The Rise of the Norwegian Parliament

Studies in Norwegian Parliamentary Government

Hilmar Rommetvedt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781135774912
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Politica

This work presents eight studies of different but interrelated aspects of parliamentary government in post-war Norway. Split into three sections, it focuses on the formation of government, organization of parliament and the changing relations between parliament, executives, and organized interests.

CHAPTER 1
Pluralization and the Rise of Parliament: An Introduction

Every traveller who, curious in political affairs, enquires in the countries which he visits how their legislative bodies are working, receives from the elder men the same discouraging answer. They tell him, in terms much the same everywhere, that there is less brilliant speaking than in the days of their own youth, that the tone of manners has declined, that the best citizens are less disposed to enter the chamber, that its proceedings are less fully reported and excite less interest, that a seat in it confers less social status, and that, for one reason or another, the respect felt for it has waned.

Lord Bryce

DECLINE AND RISE OF PARLIAMENT

There is hardly any doubt that every traveller who, curious in political affairs, would visit Norway in the 1960s and 1970s and enquire how the Norwegian Parliament, the Storting, was working, would get the same answer as the one Lord Bryce predicted in 1921, in his description of The Decline of Legislatures’.¹ Not only older men would say that the Storting had declined since 1884, when the principle of parliamentarism was established in Norway under the slogan ‘all power in this hall’. They would characterize the Storting as a rubberstamping institution, or what we in Norway call a sandpåstrøingsorgan, an institution doing nothing but sprinkle sand on the ink the government has used to write its proposals.

The Norwegian Storting was established at the constituent assembly at Eidsvoll in 1814.2 During the Napoleonic wars, the union of Denmark-Norway sided with Napoleon, and Sweden with his adversaries. The Allies promised the successor to the Swedish throne that he would get Norway if he joined them in subduing France. After Napoleon’s defeat, the king of Denmark signed the treaty of Kiel in January 1814, ceding Norway to the king of Sweden. The Danish vice regent in Norway, Crown Prince Christian Frederik, repudiated the treaty and called together the most influential men in Norway to an assembly at Eidsvoll. The delegates to this assembly called for a liberal constitution and decided that the people should elect deputies to a constituent national assembly. The idea of the sovereignty of the people had prevailed.

The 112 representatives to the constituent assembly at Eidsvoll represented the towns, the army and navy, and the rural districts. They included land-owning farmers, merchants, industrialists and government officials. On 17 May, the constitution was signed and sealed, and Christian Frederik was elected king of a free, sovereign and independent Norway. With this, Norway had established its constitution and founded its national assembly—the Storting. Even though Norway was forced into a union with Sweden, the Norwegians managed to retain the major elements of the constitution, including the Storting.

The constitution was based on the principles of sovereignty of the people, separation of powers, and human rights. Forty-five per cent of all men above the age of 25 were given the right to vote in 1814.³ The principle of separation of powers was abandoned in 1884 when the principle of parliamentarism achieved its breakthrough after several years of conflict between the Norwegian Storting and the king in Sweden. The king lost his freedom to choose his advisors, and the parliament established authority over the executive. However, the struggle for power between the Norwegian Storting and the king in Sweden continued for several years. In 1905 the struggle came to an end. The king refused to sanction the Storting’s resolution on the establishment of separate Norwegian consulates. The Storting declared that the Swedish-Norwegian union was dissolved. Unwillingly, the Swedes accepted the situation. Norway had gained full independence.

