The Road to Universal Suffrage

The Western Europe that we are concerned with here comprises the countries to the west of the Austrian Empire, the German Empire, and the Russian Empire in 1905-07 with the exception of the mini-states (Andorra, Monaco, Liechtenstein, San Marino, and the Vatican). In the major states the most common head of state was a king, but some states, led by France, were republics and had a president as head of state. The heads of state were in many cases struggling against ongoing limitations of their power and only in Britain a very stable pattern had crystallised itself during the preceding century. British parties and parliament decided in fact over the formation of government. In many other states in Western Europe the head of state continued to demand a decisive voice in the formation of governments and the selection of ministers.

Governments existed in different forms, not always formalised as governments, and they were headed by a responsible head minister but under different labels: prime minister (the concept we will use here for the type of function), first minister, minister of state, president of the council, chancellor, etc. A prime minister might be the choice of the head of state of of the representation. The prime minister as a leader of a government that got its position through its support in the parliament was an established system in Britain and France. In Britain political responsibility had grown from custom and tradition over decades, but in France it had become established through the constitution of 1875 and had become stabilised only after serious political fights and crises. The kingdoms of Belgium, Italy and Spain had a similar development in this respect as France. In the Netherlands the monarchy tended to lose influence around the turn of the century and the governments were formed as coalitions within the parliament. The same holds for the kingdom of Norway after the dissolution of the union with Sweden in 1905. In all these countries whole ministries under a political leader with support in the parliament were formed and dismissed through the formation of alliances of parties in parliament and the role of the head of state became more and more limited in regard to the formation of governments.

In some other countries of Western Europe political responsibility was under its way but not a completed process. Kings as heads of state wanted to preserve a role in appointing and dismissing ministers and in some countries (e.g. Portugal, Sweden) the first decade of the twentieth century was a period of tow between parliament and head of state. The critical question was how far political responsibility of ministers should go and which was the role of the prime minister. The tow was especially bitter in Portugal 1906-08 and ended with the murder of the king. Many ministers still were appointed by the head of state directly or through the prime minister selected by the head of state. Ministers were often chosen rather for their position in state administration than for their political activities. It was a rule in many countries that only a few if any of the ministers were recruited from parliament, and the rest were bureaucrats as had been the earlier custom in almost all countries. Ministers were normally not responsible before the representation, which means that they could not be dismissed by parliament for political reasons, either individually or collectively as a government. In many countries they were regarded responsible for their actions and subordinated to law and in some countries there were specific legal institutes for the sake of charging ministers with mismanagement of their duties. The change was great from some decades earlier, when ministers were often regarded as just representing the monarch. As head of state the monarch was most often formally exempted from all juridical responsibility. Then a vengeance for mismanagement could be taken on ministers only after a revolution.

Political parties were formed and were very active in all countries of Western Europe during the second half of the nineteenth century. They were normally formed in order to carry through a political programme in parliament. To achieve power in parliament they had to be active in elections, but as long as franchise was the privilege of a limited group or unequal weight of votes made certain groups dominant real national parties were not needed for the establishment. Only when suffrage was extended in the end of the nineteenth century real national parties came into existence beside parliamentary fractions. In some countries there existed only a few main parties and the fundamental two-party system of Britain (even though three or more parties were almost always active in British elections) was admired in many countries. However, in most other countries a combination of ethnic, religious and ideological cleavages created a multi-dimensional ground for parties of different shades. By the beginning of the twentieth century the formation of governmental coalitions that could support ministries and also dismiss them had become a main function for parties within parliaments. Outside of parliaments the national organisation of parties was closely related to the extension of franchise, and the possibility to mobilise broad layers was, of course, dependent on their rights to vote or their hopes to acquire such rights through their political activity.

The limitation of franchise is one thing, the actual mobilisation of those with voting rights in elections and for political goals is another. Voting patterns are far more difficult to investigate than suffrage legislation, and Rokkan has delivered only scattered examples, mainly from Norway and very few from the period before 1910.

Party organisations at the national level did not exist anywhere in Europe before the 1870s. The social democrats were path-breakers, and for them the national party often preceded the parliamentary fraction. Most other parties had the opposite development. First came parliamentary fractions and later, often close to the turn of the century, national organisations were created in order to support the candidates of the party. These organisations also should make the voters – for at the turn of the century an extended suffrage for men existed or was under way – become acquainted with the programme of the party. Conservatives and sometimes also liberals hesitated about creating national party organisations. It is to be noted that in the rhetorics of the period the word ‘party’ had a bad ring and its connotation was more often ‘faction’ and the internal struggles that had broken down the Roman Republic than an association for the good of society. Many actual parties were called associations or national associations for a certain ideological goal.

Parties were most often allied to vested interests in society. The social democrats had the advantage of being able to associate themselves with the trade union movement when the party was formed. Trade unions were formed in all countries in Western Europe after a British model, and they spread rapidly in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The idea of collective bargaining with strikes as a means of pressure on employers was felt by many of the trade union members to be close to socialism. But trade unions were not self-evidently social democratic. The revolutionary ideals of social democrats in late nineteenth century were often seen as contrary to the idea of promoting improvements in the conditions of workers through bargaining.

For the sake of a democratic culture it was most important, however, that trade unions were formed and that workers could make their voices heard in the local union. The federations of unions that grew up made workers aware of how a representation might work and made many look at a parliament as a possible representation. Other associations on the local level played a similar role – the temperance movement was very important in this respect as were also, at least in some (protestant) countries, the revivalist movements that led to the creation of congregations which were led and administered by the members themselves. Such schools of direct democracy and representative democracy made many of the citizens of Europe ripe for democracy long before they had a real share in the citizens’ rights as enfranchised members of their societies.