Parties, Elections and Political Behaviour in the Northern Countries: A Review of Recent Research

Abstract

The Northern countries can look back on a long tradition of scholarly academic work on problems of government, administration and politics: a chair of “rhetoric and statecraft” was set up at Uppsala as early as in 1622, a professorship in the “science of the state” was established at Sorø Academy in 1747 and there was some teaching of Statistik at Copenhagen from 1785 onwards. These early endeavours mirrored the concerns of the central administrative bodies of the monarchies and were focused on issues of legitimation and normative regulation. With the gradual growth of the movements of opposition during the nineteenth century, the conditions for scholarly work on government and politics changed: the emergence of mass parties and the extension of the suffrage to the underprivileged strata of the national communities not only set new tasks for research but also called for new approaches and new techniques of study. The “entry into politics” of the urban bourgeoisie, the farmers and the workers became an important theme in national historiography, but it took some time before the study of parties, popular movements and elections received recognition as a deserving line of academic inquiry.

This article was completed at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford (Cal.). The senior author wishes to acknowledge his great indebtedness to the Center and its staff for the services rendered during the preparation of the article for the press.