ABSTRACT The parliamentary floor represents an important arena for political debate. Recent research shows that politicians use foreign events strategically through parliamentary speeches to achieve electoral success. However, it is not clear how politicians do so to increase attention to their preferred issues. This article argues that by combining key insights from issue competition and legislative debate theory, we can see how issue ownership and the opposition's greater freedom to focus on certain issues interact to shape responses to foreign events. This is demonstrated through a parliamentary speech attention framework tested on Danish and Norwegian responses to the October 7 attacks in Israel. Issue ownership was more strongly associated with attention responses for opposition than government parties, with Denmark driving multiculturalism responses and Norway driving immigration responses. The article shows how foreign events can become assets for issue‐owning opposition parties and thus advances our understanding of issue competition in parliamentary debates.
ABSTRACT Can electoral success be an asset for being appointed to more prominent ministerial posts in cabinets? Are ministers punished or rewarded by voters according to the importance of their post? These questions are explored in this article. Portfolio allocation as well as electoral consequences of participating in governments is usually studied at the party level and not for individual politicians. The novel approach in this article is to focus on individual ministers rather than parties. We approach importance of ministerial posts according to membership of certain cabinet committees, which can mark a clear demarcation line of which ministers have more and less influence on cabinet policies within parties in governments. By using a dataset on Danish ministers from 1977 to 2022 we find a complex relationship between personal votes and policy influence in cabinet, providing important nuances to the existing literature on cabinet governance, ministerial selection and cost of ruling.
ABSTRACT This study explores citizens' evaluations of competing security threats and prioritizes policy responses using data from Finland. Despite escalating geopolitical tensions and proximity to Russia, Finnish public opinion favors broader human security concerns, such as climate change and organized crime, over traditional military threats. Using a randomized conjoint experiment, we analyze how individuals evaluate trade‐offs between different threat environments and security policy arrangements across national, community, and personal security domains. The results show that internal and environmental security threats strongly influence public preferences, often as much as or more than military threats. These patterns are consistent across demographic and political subgroups, suggesting that public security preferences are relatively stable and multidimensional rather than purely reactive to short‐term geopolitical developments. While there is support for moderate defense spending and alliance commitments such as NATO membership, proposals involving nuclear weapons or very high military spending face public resistance. The study highlights the importance of public opinion in shaping security policy priorities, particularly in small states where resource constraints make trade‐offs between different security domains more visible. The findings contribute to research on public opinion and security policy by demonstrating how citizens prioritize military and non‐military security concerns within a comprehensive security framework.
ABSTRACT Local candidates are essential for democratic representation in local elections, yet the number of individuals willing to run for office continues to decline. This study examines the reciprocal relationship between electoral performance and candidate supply, arguing that electoral victories enhance a party's ability to attract candidates through a bandwagon effect, while losses drive both voter and candidate withdrawal. These dynamics are especially pronounced for niche parties which face heightened recruitment challenges when electoral support weakens. Drawing on a novel dataset covering more than 30 years of Swedish local elections, and using OLS, logit, and heterogeneous difference‐in‐differences models, the study demonstrates that electoral gains significantly increase the number of nominated candidates and reduce the probability of fielding no candidates at all, while losses sharply increase the risk of candidate shortages. In turn, parties that fail to nominate candidates experience a significant electoral decline, lasting up to three electoral cycles. These findings underscore the self‐reinforcing nature of candidate shortages and highlight how the inability to field candidates poses risks not only for individual parties but for the quality of local democratic competition.
ABSTRACT The information that flows to public officials is an important aspect of policymaking. Research on the informational basis of policymaking is, however, fragmented, tending to focus on singular informational practices in isolation. This article develops a typology of multiple informational practices, joining apparently fragmented informational bases of policymaking into a common framework, and using administrative data to explore trends in informational practices in government across five decades, with Norway as a case. The results show that a notable diversification has occurred at the level of the ‘knowledge regime’, especially since the 1990s. Newer informational practices such as performance and internal audits and quality assurances of major investments have expanded at the same time as traditional practices such as policy evaluations and green papers have declined. Taken together, this implies that more customised policy information is being sourced from within the government apparatus, with standardised information becoming more prominent. Possible explanations for this are a desire for less reliance on external providers, public officials increasingly preferring compliant, expedient and predictable information from external sources, and well‐positioned internal information providers having expanded their purview and power.
