Sweden

Official name of country: Kingdom of Sweden
Capital: Stockholm
Official language: Swedish
Population: 9 422 661 (per 2011)
Size: 449 964 square kilometers
Currency: SEK (Swedish kronor)
Form of government: Constitutional Monarchy
Head of government: Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt
Head of state: His Majesty King Carl XVI Gustav
Public holidays in 2009: January 1st (New Year’s Day), January 6th (Epiphany), April 22nd (Good Friday), April 25th (Easter Monday), May 1st (Labour Day), June 2nd (Ascension), June 12th (Whit Sunday), June 6th (National Day), June 24th (Midsummer’s Day), November 5th (All Saints’ Day), December 24th (Christmas Eve), December 25th (Christmas Day), December 26th (Boxing Day), December 31st (New Year’s Eve).

Government
Sweden is a constitutional monarchy with His Majesty King Carl Gustaf as Head of State. The position as head of state is hereditary, and the successor may be both male and female. The monarch has limited powers, but is consulted in affairs of state. In 1975, the new constitution stripped the monarch of his symbolic and formal duties in relation to government formation and resignation, a role that the Norwegian and Danish monarchs still possess. The political duties usually assigned to the monarch are now taken care of by the speaker of the parliament, Talmannen.

The Swedish parliament is called Riksdagen. The Swedish democracy is a unicameral parliamentary system. It is also a consensual democracy, and since the 1970s multi-party majority or minority coalitions have become increasingly common. The prime minister selects his own colleagues and is free to decide how many ministerial posts should be included in the cabinet. The Swedish parliament controls the government’s work and passes laws and fiscal budgets on the basis of committee work. All the members of Riksdagen are automatically assigned a place in a committee, and the committees’ compositions reflect the parties’ parliamentary strength, so that most parties get at least one seat in each committee, provided they earned enough mandates in the last election.