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The constitution of Sweden is going to be changed, and the change may spell problems for nationalists and conservatives, despite the nationalist Sweden Democrats being part of the country’s ruling coalition.
That the fundamental documents of the Swedish state and its democracy are about to be altered is something that perhaps should kick-start the debate about the way the country is ruled – and how some stipulations in the constitution may have contributed to many of Sweden’s political and social problems. The public awareness of the amendment is however low, and the media attention has so far been lacklustre.
In and of itself, alterations to the constitution are not unusual in Sweden, and adjustments are practically always done at the start of new terms. The Swedish constitution requires a majority of the parliament to approve the changes twice, once before and once after a general election. This makes the changing process relatively smooth, since it can in theory be done by any one government that wins two elections in a row. Parties that have twice earned the majority of the voters’ confidence have earned the right to leave their mark on the country’s constitution, it can be argued. This means that the amendments proposed during the current term will be confirmed after the 2026 election, at earliest in 2027.
The constitution about to be cemented
So what are the changes this time? The most important one is that a constitutional amendment, requiring two rounds of votes in parliament with one general election in-between, will require a supermajority of two thirds in the second round. Practically this means that a government that attempts to push through a constitutional amendment will need to seek support for the changes from the opposition. Formally, the purpose of this is to safeguard the integrity of the constitution and some of its newer amendments, including one that supposedly grants more independence to the judiciary. Vague notions of the “uncertainty” of the times we live in as well as populism were evoked by the government as justification for this, when the justice minister presented the proposition a few weeks ago.
The Sweden Democrats, though supporting the government in other areas, are critical of the raised threshold. It will practically lock parties like themselves out of the power to push for necessary change through government, and instead leave the fate of the constitution in the hands of mainstream bipartisans – the same people who for the past few decades have destabilised Sweden with mass migration and other destructive policies.
One example that illustrates the problem with this “safeguard against populism” is the 2010 constitutional amendment, which was carried nearly unanimously through parliament, was it not for the opposition of the Sweden Democrats who had entered parliament with around six percent of the vote earlier that year. One of the additions in this amendment was the duty for the government to “promote the cultural development” of “ethnic, religious and language minority groups”, which has since been cited as one of the contributing causes of the spread of multiculturalism and mass migration to Sweden. It is unlikely that a proposal to repeal the clause will ever pass parliament with two thirds of the vote, as the constitution is about to require. This ‘multicultural’ amendment also shows that a unanimous parliament is not better at making decisions that stand the test of time, than a temporary majority supported by “populists” would be.
Necessary reforms may be blocked
The raised threshold for constitutional adjustments comes at a bad time, since Sweden is currently struggling with a revision of the past four or five decades of politics, where numerous ill-advised reforms were undertaken. The current constitution was adopted in 1974, replacing the previous Instrument of Government from 1809, and it was already from its inception coloured by the ideas of its time. Ideas that are now rapidly being rejected.
Sober perspectives on citizenship and criminality that were viewed as obsolete in the 1970s are now on the rise in Sweden, but left-wing roadblocks may impede or entirely prevent their influence on the constitution if the confirmation threshold is raised from simple majority to two-thirds majority. One crucial redress would be to grant the state the power to withdraw citizenships that have been bestowed on migrants who are guilty of severe crimes, or who partake in organised crime or terrorism. This is today impossible, all while citizenships have under decades of lax rules been handed out to migrants with unverified identities, foreign criminals, and security threats. It is imperative that Sweden can undo the damage to not only its society, but to the EU citizenry as well, by revoking illegitimately granted citizenships.
Such a reform is unlikely to ever get the support of any of the socialists, the greens, and other progressive elements of parliament. It is only through the Sweden Democrats, who can negotiate with the centre-right government, that such an important proposal can ever become reality, and it can only happen under the current rules of the constitution.
The same goes for the clause in the constitution that states that Sweden is beholden to the European Union, another naïve stipulation that was amended in 2010 under flying colours – opposed only by the Sweden Democrats. The party, which has softened its eurosceptic position in later years, has spoken about the need for a ‘Swexit’ mechanism to guard Sweden from unjustified infringements of sovereignty from the EU. Right now, if the EU membership is enshrined in the constitution, what can Sweden realistically put up against Brussels? Whether one is pro-EU membership or not, a clause clarifying the membership in the constitution can be viewed as redundant, and only serves as a legal obstacle to any future democratic will of secession.
The People versus the Elite
The first article of the Swedish constitution, the Instrument of Government, opens with the words “all public power in Sweden is derived from the people”. This embodies the political culture that has historically been predominant in Sweden, where peasants once formed a potent political block against the power of the nobles. This ‘populism’ is reflected in the flexibility of the constitution to this day, where the elected representatives of the people may alter the constitution of the country with relatively lax checks and balances.
This system has worked well so long as Sweden has been a homogeneous high-trust country with common respect for its own cultural traditions. With the advent of the new generation of idealist politics in the second half of the 20th century, the nearly unbridled power of parliament instead became a disadvantage. The trust the Swedish put in their elected representatives was abused to commit vandalism against the constitution, where all short-sighted political trends of the neoliberal era were quickly beatified. From a democratic point of view, it is only right that the damage be repaired the same way it was caused; by simple parliamentary majority.
The Swedish constitution has become unfit for purpose after years of mismanagement by the liberal elite, and any insinuation that it should be cemented in its current state by complicating the amendment process is a violation of the principle that the Instrument of Government opens with. “All public power in Sweden is derived from the people”