The essence of electoral struggle in the Scottish counties during the elections to the house of commons of the United Kingdom (1707–1832)

In this article the researcher examines the essence of the struggle to be elected to the UK Parliament in Scottish counties in the context of rules, processes comprising the electorial system being completely discredited. Traditionally, researchers (R. M. Sunter, J. Ferguson, A. Murdoch, W. Ferguson) concentrated their attention on the dominant role of patronage and personal relations on the outcome of elections in Scottish counties. Historians also agree that land qualification was the reason of the small number of voters and that the possibility of formal land cessions for life led to fictitious voters. However, researchers do not pay enough attention to the scale that land distribution influenced electoral struggle in different regions.

The research is based on the source «View of the political state of Scotland in the last century: a confidential report on the political opinions, family connections, or personal circumstances of the 2662 county voters in 1788». The aforementioned work contains information on all the voters and on the electoral situation in each of the counties. Based on this source the researchers determine the extent to which land distributions influenced the election process in Scottish counties. The authors come to the conclusion that the size and the number of estates created the framework of the system existing in the counties and thus largely determined the outcome of the elections. The analysis of the source reveals that depending on the land distributions counties could have completely different situations. For example, in one county personal relations between local political actors could have major influence on the outcome of the elections if several voters had more or less equal land ownership (including the possible fictitious votes), and no influence in another if the said county was controlled by a single landholder.

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