PAR TY POLITICS VOL 6. No.2 pp.

225-239

Copyright © 2000 SAGE Publications London. Thousand Oaks. New Delhi

RESEARCH NOTE

-
MAPPING THE NORWEGIAN POLITICAL
SPACE
Some Findings From an Expert Survey

Leonard Ray and Hanne Marthe Narud

ABSTRACT

This research note reports the results of an expert survey on party

positions in Norway in 1998. This was a partial replication of the 1989
survey conducted by Laver and Hunt (1992). The survey results are used
to describe important aspects of Norwegian party competition,
including issue ownership and the dimensionality of the Norwegian
political space. These results indicate that important elements of the
centre-periphery cleavage are now much more aligned with the overall
left-right dimension than was the case in 1989. The convergence of
positions of the Socialist Left and Center parties is not surprising, given
the extensive cooperation between them during the 1994 campaign
debate on EU membership. The emphasis on non-material values in the
1997 campaign further contributed to the importance of moral issues
for the second dimension in Norwegian politics. The mismatch between
traditional party alliances and current party positions has made the
process of government formation quite problematic.

KEY WORDS _ cleavage structures _ issue ownership _ Norwegian political parties

It has long been common to discuss politics using spatial metaphors. The
use of the left-right ideological axis can be traced back to the French revol-
ution (Laponce, 1981; Demker, 1996). More recently, political scientists
have begun to use multi-dimensional conceptions of political space as a
basis for general theories of political conflict. Theoretical models incor-
porating spatial conceptions of politics have been used to predict coalition
1354-0688(200004 )6:2;225-239;011414

from the SAGE Social Science Collections. All Rights Reserved.

 PARTY POLITICS 6(2)

formation, explain electoral behavior and account for variations in public

policy.
Empirical research that tests such spatial models of politics requires an
estimation of the positions of actors such as political parties within this
political space. Three principal techniques have been employed to generate
estimates of party positions on policy or ideological dimensions: the analy-
sis of documentary sources; extrapolation from representative surveys of
party leaders, activists, or electorates; and the use of expert surveys. This
research note presents the findings from an expert survey on the policy and
ideological positions of the main Norwegian political parties in 1998. This
survey was conducted 4 months after the September 1997 parliamentary
election.
Earlier research has used expert survey techniques to place Norwegian
parties on ideological and policy dimensions. Castles and Mair (1984) and
Huber and Inglehart (1995) used this technique to estimate party positions
on the left-right ideological dimension. Ray (1999) used an expert survey
to estimate party positions on the issue of European Union (EU) member-
ship. Laver and Hunt (1992) employed the technique to derive party pos-
itions on eight different policy dimensions.
The data gathered by Laver and Hunt provide a relatively comprehensive
picture of the Norwegian political 'space' in 1989. The intervening decade
has, however, been particularly tumultuous in Norway. The 1990s saw the
dramatic return of the issue of EU membership to the political agenda.
Previous research has demonstrated that the struggle over the EU activates
all the underlying cleavages in the Norwegian political system, creating hos-
tility between parties that are normally friends and allies (Rokkan and
Valen, 1964; Bjorklund, 1980; Bjorklund and Hellevik, 1993; Narud,1995;
Valen, 1995). The mobilization of the territorial dimension of Norwegian
politics, including the center-periphery and the urban-rural cleavages, has
reduced the significance of the left-right dimension. The parties of the non-
socialist camp, traditionally close neighbors on the left-right axis, are highly
polarized on the territorial dimension. The increased saliency of the latter
dimension inhibited the traditional bourgeois coalition alternative in the
early 1970s and throughout the 1990s. If the non-traditional patterns of
party cooperation during the second Norwegian EU referendum also
affected or reflected shifts in party positions on issues other than EU
membership, then this period will have altered the shape of the Norwegian
political space.
In this research note, we present the data generated by our expert survey
and use this information to sketch out the Norwegian political space. We
investigate two aspects of party competition in Norway: the patterns of issue
ownership among parties, and the overall dimensionality of the political
space. We discuss changes in party positions since 1989 and the implications
of these for government formation in the late 1990s.

