Norway

Center And Periphery

Knut Heidar

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429978265
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Norway is by history and culture very much a Scandinavian nation with its own unique profile. This book analyzes the factors that have shaped the sociocultural fabric of Norwegian politics. One of the most important themes Heidar analyzes is the power of the periphery, both in social as well as geographic terms. In the geographic sense, Norway is a small nation, and although it has been able to remain economically and politically stable, it is situated on the European flank. It is therefore dependent upon and vulnerable to external economic and political developments. In critical periods of its history, Norway's size has made it an object rather than an initiator of change. In the social sense, Norway has existed as a?periphery nation?. It is this multi-dimensional center-periphery situation that has been crucial in shaping institutional structures and practices. Another theme that Heidar explores is Norway's enduring egalitarian culture. This book focuses on the primacy of politics in Norway and the role played by the nineteenth-century peasant movement and the twentieth-century labor movement in shaping modern Norway. Today, political and cultural traditions are challenged by the force of globalization. Norway is defined as a stable, parliamentary, multiparty system with a social democratic tradition. It was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Book of 2001.

1
Small-Scaled, Egalitarian, and Territorially Based

But it still lies there. Huge Norway,

sea washed and grand, with business and peaks.

If you seek them—the round views and the sky light—

don’t stay up there, or let dreams carry you away.

There is a time of need and we are part of the world,

But from a different country

that the noblemen did not quite conquer

So we don’t bow as deep as the neighbors do,

it was too steep up here.

—Rolf Jacobsen, from the poem “Annerledeslandet” (“Different Country”), translated by the author

On May 1, 1960, the U.S. Air Force pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down in a U-2 spy plane over Sverdlovsk in the Soviet Union. His destination was Bodø, Norway. Global cold war logistics had placed Norway centrally on the United States–Soviet Union axis, as Norway bordered some of the most sensitive U.S.S.R. military areas on the Kola Peninsula. Membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has been the main pillar of Norwegian security policy since 1949. Within the NATO alliance, however, Norway has been both at the center and at the periphery: It was centrally located on the global map of cold-war nuclear missile strategies, but it has resided on the geographic flank of the “European theater.” Among its continental allies, Norway’s Atlantic, Anglo-American leanings placed the country at the periphery—at least in political terms. The feelings have to some extent been mutual: Twice Norwegian voters have rejected membership in the European Union (in 1972 and in 1994). After heated debates, including stern warnings about isolationism, economic failures, and loss of political influence from the Norwegian “establishment,” the voters nevertheless decided (like the Swiss) that Brussels was too far away.

Norway has been a quiet corner in postwar European developments with few dramatic appearances in the international arena. During the 1990s, its presence was only sporadically noted in the global media, for example, at the height of the Middle East peace process, during the 1994 Winter Olympics, and when resuming commercial whaling. “The Oslo channel” hit the international headlines in August 1993. Secret as well as semiprivate diplomacy had produced an agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) about a gradual development toward mutual recognition and peace. The accord was signed at a White House ceremony in September of the same year. During the Lillehammer Olympic Winter Games in 1994, Norway was again in the media; these were, according to the chairman of the International Olympic Committee, Mr. Samaranch, “the best winter Olympic games ever.” The praise was greeted with immense pride. With less pride, however, but with all the more stubbornness, the Norwegian government made international news in the early 1990s–especially in the United States–with its decision to resume whale hunting, defying the ban imposed by the International Whaling Commission. Norway argued that the whale population was not threatened and that responsible hunting was a question of biologically sound harvesting—a decision that no doubt reinforced a view of the cruelty of Norwegian huntsmen.

A Small Country

Size matters when it comes to visibility on the world stage. It will be argued in this book that it also matters in shaping political systems. This is both a question of what external dependency does to shape internal political processes and of what population size—combined with geography—does to mold the structure of internal politics.

Norway is undoubtedly a small country. With a population of just over four million, it is about the size of Minnesota, incidentally a U.S. state hosting many inhabitants of Scandinavian descent. Geography is also important. Norway is situated at the European flank. It is sparely populated and has a very long coastline and a mountainous inland terrain, making it difficult to establish and maintain lines of communications. The country faces the Atlantic Ocean, and Norwegians have historically been very dependent on the sea for communication and commerce. The logistic “stretch” of the country made strong local government a political necessity. The periphery remained strong throughout the process of nation-building. The center was a necessity, not a national pride.

