Duvold, Kjetil

English

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Rezensionen 
 
Øyvind Østerud (ed.): Norway in Transition: Transforming a Stable 
Democracy. London / New York: Routledge 2007, 219 S.
This author recalls an episode the morn-
ing after the Norwegian general election 
on September 10, 2001. Just as I was 
watching smoke pouring out of one the 
Twin Towers, I received a call from the 
director of the political science depart-
ment in Vilnius – where I was based at 
the time. In a state of awe, I mentioned 
the terrible images from New York – of 
which he was clearly blissfully unaware, 
as he replied: “listen, I have a much more 
important issue to bring up.” The issue in 
question was a radio reporter who wanted 
to ask me about Norway after the fresh 
election. The journalist must have been 
equally unaware of the monumental 
changes that were taking place across the 
Atlantic, since he kept posing cheerful 
questions about Norway. Feeling some-
what upset about what I saw on CNN – 
let alone by the shocks that were still to 
come – I do not remember very clearly 
what was said during our conversation, 
but I do recall the journalist asking me: 
“what can Lithuania learn from Nor-
way?” Again, I am not sure what I possi-
bly could have answered, but I have often 
thought about this question later: “What 
are the lessons to be learnt from Nor-
way?” Is Norway at all interesting for 
comparative political scientists? The 
paradox of Norway, I have come to con-
clude, is that it is a rather boring, yet 
highly anomalous, case in the compara-
tive literature: “boring” due to its afflu-
ence, stability, homogeneity and compre-
hensive welfare system; “anomalous” 
because nearly all countries with vast 
natural reserves tend to be rather unsta-
ble, corrupt and undemocratic: look to 
Russia, Nigeria, Venezuela, or the entire 
Middle East. 
The volume at hand, originally published 
as a special edition of West European Po-
litics, presents the case for a stable de-
mocracy under transformation, as it were. 
Norway, like practically all contemporary 
states, has indeed been compelled to re-
adjust to global changes on a fairly com-
prehensive scale. Hence, the public sector 
is being restructured and streamlined, 
governing principles are being reinter-
preted, cosy corporatist structures make 
way for greater pluralism, voters are less 
loyal to the political parties, authorities 
are less trusted, and so forth. In his typi-
cally crisp style, Østerud presents a tidy 
overview of the state of contemporary 
Norway in the introductory chapter. 
Moreover, he points out three fields in 
which Norway appears to be “interesting 
96 NORDEUROPAforum 2/2006 
Rezensionen 
to the outside world”: 1. the Norwegian 
“political model” – with its from-the-
cradle-to-the-grave welfare services; 2. 
the peculiar international position of the 
country – not least because of its notori-
ous decision to turn down EC/EU mem-
bership twice; and 3. its posture in inter-
national affairs – this is the land of the 
Nobel Peace Prize, after all. Somewhat 
unfortunately, though, the two (overlap-
ping) international dimensions are all but 
ignored in the subsequent chapters. 
Why is that so? It is perhaps rather fit-
ting that foreign policy is so overlooked: 
just as the European Community trans-
formed itself into a vast entity of 27 
members (and, perhaps, still counting), 
successive Norwegian governments have 
been forced to balance the negative out-
come of the 1994 referendum with a 
quiet EU adaptation. As an EFTA mem-
ber, Norway has obtained nearly all 
rights – and taken on a similar number of 
obligations – of the Common Market via 
the European Economic Area (EEA) 
agreement, the brainchild of former EU 
Commissioner Jacques Delors, and en-
thusiastically embraced by the mighty 
Norwegian Prime Minister at the time, 
namely Gro Harlem Brundtland. Mrs. 
Brundtland clearly saw the EEA as a 
waiting room for upcoming EU mem-
bers. It might have worked this way, had 
it not been for the fact that most other 
original members (Sweden, Finland and 
Austria) quickly left the room, while 
Switzerland never even entered. Impor-
tantly, the EEA was not cut out to be a 
platform for other, much poorer EU con-
tenders, which left smallish Norway 
alone in the room with two Lilliputian 
states, namely Iceland and Lichtenstein. 
Although the EEA agreement may in 
fact have been the only sensible way out 
of the chaos for the – for once – so di-
vided nation: after all, the voters had not 
cast their ballot on the alternatives to 
membership. Arguably, when leading 
EU opponents toyed with the idea of 
launching a “different” agenda (i.e. an-
nerledeslandet), staying outside could 
have entailed far more radical changes 
than membership would. Be that as it 
may, many opponents and advocates 
agree on one thing: the EEA is a rather 
lacklustre compromise, implying that 
Norway must keep up with the bureau-
cratic implementation of the Acquis, 
while not actually having much of a say 
in terms of shaping EU laws – taxation 
without representation, as it were. The 
Peace Prize and a couple of fine detours 
to Sri Lanka, Guatemala and the Middle 
East aside, Norwegian foreign policy 
does not offer that luring, independent 
voice as many EU-opponents may have 
anticipated back in the 1990s. I would 
imagine that foreign policy is a lot more 
interesting in, say, Helsinki than in Oslo. 
NORDEUROPAforum 2/2006 97 
Rezensionen 
 
