The Rise and Fall of the Quasi-Bicameral System of Norway (1814–2007)

2 The rise and fall of the quasi-bicameral system of Norway (1814–2007) Eivind Smith Norway in a Scandinavian context The constitution of Norway remains primarily a national phenomenon, despite having borrowed important features from (international) political philosophy and foreign constitutions. National experiences must be understood in their social and historical context. In a number of important respects, Norway’s context is Scandinavia, where geographical and linguistic proximity and the presence of comparatively strong welfare states contribute to enhancing the impression of Denmark, Norway and Sweden as a relatively homogeneous group of countries. Constitutionally, their common label as constitutional monarchies contributes to underpinning the impression of wide-reaching homogeneity. Even the presence of purely unicameral parliaments may appear to further confirm the impression of a strong cross-border community. On the other hand, a closer look at the relevant constitutional systems uncov ers a number of reasons for warning against the temptation to ratify the impres sion of Scandinavian homogeneity. Learning about the systems of government that emerged in the two historical centres (Copenhagen and Stockholm) would provide a good starting point for those who strive to understand a number of differences between the three national systems in the field of constitutional law (Krunke & Thorarensen 2018). As a matter of fact, the position of Denmark and Sweden as two dominant and opposing powers since the late medieval period paved the way for important differences between the three western states that appeared later (Denmark and Norway, followed by Iceland) and the two eastern ones (Sweden, followed by Finland). With the exception of the replacement of the absolute monarchy by a con stitutional one introduced by the constitution of 1814, Norway never aimed at completely abolishing key institutional patterns inherited from the absolute Danish-Norwegian monarchy (1661–1814) once its full statehood was re established. In the eastern part of the realm, the new state of Finland adopted a similar position regarding its Swedish heritage. Here, that position was even strengthened by the new state’s resistance to Russian influence within the framework of the newly created Grand Duchy (1809–1917), with the tsar acting as grand duke. This way, Scandinavia ended up with two overarching 30 Eivind Smith systems of public law, albeit with internal differences between the states that have grown considerably over time. The absence of any common Scandinavian heritage is patent even when it comes to these countries’ former bicameral (or similar) parliaments. In Denmark-Norway, the presence of an absolute monarchy left no room for a representative assembly. In Norway, that situation changed after 1814, but in Denmark it remained until the king finally curtailed his own absolute powers by ‘giving’ the country its first modern constitution in 1849. A bicameral par liament formed a key part of the new institutional apparatus in Denmark but changed its character over time. During a short period, the members of both chambers were elected according to relatively inclusive norms with regard to the right to vote. According to the second constitution (1866), adopted in the aftermath of Denmark’s military defeat against Prussia (1864), the major part of the members of the upper chamber (Landsting) was chosen by an electorate dominated by high-income groups, including the still powerful landowners, and twelve out of sixty-six members were appointed by the king (Christensen et al. 2016). Had the electoral turnout in the subsequent mandatory referen dum been sufficient to satisfy the constitutional requirements of the time, the conservative upper chamber would have been abolished by the new constitu tion adopted by Parliament in 1939. By contrast, the constitutional text on which Parliament voted (1953) in the aftermath of the Second World War passed the test of the mandatory referendum because of both positive support and sufficient turnout. Its main contribution to the institutional landscape was the establishment of the lower chamber (Folketing, meaning people’s assem bly) as Denmark’s single-chamber Parliament (cf. Christiansen, this volume; Skjæveland, this volume). On the eastern shores of Øresund, royal power was less absolute. Sweden entered the nineteenth century with the inherited system of estates composed of not just three but four chambers (nobility, clergy, bourgeoisie and peasantry). The 1809 Instrument of Government kept this pattern until constitutional amend ments (1866) replaced it with a bicameral system whose upper chamber was elected by and among the members of the county and city councils for eight-year terms. From 1905, each of the two chambers was housed in two almost identical semicircular halls within the new Parliament, where the interaction between the members of the two chambers was further facilitated by architectural features such as a monumental