Norway is both an old and a young nation. The old Norse kingdom was founded during the age of the Vikings in the eighth to the tenth century but vanished under Danish rule during the “national decline” in the fourteen and fifteenth centuries. National revival came in the century between 1814 and the declaration of independence in 1905. In 1814, Norway, in the post-Napoleonic turmoil, broke free from the union with Denmark, then saw its notables create the nominally still effective Constitution, and finally was forced into a union with Sweden.

Norway is by history and culture very much a Scandinavian nation. Not only is Norway historically bound to both Denmark and Sweden, but the culture and society of all three countries have been shaped by similar forces: a Protestant state religion and languages that are mutually understandable.

Historical Background

State power and political processes have played a crucial role in shaping the sociocultural fabric of Norwegian social life. This is illustrated by Norway’s birth as a modern nation. The Constitution of 1814 was the operative instrument by which Norwegian independence from Denmark was sought. The Constitution—celebrated by Norwegian school children on May 17—was based on principles borrowed from the American constitution, British political practices, and French Enlightenment thought. It is still operative, although with numerous amendments, and plays an important role in government (though not as important as in the United States). One example is the rule that makes representation to Parliament from peripheral districts disproportionately strong. Norway has no commission to adjust constituency size or its number of representatives according to population changes. In this respect the Constitution violates the “one vote, one weight” principle.

In Chapter 2, I briefly present the historical background of nearly four centuries of Danish rule and the confederate union with Sweden from 1814 to 1905. In 1905 Norway gained full independence and shipped in a new monarchy from Denmark (prince) and the United Kingdom (princess) to secure international credibility and support. Prince Carl of Denmark was renamed Haakon VII. There had been six previous kings named Haakon in the old Norse kingdom, and it was hoped that the renaming of the new king would lend credibility to the new state. The forces of nationalism and the late independence were important factors in shaping Norwegian political culture in the twentieth century.

Since 1814 successive waves of peripheral political movements have captured state power. First, the liberal peasant movement of the late nineteenth century toppled the “public official’s state” in 1884. They forced parliamentarism on a belligerent ancien régime. The second wave came with the workers’ movement when the Labor Party entered government in 1935. Both peasants and workers were political armies of the periphery—in social as well as geographical terms. The political turbulence of the interwar period reflected not only the international economic crises but also a fundamental change within Norway from an agrarian to an industrial society. One might also include a third peripheral rebellion against the political center—the issue of membership in the European Union, which was debated in the 1970s and again in the 1990s. On both occasions, a broad alliance of central elites were voted down in a national referendum.

Current Setting

World War II changed important parameters in Norwegian politics. From the interwar policy of neutrality, Norway in the late 1940s became fully integrated in the Western bloc. The implicit reliance on British military forces before the war was changed into an explicit military alliance with the United Kingdom and, more importantly, with the United States through NATO membership in 1949. The economy was strongly dependent on shipping services and on the export of raw materials and semifinished products to other OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries. This made Norway’s economy vulnerable to fluctuations in world markets. Norway, however, evolved from one of the poorest nations of Western Europe in the early nineteenth century to one of the riches countries in the world in the late twentieth. Discoveries of large oil and gas reservoirs in the North Sea in the 1970s only partially explain this development.

Politically, Norway is, in comparative terms, a very stable country by any indicator. The Labor Party (which controlled government in 1945–1965, 1971–1972, 1973–1981, 1986–1989, 1990–1997, and again from 2000) created, during its first twenty years in power after 1945, the institutional, economic, and cultural infrastructure for what has been labeled the “social democratic state” or more broadly the “social democratic order.” The major pillars of this order were strong state presence in the economy, state redistribution of wealth to the benefit of the social as well as geographical peripheries, a welfare state caring for citizens from cradle to grave, and a uniform and almost universal state educational system. The culture of egalitarianism surviving from the old Lutheran peasant society was reinforced in this period.

During the decade of the 1970s, with its oil shock and the political “earthquake” triggered by the first European Union referendum, this social democratic order was challenged. The politics of the 1980s and 1990s have in general been variations over the battle between domestic “tradition” and international “modernity,” between social democratic egalitarianism and the new liberalism. The center-right parties took over government from 1981 to 1986 and placed—in a modified form—elements from Thatcherism and Reaganomics on the political agenda. This government’s major goals were to create a more “open society” and to “roll back the frontiers of the state.” The inertia of Norwegian politics moved toward the liberal right during the 1980s, but the referendum over EU membership in 1994 also showed that at least some of the new winds had affected the center more than the periphery. In the referendum of November 1994 in which 89 percent of the electorate participated, 52 percent voted “No” to the European Union. Geographically, the strongholds against EU membership were astonishingly similar to the “No” areas in the 1972 referendum. The situation after 1994, however, was different from 1972, as Norway now was part of the European Economic Area (EEA), which opened the EU “single market” to the EFTA (European Free Trade Association) countries. (See Chapters 4 and 5 for more on the European Union issue.)

