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This article provides information on the journal Acta Sociologica and its role in the formative years of Scandinavian sociology. Since its foundation in 1955, Acta Sociologica has been open for papers from different orientations and schools. Important paradigmatic changes have been clearly reflected in its pages. In Acta Sociologica's first five volumes, the theoretical papers strongly emphasized the importance of social factors in perceptions and behavior. The description of Acta Sociologica's relation to the studies of the welfare state is revealing in the way it has functioned during the years. A very basic characteristics of Acta has been a kind of pluralism. It was never an organ for just one kind of theoretical and ideological orientation. Positivism, Marxism, structuralism, post-modernism have all been reflected in its pages, but Acta was never a protagonist of just one kind of learning. One of the consequences of such pluralism is that there never has been anything truly dramatic associated with the contents of and in Acta Sociologica. For Scandinavian sociology and sociologists, Acta Sociologica has some special functions. Like all scientists, Scandinavian sociologists should of course aspire to be the best in the world. Acta Sociologica has been one of the important mechanisms for Scandinavian inter-comparisons.

Political sociology is much more difficult to delineate than it was thirty to forty years ago. In the 1950's there existed a vacuum, an almost empty borderland between political science and sociology. Studies focusing on both social structure and politics, on the simultaneous occurrence of structural and political change, and on large-scale historical processes behind the rise of nations and states were rare. The founding of the Committee on Political Sociology in 1959 was an administrative act of revolutionary consequence in sociology and political science. Political sociology was neither a branch of sociology nor of political science, but a genuine border field created to undertake field studies and gauge the impact of structure and culture on politics on the one hand, and the effects of politics upon society and its social institutions on the other. Political sociology is focused on dominant social and political cleavages and on master change in society. Transformations influencing social structure, politics, economy, and culture are the prime objects of political sociology. Today European and also Scandinavian societies are in the aftermath of and in the midst of two revolutionary changes.

Discusses the concept of democracy in the Nordic countries. Impact of positive public attitude to state intervention on the development of welfare state; Type of political representation functioning in government; Differences in the social composition of the elected bodies.

After World War II a rapid development of sociology occurred in the Scandinavian countries, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. By combining national intellectual traditions with different specialities in American sociology some clearly distinctive features developed within the sociology in the four countries. The student revolt at the end of the 1960s and its aftermath had substantial effects on the development of Scandinavian sociology. The dependence on American sociology weakened considerably although it did not totally disappear. Another effect was that the differences among the sociologies of the Scandinavian countries began to disappear. Rather than national sociologies there are now various orientations and code systems more or less shared by different groups in all Scandinavian countries. Sociology has become much more pluralistic, but in the process there is also an increased fragmentation and a loss of unity among the sociologists. In the Scandinavian countries there are studies of good quality in many fields of sociology. By using international reputation, and the impact on other domains of sociology as the two main criteria, four fields are singled out as particularly interesting. These fields are studies of welfare and the welfare state, comparative studies of social stratification and political sociology, women's studies, and cultural sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on Scandinavian sociology. Sociology in the Scandinavian countries that is Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden does not have its roots in national traditions of speculative theorizing about the nature of man and society. The absence of a long intellectual history of significant social philosophy and macrosociological speculation is a conspicuous feature of the four countries. This characteristic of both Scandinavian sociology and the Scandinavian societies can to some extent be explained sociologically. To state that Scandinavian sociology does not rest on national traditions of social speculation is not to say that sociology in these four countries is without national roots. It is, however, striking that the forerunners of present-day sociology belonged to a strongly empirical tradition. In all four Scandinavian countries there is a long and honorable record of studies in government, statistics, social welfare, and ethnography dealing with sociological problems. When sociology in its present form was established at the Scandinavian universities after World War II, it developed in an academic milieu with a strongly positivistic orientation.