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2 ✦ Nordic Europe in Comparative Perspective T O R B J Ö R N B E R G M A N A N D K A A R E S T R Ø M Few readers will be surprised at our treatment of Denmark, Finland, Iceland , Norway, and Sweden as one region. There is in fact widespread agreement among students of politics, social life, history, and culture that these countries share many commonalities, and that it is for a variety of purposes meaningful and interesting to study them jointly. While the Nordic countries make up a plausible and familiar region, they are not historically or geographically indistinguishable. Two countries (Norway and Sweden) are located on the geographically and culturally cohesive Scandinavian Peninsula (which takes its name from Skåne, the southernmost part of Sweden). Denmark lies on the other side of the strait of Öresund, but is seen as part of Scandinavia for historical, political, and cultural reasons. In strictly geographic terms and in our analysis, Finland and Iceland are considered to be Nordic countries, but not Scandinavian ones. Many observers argue that the political similarities between the five countries outweigh the differences. For this reason, they are often seen as suitable for “most similar system” comparisons (see, for example, Miles 1996; Arter 1999, 147–49). Indeed, Einhorn and Logue (2003, xii) argue that with the impact of globalization and the collapse of the Soviet Union, “the commonalities [in the region] have grown while the differences have lessened.” The research presented in this book will allow us to assess such judgments as they apply to contemporary Nordic parliaments and parties. Background and Overview Some readers will be familiar with the region while others might need more of an introduction. In what follows, we provide a brief historical-geographical 35 36 ✦ T H E M A D I S O N I A N T U R N background and examine the early history of Nordic representative democracy . This short overview is necessarily sketchy, but it provides a basis for a discussion of some distinctive cultural and organizational characteristics, such as Scandinavian consensus and compromise, democratic corporatism, and the welfare state(s). The chapter then goes on to explain how we structure the book with its focus on representative democracy as a chain of delegation from voters to political decision makers. In doing so, we begin with the citizens and move on to the subsequent policy-making process of parliamentary democracy . After that, we place this policy process in the context of the constraints (domestic and international) that are external to the parliamentary chain of delegation itself. In the final section of this chapter, we detail the contents of the chapters that follow and explain how we examine the recent trajectories of parliaments and political parties in Nordic Europe. Historical Origins The Nordic region as a whole is one of the few parts of Western Europe that was never subject to Roman rule or civilization, and in cultural as well as political terms it remains somewhat apart from the rest of the continent. Most of the region was never effectively integrated into the feudal Europe of the Middle Ages. The Protestant Reformation led to internal conflicts, but these were not quite as furious and bloody as those that plagued much of continental Europe. In the nineteenth century, the area was influenced as much by developments in the United States and Russia as by Western Europe. Indeed , the Nordic region remains the least integrated part of Western Europe . Until 1995, only Denmark had joined the European Union (EU), and even today (as of 2010) the Nordics account for two (Norway and Iceland) of the four West European states that have chosen to remain outside the EU (the other two are Switzerland and the Principality of Liechtenstein). Apart from their historical distinctness from the rest of Europe, the Nordics have surely changed. The peoples of the region used to be poor and uncivilized, at least in the view of people further south on the European continent. Today, they are more likely to be considered rich and successful. Likewise, the region was an area of troublesome and unrelenting conflict in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. However, for the past century (with some notable exceptions related to the two world wars) it has in general been a remarkably peaceful corner of Europe. In the seventeenth century, it was a region where monarchs were quite successful (at least for a while) in establishing absolutist rule...

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