"Parlamentarismen" som partskhetens inkarnation

En analys av Sveriges politiska debatt 1900-1920

Authors

• Kai Paajaste

Abstract

The Swedish Parliament, Riksdag, was seen as a danger by conservatives in the political struggles at the beginning of the 19th century. The conservative interpretation of Swedish (political) history was the dominant one and the argumentation was based on the past. The leftist parties, liberals and social democrats, had to take this into account when acting for democratic and parliamentary reforms. Their task can, in Quentin Skinner’s terms, be described as the task of an innovating ideologist. They had to legitimate a new range of political actions which were regarded as, if not illegitimate, then untoward. This article shows that when the conservatives identified parliamentarism with partiality, it indicated that they too had admitted that "parties" and thus even temporality and concepts of movement had gained a central position in politics. The Left argued innovatively, using this as an argument for parliamentarism and, thus, the conservatives looked like "a party" for the King. The Left was able to use modern political parties and forms and the language with future orientation as a weapon at the same time as they were able to take advantage of the "past" as a political argument. So, the leftist parties turned the conservative argument against the conservatives and in the 1930’s were finally able to conquer the concept of Folkhem, the home of the people, from the conservatives. This adaptability was the leftists' greatest advantage in these and later political struggles in Sweden.