This article investigates the first generation of peasant farmers elected to modern representative assemblies in Denmark. I argue that the contributions of the first peasant farmer politicians are an important but overlooked part of the history of democratisation in Denmark. The peasant farmer members were uneducated and unable to speak in a way considered suitable for parliament. For that reason, they were deemed unfit for political participation by their contemporaries and have been similarly judged in most of the existing literature. The peasant farmer members were not as timidly passive as they have been described. Instead of speaking, they used petitions to gain a voice in parliament. The farmer members thus introduced petitioning as a form of political participation in parliamentary politics, a practice that remains central to popular politics today. The actions of the peasant farmer politicians challenged the existing boundaries of what was considered appropriate political practice and thereby expanded the repertoire of forms of political participation available to the uneducated majority of the population.

This article investigates how a Danish peasant movement, united in the association ‘Bondevennernes Selskab’, became a social movement and therefrom developed into an early version of a parliamentary party. Established in 1846, it was the revolutions of 1848 and following political development in Denmark that triggered the movement’s entrance to parliamentary politics. In this process, the association challenged the bourgeois liberal concept of politics, as the association argued that it would represent one particular class – the peasants – in parliament. The argument of the article is unfolded in an analysis of a conflict between the peasant association and the dominating bourgeois, liberal opinion. As the conflict took place in the daily press, the article investigates both the arguments, the peasant movement had to face in the liberal newspaper Fædrelandet and its replies in the paper Almuevennen. Thereby the article touches upon how the association legitimized its actions as a social, political movement.

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Denne antologi undersøger Grunnlovens paragraf 52d, som lød, at «stemmeret suspenderes […] d) ved at nyde eller i det sidste Aar før Valget have nydt Understøttelse af Fattigvaesenet.» Denne bestemmelse blev indført samtidig med almindelig stemmeret for maend i 1898 og eksisterede frem til 1919. Bestemmelsen var en blandt flere udelukkelser fra stemmeretten, som også gjaldt ved offentlig tiltale, ved umyndiggørelse og ved opbud og fallit.Bogen kan inddeles i tre dele. Første del består af en indledning skrevet af redaktørerne Marthe Hommerstad og Bjørn Arne Steine og tre kapitler, som placerer historien om stemmeretssuspensionen i en bredere kontekst af stemmeretsbegraensninger og udvidelser i 1800-tallets Norge, samt opfattelsen af og håndhaevelsen af bestemmelsen på det nationale politiske niveau. Bortset fra de indledende kapitler ligger antologiens hovedvaegt på perioden 1898-1919 og ikke fra 1814, som bogens titel antyder.Antologiens anden del består af fem kapitler, som omhandler stemmeretssuspensionen i regionalt perspektiv med undersøgelser af suspensionen i Nordnorge, Trøndelag, på Vestlandet, Sørlandet og i Kristiania. Antologiens sidste del består af to kapitler, som behandler begraensninger af stemmeretten for fattige i Sverige og Danmark. Antologien afrundes med en kort afslutning af de to redaktører.Indledningen forklarer ordlyden i suspensionsbestemmelsen og diskuterer denne i forhold til andre suspensioner samt andre bestemmelser om hvem, der skulle miste stemmeretten for altid. Redaktørerne fremhaever den vigtige pointe, at synet på stemmeretten i perioden 1898-1919 aendredes fra en idé om stemmeret baseret på egnethed til en idé om stemmeret som en menneskeret. Indledningen placerer endvidere suspensionsbestemmelsen i en kontekst af stemmerettens udvikling fra Eidsvoll 1814 og frem mod den almindelige stemmeret for maend i 1898, for kvinder i 1913 og afskaffelsen af suspensionsbestemmelsen i 1919. Det naevnes ikke eksplicit, men denne gennemgang illustrerer, hvordan stemmerettens historie også er en historie om, hvordan forskellige samfundsgrupper har kaempet for at blive inkluderet i det politiske faellesskab. Redaktørerne pointerer, at udviklingen af stemmeretten

Democracy became a popular and highly contested concept in the Danish-speaking parts of the Danish monarchy in 1848. For a brief time, it went from being an occasional guest in political language to a popular concept in the constitutional struggle of 1848–1849. This article argues democracy became attached to an equally popular concept of the time, movement, when introduced into everyday political communication in Denmark. In this context, democracy became a name for the movement observed in Europe and in the Danish monarchy. The article identifies three main interpretations of democracy that occurred in the Danish constitutional struggle of 1848–1849 and argues the battle over the constitution was essentially a battle over how one interpreted the past, the present, and the future. Democracy became a key term in this battle in 1848 Denmark.