Yes, Fred my intention was to write about how Nordics ended up "so democratic." The narrative I am trying to create here is about broad literacy in the population made that happen. My argument is basically that how democratic you are today as a country is in large part an outcome of how early you became demomcratic and how strong democratizing forces you have in the country.

My premise is that there is never a done deal in democracy. It is a system which must be evolved over time through constant work. A society which create the condititions for which that evolution can happen will end up more democratic. That is basically my thesis.

My perspective is that Nordic democracy got to the well developed state it is today because of a population actively engaged in advancing that democracy. They did this because they were literate and well educated.

Now there are lots of other aspects to to this. Nordic countries were already more egalitarian and had flatter power structures when this process began. That is why one of my other articles focuses on geography and climate. At least for Norway that had major impact on wealth distribution.

I do see a clear divergence from Nordics and other European nations pretty early on. When Norway got its constitution it was one of the most liberal constitutions in Europe. 40% of males above 25 got to vote vs something like 3% of males in Britain. At the time Napolean was still in charge of France my impression is that he was basically a dictator. Germany and Italy certainly had no democracy. Neither did Spain or Portugal.

The single house parliamentary system you emphasize came quite late. 1953 in Denmark, 1971 in Sweden and 2009 in Norway. I honestly don't think either country was profoundly more democratic before that change.

I agree that US voters are not in a good situation. But my point is that we had many of the same issues. We had to evolve into the current system through many steps. Ironically we transitioned to propotional voting in 1921 because liberals and conservatives feared socialists would take all the power if they didn't.

I am working on revising the story. I am throwing out some tangents. The title is still a bit of a challenge for me. I want to communicate that this story is about the role literacy/literary culture played in creating Nordic democracies.

Complaining is good as you are giving me constructive criticism. It would have been worse if you just went "this sucks and you are an idiot." I will not necessarily heed all your advice, but at least I am given the chance to do so. It is like my book editor, I don't always agree with her feedback, but it is much better to get a bit too much than get too little.

Again appriciate your feedback Fred, you help me be a better writer.

PS: I keep reflecting on what you are trying to tell me: Where you looking for something that went more into the details how the parliamentary system developed? Like how voting rules changed, how workers got the vote, how women got the vote. There is actually a pretty big story about how the democratic institutions gradually assumed power over the powerful bureacracy left-over from absolute monarchy. Early on the state bureacracy and its officials held a lot of the power. It was kind of an incestuous relation as the state officials before the parliamentary system got introduced supplied all the ministers in the government. They kind of had both ends of the system parliament assembled to seldom to really keep them in check.

In many ways this is still a feature of Nordic democracies. The bureacracies tend to be quite powerful. In Sweden e.g. you could see how the bureacrats largely ran the show on COIVD19 fighting. In Denmark and Norway the bureacracy is not quite as powerful.