Read more
'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.
List of contents
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
About the author
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.
Summary
'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.
