2 - Liberal\Socialist\Conservative ideologies
2.1 - liberals and conservatives
I really think it would be interesting to create a modifier to measure how ideological, how pragmatic and how progressive ideologies and parties are. Vic2, for example, gave 100% of the liberal parliamentarians in favor of political and civil reforms, but in reality, liberal parties ruled throughout the West during the period and elected parliamentary majorities, and I don't know more than a few episodes where they established abrupt changes in voting rights or imposed abolitionist laws (like American Civil War). Conservatives signed many of the anti-slavery laws in latin-american, progressive conservatives recognized slavery was a huge problem, like liberals. In many countries, conservatives created or approved universal suffrage laws too. From the point of view of the most basic individual rights (vote and slavery), the 19st century dichotomy of vic2 (liberals vs conservative) was not so clear, because they were more pragmatic parties. Both were committed to ending slavery, at least in the long run, and did show commitment to universal suffrage in many countries (with Literacy high levels, or more plurarity political systems), but not in others (I'm talking about suffrage only). In many countries, Liberals and conservatives approved or supported the welfare policies too.
The problem with Vic2 was precisely to treat liberals as radical ideological and conservative as moderate reactionaries. They weren’t.
Maybe makes sense to link religious freedom, press freedom, basic voting rights (loosen the income criterion, allowing the middle class to vote) to liberals, but not much universal suffrage or abolitionism, because these questions was more complex and could undermine country’s stability. Although, is a fact that liberals was more progressive than conservatives and less progressive than socialists. Some conservatives are more reactionaries and don’t supports progressive laws so ease.
About the rebels: Jacobin rebels really make sense in Revolutionary France and Haiti, but don't makes sense to nickname 'jacobin rebels' for every liberal militants.
I think Vic 2 misses the point. The majority of liberal revolts in the belle époque\Victorian Era were a dispute between local elites and central governments. What was at stake was that the provinces wanted to have more autonomy against centralized regimes. Was very common that liberal elites fought by provincial or regional autonomy, descentralized political regimes and separatist purposes. They fought against centralizing governments (absolutist\authoritarian or merely unitarian regimes) in Brazil, Mexico, Switzerland, France, Portugal and many others; imperial governments that sounds like a ‘invader”, like austria and ottomans in balcans, or russia in polish-lithuanian regions, because the center of these empires didn't belong to the same cultural group of their subjects rebells; a third favorite target of liberal rebels was colonial territories of the colonial potences.
Examples of liberal revolts in the world during Victorian Era to prove what I say: the revolution of ayutla, 1st civil war, and war of Yucatán, in Mexico; the Sounderbound war, in Switzerland; The majority Independence war and revolts (long lisT); French Second Revolution; Revolutions of 1848 in Italy States; Eureka Rebellion, in colonial Australia; The Indian rebellion against British East Indian Company and Indian Independence, in India; 5 october, 1910 revolution, in Portugal; Revolution in the Kingdom of Poland; 1905 Russian Revolution; Finnish Civil War) .
Mostly, the revolt begins with an economic purpose, like dissatisfaction with high taxes, a minority with a political purpose, but whenever successful liberals revolts ends by "approving" a good portion of political rights. Of course, in separatist cases, there was a nationalist element that surpasses the liberal flag, but this type of revolt anticipated claims about political reform, and the liberal ideas was behind of the large majority separatists movements.
Not always the diferences were irreconcilable, some elements (belong to the same cultural group, for example) influenced local elites to approved a kind of federalist\confederalist constitution. I think the game could give the option to choose a more federalist\unitary constitution by providing different modifiers, for example:
A unitary constitution would reserve more taxes for the central government, more power to government in general, but the cost is a lot of political instability. A federalist\confederalist constitution cheaper infrastructure reforms in provinces and reduce the chances of separatist uprisings, but implies in a more weaker central government.
2.2 What about Socialists?
Apparently, the suffrage had more support from the leftists than from the liberals. Socialists (social-democrats), however, were always more ideological than pragmatic, they are most progressives (and sometimes this prejudicate the country’s economy and stability). Most countries passed the universal suffrage law just when the socialists became strong. In UK, for example, Labour Party was the first Party an advocate of universal suffrage for male and female.
At the same time, It doesn't seem to make so much sense to set a date for socialism to be born simultaneously across the world, at 1861. They didn't rising up so fast in the world. Only makes sense to exist socialism before the 20th century, if the country has already industrialized economy (at least 8%?) or a plural political system.
2.3. How conciliate all of that?
Vic2 brought interesting modifiers in some research: Talk about ‘political reform desire and‘ social reform desire ’. It would be really interesting to have more “conservative” liberals at the beginning of the game, but becoming more progressive when the country boosts the desire for political\social reform. Literacy is a point that should make parties more progressive as well. Some reforms should be heavier than others, for example, press freedom should have massive support from liberals, while antislavery laws should have pragmatic support from liberals and progressive conservatives. Historically, countries that depended heavily on slave labor passed laws that limited the supply of slaves, before abolishing slavery, with relative ease (support from liberals and conservatives): During the 1830s, the UK forces Latin American countries to abolish the slave trade. The “freedom of wombs” was a very common law too, all countries in South-America approved a law that ensures liberty for newborns and childs. (search for freedom of wombs). So, before abolishing, the slave population was already in sharp decline in Americas.
PS: But remember: Slavery abolition need happens before 20th century.
PS²:From the 1910s onwards emerged nationalists, communists or fascists, centralized modern regimes that represent a counterweight to the democratization of the countries.
The 3rd point: Voting rights discrimination
Well, Vic2 brings only one criterion of discrimination (income). The secondary criterion was proportional, something that gave the wealthier classes a more "heavy" vote, something based on the Prussian model. The problem is that, in practice, the Prussian model seems to have been restricted to Prussia, while the income criterion existed worldwide. Honestly, I see no reason to attribute different weights to the votes of the rich and the poor in around the world.
On the other hand, literacy was a discriminatory criterion that was present in the West during the Victorian Era. John Stuart Mill serves as a reference on this subject. I'm not sure, but I imagine that he was the first and influential public person to propose this discrimination., Mill proposed to end the wealth vote (exclusion by income) and propose create a barrier for the illiterate. Other types of discriminations policies involves: gender discrimination (a universal discrimination, more important than literacy), immigration discrimination (very common too), ethnical discrimination, etc. (again: Search for Universal suffrage on wikipedia, this link have many informations, can contribute a LOT!).
