears to be as much an outgrowth of the shift in citizen expectations as it is the consequence of the exigencies of the foreign policies of states in this period.

In an attempt to determine whether individual countries deviated from the patterns suggested by Rokkan's typology and where the impact of such events as the First World War was most pronounced, two additional regression analyses were conducted for each country.49 One of these allowed each country to have a different initial level of democratization (that is, a different constant coefficient). A second regression analysis considered the impact of an alternative rate of development/diffusion of democratic expectations (that is, an alternative coefficient for time). In no case did a country's estimated coefficient deviate beyond one standard error of the estimates in column five. Moreover, none of the deviations was statistically significant. However, small negative values for the constant coefficients for Norway and Sweden (which were unified from 1814 to 1905) suggest that these countries started from lower initial levels of democratization than

47 A second cluster of reforms can be seen in the aftermath of the Second World War. Major reforms occurred in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Austria and the Netherlands between 1944 and 1946 and in Belgium in 1949. However, no shift was detected in the equilibrium legitimacy path at this point suggesting that the turmoil of the war caused states to adjust the franchise but caused no change in the underlying demand and supply conditions of legitimacy. The only other clustering of reforms in one period occurred with five countries experiencing major reforms between 1881 and 1887. However, this grouping appears to have no better explanation than coincidence since there is evidence neither of a shift in the underlying legitimacy conditions nor of any particular cause for reforms to have occurred at this time. Finally, the "hat matrix" (see footnote 42 above) suggested that the pre-1848 data points might be affecting the estimates, but dropping these points from the sample did not affect the results.

48 D. Morgan, Suffragists and Liberals: The Politics of Women's Suffrage in England (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1975), 149-50.

49 This excludes Finland which had only one case in the small sample and two in the large sample.

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the levels which apply when they are grouped with different categories in Rokkan's typology. The regression analysis in column six adds a variable SWEDEN/NORWAY to allow for this possibility. While the coefficient falls short of statistical significance, it provides evidence of a somewhat lower initial level of democratization in Sweden and Norway than would be anticipated by Rokkan's typology. For example, the estimates of column six would predict an enfranchisement level of .46 for Norway and Sweden in 1900 versus a predicted level of .57 for Britain and Denmark. Thus the lower rate of enfranchisement experienced in these countries appears to have been due not to factors inhibiting the diffusion of pressures for democracy (for example, wide geographic dispersion of population) but rather to the "lower" initial conditions of democracy.

Figure 2 uses the coefficients of column five to depict the optimal time-path of enfranchisement estimated from the model. Examination of Figure 2 reveals that the city oligarchic and absolutist countries started from lower initial conditions of democratization and stayed at those lower levels throughout the modern period. Looking at the horizontal differences between the curves, we see that there has been about a 20-year time difference between the enfranchisement experiences of the two groups. Of course, this difference has become insignificant in recent decades, all of Western Europe having achieved virtually universal enfranchisement.

The German and French Cases50

A turning point in the democratization of the German suffrage occurred in Prussia in the year 1848 when the franchise for Landtag elections became indirect but universal for all men at least 25 years of age.51 50 The definition and measurement of suffrage reforms in absolutist heritage countries

(Italy, Germany, and Austria) is especially problematic. Major electoral inequalities existed in Prussia and Austria. The Austrian Curiae and Prussian three-class system were qualitatively different from such inequalities as the Belgian plural voting. The

processes of unification in Italy and Germany make it extremely difficult to obtain accurate adult population figures for those countries. For example, to construct such measures for the German Confederation it would be necessary to determine the adult

population of 22 German states (or, alternatively, the adult populations of Baden

Wiirttemburg, Bavaria, and parts of Hesse-Darmstadt). Because both types of difficulties plague the German case and because there is evidence that the democratization of Germany differed somewhat from that of Italy and Austria, we decided to treat Germany as a separate case here. Most of the important French lfanchise extensions (and retractions) occurred before 1850, and the measurement of those suffrage reforms also is problematic. Estimates of French enfranchisement levels and adult populations are unreliable, but the most important reason for treating the French case separately is the fact that that country experienced several major enfranchisement reversals. An in-depth analysis of enfranchisement in France is very much needed.

51 See E. N. Anderson, Social and Political Conflict in Prussia 1858-1864 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Studies, no. 12, 1954), chap. 8.

