From the Corn Laws to Free Trade: Interests, Ideas, and Institutions in Historical Perspective

by Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey

The overlapping and interacting forces that caused a Conservative government to repeal the protectionist Corn Laws against its own political principles and economic extensive qualitative and quantitative analysis. The repeal of Britain's Corn Laws in 1846—one of the most important economic policy decisions of the nineteenth century—has long intrigued and puzzled political scientists, historians, and economists. Why would a Conservative prime minister act against his own party's interests? The Conservatives entered government in 1841 with a strong commitment to protecting agriculture; five years later, the Conservative Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel presided over repeal of the protectionist Corn Laws, violating party principles and undercutting the economic interests of the land-owning aristocracy. Only a third of Conservative members of Parliament supported the repeal legislation and within a month of repeal, Peel's government fell. The Conservatives remained out of power for decades. In this definitive book, Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey examines the interacting forces that brought about the abrupt beginning of Britain's free-trade empire.Using a wide variety of methodological tools to measure both qualitative and quantitative data (including computer-assisted content analysis of thousands of pages of parliamentary debates), Schonhardt-Bailey concludes that economic interests provided the momentum behind repeal, a momentum that overshadowed almost all else. Indeed, as part of a broader momentum of democratic reform, these same interests, left unsatisfied, may easily have snowballed into revolution—as Sir Robert Peel and others feared. But interests alone did not explain why reform rather than revolution emerged in mid-nineteenth century Britain. In order to resolve more fully the long-standing puzzle of repeal, Schonhardt-Bailey traces the overlapping and intertwined forces of interest, ideas, and institutions.

Genres: Economics

426 pages, Hardcover

First published June 16, 2006

Reviews

[Zhenyao Li · Rating 5 out of 5]

3I最标志性的一本书，分析所谓的“holy grail”互相interact并shape policy的过程。仍认为这个分析框架不一定适合分析所有政经现象，但是确实适合作为起点去思考潜在的影响因素之间的作用关系。谷物法是最适合点一个例子，未来的阅读需要思考其他案列的适配性。
具体来说，Cheryl最看重的是interest，其overshadow了所有其他因素，但是仅仅有interest并不足够解释为什么等待英国的是改革而不是革命。在与policy的因果关系上虽然interest更加考前，但是在三者内部的结构关系institution更加特殊，其会被另外两者型塑/型塑两者。而作者采取外生性和内生性集合和视角恰恰利于分析这种关系。