Why should we be beggars with the ballot in our hand? Veto players and the failure of land value taxation in the United Kingdom, 1909-14

British Journal of Political Science

Volumn 36, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 575-591

  McLean, Iain ^a   Nou, Jennifer ^a  

^a NUFFIELD COLLEGE   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33747872400     PISSN: 00071234     EISSN: 14692112     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0007123406000317     Document Type: Review

References (79)

1. Cf R. Bates et al., Analytic Narratives (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998), pp. 10-18.
2. Cf. G. King, R. O. Keohane and S. Verba, Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), esp. pp. 28-30
3. G. Tsebelis, 'Decision Making in Political Systems: Veto Players in Presidentialism, Parliamentarism, Multicameralism and Multipartism', British Journal of Political Science, 25 (1995), 289-325
4. G. Tsebelis and J. Money, Bicameralism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)
5. G. Tsebelis, Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2002).
6. Tsebelis, Veto Players, pp. 8-9, 50-9.
7. The concept of the uncovered set was due to Nicholas Miller ('A New Solution Set for Tournaments and Majority Voting', American Journal of Political Science, 24 (1980), 68-96)
8. and R. D. McKelvey ('Covering, Dominance, and Institution-free Properties of Social Choice', American Journal of Political Science, 30 (1986), 283-314).
9. The most comprehensive paper is J. Banks, 'Acyclic Choice from Finite Sets', Social Choice and Welfare, 12 (1995), 293-310.
10. An explanation at the level of an advanced textbook is J. D. Morrow, Game Theory for Political Scientists (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 80-93, 121-2, 217.
11. T. Persson and G. Tabellini, 'Do Constitutions Cause Large Governments? Quasi-Experimental Evidence', European Economic Review, 46 (2002), 908-18
12. T. Persson and G. Tabellini, The Economic Effects of Constitutions (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005)
13. Mark Hallerberg and Patrik Marier, 'Executive Authority, the Personal Vote, and Budget Discipline in Latin American and Caribbean Countries', American Journal of Political Science, 48 (2004): 571-87
14. Mark Hallerberg, Domestic Budgets in a United Europe: Fiscal Governance from the End of Bretton Woods to EMU (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2004).
15. Persson and Tabellini, Economic Effects of Constitutions, pp. 270-1.
16. Hallerberg and Marier, 'Budget Discipline', p. 572.
17. M. Duverger, Political Parties (London: Methuen, 1954)
18. R. Taagepera and M. S. Shugart, Seats and Votes: The Effects and Determinants of Electoral Systems (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989)
19. G. Cox, Making Votes Count: Strategic Coordination in the World's Electoral Systems (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
20. A. Lijphart, Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian and Consensus Government in Twenty-One Countries (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1984)
21. A. Lijphart, ed., Parliamentary Versus Presidential Government (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992)
22. Alfred Stepan and Cindy Skach, 'Constitutional Frameworks and Democratic Consolidation: Parliamentariansm Versus Presidentialism', World Politics, 46 (1993), 1-22
23. Juan J. Linz and Alfred C. Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996)
24. A. Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999).
25. W. H. Riker, Liberalism Against Populism (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1982), pp. 213-32
26. W. H. Riker, The Art of Political Manipulation (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986)
27. I. McLean, 'William H. Riker and the Invention of Heresthetic(s)', British Journal of Political Science, 32 (2002), 535-58.
28. Jack H. Nagel, 'Social Choice in a Pluralitarian Democracy: The Politics of Market Liberalization in New Zealand', British Journal of Political Science, 28 (1998), 223-67.
29. For summaries and discussion, see Morrow, Game Theory for Political Scientists', McLean, 'Riker'
30. also G. Mackie, Democracy Defended (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
31. A. V. Dicey, Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution, 8th edn (London: Macmillan, 1915), pp. 37-8. Originally published in 1885.
32. Duverger, Political Parties, p. 217.
33. Cox, Making Votes Count, esp. pp. 23-8
34. Pradeep Chhiber and Ken Kollman, The Formation of National Party Systems: Federalism and Party Competition in Canada, Great Britain, India, and the United States (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004).
35. http://www.explore.parliament.uk/Parliament.aspx?id = 10295&glossary = true, accessed 4 May 2005.
36. Not only the United States, Australia and Canada, but even Scotland. See in particular MacCormick v. Lord Advocate 1953 SC 396 (Scotland)
37. I. McLean and A. McMillan, State of the Union (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 247-8.
38. Vernon Bogdanor is an eminent exception (for example, V. Bogdanor, The Monarchy and the Constitution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 113-35); but we fundamentally disagree with his conclusions, as explained below)
