The Making Of The Democratic Party In Europe, 1860–1890

295 Pages·2022·10.496 MB·English

by  Anne Heyer

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN POLITICAL HISTORY
The Making of the
Democratic Party in
Europe, 1860–1890
Anne Heyer
Palgrave Studies in Political History
Series Editors
Henk te Velde, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands
Maartje Janse, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands
Hagen Schulz-Forberg, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
The contested nature of legitimacy lies at the heart of modern politics.
A continuous tension can be found between the public, demanding to
be properly represented, and their representatives, who have their own
responsibilities along with their own rules and culture. Political history
needs to address this contestation by looking at politics as a broad
and yet entangled field rather than as something confined to institu-
tions and politicians only. As political history thus widens into a more
integratedstudyofpoliticsingeneral,historiansareinvestigatingdemoc-
racy, ideology, civil society, the welfare state, the diverse expressions of
opposition, and many other key elements of modern political legitimacy
from fresh perspectives. Parliamentary history has begun to study the
way rhetoric, culture and media shape representation, while a new social
history of politics is uncovering the strategies of popular meetings and
political organizations to influence the political system.
Palgrave Studies in Political History analyzes the changing forms and
functions of political institutions, movements and actors, as well as the
normative orders within which they navigate. Its ambition is to publish
monographs, edited volumes and Pivots exploring both political institu-
tions and political life at large, and the interaction between the two. The
premise of the series is that the two mutually define each other on local,
national, transnational, and even global levels.
More information about this series at
https://link.springer.com/bookseries/15603
Anne Heyer
The Making
of the Democratic
Party in Europe,
1860–1890
Anne Heyer
Institute for History
Leiden University
Leiden, The Netherlands
Palgrave Studies in Political History
ISBN 978-3-030-87747-7 ISBN 978-3-030-87748-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87748-4
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
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Acknowledgements
Why do we think of parties as democratic institutions? This question has
puzzled me since I read Robert Michels as a student in the National
Library of Scotland in Edinburgh in 2010. Back then I focused on the
crisisofpartiesofthepresent.Forthismonograph,Ihavekeptthegeneral
interest but moved to a historical approach: the book takes parties to the
past.Thescholarlyreasonsforwritingthisbookareexplainedintheintro-
duction that also explains the, perhaps to some extent, unusual setup of
this book. This monograph is not only meant as a conventional histor-
ical study; it tries to speak to historians and social scientists alike. For this
purpose, Chapter 2 brings together the theoretical literature about party
formation of several disciplines and relates them to the parties discussed
in the rest of the book. This might look less like the familiar outline
of conventional historical monographs, but I have taken great care to
develop a narrative that should speak to those who are no experts in
nineteenth-century German, Dutch or British history. Accordingly, the
remaining Chapters 3 until 6 tell about the struggles and hopes of the
main figures of this book: party founders—the agents that navigated the
unrulytimesofthenineteenthcenturytoaccomplishsomethingthatwas
recognized as truly exceptional already in their time.
Finishing a book is a laborious and strangely joyous experience. This
particular manuscript has been in the “making” for a long time. An
earlier account constituted my doctoral dissertation, which I defended
in January 2019. The book would have not been possible with the
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
meticulous reading, thoughtful comments, precise feedback and always
encouragingsupervisionofMaartjeJanseandHenkteVeldewhoactedas
excellent doctoral supervisors and, together with Hagen Schulz-Forberg,
are the editors of this exceptional book series Palgrave Studies in Polit-
icalHistory.TheDutchResearchCouncil(NederlandseOrganisatievoor
Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek) funded the doctoral research. My sincere
gratitudegoestoPeterStamatovforsupportingtheprojectwithsomany
comments and additional time to rewrite the manuscript in Madrid. I am
