Centuries ago, Denmark ruled from Greenland to Russia and northern Germany, including the later countries of Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Iceland. It was the major European power. Then it lost wars and territory, first relinquishing Sweden (and Finland) in the sixteenth century, and, having been on the wrong side in the Napoleonic wars, forfeiting Norway to Sweden in 1814. Finally, Prussia took the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein in 1864, and Denmark became the small, compact country that we know today.
Along the way, the Danes became a singular nation with impressive social cohesion, high levels of reciprocal trust, and miniscule amounts of corruption. But it supported an absolute, if benevolent, monarchy from 1660 to 1849. Several of its most important nineteenth-century political thinkers assert, however, that because Danish kings ruled for, and on behalf of, their people (rather than by divine right), that they listened to the voices of...