Suchergebnisse

ABSTRACTAdvanced secularization in the Scandinavian countries has not resulted in the elimination of "the religious factor" from political life, rather has it led to a resurgence with the recent establishment in Sweden, Denmark and Finland of native counterparts to Norway's Christian People's Party. The article first examines the development of the characteristic religious cleavage structures of Scandinavia, from the imposed uniformity of the state churches in the early nineteenth century to the relatively open and competitive religious cultures of the twentieth century. The interrelationship between religious cleavages and political alignments is then examined and an attempt made to explain the failure of stable religious parties to emerge in the formative period of the party systems. Finally, the circumstances surrounding the later emergence of the religious parties are described and it is argued that these parties collectively constitute a new species of the genus Christian Democracy, different in kind from Fogarty's Continental and Anglo‐Saxon species.