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which a more effective international security system may eventually emerge. The Nordic Council provides the mechanism through which Denmark may coordinate its activities with its northern neighbors.
The centrally controlled police system is fully adequate to the needs of the small country and enjoys respect and confidence of the generally well-ordered and law-abiding population. A special section of the police, the State Police Intelligence Service, maintains internal security. Careful not to infringe on the liberties of the sensitive Danes, it keeps close watch on the very few potential subversives.
B. Structure and functioning of the government (U/OU)
1. Roots of the system
The Union of the Danish Viking tribes into the semblance of a nation state may be traced to the 10th century - the reign of the elected King Gorm the Old. As national unity as consolidated in the succeeding reigns, the kingship became hereditary. It simultaneously evolved in irregular fashion from a limited monarchy, to an absolute monarchy that endured anachronistically until the mid-19th century, to the constitutional monarchy of the present era. The continued acceptance of at least nominal hereditary princely rule stems in important measure from the ability of the monarchy to conform with the aspirations of the rapidly evolving society.
From the 15th to the 17th centuries Danish Kings were subjected to much the same pressures as Monarchs elsewhere in Europe. Efforts of the nobles to establish feudalism as it existed in Europe to the south were resisted and finally crushed by King Frederick III in 1660, after mismanagement and the military defeat had brought the country to the brink of collapse. The Royal Act of 1665, declaring the monarchy absolute, endured for nearly 185 years. Supreme political power now rested with the King, who reestablished most of the old Norse privileges and brought the peasants and burghers under royal protection. During this period the Kings were generally energetic and fair-minded rulers, and justice, on the whole, as dispersed equally through the courts.
Because Denmark was somewhat out of the mainstream of European political development, influences of the 18th century Enlightenment and French Revolution felt in Copenhagen were largely confined to the social and cultural. As long as an adequate and growing measure of social justice was assured, by standards then prevailing, many thoughtful Danes as late as the Napoleonic era still believed in benevolent despotism. By the mid-19th century, however, Denmark became caught up in the general European quest for democratic political reform. In 1848 King Frederick VII sensed a groundswell of opinion against the absolutist system and on the request of a delegation of leading citizens quickly granted his people the right to have a constitution. The document was promulgated in June 1849, and the modern era in Danish political life began. Since then Denmark has been ruled by a governmental assembly, originally consisting of two chambers known as the Folketing (lower house) and Landsting (upper house). The King's position was defined constitutionally, and most Danish men were granted the right to vote.
Although the forms of Danish democracy had been established, the reality was slow to come. The last three decades of the 19th century were given over to a struggle for supremacy between the parliament and the King. The Agrarian Left (Venstre), the larger political grouping in the Folketing and the forerunner of the Moderate Liberal Party, opposed the practice of personal royal selection of the Cabinet, which normally meant that government ministers were members of the minority right. Finally, in 1901 the King was obliged to concede, and in that year he established a Venstre Cabinet, the first having the confidence of a majority of the lower house. A factor in that result had been the introduction of the secret ballot, also in 1901. A new Constitution in 1915 further liberalized the system by granting the ballot in Folketing elections to all persons over 25 years of age, including women and servants. Thus, parliamentary democracy developed in Denmark much as in the other Scandinavian countries - through essentially peaceful evolution.
2. Constitution
Since 1849 Denmark has had seven Constitutions. Five fell within the period 1849-1866, and the major number of these served principally to adjust the stormy relations between Denmark proper, and its Crown Lands, the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. The Constitution of 5 June 1953, which is still in effect, borrows liberally from the Constitution of 1915, which provided Denmark with a centralized liberal democratic government under a constitutional Monarch.
The 1953 Constitution, stemming from pre-World War II demands for further democratization and intensive postwar study of those demands, brought
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