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Rune Slagstad. De nasjonale strateger. Oslo: Pax Forlag A/S, 1998. Pp. 561. In De nasjonale strateger [The National Strategists], Rune Slagstad identifies Frederik Stang (1808-84), academician and civil servant, and Einar Gerhardsen (1897-1987), Labor Party activist and prime minister, as the two major political figures in Norwegian history since 1814. Both Stang and Gerhardsen headed their own powerful reform regimes-the Civil Servant State and the Labor Party State-each bearing their name: "the Stangean System" and "the Gerhardsen Epoch." These two political leaders show in their respective ideologies and reform agendas both the continuities and the divisions that attended the modernization of Norwegian society.
Slagstad, professor of sociology at the Institute for Social Research in Oslo, presents a well informed, innovative, and refreshing analysis of Norwegian history from around 1800 until the present time. Periodization follows dominant governmental ideologies: the Civil Servant State and its professor politicians, 1814--84, the Liberal (Venstre) Party State and its folk educators, 1884-1940, the Labor Party State and its reform technocrats, 1945-1970s, and...