Jacob Aars

Contacting as a channel of Political Involvement: Collectively Motivated, Individually Enacted

Citizen-initiated contact with politicians is an increasing, but often neglected, form of political participation. Direct contact fits well with new participation trends that increased individualisation and a single-issue focus have brought forth, and is often interpreted as a participatory form that conforms with such new demands. Yet while political participation through most traditional channels is decreasing, direct-contact increase implies that people are still channelling involvement through the established institutions. Accordingly, this article argues that the significant increase in direct contacting of representatives is not an expression of protest behaviour. On the contrary, contacting shows strong adherence to representative democracy. It is related to conventional modes of political participation, above all party-related activities. This study examines contacting in relation to other forms of political involvement, using data from the Norwegian Citizenship Survey. The analyses reveal that even after removing from the analyses those who themselves hold public office, citizen-initiated contacting is related to party activity. Political ties are more important in explaining contacting than is the socio-economic status of the contactors.

Tensions and cooperation in a multilevel system: Integrating district councils in city government in Bergen

Abstract This article deals with the fact that central–local relations in a multilevel system often seems to create tensions. A district council reform in the city of Bergen, Norway intended to decentralise authority within the political system of the city ended up with a more centralised relationship between central and local levels. With this observation as a point of departure we categorise decentralisation according to the degree of discretion available for the local level concerning a) objectives and b) means to reach the objectives. By combining these dimensions we identify two types of decentralisation; administrative and political. We claim that all central–local relations will exert features of both types. The mere presence of political bodies is therefore not sufficient to characterise a specific relation as politically decentralised. We conclude the article by discussing some conditions for successful multilevel governance. The conditions draw on experiences from the Bergen district reform, but may have relevance in a wider context.

The Careers of European Local Councillors: A Cross-National Comparison

This article is concerned with the political careers of local councillors. More specifically, the key question is about a possible professionalization of councillor careers at the local level in Europe. If the careers of local councillors tend to follow a number of standard routes, to what degree can these be perceived of as professionalized? In our effort to identify dominant courses of mobility, we distinguish between three successive stages of councillor careers: Pre-electoral experiences, in-council orientations, and future career aspirations. In the ideal model of professionalization there is a strong link between career stages. Professionalization is seen as a unidirectional process by which an occupational group gradually acquires the traits of a profession. By and large, local political careers in European countries do not adhere to the linear model of professionalization. Instead, a fits-and-start model seems more suitable, indicating that professional careers to a large extent are shaped incrementally, through learning and practical experience.

Independent Lists in Norwegian Local Politics

Political parties and local politics are uneasy bedfellows. Since parties tend to focus on nationally-based cleavages, they frequently draw attention away from genuinely local affairs. Furthermore, local political issues are often incompatible with party cleavages. Yet, local politics is in most western countries party politicised. Furthermore, the party systems found at the local level are, to a great extent, blueprints of national party systems. Generally, the Scandinavian countries are highly party-based local government systems, with the national parties present in most local elections.

Representativeness and Deliberative Politics

Recent years have witnessed a world-wide decrease in local political interest and participation, reflected in marked falls in turnout in local elections. In Norway, only 59 per cent of voters went to the polls in the last local elections, the lowest figure since the 1920s. This decline of interest in politics is also evident in an increasing unwillingness among the public to seek party membership (Bjorklund, 1998: 51), while political parties often report problems of recruiting candidates for local elections (Rasmussen, 1993: 113).

The 22 July Terrorist Attacks in Norway: Impact on Public Attitudes towards Counterterrorist Authorities

Did the terrorist attacks in Norway affect citizens’ attitudes to security-related institutions and policies? To answer this question this study pools two cross-sectional surveys, collected shortly before and after the 2011 terrorist attacks, to determine the attacks’ effects on peoples attitudes. One important finding is that general support for the institutions responsible for security increased slightly, whereas specific support for government agencies capability to prevent and cope with crises decreased markedly. A second important finding concerns the potential for politicisation of crises: On issues of security, the distance between right-wing voters and other party voters increased after the attack. Irrespective of party attachment, Norwegians have become less satisfied with governmental policies on security-related issues, but dissatisfaction has increased significantly more among right-wing than among left-wing voters. Thus, even in a country where politicians responded to the crisis with an appeal to togetherness and common values, citizens’ attitudes on security policies were politicised.

