Proportional: party list system with proportional distribution. The development of the quality of democracy in Norway

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1 Norway Basic facts 2007 Population GDP p.c. (US$) Human development rank 1 Age of democracy in years (Polity) 61 Type of democracy Parliamentary Electoral system Proportional: party list system with proportional distribution of seats Party system Multi-party system The development of the quality of democracy in Norway The overall quality of democracy Norway exhibits a very high quality of democracy throughout the 18 years studied according to the line chart above. Overall, the country always scored between 78 and 80 scale points and well above the average of all 30 countries studied. The respective graph only varies marginally over time. Suggesting that Norway's democratic quality remained rather stable between 1990 and 2007; smaller temporary dips can be observed in the years , 2001 and The following discussion will address the Norway's principles and functions and shed more light on the country's strengths and weaknesses. 1

2 Freedom As the chart illustrates, the principle freedom might be responsible for Norway s high degree of democratic quality. Just like the latter, Norway outperformed the sample average with regard to freedom in all years studied. Moreover, after a slight decline between 1992 and 1994, the principle continually improved from a level of 66 to 71 scale points from 1994 to In the remaining years up to 2005, the freedom principle continued to exhibit high score values apart from smaller dips in 2001 and The progress in the late 1990s can mainly be attributed to the public sphere function. The main source of the increase in the public sphere function is linked to a vitalisation of the civil society; that membership in humanitarian and human rights organisations increased continually from 1995 up to The same factor, however, is also partly responsible for the minor decreases visible after the turn of the century, as the number of memberships in said civil society organisations appears to drop. At the same time, the comparatively high number of daily newspapers available gradually diminished a development which can be observed in most established democracies. Moreover, an important shortcoming remains the fact that Norway lacks constitutional provisions for freedom of assembly and association. Nevertheless and despite the still fairly low score, Norway ranked among the top ten countries with regard to the public sphere after the turn of the century. Generally, individual liberties are very well-secured in Norway, as reflected in the high score values on most indicators. Once again, as was the case for public sphere, the missing constitutional guarantee of freedom of movement negatively influences the individual liberties score. Furthermore, among the freedom functions, individual liberties varied the most over time, even though no unidirectional trend can be discerned. The rather large fluctuations in various years are all a consequence of changes in the effective freedom of religion. The relapse from 1998 to 1999, for example, might be related to a 1995 law 2

3 which fully implemented compulsory religious education, focusing on Christianity, in public schools by 1999 and which was contested by various religious and secular groups (HRR 1999). In 2001, legal action was taken to facilitate parents requests to exempt their children from parts of the class. Moreover, the Norwegian Humanist Association appealed against the law in the Supreme Court and, after rejection, the European Court of Human Rights (HRR 2003). The latter ruled the mandatory religious instruction to contradict human rights and demanded legal steps to amend the 1995 law (HRR 2005). In addition, the Norwegian government made strong efforts to fight anti-semitism and condemn religious intolerance in early All of these parallel developments may have contributed to the increase in religious freedom visible in the graph of individual liberties between 2002 and Finally, the rule of law function also exhibits comparatively high score values. Similar to the other two functions associated with the freedom principle, rule of law exhibits high degrees of fulfilment on all indicators apart from two constitutional provisions aimed at guaranteeing equality before the law (public trials and fair organisation of the court system). The marginal downturn is caused by less favourable assessments of judicial independence as well as a shrinking confidence in the justice system and police services. Control Just like the previous principle, Norway's control values exceeded the cross-national standard in all 18 years examined. But contrary to the graph for the average of all 30 countries, control exhibits some variation in Norway, especially between 1998 and This pattern is closely mirrored in the function mutual constraints but on a lower level. According to our data, all of the visible up- and downtrends indicate changes in the effective balance between the government and opposition forces in the parliament. When the Labour Party stepped down from govern- 3

