Instrument of Government (1772)

Sweden's Constitution of 1772 (Swedish: regeringsform, "Instrument of Government") took effect through a bloodless coup d'état, the Revolution of 1772, carried out by King Gustav III, who had become king in 1771, establishing a brief absolute monarchy in Sweden. This was a response to perceived harm wrought upon Sweden by a half-century of parliamentarism during the country's Age of Liberty practiced according to the Instrument of Government (1719), as many members of the Swedish parliament then used to be bribed by foreign embassies.

The 1772 Constitution was partly inspired by the current Enlightenment ideas of separation of powers by Montesquieu, but also based on earlier traditions in Sweden, especially from the era of King Gustav II Adolf, and two of the offices of the ancient Great Officers of the Realm were revived. King Gustav III also cherished other Enlightenment ideas (as an enlighted despot) and repealed torture, liberated agricultural trade, diminished the use of death penalty etc. The somewhat later Freedom of the Press Act of 1774, a part of the constitutional law and largely edited by Gustav III, was actually commended by Voltaire. The earlier first Freedom of the Press Act of 1766 was repealed by the Constitution in 1772.

The outcome of the constitution and its deliberately vague formulations, partly attributable to it being written in haste, was however a more or less authoritarian political system more weighted in favour of the King's power. In 1789 it was amended in a still more direction by the Union and Security Act.

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