On balance, what this book offers is a 
fairly conventional sequence of public 
policy studies. Several of the authors dis-
cuss the health of the “Norwegian 
model”. Christensen brings up the core 
elements of the Nordic / Norwegian 
model of governance, suggesting that it is 
being transformed by a recent reformist 
impetus. This reform wave, an underlying 
theme in several chapters of this volume, 
is largely derived from New Public Man-
agement (NPM) – a highly influential 
paradigm within the school of public 
management studies, seemingly affecting 
the public sector machinery in the entire 
Western hemisphere. Rommtvedt exam-
ines a different set of changes to the 
Norwegian model of governance, in a 
chapter dedicated to the decline of neo-
corporatist arrangements and, conse-
quently, the greater dispersion of power. 
A consequence of this “pluralisation” is, 
according to the author, a shift of power 
from the executive to the legislature. This 
change may be a good thing for represen-
tative democracy, although it invariably 
brings along more instability, as Strøm, 
Narud and Valen’s chapter testifies to. 
The authors weight up the implications of 
Norway’s long-held traditions of minority 
governments. One of the implications, it 
seems, is that it weakens the accountabil-
ity of the executive branch, which again 
means that the voters may have a hard 
time identifying the parties – particularly 
those in power. Heidar’s chapter echoes 
many of these arguments, as he tries to 
account for the recent “diffusion” of the 
Norwegian party system. Nobody sym-
bolises these changes more visibly than 
Carl I. Hagen, the leader of the somewhat 
preposterous Progress Party for almost 30 
years. Mr. Hagen has been admired and 
despised in equal measures by the general 
public. He may well have whipped up 
xenophobia and anti-establishment senti-
ments among the voters, or even helped 
undermine general trust in the Norwegian 
political class. But he is nevertheless one 
of the most influential figures on the 
Norwegian political scene during the last 
two decades. 
Centre-periphery relations receive the 
bulk of the attention in two chapters, each 
arguing that recent local government re-
forms – largely based on the mantra of 
the aforementioned NPM thinking – rep-
resent a new form of centralism. Argua-
bly, the centre-periphery dimension has 
always played a more prominent role in 
Norwegian politics than in, say, Sweden 
or Denmark – even if Norway shares with 
the rest of Scandinavia a time-honoured 
tradition of centralism. Tranvik and Selle, 
however, argue that centre-periphery rela-
tions are being curtailed. This shift spells 
dramatic changes at the very core of the 
Norwegian democracy model – even 
more profoundly, the authors claim, than 
98 NORDEUROPAforum 2/2006 
Rezensionen 
in other European democracies. Con-
versely, Baldersheim and Fimreite are 
open for the prospects of a new form of 
regionalism, albeit based on considerably 
larger territories than the current, smallish 
municipalities. 
At a glance, many of these chapters seem 
to suggest that Norway is in a severe state 
of flux. Is that really the case? All things 
considered, Norwegian politics remain as 
solid and peaceful as a fjord! Suitably, 
then, in the final chapter of this volume, 
Engelstad and Gulbrandsen suggest that 
the basic features of the Norwegian wel-
fare model remain underpinned by solid 
support from the political establishment as 
well as business leaders. Since a push for 
change to the welfare model is unlikely to 
come from below, the “Norwegian model” 
might just tag along for the foreseeable fu-
ture. At least as long as the vast natural 
reserves keep flowing. But herein lays an 
interesting paradox of Norway: the oil 
wealth may turn out to be more sour than 
sweet. Many Norwegian citizens question 
the wisdom of saving the revenues from 
these resources, shrugging off the sugges-
tion that spending would create inflation. 
They consider the so-so standards of 
schools and hospitals and ask: why can 
we not invest more on improvements? In 
an interesting contribution, Listhaug ad-
dresses the issue of “resource curse”, 
which has poisoned politics in many oil-
rich countries around the world, but he 
finds the presence of just a mild form of 
this curse in the Norwegian case. His 
study reveals that many citizens question 
the self-imposed restriction on public 
spending – and perhaps even warm to the 
tax and spending proposition made by the 
Progress Party: you can have the cake and 
eat it. Nevertheless, Norwegians continue 
to put their trust in their political institu-
tions. Listhaug’s chapter demonstrates 
that Norway in fact is a rather curious 
case in the comparative literature. 
Norway in Transition works quite well as 
an introductory text on contemporary 
Norwegian politics – better, in fact, than 
many single-authored books that are avai-
lable on the market. By and large, the 
contributors are well-established heavy-
weights within the Norwegian political 
science community. Solid and credible 
stuff, for sure, but the readers are depri-
ved of fresh and perhaps even thought-
provocative perspectives on Norway. On-
ce again, what is interesting about Nor-
way from a comparative perspective? If 
you already hold the opinion that Norwe-
gian politics is rather dull, you are not li-
kely to change your mind after reading 
this volume. 
Kjetil Duvold (Berlin)
NORDEUROPAforum 2/2006 99 


