This article examines why the late-industrializing Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden over the long nineteenth century developed civil societies and political parties with an ability to compromise. Based on comparisons with contemporary Prussia and within-case evidence, it traces the explanation to Scandinavia’s impartial state administrations, forged before the French Revolution and the era of modern mass politics and democracy. This emphasizes the importance of a penetrative bureaucracy in forging auspicious state-society relations and downplays the separate impact of peaceful agrarian reforms for Scandinavia’s stable democratization.
