Are Party Activists the Party Extremists? The Structure of Opinion in Political Parties

In re-examining May's law of curvilinear disparity, this article analyzes the structure of opinion of political parties. May suggests that voters, party leaders and party activists have different incentives to participate in politics, and therefore voters and leaders have more moderate positions on issues than party activists. This article is based on the extensions of May's law made by Kitschelt, who argues that curvilinear disparities, although not general phenomena, are bound to occur in specific circumstances. We have focused on the level of cleavage conflict in the system, the variable that Kitschelt himself found to be critical for explaining party radicalism among sub-leaders. Using the Norwegian multiparty system as a test case, we propose that radicalism among party activists is conditioned by the relative saliency of different policy dimensions. The empirical analysis, which is based on surveys of MPs, party members and voters in connection with the general election of 1993, gives very little support to our proposition.     

Local Political Recruitment in Crisis? A Comparison of Finland and Norway

Beginning with the assumed problem of high turnover among local councilors in Norway, the article compares local political recruitment processes in Finland and Norway. Turnover in Norwegian local councils has proven surprisingly stable at 60–65 percent for a series of elections, whereas it has been significantly lower at 35–45 percent in the other Nordic countries, including Finland. Turnover among Norwegian councilors is mainly due to voluntary retirement. According to theories of political recruitment and representation, lack of motivation among candidates poses a threat to the democratic quality of political systems, because it undermines the voters' ability to exercise democratic control over politicians. The authors argue that rotation in office need not constitute a democratic problem. On the contrary, empirical evidence is presented to show that participation in political council work may in itself have a politically activating effect on the participants. Very few candidacies can be described in terms of political ambition. Instead, motivation is often created and cultivated through participation. Furthermore, rotation in office may lead to the diffusion of political competence and may therefore constitute an alternative source of democratic control.     

Election Campaigns,Issue Focus and Voting Intentions: Survey Experiments of Norwegian Voters

This article investigates whether and how changes in issue focus in election campaigns affect voting intention, even if no preference change takes place, and whether such effects vary systematically across different groups of voters. Evidence is reported from two survey experiments of Norwegian voters, where respondents were treated with information drawing their attention towards issues pertaining either to immigration or the environment. Although irrelevant for policy learning or persuasion, this information strongly increased the support of particular parties. More specifically, parties with ‘ownership’ of the issues involved gained votes. Certain types of voters were more likely to change voting intentions post‐treatment than others, but which types crucially depended on the issue area under focus. Nevertheless, the results indicate that the issue focus of campaigns is very important for vote choice. Hence, one should expect that, for instance, even ‘neutral’ political news coverage at or close to election day could affect voters in predictable ways. Furthermore, one should expect different parties to fight hard to steer the focus of campaigns towards issues where they have ownership.     

Fiscal and Spending Behavior of Local Governments: Identification of Price Effects when Prices are not Observed

This paper analyzes local public fiscal andspending behavior in a setting where localgovernments, represented by the dominantparty or coalition, are treated as utilitymaximizing agents. The econometricanalysis, which is based on a modifiedversion of ELES, recognizes total spendingas well as total income as endogenousvariables. Identification of the priceeffects is achieved by utilizing data onenvironmental cost factors and localtastes. The performance of the estimatedmodel is investigated by testing itsability to make out-of-sample predictionsof local government behavior.     

Is Ethnic Diversity Bad for Any Dimension of Social Capital? Trust,Networks and Voluntarism in Norwegian Communities

Ethnic diversity has been posed as a threat to social capital, but results from existing research are inconclusive. This study takes as its starting point that different aspects of social capital may be influenced differently by ethnic diversity and uses one specific welfare state context – Norway – to explore such variations. Analysing an original dataset, nine different measures are used to explore three dimensions of social capital in 61 communities in Norway, amongst the majority population and residents with immigrant background. The results suggest, first, a differentiated impact of ethnic heterogeneity on trust. Ethnic diversity is negatively associated with spatially bounded forms of trust, but not with generalized trust. Second, a negative association with traditional forms of voluntarism is found – albeit this latter relationship is much weaker than the former. Third, the results suggest that these relationships are fairly similar across different (immigrant) groups. Although residents with immigrant background typically express lower levels of generalized trust than the majority population, the relative differences between residents living in diverse or homogeneous communities are limited. Given its strong institutions Norway could be seen as a least likely case for studying the impact of ethnic diversity on social capital. On the one hand, effects are more limited than what has been found in studies from the United States. On the other hand, the fact that effects are found on community trust and volunteering indicates that this type of societal model can indeed be affected by ethnic diversification.