39. Cabinet memorandum by the chancellor of the exchequer, 'The Taxation of Land Values', 13 March 1909. UK National Archives, CAB 37/98 # 44.
40. Bernard Mallet, British Budgets 1887-8 to 1912-13 (London: Macmillan, 1913), pp. 304-5.
41. Sir George Murray to Lord Rosebery, 31 December 1908. Rosebery MSS, National Library of Scotland, NLS MS 10049.
42. Speech at Newcastle upon Tyne, 9 October 1909, quoted by Roy Jenkins, Mr Balfour's Poodle, 2nd edn (London: Collins, 1968), p. 94.
43. The King's secretary, Lord Knollys, requested Prime Minister H. H. Asquith 'not to pretend to the King that he liked Mr Lloyd George's speeches, for the King would not believe it, and it only irritated him' (Jenkins, Mr Balfour's Poodle, p. 95).
44. Bogdanor, Monarchy and the Constitution, pp. 116-19
45. Jenkins, Mr Balfour's Poodle, pp. 174-83.
46. Asquith's (or his chief whip's) draft list is printed in Roy Jenkins, Asquith (London: Collins, 1964), pp. 539-42.
47. Avner Offer, Property and Politics 1870-1914: Landownership, Law, Ideology and Urban Development in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 368-9.
48. Offer, Property and Politics, pp. 396-9
49. B. B. Gilbert, 'David Lloyd George: The Reform of British Landholding and the Budget of 1914', Historical Journal, 22 (1978), 117-41.
50. 'I am leading quite a happy life with my Welsh Goat [this may be the earliest reference to Lloyd George as 'the Goat'], who feeds happily enough out of my hand at present. But I fear he will soon want something more stimulating ... In his present humour he is a most engaging creature, full of graceful antics and the most unpractical notions' (Murray to Rosebery, 31 May 1908, Rosebery MSS, National Library of Scotland, NLS MS 10049).
51. B. K. Murray, The People's Budget 1909/10 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), p. 80 (source of quotation)
52. W. J. Braithwaite, Lloyd George's Ambulance Wagon (London: Methuen, 1957), p. 68.
53. Offer, Property and Politics, p. 245
54. 'Memorandum by Mr Edgar Harper on the Imposition of a National Tax on Land Values', 5 December 1908, CAB 37/96 # 161.
55. Offer, Property and Politics, pp. 396-7.
56. Braithwaite, Lloyd George's Ambulance Wagon, passim.
57. The terms of the settlement are given in E. Halévy, Imperialism and the Rise of Labour (London: Ernest Benn, paperback edn, 1961), p. 394.
58. Balfour: as quoted by Offer, Property and Politics, p. 357, 'Shillings of British artisans'
59. A. Offer, 'Empire and Social Reform: British Overseas Investment and Domestic Politics', Historical Journal, 26 (1983), 119-38, quoted at p. 134.
60. 'The debate in the Lords began on November 23 [1909] ... [A]s is so often the case when the House of Lords is engaged in reaching a peculiarly silly decision, there were many comments on the high level of the debate and on the enhancement it gave to the deliberative quality of the chamber' (Jenkins, Mr Balfour's Poodle, pp. 100-1).
61. K. Jeffery, 'Sir Henry Hughes Wilson', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, on-line edition (source of quotation)
62. A. T. Q. Stewart, The Ulster Crisis (London: Faber & Faber, 1967), p. 149.
63. T. E. Scrutton, 1920, quoted by Offer, Property and Politics, p. 369
64. Commissioners of Inland Revenue v. Smyth, (1914) 3 KB 423.
65. Motion by Lord Lansdowne, 10 November 1909, quoted by Jenkins, Mr Balfour's Poodle, p. 95.
66. Dicey, Law of the Constitution, pp. xc-cv, quoted at p. xcii and p. xcvii
67. emphasis in the original. The quotation from George V is to be found in Bogdanor, Monarchy and the Constitution, p. 128.
68. H. H. Asquith, 'The Constitutional Position of the Sovereign' (memorandum to George V), September 1913, in Jenkins, Asquith, pp. 543-5, quoted at p. 544.
69. The evidence that the leaders of His Majesty's Opposition helped to finance the Ulster gun-running of 1914 is in A. Jackson, Home Rule: An Irish History 1800-2000 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003), pp. 133, 327.
70. G. Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England (London: Constable, 1936, and many reprints).
71. Dangerfield's indignation is shared by, for example, Sir Robert Ensor, England 1870-1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1936), pp. 473-9.
72. Bogdanor, Monarchy and the Constitution, p. 309.
73. Douglass North and Barry Weingast, 'Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in 17th Century England', Journal of Economic History, 49 (1989), 803-32
74. David Stasavage, Public Debt and the Birth of the Democratic State: France and Great Britain, 1688-1789 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
75. Critics who believe that North and Weingast overstate their case include G. Clark, 'The Political Foundations of Modern Economic Growth: England, 1540-1800', Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 26 (1996), 563-88
76. and S. R. Epstein, Freedom and Growth: The Rise of States and Markets in Europe, 1300-1750 (London: Routledge/LSE, 2000), chaps 1, 2 and 8.
77. A. T. Peacock and J. Wiseman, The Growth of Public Expenditure in the United Kingdom (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961).
78. Stasavage, Public Debt, chap. 5
79. I. McLean, Rational Choice and British Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), chap. 2.