Three Themes and One Proposition

Government in Norway shares many characteristics with that in other small West European countries, particularly, Norway’s Scandinavian neighbors: It is a stable parliamentary, multiparty system with a strong social democratic tradition. But Norwegian politics has its own profile, which is brought out by three central and persistent themes: Norway is a small and young state in the European periphery; its politics operates within an egalitarian social structure; and it is marked by the political strength of the periphery.

The first theme developed throughout this book is that the politics of Norway is characterized by Norway being a small state in the European periphery. Norway’s history as a sovereign state has to a large degree been decided by European developments in war and diplomacy—in 1814, 1905, and 1940–1945. As a small country in the Nordic region, Norway has been an object rather than an initiator of change. This goes for the economic, cultural, and political matters alike, although there clearly are significant national adaptations to international trends. Openness and dependency have long characterized Norwegian society and politics, and this dependency has become even stronger since the 1970s due to the oil economy, the general liberalization of world markets, and the impact of the European Union’s single market. This openness has in important respects made an impact on the political process, as reflected in Norway’s strong corporatist structures and sensitivity in matters of national security.

The second theme is focused on the egalitarian culture. In a European as well as a Scandinavian context, Norway was unique in not having a viable aristocracy and in keeping a free peasantry all through the Middle Ages. The political mobilization of the peasantry in the nineteenth century as well as the socialist workers’ movement in the twentieth both emphasized egalitarian values and goals. A Protestant state religion coexisted with a strong Christian lay movement that reinforced egalitarian cultural traits. Until the late nineteenth century, Norway was also—as argued above—a comparatively poor European country with an economy that did not provide a foundation for a substantial upper class.

The third theme characterizing Norwegian politics is the struggle between the center and the periphery. The issues related to this theme have two dimensions, the first stemming from Norway’s position as a nation of the European periphery. These issues are reflected in domestic politics like the European Union issue. Another cluster of issues is generated by the topographical/cultural nature of a country with a long coastline, difficult communications, varied regional economies, and a strong egalitarian culture. The decisionmaking elites at the center of the country have regularly provoked peripheral reactions based on mixed feelings of resentment and dependence. Opposition toward the center, the Oslo elites, has indeed been crucial in shaping institutional structures and practices, giving Norway’s polity and politics their character. It is not surprising that two of Norway’s best-known political scientists/sociologists abroad, Stein Rokkan and Johan Galtung, both made the “center-periphery” analysis the cornerstones of their analyses.

In addition to these three themes, I am putting forth a proposition for further discussion: the primacy of politics. Historically, politics and policies have been crucial in developing Norwegian society. As a theme to characterize contemporary Norwegian politics—in contrast to the politics of other countries—it is perhaps dubious. But in part as a consequence of the three themes characterizing Norwegian politics, social and economic change has often been initiated within the political sphere.

One of Norway’s “good kings” was Magnus the Lawmaker (1263–1280). During his reign, the laws were improved and extended to benefit the whole society. Similarly, the state has played a decisive role throughout Norway’s modern history in shaping society. During the period historians label “the public official’s state” (1814–1884), public officials vigorously advocated and put in place the vital institutions of a modern capitalist economy, such as banks and credit institutions. Bureaucrats and politicians, not entrepreneurs, created the foundations for private enterprise in Norway. Arguably, there is a link between this state-driven capitalism in the nineteenth century and the state-driven welfare state of the successive social democratic governments in the post-1945 era.

The primacy of politics does not mean “command politics,” where absolutist rulers decide what is in the best interests of the country.¹ Rather my proposition emphasizes the importance of negotiated settlements between the various political forces in explaining change, possibly more important in Norway than in countries with a broader-based, more robust civil society.

However, as an early recipient of U.S. Marshall aid (1948–1952) and a founding member of the OECD (1961), postwar Norway developed an economy with a “balanced” public-private mix. Elections were free and human rights respected. The even greater integration of Norway ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Small-Scaled, Egalitarian, and Territorially Based
• 2 People, Society, and History
• 3 Political Institutions
• 4 Political Forces and Political Participation
• 5 Political Economy
• 6 Public Policies
• 7 Foreign Relations
• 8 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index