4 ment after failing to reach their electoral goal of 36.9 per cent of the votes in the 1997 elections, they were replaced by a minority coalition of the Christian Democratic Party, the Liberal Party and the Centre Party (combined 26.1 per cent of the votes) under the leadership of Kjell Magne Bondevik (NSD). Thereby, the balance of powers in the parliament shifted in favour of the opposition. In 2000, however, this trend was reversed when the new government broke down and the Labour party returned to power. But already in 2002, as a result of the elections in the previous year, the government was handed back to the Christian Democrats who now ruled together with the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party (NSD). This again affected the balance of power positively. In the 2005 elections, finally, the game was repeated, bringing the Labour Party into government once more. Besides mutual constraints, the function competition is responsible for most of the variation in the aggregate principle s score between 2000 and 2006 as well. While remaining stable on a level ranging between 65 and 68 score points up to the end of the 20 th century, at the turn of the century competition suddenly rose. This is a consequence of the already mentioned 2001 elections in which the largest party in Norway, the Labour Party, faced a devastating loss in votes (-10.7 per cent) and seats (-22) whereas especially the second largest Conservative Party gained ground (+6.9 per cent of votes, +15 seats). As a consequence, both the closeness of the electoral outcomes as well as the dispersion of seats in the parliament increased. Four years later, however, the situation changed when the Labour Party managed to extend its lead over the runner-up Progress Party by about 10 percentage points. The third function of the control principle, governmental capability, although exhibiting comparatively high score values, seems to have varied more often than the other control functions over time. After an initial improvement between 1990 and 1991, the function maintained a rather high level, interrupted by dips in 1992, between 1996 and 1997, between 1999 and 2001 (lasting until 2007). All of these developments can be explained by fluctuations in governmental stability, caused by various unforeseen changes in the composition of the governing coalition, one example being the already mentioned failure of the Bondevik government in This latest backslide was further aggravated by declining levels of confidence in the government and of the perceived effectiveness of the executive branch to implement democratic decisions. Moreover, the intrusion of religious pressure groups into government affairs intensified as of This might again be related to the implementation of a law introducing compulsory religious education into public schools as already discussed above. Generally, the ties between the state and the church are considered to be traditionally quite strong in Norway, which is e.g. reflected in the fact that the constitution requires half of the cabinet members to belong to the state church (HRR 2002). 4

5 Equality As for the third of the democratic principles too, Norway constantly exceeded the sample average of equality by about scale points. However, while the average degree of equality across all countries under study slowly increased over time, the Norwegian score rather seems to have been regressing, at least since In the 2000s, this decline was mainly due to the function participation, with regard to which Norway is among the five to six best performing countries in general because of rather high values on most indicators. The gradual downturn in the last eight years under study, however, can be attributed to a decreasing representativeness of electoral turnout in terms of various socio-demographic characteristics (gender, age, income and education) as well as lower participation of citizens in petitions and demonstrations and thus larger gaps between age and gender groups thereof. The graph of the function representation shows some similarities with participation. In fact, it is also responsible for the most prominent dip in equality between 2000 and 2001, which corresponds to a decline in issue congruence, i.e. the congruence between the distributions of left and right preferences among voters and parties in parliament. Before 2001, representation was largely stable in Norway. Transparency, finally, scores highest among the equality functions but also exhibits the most variance over time. After a short phase of stability in the early 1990s, transparency improved remarkably between 1993 and This can to some degree be explained by reducing levels of corruption but above all by progress in terms of the political restrictions of media freedom and the government s willingness communicate in a transparent manner. The latter, however, mainly caused the function to backslide between 1996 and This could be related to the inability of the centre-right government coalition at the time to communicate with one voice (SGI 2009). During the 2000s, transparency more or less levelled off around 85 scale points. The fluctuations visible in the graph within this period can be attributed to all of 5

6 the aforementioned indicators as well as, additionally, the legal constraints exerted upon media operations. The democracy profile of Norway Legend: (Principles and Functions) Principle: Freedom: RL (Rule of Law), IL (Individual Liberties), PS (Public Sphere). Control: GC (Governmental Capability), MC (Mutual Constraints), CO (Competition). Equality: TR (Transparency), PAR (Participation), REP (Representation). As the discussion of the individual principles and function has already demonstrated, Norway has a very high quality of democracy. This is clearly reflected in the spider charts above, which illustrate the country s democratic profile at three specific points in time and in comparison with the average of all 30 countries in the Democracy Barometer sample. In all three years displayed, Norway outperformed or reached the mean of all 30 countries with respect to all of the nine democratic functions. Nevertheless, some differences can be observed. Overall, the equality functions transparency and participation score above average, especially in Similarly, the freedom functions individual liberties, rule of law and public sphere also show comparatively high degrees of fulfilment. Additionally, Norway outperforms the countries' average also with respect to its governmental capability. In sum, Norway might thus be considered a more egalitarian than libertarian democracy, which does not come unexpected from one of the Northern European countries. 6