ABSTRACT Coalition politics represents a challenge to democratic citizens: they need to consider which governing coalitions a party is willing to enter or support in order to make informed vote choices. Following a minimalist perspective, several scholars have suggested that citizens rely on universal heuristics , such as left‐right placement, when navigating coalition politics. However, coalition politics is often presented to citizens by politicians and media in a simplified form specific to the institutions and traditions of their countries. We propose that this allows for institutional heuristics , which are both cheaper and more accurate. We illustrate our theory using public opinion data from Denmark (2021−2024), where the division of parties into red and blue blocs is a defining feature of coalition politics. We find that knowledge about which party belongs to which bloc, allows citizens to successfully perform the three central tasks that the political system presents them with: (1) Mastering the terminology of coalition politics, (2) knowing which parties to hold accountable, and (3) understanding the coalition implications of voting.
ABSTRACT Research has documented an increase in the use of negative campaign strategies during election campaigns worldwide. This study contributes to the literature by offering a longitudinal analysis of how negative statements and moral scandalization strategies by Swedish political parties on Facebook have evolved over time, and whether they contribute to user engagement. Using a census sample ( N = 2,779) of posts published by all parties represented in parliament during the 4 weeks leading up to the elections in 2014, 2018, and 2022, we reveal that targets of negative campaign messages have shifted considerably alongside changing party loyalties. Sweden's increasingly polarized multi‐party system coincides with a general rise in the prominence of negative statements and scandalization, yet we find no clear‐cut indications that these strategies drive user engagement.
This article examines the impact of populist governance on state-civil society relations in Sweden, a country traditionally marked by collaborative relations and democratic stability. Focusing on reforms in adult education and international aid under a government supported by a right-wing populist party, the study explores how these changes are perceived by civil society organizations (CSOs). Drawing on qualitative interviews with CSO representatives, the analysis applies the concept of populist governance-characterized by polarizing communication, state capture, and measures against political opposition. Findings reveal increased control, reduced autonomy, and declining trust in public institutions, with CSOs perceiving politicized funding processes and diminished opportunities for advocacy. While some reforms reflect broader governance trends, the study identifies a shift in the "rules of the game," suggesting a democratic backsliding. The article contributes to understanding how populist governance manifests in liberal democracies and reshapes the role of civil society in public policy.
This article examines how academic national security expertise in Denmark and Norway translates into public visibility and engagement opportunities. While a largely US-centred literature on the practitioner-academic gap in national security identifies persistent obstacles to policy relevance-often locating responsibility either within the academic profession or among policymakers-there is limited systematic evidence on how these dynamics operate in small, high-trust democracies. Drawing on an original dataset combining bibliometric indicators and national media coverage, a survey of leading security scholars, and a set of qualitative interviews, the article analyses how patterns of public voice and engagement are structured across institutional affiliation, geography, seniority, and gender. The findings show that security scholars in Denmark and Norway express strong commitment to public dissemination and policy engagement and generally perceive the policy environment as receptive. However, access to sustained public visibility and policy dialogue is unevenly distributed and shaped less by disciplinary orientation or scholarly motivation than by institutional geography. Informal networks, proximity to political and media centres, and weakly institutionalised organisational support systematically advantage scholars located in capital-based institutions, while constraining those positioned elsewhere. By comparing Denmark's restrained centralism with Norway's centralised pluralism, the article demonstrates how national institutional configurations condition who speaks, who is heard, and who remains silent in national security policy debates.
The failure of governments worldwide to meet the climate targets of the Paris Agreement has sparked a debate about different decision-making practices. While some scholars advocate participatory practices, others argue for greater involvement of scientific experts. Less is known about public preferences for these decision-making practices and their potential to generate policy legitimacy in the context of climate policymaking. Also, few studies have explored preferences across individuals with different political orientations, levels of trust, and attitudes to climate action. Drawing on a survey conducted in 2023 in Sweden, this study presents novel insights on public preferences for participatory democracy and technocracy with decision-making authority within climate policymaking. The study finds that expert governance is not only the preferred model but also that it garners support across groups with diverse political views and among individuals unconcerned about climate change. The preferences may reflect growing frustration with insufficient climate action, but perhaps also the complexity and urgency of the issue. Under the assumptions about policy legitimacy presented in this study, expert governance appears to have greater potential than participatory democracy to foster consensus across political cleavages and to build acceptance among individuals who are typically skeptical of climate policies.
