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The evolving relationship between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and its three Scandinavian member-states and two nonmember Nordic countries, Sweden and Finland, has amply demonstrated the quip by Danish sage Robert Storm Petersen that “nothing is harder to predict than the future.” While the European and North American security policy galaxy gives birth to new or reinvigorates older entities—the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC), the Partnership for Peace (PFP), the Western European Union (WEU), and the European Union (EU)—it is not readily clear what membership in such organizations means. As recently as 1988, NATO remained a contentious issue in Denmark and Iceland, and more discreetly so in Norway. Swedish and Finnish membership in the alliance would have been unthinkable. The pattern of Scandinavian security policies seemed set, and the debates remained surprisingly spirited despite their numbing repetitiousness. New issues had certainly arisen during the 1980s: NATO Intermediate Nuclear Forces, pre-positioning of military stocks in Denmark and Norway, and the restrictions on nuclear weapons on NATO ships. And there were numerous encores of earlier themes: the role of the Keflavik air base, the ability of Sweden to provide for its own security, and Finland’s mystical obligations to the Soviet Union under the latest versions of the Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance (FCMA).

The combination of a tradition of arbitrary royal government and popular intolerance, with the existence of extensive, unitary and highly centralized institutions of government, and with the dominance of government by a single, reformist party for more than a half century would seem a potent recipe for governmental abuse of individual and minority group rights. That is especially true in the absence of the formal constitutional safeguards used to preserve rights elsewhere Yet the Nordic democracies have in fact proved exemplary in protecting civil liberties Why? This article challenges the view that Nordic political societies are consensual historically or by nature, and it describes the limited traditional institutional checks on abuse of individual and minority rights by government Instead it finds the basis for the Nordic democracies' excellent record in civil liberties in the combination of (1) the development of new, non-traditional institutional checks on government. (2) the use of direct democracy as a check on parliamentary majorities. (3) the pervasive use of corporatist channels encompassing the major oppositional interest groups to draft and implement legislation, and (4) the effective constraints placed on decisions by parliamentary majorities by the pattern of fierce partisanship in the finely balanced parliamentary party constellation These protections for individual and minority liberties arise primarily from the assumption that basic conflicts of interest are a fact of political life and that they should be institutionalized.

Given the continuing importance of democracy as an analytic concept. this article seeks to compare Scandinavian practice with accepted general definitions and theories. Definitions that recognize contemporary political democracy as consensual and procedural seem most appropriate to the Scandinavian cases. Although remaining dynamic. political democracy has not been a contested principle for more than 50 years. Efforts since 1945 to extend democracy to social and economic spheres have been more controversial, however. Welfare state measures enjoy broad support, not least for functional reasons. For many, however, such policies seek a broader social democracy instead of merely a humane ‘safety net’. Economic democracy remains the most contested dimension. Seeking to transcend corporatism and rational collective bargaining, economic democracy seeks simultaneously to promote greater economic equality and participation while maintaining an efficient productive system. The dynamic and expanded democratic model has engendered much domestic debate about means and ends. This has been, on balance, a source of reinvigoration.