What I am afraid of in Sweden is a "democratic" collapse. We have more authorities (About 300) running then we have skilled politicians that can control and instruct them. We have during most of the 1900:s and even now have had a more or less socialistic government with an almost as socialistic oposition. This has been changing, both has gradually been getting less socialistic.  My country has a kind of consesus culture. :-( This has made people used to getting promises that the political sector will allways provide, this can not continue due to fiscal reasons, its impossible to raise taxes as much as would be needed. How will people react when they dont get what they have been promised? There are efforts to correct this, our pension system was redone a few years ago into one that is viable wich means that payments will be lowered automatically withouth any new decisions if the economical growth stops or the economy shrinks or when the baby boomers retire...

How will people react to these bad news? We have had new parties forming with sadly simple "give us or vote and all will be well as it used to be" promises and the worst of them had "evacuate the immigrants" on the agenda. So far they have attracted nutcases and failed, at worst after being a minority party for one election. But there is a risk that people will ask for a strong leader with stupid ideas.

What made us fairly prosperous even when we had a lot of socialism was a strong private sector that was more or less left alone untill 1970 with the major exeption being laws written in ways that was better for large corporations and worse for small. We had enough luck to survive the second world war unharmed and there were only two countries in europe where the marshall aid money could be spent Switzerland and Sweden. We also had and have plenty of forests, hydropower and minerals. The authorites had a major purge of the corruption in mid 1800:s and were since long run in a professional way to be independet of the kings power, some kings are worthless. Our major socialist party were actually competently run, they and the liberals had a strong emphasis on education, started local libraries and the leaders they elected understood common work and economy and were fairly unselfish. The second generation were not as good and the emphasis on education started to faulter. The third generation is from my point of view going realy bad, they have started to corrup the authorities by appointing relatives and trusty party  members as all kinds of officials. The system to resist a bad king worked fairly well during most of the 1900:s.

In the opposition party I am am member of there is a debate on how to do something about this when get into power. Can the old system be restored or will it change into a more american system where each new government change all the top officials? We need to change a lot of people out to make the country possible to govern in a new direction but how unseflish can we be with the new appointments? My guess is that we will try to restore the old "proffesional accountant" system.

I realy, realy hope there will be a change of power during the next election. Sweden could be so much better run and also developed from being a fairly peak oil resistant contry to a country benefiting from peak oil. Our current socialists needs to be humbled and find ther roots and educate their members instead of talking big and dumb people down. We will need their opposition to stay alert for a number of elections. ;-)

One part of our democracy that might aid during hard times is the fairly independant municipal governments wich has a a part of the income tax as their major income. We have cities/municipials that are exelently run and others that are quite badly run. Strange political coalitions, bickering, experimentation and a fair number of politicians that know their neighbours and are in touch with the state government. The current socialists have nearly wing clipped that part of our democracy by laws directing and centrally planning a lot of what they do. But it is still a working tradition that can be restored.  Our large number of district heating systems is due to our climate and the municipals tradition of building waterworks and sanitiation etc. Much of the building of new railways and new rail traffic is due to municipials trying to extend the commute radius to compete better with other regions.

There is a general feeling that we need to build infrastructure now before the baby boomers start to retire, the municipials at the bottom of the list wont get their railways untill the money dries up. I think peak oil will add to the haste and intensifie the competition.

I do not know how this compares to USA since I know far to little about that continent sized country. You seem to have more of the same kind of runaway autority size and number problem. Some people complain about the same kind of nomenclature forming within ruling parties. I think you have  a vibrant democracy for local elections of authorities, correct?

Sometimes I wonder if Sweden could be run so well that we get Americans to migrate over here. Our shool voucher system is probably the best example of a change from socialistic to a free and market based system. 7% ( between 0 and 25%)  of the pupils go to non municipial schools but we still have a problem with poor education results, our municipial run schools and government needs to learn lessons from Finland.

There are ideas about dismantling other parts of the big government systems in ways that open up for free enterprise, innovation and other ways of living. But introducing variations is like pulling teeth, people resist it and want things to be as they allways were even if it hurt all day untill they notice that it realy works better after the big change. It has been done with the state teleco company and that worked out well but the deregulation of the electricity production was a PR disaster even if it works fairly well if you analyze it. Our greens rased energy taxes and energy prices are getting higher and people blame it on the deregulation. Could have been worse, at least we did not do it California style. :-)

What kind of government and democratic traditions will work best during a peak oil resource crisis?