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Enfranchisement in Western Europe

FIGURE 2

THE PATH OF ENFRANCHISEMENT IN WESTERN EUROPE

LEGEND Continuous Representation -

Britain B Sweden S Finland F

Protracted Absolutist Denmark D Norway N

City Oligarchic - Netherlands n Belgium b

Absolutist Heritage- -

Austria a Italy i

B S - D

F S n /

N

B D

k;b

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 789 1850

70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150 160 170 1900 1919 1945

TIME

Figure 3 shows that, in comparison to other franchise extensions of this period, the 1848 Prussian reform was unusually liberal, especially by the "absolutist heritage" standard which Rokkan applies to Prussia and Germany. What Figure 3 does not show is the electoral inequality instituted through the Constitutional Act of 1850 (and lasting in Prussia until 1918) which provided for a three-class voting system and effectively negated the democratic reform of two years before.52 A more lasting 52 The three-class system provided for voting according to the proportion of taxes paid in

each electoral district; the system was highly inequitable (see E. N. Anderson and P. R. Anderson, Political Institutions and Social Change in Continental Europe in the Nineteenth Century [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967], 316). This three-class system had been employed in Baden and in the Prussian Rhineland prior to 1848. Indeed, one of the problems in analyzing the German case is that each state has a

1.00

.95

.90

.85

.80

.75

.70

.65

.60

.55

.50

.45

.40

.35

.30

.25

.20

.15

.10

.05

.00

1

J l l l I l l ? ? ?

323

i

i

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JOHN R. FREEMAN and DUNCAN SNIDAL

liberalization of the franchise occurred in conjunction with unification when Bismarck used enfranchisement as one of the principal means of legitimizing the centralization and expansion of the German state. Universal manhood suffrage (with no three-class voting inequality) was provided for in lower house elections for the North German Confederation (1867) and again for the German Empire (1871). Ignoring the severe electoral inequality which existed in Prussia then, the suffrage level for the initial election of the German Empire suggests that German elites may have been more generous with the franchise than their "absolutist heritage" would have predicted, but also that their reforms were not out of line with those experienced in other European countries (for example, Britain and Sweden). Perhaps this was due to the need to mobilize citizens for Germany's war efforts against Austria and France since it seems unlikely that the German populace developed democratic expectations at a faster rate than citizens in other countries. In sum, the German case seems to fit the broad pattern of European enfranchisement while at the same time exhibiting interesting differences from what might be anticipated from Germany's inherited style of rule.

In many respects, the French history of enfranchisement is exemplary of the process by which the elites' desire for legitimation and citizens' democratic expectations lead to the extension of voting rights. It was through enfranchisement that the Napoleons sought to legitimize the operation and expansion of their empires. The franchise was such a vital element of their domestic and foreign policies that when other European elites advocated universal suffrage they were accused of Caesarism.53 French citizens were the first to be granted a liberal suffrage. The memory of that experience could not be expunged, nor could the further development of democratic expectations be arrested.54

In other respects, however, the French experience was the most anomalous of all. As Figure 3 shows, the pattern of French enfranchisement is unlike any other in the sample. At the end of the eighteenth century, the suffrage was granted to a relatively large number of citizens; then, early in the nineteenth century, the franchise was severely retracted.55 In 1848, a second liberal extension of the franchise

different history of democratization dating back to Stein and Hardenburg's liberalization of the municipal franchise in 1808.

53 See Anderson and Anderson, Political Institutions and Social Change, 330-31; and Seymour and Friary, How the World Votes, Vol. 1, chap. 17.

54 Thus David Thomson emphasizes "the accumulative progress in the assertion of constitutional rights and civil liberties." He goes on to point out that "even the 'personal government' of Napoleon III was forced to retain universal male suffrage and an elected assembly, although the democratic functioning of these institutions was foiled by governmental pressure and management of elections..." (Democracy in France: The Third and Fourth Republics [3rd ed.; London: Oxford University Press, 1960], 17).

55 Of course, there is some question as to whether the franchise had any meaning under

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Enfranchisement in Western Europe

FIGURE 3

THE PATH OF ENFRANCHISEMENT IN PRUSSIA/GERMANY AND FRANCE

LEGEND

France (Protracted Absolutist Rule) FR Prussia/Germany (Absolutist Heritage) p/g

FR FRFR

pt

FR

/ FR

FR

g

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150 160 170 1789 1850 1900 1919 1945

TIME

tPrussian Reform of 1849 (not 1850 when three class voting system instituted).

was promulgated but this was followed by a 97-year interval in which women did not gain the right to vote. Events which precipitated these suffrage extensions and retractions often were of a violent, revolutionary character and knowledge of the French revolutions diffused through Europe, providing an impetus for elites in other countries to respond to the buildup of legitimacy discrepancies.56 What

Napoleon Bonaparte's rule. Be that as it may, the suffrage retraction of 1815 clearly represented a severe case of disenfranchisement, especially when compared to the optimal enfranchisement curve for the continuous representation and protracted absolutist countries.

