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Scholarship have proposed a resource curse hypothesis arguing that an abundance of natural resources stimulates economic policy choices and rent-seeking, creates conflicts over the distribution of wealth, and ultimately could lead to civil war. A demonstration that oil wealth dissatisfaction most likely contributes to the decline in political trust in Norway is presented.

This article compares the Swiss and Norwegian European policies. It combines an analysis of the sectoral interests among the elite, based on a qualification of Katzenstein's small-state/flexible adjustment thesis, and an analysis of the referendum behaviour, based on survey data. At the first level, it shows that the structure of each state's economic dependence on the European Union (EU), on the one hand, and the threat of liberalization among domestic sectors of the economy, on the other, were more decisive than the 'liberal' or 'social' pattern of adaptation to international changes in shaping Swiss and Norwegian elite's attitude towards European integration. At the second level, it suggests that, if taking part in the EU project - be it through full membership or through membership in the European Economic Area- is not perceived as an economic necessity, cultural and political factors can have a more decisive impact than economic factors on the voters' decision.

This article compares two spatial models of party competition: (a) the traditional proximity model and (b) the directional model of voter choice. The article first lays out the differences between the two models in multiparty systems. The traditional proximity model makes no clear prediction about the spatial structure of political parties; the directional model predicts that optimal placement for parties will be along the circumference of a circle at a moderate distance from the center. Both theories have implications for overtime strategy and the success of new political parties. Traditional proximity theory emphasizes movement toward a location with high density of voters, while directional theory emphasizes the importance of a distinct directional strategy. The authors examine the Norwegian political system from 1969-1985 and the Swedish system from 1979-1982 and find the directional theory more strongly supported.

The Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway International Journal of Comparative Sociology Vol.40 (1999) pp. 117-140 The Thatcher and Reagan revolutions initiated a decade of pro-market reforms in [...]

TORIL AALBERG [**] A Study of Equality Ideals and Attitudes toward Current Policies [*] ABSTRACT The Thatcher and Reagan revolutions initiated a decade of pro-market reforms in a large number [...]