226
 RAY AND NARUD: NORWEGIAN POLITICAL SPACE

Table 1. Policy/ideology dimensions included in present and prior research

Dimension Present research Laver and Hunt (1992)

Strictly comparable Growth vs environment Growth vs environment
dimensions Tax vs spending Tax vs spending
Urban vs rural Urban vs rural
Decentralization Decentralization
Homosexuality Social policy (abortion
Abortion and homosexuality)

Related dimensions Regulation of market forces Public ownership

Relations with NATO Relations with USSR

Incomparable dimensions Immigration Pro/anti-clerical

European integration
Left-right placement

The Expert Survey

The questionnaire format was similar to that used by Laver and Hunt
(1992).1 We selected a limited set of policy scales, which were felt to capture
the important cleavages in the Norwegian party system while providing a
basis for comparison with earlier data. The policy dimensions employed in
our survey, along with those measured by Laver and Hunt, are presented in
Table 1. Four of the dimensions included in Laver and Hunt's survey were
also included in the present survey, while a fifth (abortion and homo-
sexuality) was included as two separate dimensions. Two dimensions used
by Laver and Hunt were included in somewhat altered forms. Positions on
East-West relations were measured in 1989 as relations with the Soviet
Union. This was replaced by a question on the relationship with NATO. The
Laver and Hunt question on public ownership of the means of production
was replaced with a question on government regulation of market forces.
One of Laver and Hunt's dimensions, church-state relations, was simply
dropped from our survey, while three new dimensions were added: immi-
gration, European integration and general left-right placement.
We identified 42 Norwegian political scientists who specialized in con-
temporary Norwegian politics or in party systems and electoral competition.
Questionnaires were mailed out to these scholars in January 1998. The
respondents were asked to provide judgements of party position and issue
salience for eight parties on 11 scales. After 2 weeks, a reminder was sent
to those individuals who had not returned their questionnaires. In all, 30
respondents returned completed questionnaires, giving a response rate of 72
percent.

227
 PARTY POLITICS 6(2)

Table 2. Reliability measures from current and prior expert surveys

No. of Scale Standard deviation of
Author(s) scales size expert judgements SDlscale size
Castles and Mair (1984) 1 11 (avg. range = 1.9)a NA
Laver and Hunt (1992) 8 20 2.4 b .12
Huber and Inglehart (1995) 10 0.87 .09
Ray (1998) 7 0.77 .11
Ray and Narud (1999) 10 20 2.3 h .12
"Standard deviations were not reported by these authors.
bMean standard deviation across all parties and all policy scales included in the survey.

Because the raw data gave us little reason to suspect systematic differences
across experts in their use of the scales, we use the mean judgement as our
estimate of party positions. 2 This is the most transparent aggregation func-
tion, permitting the use of the standard deviation of expert judgements as a
measure of their internal consistency. Summary data on the standard devi-
ations from the present survey and for prior research on Norway are pre-
sented in Table 2. Given the variety of scale sizes employed in prior research,
it is most meaningful to compare standard deviations expressed as a per-
centage of the scale range. According to this measure, the internal consis-
tency of our experts was quite comparable to that of other expert surveys.
Experts showed the most consensus in their evaluations of party positions
on relatively salient dimensions. The average standard deviations for judge-
ments of party position and issue importance on each dimension are pre-
sented in Table 3. As the table indicates, experts were quite consistent in
their judgements of party positions on the left-right dimension, as well as
on salient policy areas such as taxes, regulation, support for rural areas and
European integration.
Agreement among experts was somewhat lower for the other policy
dimensions, and there was a surprising amount of disagreement on the
dimension of decentralization. The question on decentralization was
intended to measure party positions on geographic decentralization; in this
context, the concentration of power and resources in the capital, Oslo. A
closer examination of individual responses on the decentralization question,
as well as informal conversations with some of the 'anomalous' experts,
revealed that some had interpreted the decentralization question as referring
to the transfer of power from the public sector to the private sector and civil
society. Factor analysis techniques were used to determine more sys-
tematically which experts had interpreted this dimension in this way.3 The
four experts who appeared to interpret the decentralization dimension 'ver-
tically' as opposed to geographically were excluded and party positions on
this dimension were recalculated. This resulted in an increase both in the
228
 RAY AND NARUD: NORWEGIAN POLITICAL SPACE

