Cross-Cultural Blog: The Swedish king - Not a threat to democracy

Hi.
We chose to write about the swedish king since it has came to our attention, during other maratech meetings, that some americans had they idea that sweden was a lead by a king that accted as a dictator. This is however not the case at all. in fact - the swedish king has no power what so ever and are not even allowed express his politcall views, due to the risk that his opinon may influence some swedish people.

Instead the actual power are possesed by politicians elected by the people in public elections every fourth year. In Sweden we offen have very high participation in our elcetions, the usual sats is that about 90% of the people vote. The swedish constitution is strongly influated by Montesques theories, about dividing the power into 3, one that makes laws (the parliament), one that executes the laws (the goverment) and one that looks to the laws beeing followed (the courts and the police force).

The primary function of the swedish king is instead to represent the country in different situations.
It is debated in Sweden if we want to remain a monarchy and keep the king and recent studies say that about 60% of the swedish people want to keep the king.

We hope to have a nice discussion with our american friends about this topic. Forgive eventuall wrong spellings or bad english in general. ;) /Grettings from Linus and Sebastian, Group B

Picture of the Swedish king Carl XVI Gustaf
http://denriktigasportbloggen.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/kungen.jpg

Posted by Rhetoric Class, Orebro University on November 30, 2009 08:32 AM | Permalink