Eighteenth-Century Political Participation and Electoral Culture

18世纪的选举在很大程度上是腐败和放荡的代名词，以臭名昭著的“腐败”和“口袋”自治市为代表，并以威廉·霍加斯的“选举幽默”系列（1755年）为代表。当然，只有一小部分人可以投票。能够自由投票的人就更少了。尽管大选应该每三年举行一次，然后是七年，但竞选活动的巨额费用确保了只有一小部分选区受到竞争。这不是现代民主，但议会选举对所有人都至关重要，不仅是为了选出议员，也是为了赋予权力感和归属感（即使只是暂时的），帮助塑造国家的自我形象，并帮助建立新的宪政传统。此外，我们想表明，选举不仅影响到，而且还涉及到广大人口-包括那些有选举权的人和那些没有选举权的人。选举往往伴随着印刷品、布道和歌曲的爆炸式增长;无数的仪式、集会和娱乐;新的服装、装饰和行为模式。男人和女人，成年人和儿童，富人和穷人，有公民权的和没有公民权的，所有人都参与其中--既是消费者，也是这一独特文化和政治体验的积极创造者。我们项目的基本目标是对这些参与、仪式、有时是狂欢节的非凡时刻进行强烈的关注，并考虑其后果和遗产。要做到这一点，我们将收集来自英格兰1696年至1831年选区的新民意调查数据，与当地历史学家团体合作;使用创新的数字化工具对这些数据进行新的审查;并收集构成人们选举生活经验的文物和实践。我们将获得新的见解选举人口，选民行为，以及如何投票模式随着时间的推移，跨地区，并在不同类型的选区变化。从档案和创造性的实践研究（后者旨在重新想象和重新制定选举的重要元素，现在失去了）的组合，我们将获得的程度，普及性和选举文化的包容性的新认识。通过将民意调查数据置于其文化背景中，我们将了解竞选活动的元素-印刷品和游行，宴会和民谣，腰带和布道-是否对政治结果产生了影响，或者在选举时间之外留下了任何重要的遗产。所以这个项目是关于两件事：人们如何参与政治，无论是有投票权还是没有投票权;以及各种媒体的干预如何影响投票行为和结果。这两个问题在我们这个时代仍然非常重要。今天，许多人选择不投票。这与18世纪世纪绝大多数人被排除在选举权之外截然不同。但我们的研究将挑战我们以不同的方式思考非选民如何参与民主进程-例如，通过音乐，文学，时尚和艺术，或者通过广播新闻和社交媒体，而一旦它是传单和竞选。我们要问的是，数据分析和有针对性的数字传播策略等当代现象在改革前的英国是否有对应的东西，甚至是起源，以及这些干预措施对人们与民众的关系有什么影响。与我们的合作伙伴，议会和国际卫生条例的历史工作，我们的目标是传达我们的调查结果，远远超出了学术界的观众，特别是学校和一系列的事件定时（如果可能的话）伴随下一届英国大选。除了重塑我们对议会改革之前选举如何运作的理解外，我们还打算让这个项目为今天关于政治沟通和政治参与的紧迫辩论提供有用的信息。

Eighteenth-century elections are largely synonymous with corruption and debauchery, epitomised by the infamous 'rotten' and 'pocket' boroughs, and memorably represented by William Hogarth's 'Humours of an Election' series (1755). Certainly only a small proportion of the population could vote. Even fewer could exercise their vote freely. Although general elections were supposed to be held every three, then seven, years, the huge expense of campaigning ensured only a small proportion of constituencies were contested. This was no modern democracy.Yet parliamentary elections were fundamentally important to all, not only for the selection of MPs, but also in bestowing a sense of power and belonging (even if only temporarily), in helping to form the nation's self-image, and in helping to forge a new constitutionalist tradition. Moreover, we want to show, elections not only affected, but also engaged, a wide section of the population - both those enfranchised and those not. Elections were often accompanied by an explosion of print, sermons, and song; countless ceremonies, assemblies, and entertainments; new modes of dress, decoration, and behaviour. Men and women, adults and children, rich and poor, franchised and unenfranchised, all participated - as consumers, but also as active makers of this unique cultural and political experience.Our project's fundamental aims are to shine an intense light on these extraordinary moments of participation, ritual, and sometimes carnival, and to consider their consequences and legacies. To do this we will collect new polling data from constituencies across England 1696-1831, working in partnership with local historian groups; subject this data to new kinds of scrutiny using innovative digital tools; and gather the cultural artefacts and practices which constituted people's lived experiences of elections. We will gain new insight into electoral demography, voter behaviour, and how voting patterns changed over time, across regions, and in different types of constituency. And from a combination of archival and creative practice research (the latter designed to reimagine and re-enact important elements of elections now lost) we will gain new understanding of the extent, pervasiveness, and inclusiveness of electoral culture. By placing polling data in its cultural contexts, we will come to understand whether the elements of campaigning - print and processions, banquets and ballads, sashes and sermons - made a difference to political outcomes, or left any significant legacy beyond election time.So this project is about two things: how people participate in politics, both with and without the vote; and how interventions across a proliferating range of media affect polling behaviour and outcomes. Both remain highly relevant in our own time. Today, many choose not to vote. This is very different from being excluded from the franchise, as was the great majority in the 18th century. But our research will challenge us to think differently about how non-voters may engage with democratic processes - through music, literature, fashion and art, for example, or via broadcast journalism and social media when once it was handbills and the hustings. We will want to ask whether contemporary phenomena such as data analytics and targeted digital communication strategies have counterparts, even origins, in pre-Reform Britain, and what effects, if any, these kinds of interventions have on people's relationship to the demos. Working with our partners, History of Parliament and the IHR, we aim to communicate our findings to audiences well beyond academia, particularly to schools and at a series of events timed (if possible) to accompany the next UK General Election. As well as reshaping our understanding of how elections functioned before parliamentary reform, we intend that this project should usefully inform pressing debates about political communication and political participation today.