Do enfranchisement reforms change the demographic composition of elected bodies? While previous research has demonstrated positive effects of suffrage extensions on political participation and the substantive representation of group interests, effects on descriptive representation remain understudied. Focusing on voting age reforms, we hypothesize that lowering the voting age to 16 increases the shares of selected and elected young candidates via changes in party and voter behavior. Drawing on evidence from two Norwegian voting age trials and a difference-in-differences design, we show that municipalities with a lowered voting age saw significantly more young candidates elected. This was driven by changes in voter behavior: While parties did not select or prioritize more young candidates, voters supported them with higher shares of preference votes. Exploring mechanisms, we find tentative evidence that treatment effects depended on voters who were not directly affected by the reform. Also, effects appear to slightly weaken in the second election with a lowered voting age.

Is satisfaction with municipal general practitioner (GP) service provision related to objective characteristics of the local service supply? We argue that objective features of public services will be more significant for citizen satisfaction when most users have first-hand experience with a service, as is the case with GP services. The study combines elements from two theoretical approaches: a) Hirscman's Exit, voice, loyalty (EVL), and b) the Expectancy-Disconfirmation Model (EDM). We employ a novel dataset that combines individual-level data from five waves of the Norwegian Citizens Survey (2010, 2013, 2015, 2016 and 2019) with municipal-level panel data on GP service characteristics. We focus on three crucial aspects of municipal-level GP services: choice options, continuity, and competence. All major municipal-level GP service characteristics are positively related to satisfaction. Related to our theoretical framework, this implies that services that are used frequently and are familiar to users will be less susceptible to expectation management because prior performance and objective features will play a more prominent role than for services that are less well-known.

Surveys among bureaucrats are a widely used tool of data collection in public administration research. However, survey researchers in public administration are facing various challenges, such as declining response rates among bureaucrat respondents and limited respondent pools. Moreover, researchers seeking to establish robust empirical evidence on the drivers of bureaucrats' behaviour and attitudes encounter difficulties in collecting longitudinal individual-level data. This article argues that the research community should collectively address these challenges and demonstrates one way to achieve this: by establishing a researcher-driven survey infrastructure. We present such a novel survey infrastructure that may serve as a prototype for implementing this research agenda worldwide. We illustrate the innovative potential of combining longitudinal and paired research designs that involve parallel surveys of relevant stakeholders, including politicians and citizens. Finally, the article discusses dilemmas and trade-offs in the operation of survey infrastructures for public administration research.

Norwegian municipal councils themselves determine the number of members in a municipal council. From 1979 to 2019, the number of municipal council representatives has been reduced by more than 4,000 representatives. Ahead of the 2023 election, 39 municipalities chose to reduce the size of their councils, while 3 opted to increase the number of representatives. We examine a) how local politicians justify the size reduction and b) what reduction means for female representation and local party diversity. The analysis is based on qualitative data such as municipal council minutes and meeting documents, media clips, and statistical material showing the development of representation over time. We find that arguments supporting the reduction primarily concern economic efficiency (meeting allowances and similar expenses) and so-called ‘deliberative’ efficiency (slower and more cumbersome decision-making). Counterarguments are more focused on issues related to democracy and representation. In our analysis of how the reduction affects representation, we find that reducing the size of municipal councils does not appear to have affected the proportion of women in the councils or the number of parties represented in the councils in 2023.

Do enfranchisement reforms change the demographic composition of elected bodies? While previous research has demonstrated that suffrage extensions affect policy outcomes, the underlying mechanisms remain understudied. Focusing on the case of youth enfranchisement, we hypothesize that lowering the voting age to 16 years causes changes in both voter and party behaviour and leads to more young people being elected. Drawing on survey and observational data from local elections in Norway, we use quasi-experimental evidence from two voting age trials to test these suggestions. We show that municipalities with a lowered voting age saw significantly higher shares of young councillors elected. This effect was not due to changes in party behaviour, but to voters providing young candidates with more preference votes. The effect was most pronounced in the first election following the reform, indicating that some of it might be driven by older voters changing their behaviour in a one-off manner.

Artikkelen presenterer etableringen, organiseringen og gjennomføring av ny forskningsinfrastruktur for norsk forvaltningsforskning. Norsk Forvaltningspanel (NFP) er en forskningsinfrastruktur etablert for å gjennomføre jevnlige spørreundersøkelser blant forvaltningsansatte i staten (departementer, direktorater og tilsyn). NFP er en del av en større forskningsinfrastruktur som både muliggjør panelundersøkelser blant byråkrater over tid og koordinert datainnsamling mellom byråkrater, politikere, journalister og medborgere. Artikkelen skisserer bakgrunnen for etableringen av NFP, noen grunnprinsipper for organisering av infrastrukturen, samt en gjennomgang av fordeler og utfordringer ved etableringen av en slik infrastruktur. Deretter analyserer vi panelets representativitet og presenterer utvalgte resultater fra første runde med datainnsamling i NFP, som vi sammenligner med eksisterende survey-data. Avslutningsvis diskuterer vi kritiske steg i videreutviklingen av forskningsinfrastrukturen.