Øyvind Østerud (ed.): "Norway in Transition: Transforming a Stable Democracy"

Dokumenten-Publikationsserver der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Rezensionen  Øyvind Østerud (ed.): Norway in Transition: Transforming a Stable Democracy. London / New York: Routledge 2007, 219 S.This author recalls an episode the morn-ing after the Norwegian general election on September 10, 2001. Just as I was watching smoke pouring out of one the Twin Towers, I received a call from the director of the political science depart-ment in Vilnius – where I was based at the time. In a state of awe, I mentioned the terrible images from New York – of which he was clearly blissfully unaware, as he replied: “listen, I have a much more important issue to bring up.” The issue in question was a radio reporter who wanted to ask me about Norway after the fresh election. The journalist must have been equally unaware of the monumental changes that were taking place across the Atlantic, since he kept posing cheerful questions about Norway. Feeling some-what upset about what I saw on CNN – let alone by the shocks that were still to come – I do not remember very clearly what was said during our conversation, but I do recall the journalist asking me: “what can Lithuania learn from Nor-way?” Again, I am not sure what I possi-bly could have answered, but I have often thought about this question later: “What are the lessons to be learnt from Nor-way?” Is Norway at all interesting for comparative political scientists? The paradox of Norway, I have come to con-clude, is that it is a rather boring, yet highly anomalous, case in the compara-tive literature: “boring” due to its afflu-ence, stability, homogeneity and compre-hensive welfare system; “anomalous” because nearly all countries with vast natural reserves tend to be rather unsta-ble, corrupt and undemocratic: look to Russia, Nigeria, Venezuela, or the entire Middle East. The volume at hand, originally published as a special edition of West European Po-litics, presents the case for a stable de-mocracy under transformation, as it were. Norway, like practically all contemporary states, has indeed been compelled to re-adjust to global changes on a fairly com-prehensive scale. Hence, the public sector is being restructured and streamlined, governing principles are being reinter-preted, cosy corporatist structures make way for greater pluralism, voters are less loyal to the political parties, authorities are less trusted, and so forth. In his typi-cally crisp style, Østerud presents a tidy overview of the state of contemporary Norway in the introductory chapter. Moreover, he points out three fields in which Norway appears to be “interesting 96 NORDEUROPAforum 2/2006 Rezensionen to the outside world”: 1. the Norwegian “political model” – with its from-the-cradle-to-the-grave welfare services; 2. the peculiar international position of the country – not least because of its notori-ous decision to turn down EC/EU mem-bership twice; and 3. its posture in inter-national affairs – this is the land of the Nobel Peace Prize, after all. Somewhat unfortunately, though, the two (overlap-ping) international dimensions are all but ignored in the subsequent chapters. Why is that so? It is perhaps rather fit-ting that foreign policy is so overlooked: just as the European Community trans-formed itself into a vast entity of 27 members (and, perhaps, still counting), successive Norwegian governments have been forced to balance the negative out-come of the 1994 referendum with a quiet EU adaptation. As an EFTA mem-ber, Norway has obtained nearly all rights – and taken on a similar number of obligations – of the Common Market via the European Economic Area (EEA) agreement, the brainchild of former EU Commissioner Jacques Delors, and en-thusiastically embraced by the mighty Norwegian Prime Minister at the time, namely Gro Harlem Brundtland. Mrs. Brundtland clearly saw the EEA as a waiting room for upcoming EU mem-bers. It might have worked this way, had it not been for the fact that most other original members (Sweden, Finland and Austria) quickly left the room, while Switzerland never even entered. Impor-tantly, the EEA was not cut out to be a platform for other, much poorer EU con-tenders, which left smallish Norway alone in the room with two Lilliputian states, namely Iceland and Lichtenstein. Although the EEA agreement may in fact have been the only sensible way out of the chaos for the – for once – so di-vided nation: after all, the voters had not cast their ballot on the alternatives to membership. Arguably, when leading EU opponents toyed with the idea of launching a “different” agenda (i.e. an-nerledeslandet), staying outside could have entailed far more radical changes than membership would. Be that as it may, many opponents and advocates agree on one thing: the EEA is a rather lacklustre compromise, implying that Norway must keep up with the bureau-cratic implementation of the Acquis, while not actually having much of a say in terms of shaping EU laws – taxation without representation, as it were. The Peace Prize and a couple of fine detours to Sri Lanka, Guatemala and the Middle East aside, Norwegian foreign policy does not offer that luring, independent voice as many EU-opponents may have anticipated back in the 1990s. I would imagine that foreign policy is a lot more interesting in, say, Helsinki than in Oslo. NORDEUROPAforum 2/2006 97 Rezensionen  On balance, what this book offers is a fairly