All That is Solid Melts into Air: Party Identification in Norway

For two decades researchers have been arguing whether profound changes were taking place in electoral politics or not. Surprisingly little attention has been paid to party identification in the European debate. In Norway, party identification has dropped dramatically since the mid-1980s. We hypothesize that the strong psychological ties between citizens and parties, described as party identification, have become a rare occurrence for several reasons. The intense debate over EU membership weakened the formation of party identification in two periods linked to the referendums in 1972 and 1994, but we also believe the observed decline in party identification to be a long-term change linked to the fading of the old cleavages and the decline of parties as mass organizations. The hypotheses have been tested on data from the Norwegian Electoral Surveys and the Referendum Surveys from 1972 and 1994. Although the hypotheses find support, alternative explanations cannot be ruled out at this stage.