Table 3. Mean standard deviations for each dimension

Mean importance Mean SD of Mean SD of
of issue estimate of estimate of
Scale dimension a party position issue importance

Left-right 13.08 1.84 3.59

Market regulation 13.93 1.88 2.81
European Union 13.88 2.08 3.54
Taxes-spending 13.57 1.82 2.76
Urban-rural 12.84 2.12 3.55
NATO 12.57 2.38 3.76
Immigration 12.28 2.34 3.13
Abortion 11.49 2.34 3.72
Decentralization (corrected) 11.47 3.34 3.65
Decentralization (uncorrected) 11.30 3.92 3.89
Environment 10.80 2.46 3.53
Homosexuality 10.73 2.58 4.19
aIn calculating these mean scores, parties are weighted by parliamentary representation.
Unweighted means are very similar (correlation = .87).

consistency of the expert judgements, as well as in the anticipated corre-

lation between this scale and the measure of party positions on the
urban-rural dimension. While estimates of the importance of dimensions to
parties were slightly less consistent than estimates of the positions of parties
on these dimensions, the overall pattern across dimensions is broadly
similar.4

Patterns of 'Issue Ownership' in Norway

The 'saliency theory' of party competition claims that political parties build
up their support on issues that they have made their 'own' (Budge and Farlie,
1983).5 Their preferences relative to these issues determine their policy pos-
itions in the policy space. 'Directional theory' presumes that issues repre-
sent a choice between two sides of a question and that party competition
takes place on the basis of centrifugal forces (Rabinowitz and Macdonald,
1989; Listhaug et aI., 1990; Macdonald et aI., 1991, 1998). Voters evalu-
ate the party signaling the strongest stand in their ideological direction as
the party 'best' situated on that dimension. Both of these theories suggest
that parties do not all compete on all possible policy dimensions. They
propose instead that one important aspect of any party system is the associ-
ation of certain issues with specific political parties.
The data from the expert survey allow us to map out the pattern of issue
ownership in the Norwegian political system. Drawing upon directional
and saliency theories, we use issue importance and positional extremity as
229
 PARTY POLITICS 6(2)

Table 4. Party extremity and issue salience

Most extreme
parties Highest Correlation of
salience issue importance with
Issue scale Low High parties extremity of position
Taxes-spending 50S Prog Prog .96* * *
Left-right 50S Prog Prog .64
Immigration 50S Prog Prog .91 * *
Environment 50S Prog 50S -.27
Market regulation Prog 50S 50S .91 * *
Abortion 50S Chr Chr .92***
Homosexuality 50S Chr Chr .90**
NATO 50S Con Con .89**
European Union Cen Con Cen .88'''c
Decentralization Cen Con Cen .52
Urban-rural Cen Prog Cen .71 *
* = P < .05; ** = P < .01; *** = P < .OOL
Party abbreviations: Cen = Center Party (Senterpartiet); Chr = Christian People's Party (Kris-
telig Folkeparti); Con = Conservatives (Hoyre); Prog = Progress Party (Fremskrittspartiet);
Sos = Socialist Left Party (Sosialistisk Venstreparti).

indicators of issue ownership. For each issue, we compare the perceived

importance of that issue across parties. Saliency theory suggests that the
party rated as the most interested in that issue is a good candidate for an
'issue owner'. The other indicator of issue ownership is positional extrem-
ity. According to directional theory, the parties with the most extreme pos-
itions on an issue are those that are most strongly associated with that
issue. A position near the center of the political space indicates a party not
interested in an issue.
The parties located at each extreme on the 11 policy dimensions, as well
as those rated as the most interested in that dimension, are reported in
Table 4. An analysis of the perceived importance of policy dimensions to
political parties indicates the strong issue profiles of the Progress and Center
parties. Progress is rated as the party most associated with issues of immi-
gration and taxes, as well as the overall left-right dimension. The Center
Party has an issue profile reflecting its roots in the Norwegian periphery and
is associated with the urban-rural dimension, decentralization, and (oppo-
sition to) European integration. Two of the remaining five issues (abortion
and homosexuality) are associated most strongly with the Christian People's
Party, which also has a strong issue profile on moral questions. Likewise,
the Socialist Left is associated with market regulation and environmental
protection. The remaining issue, NATO, is most strongly associated with
the Conservatives. Interestingly, there is no issue for which the largest party
230
 RAY AND NARUD: NORWEGIAN POLITICAL SPACE