conventional sequence of public policy studies. Several of the authors dis-cuss the health of the “Norwegian model”. Christensen brings up the core elements of the Nordic / Norwegian model of governance, suggesting that it is being transformed by a recent reformist impetus. This reform wave, an underlying theme in several chapters of this volume, is largely derived from New Public Man-agement (NPM) – a highly influential paradigm within the school of public management studies, seemingly affecting the public sector machinery in the entire Western hemisphere. Rommtvedt exam-ines a different set of changes to the Norwegian model of governance, in a chapter dedicated to the decline of neo-corporatist arrangements and, conse-quently, the greater dispersion of power. A consequence of this “pluralisation” is, according to the author, a shift of power from the executive to the legislature. This change may be a good thing for represen-tative democracy, although it invariably brings along more instability, as Strøm, Narud and Valen’s chapter testifies to. The authors weight up the implications of Norway’s long-held traditions of minority governments. One of the implications, it seems, is that it weakens the accountabil-ity of the executive branch, which again means that the voters may have a hard time identifying the parties – particularly those in power. Heidar’s chapter echoes many of these arguments, as he tries to account for the recent “diffusion” of the Norwegian party system. Nobody sym-bolises these changes more visibly than Carl I. Hagen, the leader of the somewhat preposterous Progress Party for almost 30 years. Mr. Hagen has been admired and despised in equal measures by the general public. He may well have whipped up xenophobia and anti-establishment senti-ments among the voters, or even helped undermine general trust in the Norwegian political class. But he is nevertheless one of the most influential figures on the Norwegian political scene during the last two decades. Centre-periphery relations receive the bulk of the attention in two chapters, each arguing that recent local government re-forms – largely based on the mantra of the aforementioned NPM thinking – rep-resent a new form of centralism. Argua-bly, the centre-periphery dimension has always played a more prominent role in Norwegian politics than in, say, Sweden or Denmark – even if Norway shares with the rest of Scandinavia a time-honoured tradition of centralism. Tranvik and Selle, however, argue that centre-periphery rela-tions are being curtailed. This shift spells dramatic changes at the very core of the Norwegian democracy model – even more profoundly, the authors claim, than 98 NORDEUROPAforum 2/2006 Rezensionen in other European democracies. Con-versely, Baldersheim and Fimreite are open for the prospects of a new form of regionalism, albeit based on considerably larger territories than the current, smallish municipalities. At a glance, many of these chapters seem to suggest that Norway is in a severe state of flux. Is that really the case? All things considered, Norwegian politics remain as solid and peaceful as a fjord! Suitably, then, in the final chapter of this volume, Engelstad and Gulbrandsen suggest that the basic features of the Norwegian wel-fare model remain underpinned by solid support from the political establishment as well as business leaders. Since a push for change to the welfare model is unlikely to come from below, the “Norwegian model” might just tag along for the foreseeable fu-ture. At least as long as the vast natural reserves keep flowing. But herein lays an interesting paradox of Norway: the oil wealth may turn out to be more sour than sweet. Many Norwegian citizens question the wisdom of saving the revenues from these resources, shrugging off the sugges-tion that spending would create inflation. They consider the so-so standards of schools and hospitals and ask: why can we not invest more on improvements? In an interesting contribution, Listhaug ad-dresses the issue of “resource curse”, which has poisoned politics in many oil-rich countries around the world, but he finds the presence of just a mild form of this curse in the Norwegian case. His study reveals that many citizens question the self-imposed restriction on public spending – and perhaps even warm to the tax and spending proposition made by the Progress Party: you can have the cake and eat it. Nevertheless, Norwegians continue to put their trust in their political institu-tions. Listhaug’s chapter demonstrates that Norway in fact is a rather curious case in the comparative literature. Norway in Transition works quite well as an introductory text on contemporary Norwegian politics – better, in fact, than many single-authored books that are avai-lable on the market. By and large, the contributors are well-established heavy-weights within the Norwegian political science community. Solid and credible stuff, for sure, but the readers are depri-ved of fresh and perhaps even thought-provocative perspectives on Norway. On-ce again, what is interesting about Nor-way from a comparative perspective? If you already hold the opinion that Norwe-gian politics is rather dull, you are not li-kely to change your mind after reading this volume. Kjetil Duvold (Berlin)NORDEUROPAforum 2/2006 99 

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Øyvind Østerud (ed.): "Norway in Transition: Transforming a Stable Democracy"

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