Introduction

Unlike France, which has a strong president as well as a governing party or governing coalition in the parliament (the National Assembly), Norway is a pure parliamentary government. Election of this parliament (the Storting), like many similar elections in Europe and elsewhere, is held under proportional representation (PR) and a list system in which each voter votes for a party, not a candidate. Seats in the Storting are assigned roughly in proportion to the vote share received by each party (using a modified Sainte-Laguë system). Again, as in many other polities, some grouping of parties must form a coalition – either explicitly or implicitly – to constitute a government, unless one party can achieve a majority of all the seats, something that has not happened in Norway since 1961.

Not only is Norway the only one of the four countries in our study that has a parliamentary election under PR, it also has a relatively large number (seven) of viable parties that usually secure seats. These parties, in their conventionally conceived order from left to right, are the leftist Socialists and Labor; three center parties – the Liberal, Center, and Christian People's Parties; the rightist Conservative Party; and the ultra-right and maverick Progress Party. Five, and at times six, of these parties partition themselves into two relatively stable blocs that traditionally vie for sufficient seats to form a government (Aardal 1990; Aardal and Valen 1997; Strøm and Svåsand 1997; Urwin 1997). The two leftist parties may form a leftist coalition, or Labor may form a minority government with implicit support from the Socialists.