DETERMINISM AND THE DOCTRINE OF HARMONY

The triumph of parliamentary government in Sweden was followed by a period of parliamentary crisis. Just as Swedish public life before World War I had fallen short of the constitutional ideals of the Left, events after the introduction of universal suffrage and parliamentarism did not live up to leftist expectations either. Arvid Lindman's proportional representation formula preserved the multiparty system. In addition to the Conservatives, the Liberals (who had split in 1922 into a “Prohibitionist” and a “Liberal” party before merging again in 1934) and the Social Democrats, there were two comparatively new parties represented in Parliament – the Agrarians and the Communists; the latter had broken away from the Social Democrats. There was no parliamentary power base for a strong government. Short-lived minority governments came and went, including the Conservatives, the Prohibitionists (both with and without the Liberals as a coalition partner), the Social Democrats, and an occasional nonparliamentary government of senior civil servants. Under such circumstances, it was not possible to carry out a thoughtful and purposeful government policy. Politics became one continuous strategic game. In parliamentary committees, the parties were constantly looking over each other's shoulders with the aim of forming new coalitions to improve their positions, perhaps by unseating the government and helping form a new cabinet.