Evolution of political manifestos with a study of proposals to reform the House of Lords in the 20th century

This is a study of how electoral Manifestos have evolved in the 20th century, with a special case study of how Manifesto undertakings in one policy area, that of Reform of the House of Lords, have been delivered by a party when in government. An examination of the Manifestos issued by the Labour, Conservative and Liberal parties for the 27 elections between 1900 and 2001 shows a substantial increase in size on various dimensions and a certain convergence between the parties in their approach to presentational characteristics. A statistical analysis of the overall set of data collected could not confirm that the variations observed were not due to chance. Examination of the relationship between pledges in Manifestos and action taken to reform the House of Lords shows that these pledges were neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for reform to take place. Several reforms have been introduced which had not been pledged in electoral Manifestos whilst several pledges put forward have not been followed up. The study is making several modest contributions to the literature and is highlighting a few areas where further research could be undertaken.