The problem with early-modern petitions: safety valve or powder keg?

Almbjär, Martin

doi:10.1080/13507486.2019.1575798

Cited by 12 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 54 publications

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“…He made sure that the college's decisions were based on inputs from preordained, nationally organized consultations of the peasantry alongside the usual hearings of landlords and county governors (Jensen 1936, 62-3). These consultations resulted in a vast number of petitions-150 from peasant groups in the first year (Løgstrup 2015, 66)-that became vital elements in the reform design (Almbjär 2019(Almbjär , 1018Hansgaard 1981, 75).…”

Section: Impartiality In Policymaking and Implementationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impartial Administration and Peaceful Agrarian Reform: The Foundations for Democracy in Scandinavia

Andersen

2023

Am Polit Sci Rev

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Why was the route to democracy in Scandinavia extraordinarily stable? This paper answers this question by studying Scandinavia’s eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century peaceful agrarian reforms, which contributed to auspicious state–society relations that made democracy progress relatively smoothly. Based on comparisons with contemporary France and Prussia and process-tracing evidence, the paper shows that Scandinavia achieved relatively extensive and peaceful agrarian reforms because of relatively high levels of meritocratic recruitment to the central administration and state control over local administration, which ensured impartial policymaking and implementation. These findings challenge prevailing theories of democratization, demonstrating that the Scandinavian countries represent an alternative, amicable path to democracy led by civil servants who attempt to transform their country socioeconomically. Thus, strong state-cum-weak society countries likely have better odds of achieving stable democracy than weak state-cum-weak society countries. However, building bureaucratic state administrations alongside autonomous political societies is probably a safer road to democracy.

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Section: Impartiality In Policymaking and Implementationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impartial Administration and Peaceful Agrarian Reform: The Foundations for Democracy in Scandinavia

Andersen

2023

Am Polit Sci Rev

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Conditional Hospitality Toward Internal Refugees: Sweden During the Great Northern War, 1700–1721

Nauman

2022

Baltic Hospitality From the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century

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During the early eighteenth century, the eastern coastline of Sweden received an unprecedented number of internal refugees fleeing from Russian attacks in Finland and Sweden’s Baltic territories. This chapter traces the reception of these refugees in terms of delegated and conditional hospitality, and the responses it provoked. While the king formulated policies of hospitality, he delegated the coordination of efforts and the responsibility for separating deserving refugees from undeserving ones to a commission. The practical tasks of providing funds and performing day-to-day hospitality were delegated to local communities and individual subjects. The conditions of hospitality are revealed in the security measures that authorities and communities imposed on the refugees. By analyzing these measures and the responses they provoked from the refugees, I argue that hospitality hinged on the refugees being in Sweden temporarily—as soon as the war ended, they were expected to return home. Furthermore, the hospitality proved frail as the security measures led to autoimmunization: attempts by the commission to separate deserving from undeserving refugees created rifts between hosts and guests, aggravating the situation.

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Introduction: The Transformation of Petitioning in the Long Nineteenth Century (1780–1914)

Miller¹

2019

Soc. sci. hist.

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This introductory essay, firstly, offers a comparative, historical perspective on the transformation of petitioning into a vehicle for mass popular politics across North America and Western Europe during the “long” nineteenth century (1780–1914). While petitions were well established as an instrument of state in many early modern states, from the late eighteenth century a new type of mass, public, collective petitioning, based on established or invoked rights, emerged on an unprecedented scale in many countries. Mass petitioning underpinned the nascent repertoires of collective action pioneered by social movements. At the same time, the reception of petitions was institutionalized by political authorities, particularly legislatures elected under limited suffrage, as a potential source of legitimation. Secondly, the introduction suggests why people petitioned, and continued to petition, when their campaigns were often unsuccessful in achieving immediate results. The answer lies in the manifold advantages of petitioning in enabling political organization, mobilization, identity formation, citizenship, political change, and the forming of networks with elite political actors. By shaping an emerging field examining petitioning and petitions, raising awareness of petitions as sources and the methodologies to exploit them, and addressing broad questions of interest to historians and social scientists, this special issue hopes to stimulate further research and contribute to a rich dialogue in the years to come.

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The problem with early-modern petitions: safety valve or powder keg?

Cited by 12 publications

References 54 publications

Impartial Administration and Peaceful Agrarian Reform: The Foundations for Democracy in Scandinavia

Impartial Administration and Peaceful Agrarian Reform: The Foundations for Democracy in Scandinavia

Conditional Hospitality Toward Internal Refugees: Sweden During the Great Northern War, 1700–1721

Introduction: The Transformation of Petitioning in the Long Nineteenth Century (1780–1914)

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