Elin Haugsgjerd Allern

Political parties and interest groups Disentangling complex relationships

According to a widespread assumption, party–interest group links are significantly weaker than they used to be. Both sets of organizations, it is said, now prefer autonomy over the constraints implied by close relationships, especially in supposedly ‘cartelized’ established party systems but also in new democracies. In this article, we briefly review existing literature on party–group links and argue that the common wisdom – and this particular aspect of Katz and Mair’s cartel thesis – may need to be qualified. First, we have to define more precisely what we mean when we talk about the relationships in question, not least because they may assume myriad forms. Second, the little empirical research that has been done hints at a good deal of variety, both over time and between polities and parties. Third, we must further explore possible explanations for such differences in party–group relations, including the motives of the actors involved. The substantive articles in this special issue throw new light on all three issues.

A Turn to the Right: The Norwegian Parliamentary Election of September 2013

The parliamentary elections on Monday, 9 September 2013, resulted in the election defeat of the ‘red–green’ coalition of Labour, the Centre Party, and Socialist Left. After nearly eight years in government, the three centre-left parties lost majority in the Norwegian Storting. The result did not come as a big surprise, as the four opposition parties in Parliament had for a long time been in the lead according to the opinion polls, and all of them had promised not to support a new Labour-led government. On 16 October, a new coalition government headed by the Conservatives’ party leader, Erna Solberg, took office, and Norway’s new-right populist party, the Progress Party, entered government for the first time. The government is supported by the Christian People’s Party and the Liberals in Parliament. How and why did this happen?

Inside the Black Box: Parties as Multi-level Organisations in a Unitary State

This article addresses the issue of how parties organise and work across territory in unitary states. Concentrating on policy-making in Norway, it provides a multi-dimensional description of intra-party links and power relations. Norwegian parties tend to be well-integrated, partially governed bottom-up, rather centralised, and to allow significant local autonomy. Hence, the findings support the hypothesis that non-hierarchical elements might develop within parties in unitary, as well as federal, settings. However, the parties examined are still quite far from the stratarchical imperative described in Katz and Mair’s cartel party thesis, and the documented degree of vertical integration and, to a lesser extent, centralisation corresponds to the unitary nature of the state. The article briefly speculates on what might explain the somewhat conflicting nature of Norwegian party organisations. Finally, this case study demonstrates that territorial relationships within parties potentially include a complex web of both formal links and informal interactions.

Survival of a Majority Coalition: The Norwegian Parliamentary Election of 14 September 2009

After an extremely close election race, which culminated on Monday 14 September 2009, the incumbent coalition of the Labour, Centre and Socialist Left parties managed to win another parliamentary majority. The incumbent parties’ joint vote share had dropped since 2005 – yet only by 0.2 per cent. Both main parties on the right – the Conservatives and the Progress Party – increased their scores, but the centre-right opposition was left split and dissatisfied with their overall electoral performance. Hence, the historical red–green alliance of 2005 had, contrary to many political observers’ expectations, survived four years in government and, for the first time since 1993, a sitting Norwegian government had retained power after an election. Why? In this article, the Norwegian parliamentary election of 2009 is described and tentatively explained.

Conclusion: Qualifying the common wisdom

It is widely agreed that the relationships between parties and interest groups help shape the nature of democratic governance. Those relationships are also a key aspect in the literature on the development of party organization and are an integral part of what are widely seen as the two most influential ideas about political parties to have been produced in the past fifty years – Kirchheimer’s ‘catch-all thesis’ and the ‘cartel party thesis’ developed by Katz and Mair. During the twentieth century, against a background of eroding class identity and an increasingly pervasive electronic media, Western political parties moved from being relatively closed communities to more open, professionally-driven structures with less incentive to build or maintain close relationships with particular interest groups. Writing as far back as the 1960s on what he called the end of the mass party and rise of the catchall party, Otto Kirchheimer argued that the future lay in looser and less exclusive links. Writing some thirty years later on the cartel party, Richard Katz and Peter Mair argued that a number of developments, most obviously the increased availability of public subsidies (following the decline of traditional party support), had pushed things even further: having penetrated (and been penetrated by) the state, parties as organizations would become (indeed, had already become) largely detached – if not completely separated – from organized interests or, if they had no such links to begin with, would be largely uninterested in cultivating new ones. Supposedly, parties no longer act as agents for particular interest groups; interest groups make demands on whatever parties are in government. Also, it is argued that in new democracies, party-group links tend, in general, to be relatively weak.

The New Politics of the Welfare State? A Case Study of Extra-Parliamentary Party Politics in Norway

According to the literature on the ‘new politics of the welfare state’, party politics plays a minor role in welfare policy outputs today. In this article, we ask what the degree of politicisation is below the level of government. Focusing on two specific policy areas – pension reform and anti-poverty policy – and both substantive and procedural aspects of politicisation in the case of Norway, we identify party policies and map intra-party decision-making prior to the 2005 general election. We first conclude that neither policy area seemed to be strongly politicised, but nonetheless, there were limits to the ‘de-politicisation’ of welfare policy even in a consensual state like Norway. Hence, we show – or confirm – that counter-forces might exist between and within political parties in advanced industrial societies, yet to varying degrees across welfare policy fields.