Norway was overwhelmingly rural in 1814: about 90 percent of the electorate lived in the countryside. Because many peasants owned land and could therefore vote, wealthy urban elites feared being overwhelmed by the peasant majority. As one Norwegian political scientist puts it, the elite viewed peasants as a “potential time bomb.” So the constitution established a fixed two-to-one ratio of rural to urban seats in parliament—a ratio that dramatically overrepresented cities, since rural residents actually outnumbered urban residents by ten to one. This was the so-called Peasant Clause.