in Norway, the Labor Party, is rated as the most interested party. Likewise,
the Liberals fail to emerge with any distinctive issue profile.
An analysis of the extremity of party positions reveals five patterns of
opposition across these 11 dimensions. The Socialist Left anchors one of the
extremes in three of these patterns of opposition, standing opposite the
Progress Party on the general left-right scale, as well as on taxes-services,
market regulation, environmental protection and immigration. The Social-
ist Left opposes the Christian People's Party on moral questions (abortion
and homosexuality) and stands opposite to the Conservatives on the issue
of NATO.6 The other two patterns of opposition involve the Center Party.
The Center Party and the Conservatives take the most distinctive stands on
the issues of European integration and decentralization, while the Center
Party opposes the Progress Party over the issue of aid to rural areas. On no
issue do the Liberals or Labor hold either extreme position. Labor's elec-
toral success, given its weak issue profile, suggests that voters may be evalu-
ating the party on some policy dimension not included in our survey, or on
non-policy grounds. Prior research suggests that much of the support for
Labor is based upon the party's reputation for competence in government
(see e.g. Aardal and Valen, 1995).
The discussion above suggests that issue extremity and issue salience are
related. This can be demonstrated by correlating a party's extremity on an
issue (measured by its distance from the mid-point of the scale) with the
experts' evaluations of the importance of that issue to the party. These cor-
relations are also presented in Table 4. For all but one of the issue scales,
extremity is positively related to issue importance and eight of these ten posi-
tive correlations are statistically significant at the .05 level or better. These
relationships are all the more impressive given that there are only seven
cases.

The Dimensionality of the Norwegian Political Space

Consistent with the traditional cleavage structure of the party system,

observers have long characterized the Norwegian political space as multi-
dimensional (Rokkan and Valen, 1964; Valen, 1981; Listhaug et al., 1990;
Aardal and Valen, 1995; Narud, 1996; Narud and Oscarsson, 1999). The
most predominant of these dimensions is generally described as an economic
left-right dimension marked by conflict over the redistribution of resources
and state intervention in the economy. The second dimension is usually
associated with the distinctive geographic and economic (and to some extent
cultural) interests of the peripheral parts of Norway, and is best labeled as
a center-periphery dimension. This dimension overlaps somewhat with
another territorial dimension, the urban-rural commodity conflict, associ-
ated with state subventions to agricultural interests. Traditionally, the
center-periphery dimension was associated with three cultural cleavages: a
231
 PARTY POLITICS 6(2)

Table 5. Dimensionality of the Norwegian political space, 1989

Issue Factor 1 Factor 2

Relations with USSR .99 .08
Public ownership .97 .02
Taxes-spending .96 -.06
Growth-environment .82 -047
Urban-rural -045 .88
Clerical 040 .78
Social policy (Values) .56 .75
Decentralization -.01 -.71
Variance explained (%) 52 33
Source: Based on data in Laver and Hunt (1992).

socio-cultural conflict between two versions of the Norwegian language, a

moral conflict articulated by the teetotalist movement, and a religious con-
flict over control of the Lutheran state church. The latter dimension is today
best characterized as a moral-religious dimension, associated with policy
on, for example, abortion and homosexuality.
Laver and Hunt (1992) used their expert survey data from 1989 to test
the dimensionality of the political space in 24 countries. They found a two-
dimensional solution for Norway which corresponds to the traditional dis-
tinction between the left-right cleavage and the center-periphery cleavage.
Territorial issues such as support for rural areas and decentralization were
associated with moral questions such as policy towards homosexuality and
abortion. A replication of this factor analysis using their data is presented
in Table 5. This analysis indicates that a single-factor solution can explain
only about 50 percent of the variance in party positions. Adding a second
factor boosts explanatory power by about 33 percent.
The same technique was applied to the data from the present expert
survey. Again, a two-factor solution yielded the most reasonable fit to the
data. However, the results from this analysis (Table 6) do not reveal the
expected pattern of a left-right cleavage and a center-periphery cleavage.
Instead, three important issues generally associated with the center-periph-
ery cleavage - European integration, decentralization and support for rural
areas -load most strongly on the first factor, along with the traditional econ-
omic left-right issues. The second factor is uniquely composed of the
moral/cultural issues of abortion and homosexuality. This first dimension
now accounts for over 70 percent of the variance in party positions, while
the second dimension boosts explanatory power by only about 20 percent.
The center-periphery dimension appears weaker now that some of its
important elements have merged with the economic left-right dimension.
However, this does not imply that Norwegian politics has become uni-
dimensional. The factor analysis presented above does reveal a second
232
 RAY AND NARUD: NORWEGIAN POLITICAL SPACE