56 See Trevelyan, History of England, Vol. 3, 173.

.85-

.80

.75

.70-

.65-

.40-

.35-

.25-

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JOHN R. FREEMAN and DUNCAN SNIDAL

is not well understood is why certain French elites both failed to satisfy citizen demands for the suffrage and other political rights and, on occasion, frustrated citizen expectations by rescinding existing rights.

The explanation of enfranchisement developed here helps us to comprehend the consequences of disenfranchisement but it does not suggest any rationale for retracting voting rights. Consider the abortive suffrage retraction instituted by Charles X which together with other repressive measures precipitated the July Revolution of 1830. The diagrammatic analysis suggests that when the slope of the supply line is relatively small and positive (like S1 in Figure la), even marginal decreases in E-like those which Charles planned (from about .0047 to .0013)-result in large decreases in the level of legitimation and thus severely threaten the viability of the state. What our explanation does not provide is an account of the reasoning of Charles X and an explanation of why he ignored the warnings of Metternich and Tsar Nicholas as to the likely consequences of his actions.57 (Nor, for that matter, does it explain why Charles' brother, Louis XVIII, failed to act on the recommendations of Castlereagh.)58 Historical accounts which attribute the insensitivity of the Bourbons to their "irrationality"59 or their "wooden oligarchic outlooks"60 are not particularly illuminating. What is needed is more careful and thorough study of the deliberations of these elites and why they chose to ignore the advice of their contemporaries regarding the democratic requisites for their own legitimation.61

57 After the Opposition made great gains in the elections of 1830, Metternich and Tsar Nicholas advised Charles to make certain concessions to his opponents. Instead, Charles responded by restricting the press, dissolving the newly elected Chamber, and altering the electoral system so as to change the number of deputies and reduce the number of eligible voters from about 90,000 to 25,000. Seymour and Friary, How the World Votes, Vol. 1, 341-42.

58 Castlereagh's advice had to do with what he called "the principle of exclusion." In Castlereagh's opinion, "Tyrants [might] poison or murder an obnoxious character, but the surest and only means a constitutional sovereign has to restrain such a character is to employ him. Office soon strips him of his most dangerous adherents-he becomes unpopular, can be laid aside at pleasure, and sinks to his true lead."' See the letter from Castlereagh to Sir Charles Stuart of May 8, 1815 reprinted in C. Webster, The Foreign Policy of Castlereagh (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1963), 545-48.

59 Charles' actions are explained by Seymour and Friary (How the World Votes, Vol. 1, 342) in the following way: "There is no clearer instance in moder history of the ancient saw, that whom the gods would destroy they first make mad."

60 Thomson, Democracy in France, 31. 61 In particular, it is important to consider elites' desires to maintain control over

governmental institutions and how that objective takes priority over the goal of legitimation. See J. R. Freeman, "The Logic of Franchisement: A Decision Theoretic Analysis," Comparative Political Studies 13 (1980), 61-95; and Freeman, "Franchisement and Political Stability," chaps. 3, 8.

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Enfranchisement in Western Europe

Conclusion

The theoretical contribution of this study is that it identifies both what is similar and what is unique about enfranchisement processes. The major substantive result is the finding of a common (optimal) enfranchisement history for nine West European nations. The fitted model serves as a benchmark against which the democratic advance of countries can be assessed. For example, we have seen how the model helps us place British democratization-specifically, the second British reform-in the larger, European context. The nature of the so-called "explosive" 1906 Finnish reform can be understood in the same way. The model indicates that in that case the expected enfranchisement level (E*(t) in 1906) was .75. In actuality, the Finnish reform of 1906 increased adult enfranchisement to about .85. The extension was explosive, then, to the extent that the large discrepancy between actual and optimal levels of enfranchisement was eliminated. But the size of the reform was excessive only in so far as it exceeded the level which was necessary to satisfy the expectations of the Finnish citizenry. In that regard the excess of 10 per cent in the number of persons who gained the suffrage is not all that great. What is most important here, of course, is that we now understand why a reform of such substantial magnitude was required: a franchise reform of this size was dictated by the extant interrelationship of elite demands for and citizen supply of legitimacy.62

