Democratisation Under the threat of Revolution: Evidence from the Great Reform Act of 1832

We examine the link between the threat of violence and democratisation in the context of the Great Reform Act passed by the British Parliament in 1832. We geo-reference the so-called Swing riots, which occurred just before the 1831 parliamentary election, and compute the number of these riots that happened within a given radius of the 244 English constituencies. Our empirical analysis relates this constituency-specific measure of the threat perceptions held by the 344,000 voters in the Unreformed Parliament to the share of seats won in each constituency by pro-reform politicians in 1831. We find that the Swing riots induced voters who initially opposed democratisation to vote for pro-reform politicians after experiencing first-hand the violence of the riots.