Ideas and Interests in Constitutional Reform

Abstract

One striking feature of the past two centuries of Swedish constitutional history is the lawful adoption of a series of fundamental institutional reforms in response to changing political pressures within Sweden. There were no military or majoritarian coups, no civil wars, nor significant international pressures. Political histories of modern Sweden emphasize that the internal pressures behind constitutional reforms were generated partly by changes in accepted ideas about proper forms of governance and partly by changes in the relative strength of politically active interest groups. This book largely accepts that conventional analysis, but directs attention toward economic conditions and constitutional rules that have generated and constrained those shifts in political power, rather than to the personalities that ultimately drafted them.