This study examines the prominence and framing of religion in election campaign communication in Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Although the rise of populist radical right parties and the continued presence of Christian Democratic parties (CDP) suggest that religion is being politicised, we know comparatively little about how religion is mobilised in contemporary Nordic election campaigns. Based on a content analysis of election manifestos and parties' official Facebook accounts, the study assesses the relative prominence of different religious categories and the ways they are framed. The findings show that religion plays a limited role in Nordic election campaigns. Mainstream parties rarely invoke religion. CDP continue to articulate Christian moral values (with Sweden as an exception), whereas populist radical right parties rely primarily on anti-Islam messages rather than pro-Christian appeals. The results qualify broader claims about increasing religious politicisation in Nordic electoral politics.
In multilevel orders such as the European Union (EU), national agencies are responsible for applying laws and policies emanating from multiple institutional levels. This article examines how senior officials in such agencies interpret and rationalise their mandate when applying EU law. Drawing on a mixed-method design that combines a large-n survey of senior civil servants with elite interviews, the study analyses the behavioural logics that guide bureaucratic decision-making related to EU law in Norway. Findings show that officials largely perceive EU law application as a technical, instrumental task guided by professional expertise, while at the same time defending the need for discretion at the national level to enable national expertise adapt rules to national contexts. Prioritising responsiveness to political signals is broadly rejected, whereas attitudes towards the overarching goal of legal harmonisation with other EU/EEA states are ambivalent and varies between respondents. Findings reveal what we term the application paradox: discretion is indispensable for fair and context-sensitive application of EU law, yet simultaneously creating scope for divergence, bureaucratic self-programming, an might undermine accountability. Discretion in the context of EU law application emerges as both a safeguard of effective governance and a source of fragmented application.
Against the backdrop of (i) the Finnish Eduskunta's enactment in June 2025 of a contentious change in the voting rules for elections to the S & aacute;mi Parliament and (ii) the publication in December 2025 of the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission examining the historic discrimination practised against the S & aacute;mi population, this paper focuses on the representation of the indigenous S & aacute;mi minority in Finland. The central question, which comprises three integral parts, runs: How and why has the basis of S & aacute;mi representation changed and what was the S & aacute;mi view of their representational arrangements in the run-up to the 2025 electoral reform? Several variants of neo-corporatist representation are presented, in all of which S & aacute;mi elect S & aacute;mi to represent them. Ultimately, the case made is that the 2025 electoral reform marked a shift away from an inclusive, livelihood-based vocational franchise towards a more exclusionary, ethno-centric model predicated on strict S & aacute;mi-language criteria. The wider interest lies in the extent to which forms of neo-corporatist representation can retain utility and functional value under the cross-pressures of party-based territorial representation.
This article examines what motivates individuals to undertake the high-cost strategy of founding new political organisations. It presents a comparative study of two Norwegian organisations that emerged in the late 2010s: the anti-wind power interest group Motvind and the anti-road toll party Folkeaksjonen Nei til mer Bompenger (FNB). Drawing on semi-structured interviews with founders, the analysis shows that political entrepreneurship in both cases was primarily driven by strong emotional motivations, including anger, indignation, sorrow, and perceptions of injustice. These emotions helped founders overcome collective action barriers and commit to organisation-building, even in the absence of clear material rewards. While the specific emotional content differed across issue contexts, emotionally grounded moral evaluations consistently preceded purposive motivations related to policy influence. By highlighting the role of emotional incentives at the founding stage, the article challenges accounts that emphasise material incentives such as prestige, income, or office as primary drivers of political entrepreneurship.
