Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T11:33:26.615Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Barrington Moore's Thesis and Swedish Political Development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Francis G. Castles
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

RECENT YEARS HAVE SEEN THE RECRUDESCENCE OF AN HISTORICAL dimension in comparative political studies, which is almost certainly a reflection of the increased interest in problems of political development that began to be seriously displayed from the early 1960s onwards. Among the more interesting contributions in this respect have been Lipset's, and, in particular, Rokkan's, working-out of a diachronic analysis of patterns of political cleavage and resulting party systems, the increasing focus on crises and sequences in political development, and, of course, Barrington Moore's historical analysis of the Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. All these approaches have in common an attempt to infuse the generalizing and typological approach so typical of the modern social sciences with a deeper historical appreciation of the particular contexts within which political change occurs.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , 01 July 1973 , pp. 313 - 331
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1973

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See Lipset, S. M. and Rokkan, Stein, ‘Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments: An Introduction’, in Lipset, S. M. and Rokkan, Stein (eds.), Party Systems and Voter Alignments, The Free Press, New York, 1967 Google Scholar, and also Rokkan, Stein, Citizens, Elections, Parties, Universitetsforlaget, Oslo, 1970.Google Scholar

2 Among examples, see Rustow, Dankwart A., A World of Nations, Brookings Institution, Washington, 1968;Google Scholar Nordlinger, Eric, ‘Time Sequences and Rates of Change’, World Politics, 04 1968 Google Scholar, and Binder, Leonard et al, Crises and Sequences in Political Development, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1971.Google Scholar

3 Moore, Barrington, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, Beacon Press, Boston, 1966.Google Scholar

4 Ibid., pp. xii–xiii.

5 The exclusion of countries where the major impetus to emergent change came from abroad is quite independently suggested by Dankwart A. Rustow in his programmatic statement of a genetic theory of democratization. But it should be emphasized that Rustow's exclusion involves no criterion of size as such, and that Sweden, the subject of this essay, constitutes one of his two paradigm cases for the independent emergence of democratic procedures. See Rustow, Dankwart A., ‘Transitions to Democracy’, Comparative Politics, No. 3, 04 1970, pp. 337–63.Google Scholar In direct contrast to Barrington Moore's stance, it is interesting to note that Rokkan's strategy is precisely to concentrate his initial focus on the eleven smaller polities of Western Europe. Stein Rokkan, op. cit., p. 78. In a footnote to an earlier chapter, Rokkan takes exception to the passage from Barrington Moore cited in the text, and argues that a capacity for political innovation is not necessarily inversely related to a country's size. From the ancient world he cites as contrary examples Greece and Israel, and from the modern world, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. Ibid., pp. 70–1. It ought, perhaps, to be mentioned, that, while Rustow, Rokkan and the present author agree that Sweden's political development owes a great deal to indigenous factors, the actual factors stressed in each account are widely divergent.

6 Barrington Moore, Jr., op. cit., p. xi.

7 Ibid., pp. 430–1.

8 Heckscher, Eli F., An Economic History of Sweden, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1954, pp. 36–8.Google Scholar

9 Andersson, Ingvar, A History of Sweden, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London 1955, p. 36.Google ScholarPubMed

10 Roberts, Michael, Essays in Swedish History, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1967, p. 15.Google Scholar

11 Ibid., pp. 269–70.

12 Eli F. Heckscher, op. cit., p. 67.

13 Ingvar Andersson, op. cit., p. 216.

14 Oakley, Stewart, The Story of Sweden, Faber & Faber, London, 1966, p. 97.Google Scholar

15 Barrington Moore, Jr., op. cit., pp. 419 ff.

16 Heckscher, Eli. F., op. cit., pp. 168–9.Google Scholar It should be noted that the discussion in this paragraph relates to the areas covered by modern Sweden. In the various Baltic provinces, which made up the Swedish empire, manorialism was a major force and the peasantry was in different degrees reduced to servile status.

17 Ibid., p. 125.

18 Ibid., p. 160.

19 Verney, Douglas V., Parliamentary Reform in Sweden, 1866–1921, Oxford University Press, 1957, p. 16.Google Scholar

20 Quite apart from the political repercussions of economic changes in the countryside, there has been some controversy about the exact role and timing of the agrarian in relation to the industrial revolution in Sweden. Thus a recent commentator suggests that in Scandinavia generally increases in agricultural productivity produced the economic surplus necessary to support industrialization. Jörberg, Lennart, The Industrial Revolution in Scandinavia 1850–1914, Vol. IV, Fontana Economic History of Europe, 1970.Google Scholar However, an earlier study concludes: ‘…enskifte and laga skifte (legal partitioning) should not be regarded as part of the agrarian revolution. The latter was caused by the demands of a market created by the industrial revolution’. Dahl, Sven, ‘Strip Fields and Enclosure in Sweden’, The Scandinavian Economic History Review, Vol. 9, 1961, p. 66 (my italics).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 For details of this development, see Samuelsson, Kurt, From Great Power to Welfare State, George Allen & Unwin, 1968, pp. 194–200.Google Scholar

22 Verney, Douglas V., op. cit., note 1, p. 91.Google Scholar

23 Ibid., p. 90.

24 Ibid., p. 35.

25 Carlsson, Sten and Rosén, Jerker, Svensk bistoria II: Tiden efter 1718, Bonnier Stockholm, 1961, pp. 534–5.Google Scholar

26 Barrington Moore, Jr., op. cit., p. 422.

27 In connection with the theme of this essay, it is worth noting not merely the changes occurring within the Noble Estate, but also the comparatively high upward inter‐generational mobility between peasantry and nobility. The typical pattern was a change over two or more generations from peasant to clergyman to noble. At the end of the 17th century, just before the dawning of the ‘Era of Liberty’, it has been calculated that 30 per cent of all clergymen were the sons of farmers. See Carlsson, Sten, Bonde präst‐ämbetsman, Bokförlaget Prisma, Stockholm, 1962.Google Scholar It is an arguable proposition that the interests of the independent peasantry were that much better protected in Sweden in consequence of their sons and grandsons being able to find a place in the higher estates.

28 Rustow, Dankwart A., The Politics of Compromise, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1955, p. 23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 Kurt Samuelsson, op. cit., p. 214.

30 Dankwart A. Rustow, The Politics of Compromise, p. 25.

31 Douglas V. Verney, op. cit., p. 67.

32 Barrington Moore, Jr., op. cit., pp. 429–30.

33 See, for instance, Almond, Gabriel A. and Bingham Powell, G., Jr., Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1966, pp. 177–8.Google Scholar

34 Among these, one should, perhaps, include the Swedish peasant emigration to the USA, which, starting in the 1850s, swelled into a torrent by the latter decades of the 19th century. This factor might be seen as a ‘safety‐valve’, which permitted Swedish peasant dissatisfactions to be exported aboard during the crucial period of the industrial revolution. In the terms used by Samuel P. Huntington, it might be argued that social frustration in Sweden was diminished because mobility opportunities (including here mobility to move abroad) were relatively high. See Huntington, Samuel P., Political Order in Changing Societies, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1968, pp. 54–5.Google Scholar

35 Rustow, Dankwart A., ‘Sweden's Transition to Democracy: Some Notes toward A Genetic Theory’, Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 6, 1971, p. 22.Google Scholar