Table 6. Dimensionality of the Norwegian political space, 1998

Issue Factor 1 Factor 2
Market forces -.97 -.00
Relations with NATO .96 .17
Tax-spending .95 .15
Growth--environment .94 -.20
Urban-rural .93 -.30
Immigration .90 .01
European Union .89 -.32
Decentralization .78 -.50
Homosexuality .60 .78
Abortion .42 .87
Variance explained (%) 72 19

factor, which is most strongly associated with moral issues such as abortion
and homosexuality and accounts for a non-trivial amount of the variation
in party positions. A plot of the Norwegian political space using these two
underlying factors demonstrates the importance of both these dimensions
for contemporary political life in Norway. As Figure 1 indicates, the main
parties of the current governing coalition - the Center Party and the Chris-
tian People's Party - are distinguished from the other Norwegian parties by
their position on this second dimension.
The change in dimensionality between 1989 and 1998 cannot be
explained away as an artefact of the differences in dimensions included in
the two expert surveys. When the factor analysis is repeated with only the

1.5
E Lab.
.!!! 10 Red .
• •
~ Sos.
• Con.
g .5 •
co.... 0.0 Lib.
0
•
~ -.5
N -10
.... Gen .
0
t> -1.5
•
Chr.
~
u.. -2.0 •
-15 -10 -.5 0.0 .5 1.0 1.5

Factor 1: Economic left - right

Figure 1. Party positions in the Norwegian political space, 1998
Abbreviations: Lab = Labor Party; Lib = Liberal Party; Red = Red Election
Alliance; for other abbreviations, see Table 4.
233
 PARTY POLITICS 6(2)

most comparable policy dimensions included (taxes-spending, urban-rural,

decentralization, social policy, and the environment), the observed decrease
in the dimensionality of the political space reappears. Something has hap-
pened to bring the economic left-right cleavage and certain aspects of the
center-periphery cleavage into closer alignment.

Cooperation and Convergence

The most dramatic political event in Norway during the 1990s was the 1994
referendum on membership of the European Union. In 1989 the question of
EU membership had only just reappeared on the political agenda. During
the 5 years preceding the referendum, a strong anti-membership coalition
was formed which brought together some of the traditional parties of the
periphery, in particular the Center Party, with the parties of the left, especi-
ally the Socialist Left Party. These parties cooperated extensively during the
anti-EU campaign, even coordinating their positions before parliamentary
debates (Hjelseth, 1995). Much of the change from 1989 to 1998 can be
attributed to shifts in the positions of these two parties.
This can be demonstrated by comparing the positions of these two parties
on two specific policy dimensions, one normally associated with the econ-
omic left-right cleavage, the other with the center-periphery cleavage.
Figure 2 presents the positions of the Norwegian parties on these two dimen-
sions in 1989 and 1998. The 1989 data indicate a relatively weak relation-
ship between support for increased government services and support for
rural areas. While some parties, such as the Conservatives and the Progress
Party, are both on the economic right and in favor of urban interests, the

ffi20
-e 18
=? 16
c:o 14
~l.ab.
12
•
~ 10 sos.
0
8
co.... 6 - --
2 4

~
e 2
O~ __~__~~__~__~~
Gen. Gen .
• __~__~____~__~____~__~ o0
• 1998
1989
o 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20

