The singularities of the Swedish monarchy in the European framework: The King as a static symbol of the State

Abstract

Abstract:
Within the framework of the European parliamentary monarchies, the constitutional design of the contemporary Swedish monarchy has some singularities worthy of attention. The paper starts from a panoramic overview of the Swedish monarchy in the Instrument of Government of 1975 that dissociates the Head of State from the state powers thus setting up a characteristic model
of rationalization of the parliamentary monarchy in the written constitutional text and analyzes the significant lack of powers that individualizes the position of the Swedish Head of State compared with the rest of the European sovereigns.
To continue, the evolution of the institution in Sweden from the previous Instrument of Government of 1809, that established a constitutional monarchy based on the principle of separation of powers, is considered. Parliamentarism was progressively introduced from 1918 without formally amending the constitutional text, giving new sense to the constitutional dispositions by means of interpretation. It was in 1969 that, through a partial reform of the Constitution, the parliamentary system was formally incorporated when Parliament was granted the possibility of bringing a vote of no confidence.
Then, it goes on with the discussion about the King’s powers in the travaux préparatoires of the new Constitution of 1975 that culminated with the so-called Compromise in Turekov in 1971 in which the Swedish political parties finally agreed on a constitutional design restricting the King’s powers, paying attention to the circumstances and reasons that explain why the Swedish monarch lost the formal powers that had coexisted since 1918 with the functioning of the parliamentary system, emphasizing the motivations of the parties represented in the Commission that drafted the new Instrument of Government.

The paper concludes by referring to the striking exclusion of the Swedish Head of State from the Cabinet formation process in the Government Instrument of 1975 and the unusual variant of negative parliamentarism adopted in which the vote of the Prime Minister previous to his appointment is not really a vote of confidence but of «no no-confidence». With the constitutional reform of 2011, the novelty introduced was that, following the elections, the Prime Minister must undergo a mandatory vote of confidence, although the principle of negative parliamentarism is maintained essentially as long as he can continue in office if more than half of the members of Parliament do not vote against him, irrespective of the favorable votes he receives.