Albion's Seedlings

Danish "Democracy" and Anglosphere Liberty

Verity stated in the preceding post that "Denmark has survived as a democracy for over a thousand years". Helen Szamuely challenged this statement, and Verity responded that she did not mean this term in a formal sense, but noted that "the Scandinavians have governed by concensus for at least a thousand years".

This terminological jousting actually points us to an important Anglospheric point.

A little googling around shows me that the Danes managed to retain a lot of medieval constitutionalism until fairly late in the day, but that they went through a period of royal absolutism. Nonetheless, fairly early, they managed to reassert constitutional, law-bound government, which they have retained to this day.

The problem we have is the use of "democracy" as a short-hand for constitutional government, the rule of law, etc. Democracy does not really capture what was going on prior to the 18th century at the earliest. The better term to describe the kind of phenomena that existed in earlier periods of history which led to orderly, lawful, relatively free governments is "medieval constitutionalism".

As Lord Acton tersely and accurately put it "Liberty is medieval, despotism -- modern". Most people don't realize this fact. Getting their heads around it is a challenge. To most educated people the thousand years from the fall of Rome to the Renaissance and Reformation are one long dark age. But that is seriously mistaken and leads to all kinds of problems in understanding what really happened and how it happened.

OK, ten syllables, maybe even eleven, but a small price to pay for superior exactitude in our terms, yes?

Denmark, a Germanic country, like England, and it inherited the ancient Germanic notions and practices of liberty and representation. Denmark also benefitted from being located away from the center of European political competition. Therefore, it retained its inherited free institutions later than some of its neighbors. And Denmark restored a successor regime of free institutions earlier than some of its neighbors. A culture which was historically suited for this kind of regime was apparently not entirely crushed o-t during the absolutist period.

I do not profess to be an expert on Danish history, or even knowledgeable. But we can see that early England and early Denmark had similar cultures and institutions, and the Danes of course ruled a sizable chunk of England for a long time. But, Denmark, with a landward frontier, was unable to resist the encroachments of its neighbors, and was unable to retain its medieval constitutionalism, as England did.

Denmark, like Holland, is a case of what might-have-been if England had not been an island with a navy.

Posted by Lexington Green at October 27, 2005 11:08 AM