The Storting definitely proved its power vis-à-vis the king in 1884 and 1905. According to Norwegian political mythology those were the heydays of the Norwegian Parliament. There is widespread opinion that after those peaks were reached the Norwegian Parliament declined. Subsequently, the decline of parliament was followed by a rise of corporatism. The ‘formative moment’ of corporatism occurred during the economic crisis in the 1930s.⁴ The definitive breakthrough of corporatism in Norway came after World War II.⁵

During the first post-war decades the lack of power in the hall of the Storting was conspicuous. This was due to the fact that important decisions were made in the corporate channel, and that the Labour governments could control a majority of MPs. In his analysis of numerical democracy and corporate pluralism in Norway, Stein Rokkan declared that The crucial decisions on economic policy are rarely taken in the parties or in parliament: the central area is the bargaining table where the government authorities meet directly with the trade union leaders, the representatives of the farmers, the smallholders, and the fishermen, and the delegates of the Employers’ Association’.⁶

When Robert B. Kvavik studied interest groups in Norwegian politics, he was ‘surprised to discover the absence of “lobbyists”’ in the Norwegian Parliament.⁷ The responses of representatives of more than 500 organizations to a question asking them to weight ‘the most important channels for affecting implementation of group demands’, showed that ‘parliamentary institutions receive an exceedingly weak evaluation’. They ‘expressed a number of reasons why parliament was avoided as a contact point. Most felt that little could be done on a parliamentary level. They supported the finding that legislation was shaped in the administration; once in parliament, the lines were fixed. Legislation was best influenced at an early stage of formulation… Leaders of all the interest organizations reflected their preference for the corporate channel’.⁸

Some years later, Gudmund Hernes summarized the findings of a major study of power relations in Norway. The first of the long-term trends in the development of the political and economic system to which he drew attention was ‘the weakening of the position of the parliament. …There is widespread agreement among power holders on how power relations have changed: away from the Storting and towards the public administration and interest organizations’.⁹

There is no doubt that most Norwegian scholars and political observers in the 1960s and 1970s, and even in the 1980s, would subscribe to the ‘decline of legislature’ thesis. This understanding has changed, however, and the present situation is quite different. In his analysis of organized democracy in Norway, Johan P. Olsen found that Variations in the political significance of the Storting do not follow a pattern of steady decline from a peak during the 1880s. Rather, the data suggests an ebb-and-flow perspective’. His interpretation was that ‘during the last part of the 1970s the Storting became a more rather than a less significant institution’.¹⁰ The studies presented in this volume show many examples or indicators of what we—without being too precise—may call the rise of parliament. By the end of the twentieth century the Storting was much more active than ever before. This is clearly demonstrated by the data presented in this book. A few examples may illustrate the point.

In the first half of the 1960s government ministers had to answer approximately 280 questions and interpellations each year. By the end of the 1980s this figure had grown to more than 750 questions and interpellations each year.¹¹ Question time queries and interpellations are submitted by MPs in writing and answered orally by the ministers. In 1996 the Storting set up two new arrangements for questions to ministers: (1) A socalled oral question time, where government members have to give immediate answers to questions that are put to them orally by the MPs; and (2) written questions to be answered in writing. During the 1998/99 session, ministers had to answer a total of 1,294 questions put to them by M...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES
• PREFACE
• CHAPTER 1: PLURALIZATION AND THE RISE OF PARLIAMENT: AN INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER 2: FROM CONSENSUAL MAJORITY PARLIAMENTARISM TO DISSENSUAL MINORITY PARLIAMENTARISM
• CHAPTER 3: PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEES: PERFORMANCE, STRUCTURAL CHANGE AND EXTERNAL RELATIONS
• CHAPTER 4: REORGANIZING THE POLICY-MAKING PROCESS: COMMITTEE CHANGE AND ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS
• CHAPTER 5: COALITION GOVERNMENTS AND THE MANAGEMENT OF PARTY RELATIONS
• CHAPTER 6: FROM CORPORATISM TO LOBBYISM? PARLIAMENTS, EXECUTIVES AND ORGANIZED INTERESTS IN DENMARK AND NORWAY
• CHAPTER 7: THE IMPACT OF LOBBYISM
• CHAPTER 8: THE CENTRAL ASSEMBLY OF THE PERIPHERY
• CHAPTER 9: ‘REGIONOIL’ POLITICS AND POLICY