Resumen de Electoral Security as a Determinant of Legislator Activity, 1832�1918: New Data and Methods for Analyzing British Political Development

Andrew C. Eggers, Arthur Spirling

• We consider the relationship between a Member of Parliament's electoral environment and his strategic choice of legislative activities between the First and Fourth Reform Acts in Britain. We argue that voters and party institutions put cross-cutting pressures on members during this time, and that legislators calibrated their behavior in accordance with the marginality of their seat. We gather a massive new dataset documenting MPs� biographical information, electoral records, roll calls, and speeches. The extent of MPs� speech making and voting (our measures of legislative activity) vary with electoral security in ways consistent with our theoretical priors for Westminster systems.