From the Corn Laws to Free Trade: Interests, Ideas, and Institutions in Historical Perspective. By Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006. 440p. $47.50.

In this work, Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey presents the culmination of her more than two decades–long study of the politics of the 1846 repeal of Britain's Corn Laws. Conceiving changes in the “three Is”—interests, ideas, and institutions—as the three central components of an explanation of this policy change, she presents a series of chapter-length studies focused on each of these elements. She further divides the chapters into “demand” and “supply” sections—with the former tending to emphasize the role of shifting interests, and the latter primarily devoted to discussions of ideology as revealed by parliamentary speeches. Like many who have preceded her, Schonhardt-Bailey studies very closely the proceedings in the House of Commons, but she breaks new ground by also studying the approval of repeal in the House of Lords. (That the latter chamber, dominated in 1846 by the landed aristocracy, would nonetheless not block repeal is even more remarkable than Prime Minister Robert Peel's success in the House of Commons.) She also examines the relationship between the discussion of repeal in local newspapers and the floor votes of members of Parliament (MPs)—a particularly apposite topic given the close relationship between these newspapers and the political parties of the day, and the lack at that time of any national news media.