Espen Moe,Governance, Growth and Global Leadership: The Role of the State in Technological Progress, 1750–2000

Abstract

The concept of the ‘dissolution of estate society’ (standssamfunnets opplesning) has not been much used in Norwegian historical research. The great process of social change which took place in the 19th century, the main features of which have their counterparts in the social development of the other Scandinavian countries, has been discussed within other conceptual contexts. Norwegian historians have often stressed the contrast between an urban society and an agricultural society based on self-sufficiency, or between the people and their administrators. In economic history the changes which came with industrialization, and the shift from an agricultural economy based on self-sufficiency to an agricultural economy based on buying and selling, have been the subject of much research. In social and political history the subjects which have aroused the greatest interest have been the struggles of the farmers as well against the bureaucracy as against the commercial capitalism of the towns, and the role of the farmers in the movement towards political democracy.