Pro-spending vs Pro-tax cuts

Figure 2. Party positions in the urban/rural and the taxes/spending dimensions,

1989 and 1998

234
 RAY AND NARUD, NORWEGIAN POLITICAL SPACE

main leftist parties (Socialist Left and Labor) are in the middle of the
urban-rural dimension, while the rural Center Party is in the middle of the
left-right dimension. Party positions on these two issues in 1989 correlate
at only .49.
By 1998, this pattern had changed dramatically. The overall correlation
between positions on these two dimensions is now .85. The largest shifts in
party position involve the Socialist Left, which has adopted a more pro-rural
position, and the Center Party, which has adopted a more leftist position.
This convergence in the positions of the most rural and most leftist parties
accounts for the migration of some issues long associated with the
center-periphery cleavage over to the left-right cleavage. Indeed, this propo-
sition is supported by survey material from the 1997 general election, which
reveals that the EU dimension corresponded closely to the left-right pattern
of the policy space (Narud and Oscarsson, 1999).7
The magnitude and statistical significance of changes in party position are
indicated in Table 7. The most important shifts may be summarized as
follows.
• Compared to 1989 there has been a clear radicalization of the Center
Party, with an increase in the salience of economic issues. In 1998 the
parties of the right, the Conservatives and the Progress Party, define an
economic neo-liberal pole in politics, in opposition to the Socialist Left
and the Center Party. 8
• The Christian People's Party has increased the emphasis on moral values,
with a monopoly on moral issues in 1998.
• Labor and the Liberals are losing their distinctiveness and have drifted
towards the center of the policy space.

Conclusion

The 1990s was a tumultuous decade in Norwegian politics. The data

demonstrate that there was more to the decade than just the appearance on
the political agenda of the issue of EU membership. The positions of parties
on other dimensions have also shifted and the center-periphery dimension
has become a more clearly moral one. This emphasis on moral issues also
reflects the results of the 1997 election, which saw the Christian People's
Party dramatically increase its electoral support on the strength of an appeal
to value-based politics. Meanwhile, the differences between Labor and the
Conservatives have decreased markedly. These shifts have altered the politi-
cal game in Norway.
The positions of parties in the Norwegian political space are now clearly
incompatible with traditional two-block socialist versus non-socialist poli-
tics. The distance between the Socialist Left and Labor parties is greater now,
making cooperation between them more difficult. At the same time, the
235
 Table 7. Changes in position and salience from 1989 to 1998"
Issue Lab Prog Cons Chr Red Cent Soc Lib
Decentralization
Change in position 2.60* 5.13* 3.52* -.13 NA -3.00* -2.64* .16
Change in salience -.30 -4.27* .84 .87 NA 5.31 * 1040* .70
Taxes-services
Change in position 1.96* -.86* 1.88* .23 NA -2.19* -046 2.11 *
Change in salience -.94* -047 .90* -.05 NA 1.25* 3.98* 2.15* '"
;.-
Environment ...,:;>;l
Change in position 1044* -046 1.05* -.25 NA -.17 .10 3.96* -<
Change in salience -2.11 * 3.80* -.11 -.85* NA -.54 1.91 * -2.23*
IV
Urban-rural
'"
0
w r
0\
Change in position -.81 * 2.55* 049 1.65* NA .21 -4.65* .96* ...,
Change in salience .11 3.60* 1.17* .01 NA 1.82* 2.94* -1040* (')
Homosexuality '"
0\
Change in position .53 2048* -.23 -1.65* NA -2.36* -.64 -.18 N
Change in salience -6.33* -3.93* -3.20* 1047* NA -2.84* -1.09* -3.24*
Abortion
Change in position 1040* -.07 .74 .56* NA -1.18* 1.77* 1.25*
Change in salience -4.93* -5.87* -3.04* 4046* NA -1.66* -1.24* -3.96*
a Changes were calculated for all strictly comparable dimensions (see Table 1) .
.. Change is significant at the .05 level.
Party abbreviations: Lab = Labor; Prog =Progress Party; Cons = Conservative Party; Chr =Christian People's Party; Red =Red Election Alliance; Cent =
Center Party; Soc =Socialist Left Party; Lib =Liberal Party.
 RAY AND NARUD: NORWEGIAN POLITICAL SPACE

Center and Christian People's parties have moved away from the Con-
servative Party, and cooperation among the non-socialist parties is imposs-
ible. The largest and most cohesive block of parties appears to consist of the
Conservatives, the Progress Party, and the Labor Party. However, the tra-
ditional rivalry between the Labor and Conservative parties, as well as
norms against collaboration with the Progress Party, make this set of parties
a highly unlikely basis for a governing coalition. The interplay between tra-
ditional rivalries and current party positions has made coalition formation
much more complex. This situation may be a temporary artefact of the
highly disruptive EU debate, and the parties may shift back towards a
simpler two-block model. Alternately, this fragmentation may be a perma-
nent feature of the Norwegian party system.

