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This article examines the impact of the secret ballot on the market for votes at parliamentary elections in the 19th-century United Kingdom. I use a formal model of an exchange between a candidate and a voter to predict the impact of the secret ballot on bribe prices, the marginal effect campaign spending on candidates' electoral prospects, and election turnout. I test these predictions against original data on bribe prices and campaign expenditures at over 500 parliamentary elections. The results are consistent with the argument that the secret ballot induced British parliamentary candidates to divert their campaign spending away from vote-buying and toward turnout-buying. These results point to the adaptability of political actors in the face of institutional changes.

This article examines why after 35 years of repeatedly rejecting the secret ballot, the British House of Commons enacted it with the Ballot Act of 1872. Drawing on roll‐call votes, I show that parliamentary opposition to the secret ballot was invariant between 1832 and 1867. In 1867, however, the Second Reform Act significantly extended the electoral franchise and substantially redistributed parliamentary seats; the House elected immediately following these changes to pass the Ballot Act of 1872. I show that a key reason for the change in the House's attitude on the ballot was that anti‐ballot MPs whom the redistribution threatened to expose to electoral competition were disproportionately likely to retire prior to the 1868 election. These results imply that it was the anticompetitive effects inherent in the gross malapportionment of the older electoral system rather than the restricted nature of the franchise that insulated MPs from public pressure and kept parliamentary opinion on the secret ballot in stasis. This is a useful lesson because while almost all modern democracies operate on a universal adult suffrage, many continue to be marked by significant malapportionment.

Those who have not witnessed the making of a government have reason to be happier than those who have. It is a thoroughly unpleasant and discreditable business in which merit is disregarded, loyal service is without value, influence is the most important factor and geography and religion are important supplementary considerations.The Borden Ministry was composed under standard conditions, and was not, therefore, nearly as able, honest, or as industrious an administrative aggregation as could have been had from the material available … There were some broken hearts – in one instance, literally. In others, philosophy came to the rescue, but the pills were large and the swallowing was bitter.Paul BilkeyPrime ministers can typically rely on ideological agreement and norms of loyalty to deliver them a modicum of party cohesion. Beyond that, they have at their disposal a variety of institutional tools with which to enforce discipline. The powers to invoke the confidence convention and to dissolve parliament are the most well known and powerful of these tools, but these heavy-handed measures are ill-suited for securing unity on an on-going basis. The prime minister's monopoly over the distribution of preferment is a far more reliable means of ensuring members' loyalty. The rules of the game are simple: if the member of parliament (MP) wishes to climb the parliamentary career ladder, he or she must toe the party line. The prime minister's power over MPs' parliamentary careers is not without limit, of course. Some MPs must be brought into cabinet because they are too powerful and dangerous to leave on the backbench where they can openly challenge the prime minister.

Are parliamentary parties cohesive because leaders successfully impose discipline on their MPs or because MPs prefer -- hence support -- the same policies as their leaders do? If the latter is correct, & party cohesion is produced largely by members' concordant preferences, then models that explain cohesion as a function of the disciplinary mechanisms available to parties once the MP is in Parliament (for example, the distribution of patronage or the threat of de-selection) are not useful. This article uses British & Canadian MPs' responses to candidate surveys to estimate MPs' positions on a variety of ideological dimensions & then shows that MPs' preferences on these ideological dimensions only partially explain how often they vote against their parties. Indeed, even after one controls for an MP's ideological preferences, party affiliation remains a powerful predictor of the MP's loyalty or dissent -- suggesting that party discipline does, in fact, contribute to cohesion. Additional tests indicate that these results are not spurious. 4 Tables, 4 Figures, 1 Appendix. Adapted from the source document.