How do political blocs form, consolidate, and dissolve? And can we trace these dynamics through the language of parliamentary debate? We address these questions by analyzing speeches in the Swedish Riksdag, using supervised machine learning to examine changes in rhetorical alignment among parties. Adapting classification methods developed for two-party systems to a multiparty context, we assess rhetorical alignment between and within Sweden's political blocs across nine legislative periods (1991-2023). The results closely match expectations: rhetorical cohesion between parties was strongest during the peak of formal alliances (2006-2014) and declined during subsequent periods of political realignment. These findings demonstrate that parliamentary rhetoric offers a valuable lens for tracking the rise and fall of political blocs. More broadly, the study shows how supervised machine-learning classification can capture long-term shifts in party-system structure within multiparty democracies.
The political power of business is central to the analysis of contemporary democracies. Recent research has documented an increasing presence of corporations in some political systems. However, there is a lack of studies comparing corporations' political role across different countries. In this paper, we compare corporate political access in three traditionally corporatist countries in which lobbying by corporations has been less common due to the strong role of business associations. We analyze the importance of factors at different levels-the firm level, the sector level and the country level-in explaining corporate political access. Empirically, we rely on surveys of large corporations in Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands (N = 657). Our results provide an important corrective to research pointing to a uniform rise in corporate political activity: We document marked country differences, with a high level of corporate political activity in the Netherlands and much lower levels in the two Nordic countries.
In the contemporary digital information landscape, the dissemination of news is frequently intertwined with critiques from political figures. Populist politicians, especially, have used social media platforms to target journalists and question the legitimacy of news media. Despite the concerning nature of this behavior, the empirical evidence on how such accusations influence public perceptions of news credibility remains limited. To address this research gap, this study investigates the impact of politicians' attacks on citizens' perceived credibility of news content in Norway, a highly trusting society with strong national publishers and public service media. We conduct a vignette experiment to assess whether a politician's act of shaming a traditional media outlet (ideologically distant from his/her viewpoints) on social media affects the perceived credibility of the news story. The findings suggest that politicians' attacks on news stories significantly affect citizens' perceptions of news credibility, particularly when a right-wing populist politician targets a liberal media outlet. Interestingly, the effect was stronger among individuals who were ideologically distant from the politician's party and those with high trust in the targeted media outlet. These results indicate that politicians attacking the media are not merely preaching to the converted; rather, their behavior can influence broader public perceptions of news credibility. By highlighting these dynamics, this research contributes to a deeper understanding of the relationship between elite political discourse, social media, and public trust in news content.
Rally-round-the-flag describes a situation where voters rally behind their government and leader in the fight against an external enemy. The COVID-19 pandemic was such an external enemy and Danish voters responded immediately with an increased support of about seven percentage points for the government and a significant 33 percentage points increase in approval ratings for the Prime Minister. However, this effect gradually diminished and had completely disappeared by the time of the general election on November 1, 2022. The article employs a Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) using all 283 publicly available opinion polls on party choice from the 2019-2022 throughout the election period, along with 35 measures of the Prime Minister's approval rating.
Political hypocrisy is popularly understood as the discrepancy between what an individual says they believe one ought to do, and what they themselves actually do. Political hypocrisy is thus often linked to the study of political scandals, in which politicians who do not practice as they preach are exposed and their transgressions are amplified by extensive media coverage. Studies suggest that political hypocrisy might affect voters negatively and ultimately lead to a less healthy democracy. In this study we focus on how political hypocrisy affects the perceived functioning of democracy, understood as both a measure of the perceived health of democratic culture and voters' willingness to engage in democratic elections. We focus on the least likely case of Denmark and conduct a split-sample experiment based on novel data from a representative sample of 1038 Danish adults. We find that citizens' exposure to stories about hypocritical politicians leads to disillusionment with democratic culture, but not to disengagement. This means that citizens seem to be able to separate their negative perceptions of the political system and democratic culture from their personal responsibility to participate in elections. This reaction is most likely linked to Denmark's strong democratic culture, but also to a more generic and fundamental trait of most liberal democracies: what we call “the contract paradox.” We therefore question whether hypocritical politicians are the real threat to democracy, or whether it is rather the media's scandalization of their behavior and our collective intolerance towards it that poses a threat.
