Norway, Famous for Nothing. Except Vikings. Maybe.

Norway’s unicameral parliament is the sole legislative body for the entire country. Citizens elect representatives into office through a system of proportional representation, or PR. According to Duverger’s law, election via PR is more conducive than single-member-district plurality (or SMDP) in producing multi-party states. Examining Norway’s parliament does not refute this claim; the government is composed of many small parties which must often come together after election in order to form coalition governments or minority cabinets. Although in the past, party collaboration has resulted in a giant two-sided competition, this is not always the case; Norway continues to exhibit the multiple social factions of a multi-party system.

    Norway’s parliament, called the Storting, consists of 169 members who are elected to four-year terms from 19 electoral districts, or counties. Allotment of seats is determined using the modified St. Lague method of proportional representation. Seats are recalculated every eight years based on population and geography, where each individual merits 1 point and each kilometer merits 1.8 points. Currently, the Storting is comprised of seven different political parties: the Norwegian Labor Party, the Progress Party, the Conservative Party, the Socialist Left Party, the Centre Party, the Christian Democratic Party, and the Liberal Party. PR elections work from a party-list system. Both political parties and other groups can submit lists for election, as long as those list proposals are cleared with election authorities by March 31 of the election year. All Norwegian citizens age 18 and older are eligible to vote in parliamentary elections– even if they are turning 18 later in the same year. The king does not have the right to vote because he is not considered a “citizen."

    Since 1989, Storting elections have adapted into a hybrid system to adjust for any unfairness to small parties. One of Norway’s modifications to the St. Lague method is including “levelling seats;” each of Norway’s 19 counties has one additional seat which may go to a party that received a  number of national votes, but not enough in any particular consituency to get a seat. The threshold for any party to gain a levelling seat is 4 percent of the national vote.

    The most recent parliamentary election took place in 2009. Using the formula N = 1/ ∑ p2  and the voting results from the 2009 parliamentary elections, Norway has roughly five effective parties, although seven currently hold seats in the Storting. However, although parties do not always assimilate into the same teams after election, both larger and smaller parties often form coalitions in order to increase their collective power.

Based on Norway’s proportional representation electoral system, Duverger’s theory holds true that said PR models can generate strong multi-party systems. With greater opportunity for smaller parties to win seats in the parliament, votes are more widely dispersed and the parties avoid the polarization of a head-to-head, two-party competition.

*Sources are not included because this is a blog. Easy to read. Obv.*