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monarchs. Oxenstierna stated as much in a letter of 5 December 1632, in which he described one purpose of the new document as being to ensure that “a wise king could be properly understood, and a foolish king not immediately deposed”, i.e. that it would enable royal officials to prevent a wayward monarch from taking unwise actions that might provoke
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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
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Queen
Christina was incapable of taking an active role in government at the time the Instrument was written. However, it was intended from the beginning that the Instrument would apply not just during Christina’s minority but also after she came of age, and indeed during the reigns of subsequent
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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
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to argue that the current arrangement was inadequate. He therefore proposed to the 1660 session of the
Riksdag that the Instrument be rewritten to give him greater freedom of action, but his efforts came to naught due to his sudden death in February of that year.
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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
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fashion. His arbitrary interference in the business of government and his refusal to take advice from his officials led to mounting frustration with the absolutist system, and after the king's death in 1718 it was overthrown and replaced by a
134:), but rather to describe its existing structures and norms, and to clarify the division of responsibilities among different royal officials, in order to ensure that the regency government functioned smoothly in his absence.
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to direct military operations rather than returning to Sweden. Indeed, he did not come back to Sweden until 1636, and it was during this period of absence that he composed the
Instrument of Government.
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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
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in July 1634 and subsequently applied across Sweden, although technically it did not have legal force as it was never formally confirmed by either Queen
Christina or her successor
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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
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The
Instrument of Government was the first attempt to systematically describe and regulate the structures of Swedish government and administration, as well as the
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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
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in its description of the operation of the Swedish government, and indeed reassigned many functions which were usually discharged by the king to the
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330:. The document drawn up to articulate the new system was inspired by the 1634 Instrument of Government, and was given the same title (see
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alternative to the autocratic royal state, an oligarchic bureaucratic state, where power rests with the Great Officers of the Realm.
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Ericson Wolke, Lars; Larsson, Villstrand (2006). Historiska Media (ed.).
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instead. As Sven Nilsson says in his biography of Oxenstierna:
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used the poor Swedish performance in another conflict, the
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to repudiate the Instrument of Government and accept an
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and architect of the 1634 Instrument of Government.
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601:7282103
583:Karl XI
575:Sources
257:Riksdag
183:Swedish
40:Swedish
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238:revolt
152:ad hoc
104:regent
78:After
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920:Malta
890:Italy
409:ne.se
364:Notes
112:Mainz
692:1809
680:1772
675:1720
670:1719
665:1634
587:ISBN
462:ISBN
417:2009
304:void
170:(as
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128:1772
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