ABSTRACT
This chapter gives an account of the evolution of the Swedish political system during the early modern period up to the early 1720s, with special attention to the period 1650–1723. The period was characterized by a strong growth in state power, facilitated by the rulers’ ability to pit commoners and nobility against each other. But political revolution in the years 1718–1723 meant that royal absolutism was replaced with a constitutionalist system in which the Swedish diet, the Riksdag, ruled supreme. I claim that this change was due to two of the commoner estates, the clergy and the burghers, defecting to the constitutionalist position of the nobility. Due to their ability to ally with both the nobility on the one hand and the peasantry on the other, I will refer to them collectively as ‘the middle estates’. The third commoner estate, the peasantry, remained largely royalist, and thus kept what can be called the populist option open to the monarchs: it meant that the rulers of Sweden could choose between relying on support from commoners and lesser nobles on the one hand (the populist option), and on the aristocracy, through opting for constitutionalist power-sharing, on the other. The emergence of constitutionalism and greater political strength in the commoner estates during this period is illustrated by cases from the entire period.
