Procedural Change in the UK House of Commons, 1811–2015

• Published date: 01 February 2020
• Author: Niels D. Goet,Thomas G. Fleming,Radoslaw Zubek
• Date: 01 February 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12249

35

LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, 45, 1, February 2020

DOI: 10.1111/lsq.12249

NIELS D. GOET

Inspera AS

THOMAS G. FLEMING

RADOSLAW ZUBEK

University of Oxford

Procedural Change in the UK House

of Commons, 1811–2015

Recent research has shown an increasing interest in the historical evolution

of legislative institutions. The development of the UK Parliament has received

particularly extensive attention. In this article, we contribute to this literature

in three important ways. First, we introduce a complete, machine-readable data

set of all the Standing Orders of the UK House of Commons between 1811 and

2015. Second, we demonstrate how this data set can be used to construct inno-

vative measures of procedural change. Third, we illustrate a potential empirical

application of the data set, offering an exploratory test of several expectations

drawn from recent theories of formal rule change in parliamentary democracies.

We conclude that the new data set has the potential to substantially advance our

understanding of legislative reforms in the United Kingdom and beyond.

There is much rece nt interest in the origi n and evolution of

legislative institutions (Binder 1996, 2006; Fleming 2019; Rasch,

Martin, and Cheibub 2015; Schickler 2000, 2001; Sieberer et al.

2016; Sieberer, Müller, and Heller 2011; Sin 2015; Spirling 2014;

Zubek 2015b). In this article, we c ontribute to this rese arch by

studying parlia mentary reforms in t he UK House of Commons.

Our prima ry interest is in t he measurement of, and acc ounting

for, the incidence and magn itude of change to the House’s proce-

dural rules between 1811 and 2015. During the 200 years since t he

early 1800s, the lower chamber of the UK Parliament witnessed

numerous episodes of sign ificant proc edural transformation.

While si milar developments oc curred in other European states,

British political development during this pe riod is unique in hav-

ing occur red in the absenc e of major disjunctures i n the form of

regime change, foreign o ccupation, or warfare on British soil. The

UK Parliament is thus an attr active case for studying procedural

change.

© 2019 Washington University in St. L ouis

36 Niels D. Goet, Thomas G. Fleming, and Radoslaw Zubek

There is alrea dy a long-standing sc holarly debate about pro-

cedural change i n the UK Parliament (Fraser 1960; Redlich 1908).

In his sem inal contribution, Cox (1987) examined th e innovations

through which power over the plenar y agenda was central ized

in the hands of the executive b etween 1811 and 1867. Dion (1997)

analyzed the suppr ession of minority r ights between the adop -

tion of the First Reform Act and the Balfour reforms, wh ile Koß

(2015) focused on the events lea ding to the adoption of closure

rules in 1882 and 1887. Eggers and Spirli ng (2014) showed how

the government consolid ated its agenda-setti ng power in the late

19th century by offering the opposition far-reaching inquisitorial

powers. The same authors (Eggers a nd Spirling 2018) traced the

emergence of the Shadow Cabinet b etween the First and Fourth

Reform Acts. Goet (forthcoming) studied debate regulation pat-

terns sinc e 1811. Addressing re cent developments, Kelso (2009)

reviewed parlia mentary reforms bet ween 1900 and the early

2000s. Other work has di scussed a number of key reform s—the

establishme nt of a select committ ee system in the 1970s (Jogerst

1993), New Labour’s modernization reforms (F linders 2002,

2007), the “Wright reforms” following the 2009 MPs’ expenses

scandal (Russel l 2011), and the introduction of “English Votes for

English Laws” (Gover and Kenny 2018).

We contribute to this research in three important ways.

First, we introduce a novel data set that al lows for a detailed

measurement of proc edural reforms. In spite of a sustained po-

litical scie nce interest in the institutional histor y of the House

of Commons, we still la ck a full pictur e of institutional reforms

of the UK Parliament. A key obstacle to progress in this area is

the unavailability of a m achine-read able data set of the House

of Commons’ interna l rules— the Standing Orders —covering an

extended per iod. In studying procedural change, analysts of the

UK Parliament tend to rely on Ersk ine May (2011), a regularly

updated commentary on parliam entary conventions and proce -

dures. However, this source does not provide a systematic over-

view of formal rule changes. Researchers t hus find it diff icult to

pinpoint changes in pro cedural instit utions, let alone trace the

evolution of individual mechan isms over time. In this article, we

introduce a new and complete d ata set of all amendme nts to the

Standing Orders of the UK House of Commons (HCSOs) be-

tween 1811 and 2015.1

This data set presents, to our knowledge,

the first compr ehensive and systematic overv iew of the House’s

procedures th at spans nearly the entirety of the 19th and 20th

37Procedural Change in the UK House of Commons

centuries. Based on this novel source, re searchers wi ll be able to

compare the texts of the HCSOs for any dates bet ween 1811 and

2015, and to trace t he evolution of individual rules over ti me.

Second, we demonstrate how our data set can be use d

to construct me asures of procedural change. In the spirit of

Sieberer et al. (2016), we develop measure s of the procedural

evolution of the UK House of Commons at the macro, meso,

and micro levels. Our m acro-level view provides a f irst glimp se

of the way in which the textua l length of the rule s of proce-

dure evolved between 1811 and 2015, both at the level of simple

word or article counts and text add itions, deletions, and amend-

ments. Moreover, we show how automatic keyword-based labe -

ling of orders in our data c an be used to const ruct measure s of

procedural cha nge at the meso level. Based on such me asures,

our article traces the evolution of rules in the domains of gov-

ernment rig hts, committe e powers, European integration, and

devolution. Finally, we show how our data can fac ilitate system-

atic manual or automated label ing of the content of changes at

the micro level of indiv idual clauses.

Third, we offer an i llustrative application of our data i n

an exploratory analysis of deter minants of proce dural change

in the UK House of Commons. We use our dat a to generate

a measure of proce dural change. We then model the incidence

and magnitude of cha nge to test several theoretical expe ctations

drawn from recent res earch on parliamentary rules a s equilib-

rium behavioral patterns (Sieberer, Müller, and Heller 2011).

We find suggestive eviden ce that disturbanc es to the partisan

environment affec t patterns of reform. In par ticular, changes

in party control increase the occurrence of proce dural reforms,

while distu rbances in the level of polar ization reduce the extent

of reform. This analysis d emonstrates our data set ’s potential

to advance our underst anding of the origi n and evolution of

legislative institutions.

The remainder of this article proc eeds as follows. The next

section outline s how we have constructe d our new data set of the

Standing Orders, and describes it s key features. We then show

how our data set can be us ed to construct d ifferent measure s of

procedural cha nge at the macro, meso, and micro levels. The

following section prese nts our empirical appl ication and the re-

sults. Finally, we conclude by outlini ng potential other uses of

our data set.