This volume examines three interconnected themes in political science: the nuts and bolts of government, the complex and evolving relationship between politics and administration, and continuity and change in government. Government ministries and agencies are vital components of the executive branch of government that play fundamental roles in the democratic governing of modern societies. Contemporary public administration is conventionally portrayed as being based on a series of dichotomies: politics versus administration, coordination versus fragmentation, integration versus disintegration, trust versus distrust, etc. As an alternative, this volume, which is composed of a series of case studies from the Nordics and beyond, conceptualises and empirically demonstrates how government bodies at different levels of governance are driven by pragmatism characterised by the co-existence of multiple decision-making premises. To account for the composite aspect of government, this volume illustrates how institutional and organisational factors can structure elements in the policymaking process and how these elements are powerful tools available to purposeful design.

The term local party systems suggests that party systems not only vary between municipalities, but that the systems also have a local dimension. This chapter is concerned with the balance between national parties and the local lists in municipal council elections in Norway. We also examine whether municipal amalgamation reform has changed the balance between these types of parties. Our analyses show that the correspondence between the party system in the parliament (“Stortinget”) and in the municipal councils is strong in Norwegian municipalities. One consequence of the municipal reform is that constituencies have become larger (on average), and more representatives are being elected to the municipal councils. By comparing merged and non-merged municipalities over two elections, we find that the reform has contributed to greater party diversity in the municipal councils. This applies both to the supply of lists that stand for election and the number of lists that are represented in the municipal councils. The municipal reform, on the other hand, does not seem to have contributed to greater party diversity in the form of more or fewer local lists.

This chapter examines a citizens’ panel (a ‘mini-public’) that took place in the municipality of Bergen in 2018. We begin by discussing mini-publics as innovative measures to increase participation in political systems. In the literature, the internal quality of the panels – who is recruited and included on the panel and how opinion formation is organized – is emphasized. How mini-publics affect the political/representative political system – the external quality of the panels – has not been studied as thoroughly, and is therefore the analytical starting point for our chapter. In the empirical part of the chapter, we present the panel in Bergen, how it was recruited and organized, and the recommendations it made to decision-makers in the municipality. We also explore how citizens in Bergen assess these sorts of innovative democratic measures. The chapter ends with a discussion of the mini-public’s place in a representative democracy – are mini-publics supplements or alternatives?

ABSTRACT The 2019 local and regional elections in Norway took place against the backdrop of a historical local and regional amalgamation reform initiated by the Conservative-led government in 2014. We find six key outcomes from these elections. (1) The 2019 election witnessed an increase in turnout of 4.5 percentage points compared with the 2015 elections. This is the highest voter turnout in local and regional elections since 1991. (2) The four parties in government all suffered substantial losses. (3) The winner of the election was the Centre Party, which surged in the peripheral areas (4) The 2019 election results for the Labour Party are yet another confirmation of a long-term decline in electoral strength. (5) The emergence of a new political list, The People’s Action Against Toll Fees (FNB). (6) In the urban areas, the Greens and Socialist Left Party mobilized younger voters, securing both parties an increase in electoral support.

Counterterrorist legislation has been on the rise in many democracies after 9/11. While this may be necessary to strengthen the state’s capacity to detect and avoid terrorist attacks, it may also restrain the liberties of residents in the country where they apply. This chapter asks whether the introduction of counterterrorist legislation affects people’s attitudes towards democracy. We analyse this by combining country-level data on legislative responses to terrorism, and individual-level data on attitudes towards democracy. The findings indicate that the average number of counterterrorist regulation negatively affects satisfaction with democracy, but within each country changes in such legislation do not. Overall, changes in counterterrorist legislation are unrelated to satisfaction with democracy. Why this is the case is an important subject for further research.

Terrorism often leads to increased stigmatization of groups perceived as “out-groups”. We test two versions of out-group theory and ask whether citizens clearly distinguish between radical Muslims and Muslims in general, or if the fear of terrorism is associated with a general distrust of Muslims? We conducted a survey experiment among Norwegian citizens designed to determine the effect of group treatments on the participants’ attitudes towards wiretapping. We find that our group treatments strongly influence the participants’ attitudes towards wiretapping. However, the hypothesis that the fear of terrorism leads to a backlash against Muslims in general is rejected. Still, Norwegians are prepared to give the police leeway towards the two groups identified by the police as the greatest security risks, i.e., radical Muslim and extreme right-wing groups. Our evidence suggests that citizens are capable of discriminating between groups who aim explicitly at undermining democracy and groups perceived as different from themselves.

Based on two surveys, conducted before and after the 2011 terror attacks in Norway, this chapter studies the attacks’ effects on people’s attitudes toward institutions and governmental policies related to security. The study shows that citizens are less satisfied with governmental policies after the attacks, but there is little change with regard to general confidence in institutions responsible for security. Citizens’ party preferences prior to the attacks are crucial to understanding how individuals respond to security policies after the attack. On issues of security, the distance between right-wing voters and other voters increased after the attack. Overall, Norwegians have become less satisfied with policies on security-related issues. Even in a country where politicians responded to the crisis with an appeal to togetherness and common values, citizens’ attitudes on security policies were politicized.