Even though the question of how to improve the quality of government and reduce the level of corruption has been high on the research agenda for nearly two decades, few if any revolutionary breakthroughs in terms of policy recommendations, have so far been presented. By turning to history, i.e. to study the development from traditional bureaucracies, in which different forms of corrupt practices were prevalent, to modern Weberian public administrations in countries which today are considered relatively uncorrupt, allows us to expand the number of cases and may potentially provide us with important insights on how similar problems in the world today can be solved. The countries that today are considered the least corrupt in the world were all to different extent regarded as highly corrupt only two centuries ago and they made the transition to their current situation primarily during the 19th century, even though the legal and institutional foundations are of an earlier origin. It is however commonly agreed that the bulk of the most important pieces of legislation - and above all their effective implementation - were adopted during the course of the 1800s. These examples, however few, show that bad QoG equilibriums can be broken and changed for the better. The question then is to determine what actually enabled these countries to turn the tables and set out on an opposite path, leading to increasingly positive outcomes, looking at Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands as well as comparatively.