ABSTRACT
The working-class Chartist program of 1838—1848 demanded an extension of democracy by means of equalization: universal suffrage, secret ballot, annual elections, salaried members of parliament, no property qualification for members, and equal electoral districts, a call for 1111, with the unstated presumption that British citizens already enjoyed protection from arbitrary state action. By the enactment of female suffrage in 1918, Great Britain edged into the category of 1111, by no means a “full” democracy, but nonetheless unusually democratic among the states of its time. The exploration of tautologically necessary conditions for democracy—states and citizens—clears the way for thinking about contingent causes and concomitants of democracy. Rueschemeyer and colleagues do not quite recognize their argument's implication: Not capitalism itself, but proletarianization constitutes the crucial conditions for democratization.
