Hägerström had a passion for politics, international relations, political history and the history of political ideas throughout his life. He also lived in a world of great changes: Born in a rural and static society, in one of Europe"s oldest kingdoms, he died in a mass society where the industrial revolution had made possible such extremes as the belle époque and the world war. Besides, in his life time, parliamentary rule and constitutional democracy were solidly put in place in Sweden, the country that the twentieth century was to remember as the cradle of its welfare model.