Does Democracy Decrease Fear of Terrorism

ABSTRACT Fear is an integral part of terrorism. Fighting fear can thus be a crucial part of counterterrorist policies. In the case of terrorism, citizens look to the state for protection. Yet, most studies of terrorist fear emphasize individual-level factors. We lack studies that link fear to features of the state, especially whether democratic states are capable of reducing fear among its citizens. Our study aims to fill part of this research gap by asking whether democratic government reduces or increases fear of terrorism. We find that there is substantial cross-country variance in citizens’ fear of terrorism. The results suggest that fear is more widespread among citizens in non-democratic countries compared to citizens in democratic countries. Actual exposure to terrorist attacks has no impact on citizens’ fear of terrorism when we account for whether the country is a democracy or not. Hence, democratic government displays resilience towards fear mongering.

Ties That Bind? Effects of Inter‐level Mobility on MP Attitude to Local Government in Two Scandinavian Countries

The aim of this article is to examine to what degree the movement of elected representatives from local to central level affects the outlook of the ones who move ‘upwards’. Two Scandinavian countries – Sweden and Norway – serve as comparative cases. In both countries a high share of members of parliament (MPs) has served as local councillors before being elected to parliament. According to conventional wisdom, this high share of inter-level mobility would strengthen ties between government tiers. Hence, parliamentarians with local political background are assumed to have greater confidence in the capacities of local government. It turns out that Sweden corresponds to this assumption, while the Norwegian results to some extent contradict the same hypothesis. In the Norwegian case, MPs who previously held office as local councillors are actually more sceptical towards local government than MPs with no experience from local politics. In the last section of the article a number of explanations for the disparate findings are being discussed. For one, it appears to be a higher level of controversy related to local government in Norway than in Sweden. In turn, this accounts for some of the scepticism being expressed by the very MPs who themselves have held local office. Second, greater financial dependency in the Norwegian case creates incentives for strategic action which, in turn, might undermine confidence between levels of government. These are strategies that are harder to conceal vis-a-vis MPs who have themselves gained experience from local politics.

Electing Mayors with the Supplementary Vote Method: Evidence from Norway

Abstract Both Norway and England have used the supplementary vote (SV) method to elect mayors. SV was intended to elect mayors with a broad popular mandate, and deemed easy for voters to use. Previous research on English mayoral elections focusing on the supply side of the elections has found that voters supporting minority candidates with their first vote face difficulties using the optional second vote to choose among the remaining two top-candidates in municipalities where there are many candidates in the race. A close race, on the other hand, seems to give voters a helping hand in making this choice. Drawing on these findings, we link data on the 48 Norwegian mayoral races to survey data to further explore how the supply side of the elections and individual voter resources affect effective voting and use of the optional second vote. We use both standard logistic regression and multi-level models as statistical tools. The result reveals that 27 out the 48 elected mayors in Norway came out as majority winners (more than 50 per cent of the votes). The analysis suggests that the supply side of the elections is of minor importance for whether voters use their second vote or not. The probability of using the second vote is reduced by age, and voters who claim to understand how the electoral system works use the second vote more frequently. The analysis also reveals considerable variation in the number of first and second votes for the top two candidates (effective votes) between municipalities, and the results suggest that this variability may be explained partly by the closeness of the elections. Voters in municipalities with competitive mayoral races are more likely to vote effectively than voters in municipalities with less competitive elections. At the individual level party members are more likely to vote ineffectively.

Countering Fear: Democratic States’ Ability to Ease Citizens’ Fear of Terrorism

Fighting fear is a crucial part of counterterrorist policies. Faced with terrorism, citizens look to the state for protection. Therefore, our chapter links fear of terrorism to features of the state, especially whether democratic states are capable of reducing fear among its citizens. We employ a cross-national comparative approach using data from the 2014 World Values Survey on a sample of 57,294 individuals across 49 countries. We find that there is substantial cross-country variance in citizens’ fear of terrorism. The results suggest that fear is more widespread among citizens in non-democratic countries compared to citizens in democratic countries. Actual exposure to terrorist attacks has no impact on citizen’s fear of terrorism when we account for whether the country is a democracy or not.