Notes

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Center for Advanced Study
of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

1 A copy of the questionnaire is available from the authors.

2 A number of different techniques could be used to aggregate the expert responses
into a dataset on party positions. If one assumes that the policy scales are interval,
and that the reference points on the scales have the same substantive meaning for
all experts, then it is appropriate to average the judgements across experts to
produce estimates of party positions. If one suspects that experts may be inter-
preting the end and mid-points of the interval scales idiosyncratically, these differ-
ences can be removed from the data by standardizing the scores of each expert,
and reporting the average of these standardized scores. Finally, if even the interval
nature of the scales is in doubt, then it may be preferable to simply compare the
rankings of parties across experts.
3 The data on individual expert evaluations of party positions on the decentraliza-
tion dimension were transposed so that the eight political parties were treated as
cases, and the judgements of the 30 experts were treated as variables. A factor
analysis of this transposed matrix constrained to a two-factor solution produced
a first factor accounting for 75% of the variance in expert responses and a second
accounting for 18% of the variance. The first factor was interpreted as geograph-
ical decentralization and the second factor as 'vertical' decentralization. Those
four experts whose responses loaded most highly on the second factor were
excluded from further analyses of this dimension. Details of this procedure are
available from the authors.
4 In order to make these data on party positions available to the research community
at large, the estimates of party positions and of issue importance, as well as the
standard deviation of each estimate, are available from the authors.
5 A related perspective is to be found in the 'issue-ownership' hypothesis developed
by Petrocik (1996). The psychological premises for this hypothesis are that people
link certain views to certain parties, and are more receptive to messages that
confirm existing stereotypes. Therefore they find some sources more credible than

237
 PARTY POLITICS 6(2)

others concerning certain policy areas. For this reason, during the electoral
campaign, candidates (or parties) are likely to gain the most by advertising on
those issues over which they can claim 'ownership'.
6 Note that we exclude from this analysis the Red Election Alliance, a small political
formation which lost its only seat in parliament in 1997. If this tiny party is
included in the analysis, it replaces the larger Socialist Left Party on all but the
environmental policy dimensions.
7 The analysis by Narud and Oscarsson (1999) relied on multi-dimensional un-
folding analysis of party evaluations. They found that the second most important
dimension was a moral-religious dimension associated with the promotion of
Christian values.
8 Again, our results correspond to findings based upon survey data. Analyses of the
1997 general election demonstrated that the Center Party had a much more leftist
position in 1997 than it had in the mid-1980s. When asked to place the parties
on a scale from left to right, the voters have traditionally placed the Center Party
to the right of Labor (see e.g. Valen, 1981, 1990). In 1997 the two parties had
swapped positions, and the Center Party was placed to the left of Labor (Narud,
1999).

References

Aardal, Bernt and Henry Valen (1995) Konflikt og opinion. Oslo: NKS fodaget.
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LEONARD RAY is with the Department of Political Science at SUNY Binghamton

and the Louisiana State University. His doctoral dissertation at the University of
North Carolina, Politicizing Europe: Political Parties and the Changing Nature of
Public Opinion about the EU, was completed in 1998. His publications include
articles on the role of subnational governments in the European Union, the moti-
vations of altruistic behavior, and party positions on the issue of European inte-
gration.
ADDRESS: Department of Political Science, Louisiana State University, Baton
Rouge, LA 70803-5433, USA. [email: Iray@binghamton.edu]

HANNE MARTHE NARUD is a senior researcher at the Institute for Social

Research in Oslo. She has her doctoral degree from the University of Oslo on Voters,
Parties and Governments: Electoral Competition, Policy Distances, and Govern-
ment Formation in Multi-Party Systems (1996). Her publications include articles on
coalition governance, electoral behavior, candidate selection and political represen-
tation.
ADDRESS: Institute for Social Research, Munthesgt. 31, 0260 Oslo, Norway.
[email: hanne.m.narud@isaf.no]

Paper submitted 25 June 1998; accepted for publication 10 April 1999.

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