corridor linking the two halls. Together with the existence of joint committees and, even more importantly, the emergence of a modern system of political parties, such features inevitably paved the way for the ulti mate abolishment of the bicameral system. The current unicameral Parliament (Riksdag) has been in place since 1971 (cf. Nergelius, this volume; Nilsson, this volume). Chronology alone is sufficient to demonstrate that no Danish model was at hand when it came to the design of the new Parliament of Norway, nor did the 1814 Constituent Assembly consider the age-old Swedish ‘model’ of four estates. How, then, did modern Norway’s bicameral system come about? The quasi-bicameral system of Norway 31 How did the Norwegian bicameral system come about? In the aftermath of the battle of Leipzig, the king of Denmark-Norway, an ally of Napoleon, was forced to hand over the kingdom of Norway to the king of Sweden by virtue of the Treaty of Kiel, concluded on 14 January 1814. From the Swed ish side, the main architect of the arrangement was not the old and childless king himself but Jean Baptiste Bernadotte, Napoleonic maréchal of France and elected crown prince of Sweden under the name Karl Johan (Charles Jean). The motiva tion for his wish to take over Norway was at least partly to compensate Sweden’s loss of its eastern provinces (now known as Finland) to the tsar of Russia (1809), without having to start new wars against the Russian Empire. As a consequence of the king’s relinquishing his Norwegian realm, a group of prominent Norwegians considered themselves freed from their allegiance to the institution that they had considered as their legitimate head of state. Oppos ing the treatment of Norway as royal property to be handed over to the coun try’s hereditary enemy, they argued on the basis of the increasingly strong ideas about popular sovereignty and convinced the residing governor, Prince Christian Frederik of Denmark-Norway, to call a Constituent Assembly. Consisting of indi rectly elected members from all over the country, the assembly (Riksforsamling) gathered in April 1814 at Eidsvoll, north of Oslo, and unanimously adopted the Norwegian constitution six weeks later (17 May). Norway’s declaration of inde pendence was enshrined in the very first article, separate chapters inspired by the new philosophy of enlightenment dealt with the trias politica, and a number of citizen and human rights were included in the corpus, not just in a preamble or as additional text, like in the French and US constitutions. By virtue of the norms enshrined in the constitution, the assembly elected the residing prince as the first constitutional king of Norway. Among other functions, he was the commander of the Norwegian armies during the short war following the Swedish attack led by Bernadotte in July–August. According to an armistice concluded in August 1814, King Christian Frederik convoked the country’s new Parliament for an extraordinary session, handed over his powers and abdicated in October of the same year. He returned to Denmark, where he later became the last king to remain an absolute monarch for his entire reign. In fact, King Christian VIII died the year before his successor accepted the first modern constitution in 1849. Rather ironically, the young prince who called the Constituent Assembly of Norway, inspired by new ideas about popular sovereignty and was elected as king of Norway accordingly, refused to take a similar step before he died as king of his own homeland, Denmark. The armistice also required that the Norwegian constitution be amended in order to establish a kind of personal union between Sweden and Norway. By virtue of the amended text, the Parliament elected the king of Sweden as the king of Norway in November. The monarchy remained constitutional within the relatively unchanged institutional framework that had been established by the original constitution of 1814. A key element of the constitution was the clause in Article 49: ‘The People exer cises the legislative power at the National Assembly, consisting of two sections, 32 Eivind Smith viz. the Lag-Thing and the Odels-Thing’. In Norwegian, the text adopted by the Constituent Assembly explicitly spelled out the name of the plenary chamber (Storting or great assembly). As the common denominator of these three names is a word inspired by the name given to Norse medieval regional and local assem blies (thing), it should be regarded, of course, as an element of the post-1814 Nor wegian nation-building efforts based upon real or invented historical traditions. At present, we may leave aside that the provision about the legislative power in the hands of ‘the people’ was – and formally remains – inappropriate. That power does not belong to ‘the people’ alone but is shared between Parliament and the king in council. In fact, royal approbation is still required for a legislative text to become law (Article 78). Until 2007, the constitution vested the legislative power in one assembly split in two.

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