Several interesting questions emerge from using the model in this way. One of the most important of these is: What are the causes and impact of maintaining large discrepancies between existing and optimal suffrage levels? Our analysis tells us how elites adjust franchisement levels once they have decided suffrage reform is needed. But it remains for us to account for the fact that substantial discrepancies from E*(t) often are tolerated for long periods of time. This question is important because the stability of governments depends on elites' abilities to satisfy the democratic expectations of citizens or else to withstand the effects of excluding citizens from the electoral process.63 Failure to appreciate the magnitude and impact of such discrepancies between expected and existing suffrage levels may have dire consequences for the viability of governments. By offering a means by which to assess

62 In his article, "Finland," in S. Rokkan and J. Meyriat (eds.), International Guide to Electoral Statistics (Paris: Mouton, 1969), 0. Rantala reports that prior to the 1906 reform, about 126,000 Finns possessed the right to vote. The discrepancy between E* and E therefore was about .75-.08=.67. Perhaps the existence of this large discrepancy from E* explains why the general strike of 1905 made such an impression on Finnish elites. See E. Allardt and P. Pesonen, "Structural and Non-Structural Cleavages in Finnish Politics," in S. Lipset and S. Rokkan (eds.), Party Systems and Voter Alignments (New York: Free Press, 1967).

63 Przeworski, "Institutionalization of Voting Patterns"; see also Griffin, "Universal Suffrage in Japan."

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JOHN R. FREEMAN and DUNCAN SNIDAL

empirically these discrepancies, the investigation can contribute to studies of the political stability of European democracies.

The usefulness of the findings is not confined to the study of European democratization. If the fitted enfranchisement model accurately describes the nature of global expectations, it is clear that today any modest extension of voting rights will satisfy neither elite nor citizen demands. Consequently, the gradualist strategy of European elites is not available to the leaders of developing democracies. Ultimately, then, regimes have been able to resist the pressure for enfranchisement only by resorting to authoritarian tactics (for example, Spain and Portugal in the 1960s) and even then there were attempts to relieve this pressure through elections in a one-party system. Where this pressure for enfranchisement is not resisted, the legitimacy of the state appears to depend on large-scale suffrage extensions. But such rapid expansion of the electorate, in turn, leads to the massive influx of unsocialized voters into the electoral process, and hence the need to create alternative, nonelectoral institutions for regime maintenance.64

With regard to the comparative analysis of suffrage diachronies, the investigation refines Rokkan's typology by more precisely specifying the impact of countries' inherited style of rule. The results suggest that for the countries in our sample, the distinction between city oligarchy (Dutch and Belgian) and absolutist heritage (Italian and Austrian) styles of rule may be overstated; the same is true of the distinction between continuous representation (British and Swedish) and protracted absolutist (Norwegian and Danish) styles. Overall, the initial conditions of democratization are extremely important, however: a 20-year difference between the enfranchisement experiences of the respective groups of countries must be regarded as significant. Finally, the analysis shows that the initial ranking of countries with regard to democratization was essentially preserved over time.

Appendix: Suffrage Reforms Included in the Data Analysis (Figure 2)

Countries with continuous City oligarchies and organs of representation provincial states

Britain -1832 Netherlands -1887 Britain -1867 Netherlands -1896 Britain -1884 Netherlands -1917 Britain -1918 Netherlands -1919 Britain -1928 *Netherlands -1946 Sweden -1866 *Netherlands -1956

64 Converse, "Partisan Stability"; and Przeworski, "Institutionalization of Voting Patterns."

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Enfranchisement in Western Europe

Sweden -1909 Sweden -1920

*Sweden -1945 Finland -1906

*Finland -1944

Countries with absolutist heritages

Italy -1860 Italy -1882 Italy -1912 Italy -1919 Austria -1873 Austria -1882 Austria -1897 Austria -1919

Belgium -1831 Belgium -1848 Belgium -1893 Belgium -1919 Belgium -1949

Countries with protracted absolutist heritages

Denmark -1849 Denmark -1915

*Denmark -1920 *Denmark -1953 *Denmark -1961 Norway -1885 Norway -1898 Norway -1915

*Norway -1919 *Norway -1946

* Denotes "late suffrage reform"

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