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This article assesses how Swedish parliamentary democracy works today, almost one hundred years into its history. Our main research question is whether the transformation of the Swedish party system since the 1980s—and especially since 2010, when the populist-radical-right Sweden Democrats entered parliament—has altered the way parliamentary democracy works. We provide new evidence on Sweden's changing party system, the formation and duration of cabinets, decision-making in parliament and the relationship between what parties say in election campaigns and what they do in government. Our main conclusion is that at least by the election of 2018, surprisingly little had changed. Cabinets have formed quickly, and once formed, they have survived until the next election. The bills governments have sent to parliament have usually passed, often getting the support of one or more opposition parties. Governing parties have managed to implement approximately 80 per cent of the promises they have made in their election manifestos. That said, the relationship between the executive and the legislature was contested in the 2010–2014 and 2014–2018 parliaments, and after the election of 2018, it took a very long time to form a new government. The concluding section discusses what the future might hold. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relationship between conscription (the compulsory enlistment of civilians for military service) and democracy. Using the best available cross-country comparable data on the history of conscription and democracy, we demonstrate that there is an empirical relationship between conscription and democratization, but the relationship is more complicated than commonly believed. Specifically, we find that conscription increases the likelihood of male suffrage extensions, but only in wartime (when the conscript army is mobilized). We find no relationship between conscription and democratization apart from extensions of suffrage. Nor do we find support for the hypothesis that conscription shelters democracies from coups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do trade unions organize antigovernment strikes in some countries but not in others? This article argues that there is a curvilinear relationship between union density and political strike activity. Political strikes are rare in countries with low union density, since effective protests require a basic level of organizational capacity. They are also rare in countries with high union density, since a government that faces a strong union movement has powerful incentives to adjust its policies in order to avoid open confrontation. But political strikes are relatively common in countries with moderate levels of union density, since it is difficult for governments and unions to find viable compromises when the strength of the unions is not secure. The empirical part of the article estimates the relationship between union density and the likelihood of political strikes in two samples of advanced democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Three models of economic policymaking--the politics of bargaining, the politics of expertise, and the politics of purpose--can explain why Swedish governments made low inflation the primary objective of macroeconomic policy ten to fifteen years later than most other advanced democracies. Major economic policy shifts are caused by the disintegration of established norms regarding the purpose of political authority. Neither structural economic change nor the introduction of new economic ideas made Swedish governments give up the defense of full employment. They gave up its defense only after the norms of Sweden's political culture changed in the late 1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]