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”行政区为代表，威廉·霍加斯的“选举幽默”系列（1755年）令人难忘。当然，只有一小部分人可以投票。能够自由行使投票权的人就更少了。虽然大选应该每三年，然后是七年举行一次，但竞选活动的巨额开支确保了只有一小部分选区有竞选。这不是现代民主。然而，议会选举对所有人来说都是至关重要的，不仅是为了选举议员，也是为了赋予权力和归属感（即使只是暂时的），有助于形成国家的自我形象，有助于建立新的宪政传统。此外，我们要表明，选举不仅影响到广大人民，而且使他们参与其中，包括那些有选举权和没有选举权的人。选举常常伴随着印刷品、布道和歌曲的爆炸式增长；无数的仪式、集会和娱乐；服装、装饰和行为的新模式。男人和女人，成人和儿童，富人和穷人，有选举权的和没有选举权的，所有人都参与其中——既是消费者，也是这种独特的文化和政治经验的积极制造者。我们的项目的基本目标是在这些参与、仪式、有时狂欢的非凡时刻发出强烈的光芒，并考虑它们的后果和遗产。为此，我们将与当地历史学家团体合作，从1696年至1831年的英格兰选区收集新的民意调查数据；使用创新的数字工具对这些数据进行新的审查；收集构成人们选举生活经验的文化文物和实践。我们将对选举人口统计、选民行为以及投票模式如何随时间、地区和不同类型选区而变化有新的认识。通过档案和创造性实践研究的结合（后者旨在重新想象和再现现在已经失去的选举的重要元素），我们将对选举文化的广度、普遍性和包容性获得新的理解。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、宴会和歌谣、绶带和布道——是否对政治结果产生了影响，或者在选举时间之后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，无论有没有投票；以及越来越多媒体的干预是如何影响投票行为和结果的。这两者在我们这个时代仍然具有重要意义。今天，许多人选择不投票。这与被排除在选举权之外非常不同，18世纪的大多数人都是如此。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，而不是通过传单和竞选活动。我们想问的是，数据分析和有针对性的数字通信策略等当代现象在改革前的英国是否有对应的，甚至起源，以及这些干预措施对人们与民众的关系有什么影响（如果有的话）。与我们的合作伙伴，议会史和《国际卫生条例》合作，我们的目标是将我们的发现传达给远远超出学术界的受众，特别是学校和与下届英国大选（如果可能的话）同时举行的一系列活动。除了重塑我们对议会改革前选举运作方式的理解外，我们还希望这个项目能为当今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.