THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN SOCIETY AND AUTHORITY (THE KINGDOM OF SWEDEN OF THE 1840s-1860s)
Throughout human history, a country’s authority has always collaborated with a country’s society. This collaboration has been both positive (when society supported governmental policy) and negative (when people opposed laws enacted by their government). The paper investigates the mechanism of society-authority collaboration to elucidate the causes of people’s positive or negative attitude to their government’s policy. The research focuses on the domestic policy of the kingdom of Sweden during the reigns of Oscar I (1799-1859) and Charles XV (1826-1872). Swedish domestic policy of the period allowed the country to commence industrialization avoiding social crisis. In the mid-1860s Swedish domestic policy promoted parliamentary reforms, which predetermined the way, Riksdag worked up until 1971. A Russian historiographer E.Berendts touched upon this issue in his late-19 th century work “The Swedish System of Government”. In the second part of his work “Political, Social and Economic Development of Sweden in the 19 th сentury” the scholar described Swedish domestic policy and analyzed the country’s economy. The issue has also been studied by A.S. Kan. In his research “The History of Scandinavian Countries” and in the collective work “The History of Sweden” A.S. Kan made an attempt at exploring Swedish society from within. A special tribute should be paid to a research conducted by a Scandinavian scholar Ingvar Andersson and titled “The History of Sweden”. The research analyzes the kingdom’s economy and government policy.