'Votes should be weighed, not counted', Nineteenth-century liberals argued. This study analyzes parliamentary suffrage debates in England, France and Germany, showing that liberals throughout Europe used a distinctive political language, 'the discourse of capacity', to limit political participation. This language defined liberals, and they used it to define and limit full citizenship. The rise of consumer culture at the end of the century drove the discourse of capacity from politics, but it survives today in education and the professions.
Autorentext
ALAN KAHAN is Associate Professor of History at Florida International University, USA. He is author of Aristocratic Liberalism: The Social and Political Thought of Jacob Burckhardt, John Stuart Mill and Alexis de Tocqueville, Editor of The Tocqueville Reader, and translator of Tocqueville's The Old Regime and the Revolution.
Zusammenfassung
"Votes should be weighed, not counted", argued nineteenth-century liberals. This pathbreaking study analyzes parliamentary suffrage debates in England, France and Germany from 1830 to 1885, showing that liberals used a distinctive political language, 'the discourse of capacity', when talking about political participation. Only those people who had the right capacities, as individuals or as members of a social class, ought to be able to vote. Using the discourse of capacity defined liberals, and they used it to define and limit full citizenship, excluding women and the lower classes. Despite national variations, this political language was common to liberals throughout Europe. The rise of consumer culture drove the discourse of capacity from politics at the end of the nineteenth century, but it survives today in education and the professions.
Inhalt
Introduction: Defining Liberalism PART I: THE DISCOURSE OF CAPACITY Liberalism and Suffrage, 1830-1847 Liberalism and Suffrage, 1848-1865 Liberalism and Suffrage, 1866-1885 PART II: LANGUAGE AND CULTURE Liberalism and Nineteenth-Century Culture The Decline of Liberalism Concluding Note: The Afterlife of a Political Discourse List of Works Cited Endnotes