Social Origins of Swedish Democracy: the role of Agrarian Politics Erik Bengtsson. Lund University, Sweden Address: Erik Bengtsson, Dept. of Economic History, Box 7080, 220 07 Lund, Sweden E-mail:
[email protected] 13,257 words, 1 table Abstract In discussions of Scandinavian democratization, it is commonplace to argue that long- standing farmer representation in parliament and a lack of feudalism facilitated early democratization. The present essay questions this interpretation in the Swedish case. It centers on a re-interpretation of farmer politics at the national level from the 1866-67 two- chamber parliament reform to the alliance between the farmers’ party and Social Democracy in 1933. I show that Swedish farmers did not organize themselves independently of nobles and land-owners until the 1920s, and did not play the role of an independent pro-democratic force. The broad-based organizations of farmers in the 1920s and 1930s, with their democratic, participatory culture, were heavily influenced by the political culture of liberals and the labor movement. The implication for analyses of democratization is that deep roots are less decisive than often supposed, and that modern political agency and organization conversely, in contrast to influential research traditions and theories of democracy, can reverse undemocratic traditions. Keywords: democratization, agrarian politics, Sweden, class politics, farmers. Research financed by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond grant “Dynamic peasants? Agency and inequality in Swedish modernization”, P16-0412:1. Thanks to Agnes Cornell, Josefin Hägglund, Anton Jansson, Johannes Lindvall, Mats Olsson, Jan Teorell and Carolina Uppenberg, and to participants in the Economic and Social History Colloquium, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the STANCE seminar, Lund, for their comments.