The Emergence of Party-Based Political Careers in the United Kingdom, 1801–1918

We document the emergence of nomination and office hierarchies within the nineteenth-century UK parties and the development of norms that ensured incumbent renomination and seniority progression through those hierarchies. We offer a property rights theory of why these norms developed and show that the reform acts, which reduced the influence of patronal peers and increased party-centered voting, were the main drivers of development. The overall effect was to transform a system in which political careers were only loosely organized by the parties into one in which they dominated career prospects.