gratefulforthedetailedandencouragingreviewofmyreadingcommittee
thathelpeddevelopingthemanuscriptintoarealbook:BernhardRieger,
Ingrid van Biezen, Stefan Berger, Peter Stamatov and Hanneke Hoek-
stra. I am grateful for the two anonymous reviewers who have taken
so much time to carefully read the final manuscript book and provide
encouraging feedback. The Institute for History at Leiden University has
provided me with research time, plenty of teaching experiences and a
community of colleagues and friends. My appreciation goes to the staff
members of the numerous archives (Bundesarchiv, Archiv der Sozialen
Demokratie,InternationaalInstituutvoorSocialeGeschiedenis,Stadtbib-
liothek Braunschweig, Special Collection of Bristol University, Cadbury
Research Library of Birmingham University and the Historische Docu-
mentatie Centrum voor het Nederlandse Protestantisme of the Free
University Amsterdam) whose knowledge of collections and kind advice
made this book possible and research so much more enjoyable. Ela
Chauhan has done a magnificent job polishing the language of the final
manuscript. Willem van Rooijen and René Nijman patiently have helped
me finish the layout of the graphs.
It often seems like the type of research we do is a lonely exercise. For
this book, the opposite is true. I could not have done any of the work
without the numerous colleagues from so many disciplines and institu-
tions. The project was shaped with the feedback from the listeners and
commentatorsofmanyconferencesandworkshops.Itbenefittedfromthe
numeroustimesthatcolleaguesinLeidenandMadridattentivelylistened
and generously responded to my ideas. The work could not have been
finishedwiththecarefulreviewingbymanyexcellentscholarswhohelped
me develop and improve the text that is in front of you. Many parts of
the manuscript were written in long evenings for which my friends and
family have given me support and more importantly patience and under-
standing. The list is too long for these pages, but you know who you are
and that this is also your achievement.
Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 A New Perspective on Party Emergence 27
3 The Issue of Education: How the Association Became
Party 61
4 Making the Party 111
5 MobilizingandDisciplining:TheRelationshipBetween
Leaders and the Masses 149
6 The Role of Elections 189
Conclusion 231
Bibliography 247
Index 279
vii
List of Figures
Graph 2.1 Party organizations and suffrage rights 43
Graph 2.2 Dissemination of Anti-Corn Law League
in the Netherlands, Britain and Germany 55
Graph 3.1 Overview of organizational development of Dutch
Anti-Revolutionaries 74
Graph 3.2 Overview organizational development of German Social
Democrats 83
Graph 3.3 Overview of organizational development of British
Radical Liberals 101
Graph 4.1 Organizational structure of the German SDAP 121
Graph 4.2 Organizational structure of the British NLF 134
Graph 4.3 Organizational structure of the Dutch ARP 143
Graph 5.1 SDAP membership numbers 175
ix
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
1.1 Parties and Democracy
The history of political parties is closely connected to the history of
democracy.Modernpartiesemerginginthesecondhalfofthenineteenth
century established a close relationship with the slowly manifesting insti-
tutions of democracy, including national parliaments. This close connec-
tion between party and democracy was neither foreseen nor inevitable. It
wasestablishedbythefoundersofthefirstmodernpartieswhopresented
themselves as representatives of the people. Their agenda was one that
we could call democratic in essence: the political elite was to include the
interestsofthemassesindecision-making.Howdidpartyfoundersbring
about democratization in their community and the nation as a whole?
Mass organization, their tool to achieve social and political change, may
appear trivial in retrospect but it was powerful in the eyes of contempo-
raries. Previously, parties were loose alliances of parliamentarians with a
common political ideology. Mass organization allowed party founders to
achieve democratization in two ways: internally in the structure of the
party and externally in the political institutions of the country. Although
the number of supporters was initially small, the new parties developed
an organizational structure that was geared to mass mobilization, partic-
ipation and representation: in formalized procedures members in local
chapters elected national leaders who in turn were elected to parliament.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1
Switzerland AG 2022
A. Heyer, The Making of the Democratic Party in Europe, 1860-1890,
Palgrave Studies in Political History,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87748-4_6