Comparative work on reconstruction and peace building in war-torn countries is dominated by a macro-oriented approach, focusing on structural political reforms, legal issues, disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of (rebel) soldiers, and repatriation of the displaced. This article offers a different perspective, examining micro-level determinants of reconciliation. Earlier research indicates that political attitudes in post–ethnic conflict societies are shaped by ethnic affinity. A large literature on the importance of contextual conditions for human behavior would suggest that ethnic composition of the local population and physical proximity to the conflict zone also should affect individual support for peace and reconciliation. To test these propositions, we draw on a geo-referenced survey of the Macedonian population that measures respondents' perception of the 2001 civil conflict. Contrary to expectations, the spatial and demographic setting exerts only feeble impacts on individuals' support for the Framework Agreement. Several years after the conflict was settled, the survey data reveal a strongly divided Macedonian society where ethnicity trumps all other individual and contextual factors in explaining the respondents' preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Electoral turnout in Norway has been declining over a long period for local elections and, at the four most recent Storting elections, turnout has been at a lower level than in the preceding 25 years. This article investigates whether the fall in turnout generalises to other forms of political participation and political involvement. Data from the Norwegian Election Studies 1965–2001 and the Norwegian Values Studies 1982–1996 are analysed. In contrast to the decline of turnout, the authors find that the broader political activity of citizens has increased. The rise in political involvement and activism is quite widespread, covering dimensions like political interest, political discussion and political action. The increase includes forms of participation where political parties play a strong role and in direct action where parties are supposed to be less important. Education is strongly associated with most forms of civic participation and the rise in educational levels normally leads to an increase in participation rates. Data show that women are now as active as men in most dimensions of participation. In Norway, turnout at elections displays one pattern over time, while other indicators of political participation and involvement show different trajectories. There is no general civic decline. Using political involvement and participation as a criterion for judging the state of democracy, and taking into account the whole set of indicators studied in this article, one may reasonably conclude that Norwegian civic democracy is in better health than if one focused only on the fall in electoral turnout. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the original Downs (1957) conceptualization to the Endow and Hinich (1984) reformulation, ideology has been the key organizing dimension for electoral competition in the spatial model. The unidimensional spatial model is best suited to responsible multiparty systems where left-right position is known to be an important determinant of individual political behaviour. We contrast the traditional spatial model with the directional model recently proposed by Rabinowitz and Macdonald (1989) and test the models using data from six northern European democracies. Based on 57 different parties, the results suggest that even in this unidimensional ideological context the cleavage-oriented directional model provides a better explanation of mass attachments to political parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature suggests two major theoretical explanations for public resistance to taxation. The first emphasizes a cognitive, instrumental, utility-maximizing response to objective elements of taxation and government spending. The second treats contemporary tax revolts as the result of more enduring ideological predispositions. disaffection from politics in general and the result of social mobilization h anti-government protagonists. In this article we confront the self-interest model and the symbolic politics model with empirical evidence at both the aggregate level and at the micro-level. In the macro-analysis we examine the relationship between the level of taxation and the acceptance of tax cheating in twelve Western nations; in the micro-analysis we perform a more detailed study of Norway, employing `survey data. The over-all results clearly show the strongest support for the symbolic politics model, while the self-interest explanation is only weakly supported by the data. An important finding is that political attitudes and values have their strongest and most consistent impact among the politically uninvolved. This result further substantiates the symbolic politics model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many modern democracies have experienced a decrease in citizen support for government in recent decades. This article examines attitudes toward public policy as a plausible theoretical explanation for this phenomenon. The connection between public policy and support for the political regime has received considerable academic attention in the United States. Yet very little comparative work has examined whether citizens' policy preferences are related to a decline in diffuse support across different political systems. This article offers a clearer, more concise theoretical specification of the hypothesized relationship between public evaluations of policy outputs and support for the political regime. After specifying the theoretical concerns more succinctly, the article analyzes data from Norway, Sweden and the United States for the quarter century from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. The analysis reveals that shifts in evaluations of foreign policy and race-related policies help explain change in political trust for all three countries despite differences in the political systems. Moral issues, such as abortion, however, have no impact on political trust in any of the countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine how clearly citizens in Norway and the United States perceive the ideology and issue positions of parties and candidates. Following in the tradition of Campbell & Valen (1966) and Granberg & Holmberg (1988). we ask: Does the political system matter? We also consider the role of individual sophistication and whether sophistication has different consequences in the two cultural settings. Across a broad range of issues, we find that citizens in Norway have a sharper view of party positions than those in the United States. Sophistication influences the clarity of issue perception in both countries. However, the hypothesis that sophistication matters more in the US is not well supported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A substantial literature over the years has focused on the relationship between political alienation and ideology. Much of this research contends that conservatives are more alienated than liberals because philosophically they believe that the best government is that which governs least. A close reading of the literature, however, reveals little consistency in the empirical findings. Survey data from Norway, Sweden, and the United States are used to provide a more extensive and consistent test of the hypothesis. Ideology is defined as both left/right self-identification and policy preference on economic and "new politics" issues. The evidence reveals that in Scandinavia higher levels of alienation are found among conservatives, whereas in the US the left has been consistently more alienated, except on "new politics" issues. The discrepancy between the citizen's preferred ideological orientation and that which the public perceives the government to take, is used to explain the different findings for the three countries and the shifts in the relationship between ideology and alienation across time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines mass perceptions of political parties in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, West Germany, the Netherlands and France. For each country we construct a map in which the parties, voters, and demographic groups are located to provide a visual and spatial overview of the structure of electoral competition. Two dimensions are adequate for displaying the main ideological cleavages in each of the countries. In each case there is a strong left-right dimension combined with a more culturally defined and usually weaker second competitive dimension. In general, we find that no parties occupy the center areas of the space, which are usually dense with voters. This leads us to question the adequacy of the traditional spatial model of elections for describing competition in multiparty systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we investigate the impact of welfare state issues on the outcome of the Norwegian parliamentary election of 1985. With data from the NSD Commune Data Base we demonstrate that the gains of Labour were positively correlated with the peripheral location of the commune, the level of unemployment, the proportion of disabled pensioners, and a weak supply of health services. The results from a multivariate analysis of survey panel data show that the increase in Labour vote was strongest among those who said that the health issue was most decisive for their choice of party. Despite strong statistical controls some regional effects remain, and we speculate that regions also may carry a symbolic significance that is not captured by traditional aggregate indicators. Finally, we combine the two data sets to see if aggregate variables exhibit a direct contextual impact on individual behaviour. The results of this effort are mostly negative, a finding that invokes a renewed discussion of incompatibilities of micro and macro analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]