Instrument of Government (1634)
The Instrument of Government (
Background
After
Oxenstierna's primary purpose in drawing up the 1634 Instrument was not to effect a major change in Sweden's
Description
The Instrument of Government was the first attempt to systematically describe and regulate the structures of Swedish government and administration, as well as the judiciary and the armed forces. It also instituted a number of reforms, such as decreeing that the number of members of the Council of the Realm, hitherto an ad hoc gathering of the king's advisors, was to be fixed at twenty-five (Article #5). It furthermore established that the Council was to be headed by the five Great Officers of the Realm; one of these was Oxenstierna himself (as Lord High Chancellor), while two others were kinsmen of his, namely his brother Gabriel Gustafsson Oxenstierna (as Lord High Steward) and their cousin Gabriel Bengtsson Oxenstierna (as Lord High Treasurer).[2]
One of the Instrument's most important reforms, and certainly the one that has had the most pervasive effect upon Swedish life since 1634, was the introduction of a system of counties (Swedish: län) to replace the traditional provinces (Article #23). The counties have been rejigged several times in the centuries since, but remain the primary units of local government in Sweden to this day.[6]
The Instrument largely ignored the role of the Crown in its description of the operation of the Swedish government, and indeed reassigned many functions which were usually discharged by the king to the Great Officers of the Realm instead. As Sven Nilsson says in his biography of Oxenstierna:
All this management is top-down. Not by the king, who in a peculiar way stands outside the hierarchy, but by the officials…In the system instituted by this Instrument of Government, there is no place for the personal rule that characterises Gustav Adolf's time. On the contrary, it creates an alternative to the autocratic royal state, an oligarchic bureaucratic state, where power rests with the Great Officers of the Realm.
— Sven A. Nilsson, Axel Oxenstierna,Svenskt Biografiskt Lexikon volume 28 (1994), p.504[7]
Obviously, this reflects in part the fact that the
Reception
The Instrument of Government was endorsed by the
The Instrument thus remained in force de facto down to 1680, when Charles Gustav’s son Charles XI used the poor Swedish performance in another conflict, the Scanian War (1675-9), to revive his father’s argument that the only way to ensure the security of the Swedish Empire was by centralising power in the person of the monarch. The Riksdag was convinced, declaring on 1680 that the king "was not to be bound by any instrument of government, only by the laws of Sweden", thereby rendering the Instrument of Government void and establishing an absolute monarchy in Sweden for the first time.[4][9]
Despite the introduction of absolutism, Charles XI continued to implicitly accept many of the limits on royal power laid out in the Instrument of Government. His son and successor
See also
Notes
- ^ Nordisk Familjebok(1915), p.1207 (in Swedish)
- ^ a b "Axel Oxenstierna". ne.se (in Swedish). Nationalencyklopedien. Retrieved 4 July 2009.
- ^ http://sv.wikisource.org/wiki/Regeringsform_1634 Regeringsform 1634
- ^ a b Åberg (1994), p. 111
- ISBN 91-85377-37-6.
- ^ http://sv.wikisource.org/wiki/Regeringsform_1634 Regeringsform 1634. See Article #23 for the county system.
- ^ "Axel Oxenstierna". Svenskt Biografiskt Lexikon. Retrieved 2022-04-05. All denna förvaltning är toppstyrd. Inte av kungen, som på något egendomligt sätt står utanför, utan av de höga ämbetsmännen…I detta regeringsformens system finns ingen plats för det personliga regemente som utmärker Gustav Adolfs tid. Den skapar tvärtom ett alternativ till den kungastyrda staten, en oligarkisk ämbetsmannastat, där de höga ämbetsmännen har makten.
- ^ "Axel Oxenstierna". Svenskt Biografiskt Lexikon. Retrieved 2022-04-05. en klok konung kunde väl förestås, och en fåvitsk konung icke strax kastat omkull.
- ^ Nordisk Familjebok(1915), p.1208 (in Swedish)
Sources
- Åberg, Alf (1994). Karl XI (in Swedish) (New ed.). Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand. SELIBR 7282103.
External links
- Text of the 1634 Instrument of Government (in Swedish)