The Drive for Participatory Democracy in Nineteenth Century Britain

Bibliographic Data

ID12677153
AuthorsKenneth Good (RMIT University, corresponding author)
Year2009
Volume47
Issue3
Pages231-247
Publication date2009-07-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCommonwealth and Comparative Politics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1466-2043 • E-ISSN: 1743-9094
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14662040903132526
OpenAlexW2044729748
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited4

In association with the industrial revolution, a wide range of new self-help organisations, from friendly societies and cooperatives to trade unions, were constructed by rising urban working classes and a lower middle class in nineteenth century Britain. The process was broad and deep, built upon a pre-existing culture of democracy, and extended through a vibrant autodidact workers' society. Against entrenched oligarchical power, the popular movement aimed not only at universal suffrage and governmental power, through the formation of a Labour Party, but also at clean government and a participatory democracy of self-determining groups and institutions. After a century of struggle the successes of the British working classes were intermixed with failure. Their efforts nonetheless represented an exemplar of democratisation based on a burgeoning civil society and strong trade union movement within advancing capitalist development, as witnessed again in South Africa through the 1980s and possibly beyond

Citizen journalism · Civil society · Democracy · Democratization · Economics · Government (linguistics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sociology · Suffrage · Trade union · Universal suffrage · Working class · Labor Movements and Unions · Law · Political and Economic history of UK and US · Renewable Energy and Sustainability

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub