Suchergebnisse

The aim of this article is to examine to what degree the movement of elected representatives from local to central level affects the outlook of the ones who move 'upwards'. Two Scandinavian countries – Sweden and Norway – serve as comparative cases. In both countries a high share of members of parliament (MPs) has served as local councillors before being elected to parliament. According to conventional wisdom, this high share of inter‐level mobility would strengthen ties between government tiers. Hence, parliamentarians with local political background are assumed to have greater confidence in the capacities of local government. It turns out that Sweden corresponds to this assumption, while the Norwegian results to some extent contradict the same hypothesis. In the Norwegian case, MPs who previously held office as local councillors are actually more sceptical towards local government than MPs with no experience from local politics. In the last section of the article a number of explanations for the disparate findings are being discussed. For one, it appears to be a higher level of controversy related to local government in Norway than in Sweden. In turn, this accounts for some of the scepticism being expressed by the very MPs who themselves have held local office. Second, greater financial dependency in the Norwegian case creates incentives for strategic action which, in turn, might undermine confidence between levels of government. These are strategies that are harder to conceal vis‐à‐vis MPs who have themselves gained experience from local politics.

Beginning with the assumed problem of high turnover among local councilors in Norway, the article compares local political recruitment processes in Finland and Norway. Turnover in Norwegian local councils has proven surprisingly stable at 60–65 percent for a series of elections, whereas it has been significantly lower at 35–45 percent in the other Nordic countries, including Finland. Turnover among Norwegian councilors is mainly due to voluntary retirement. According to theories of political recruitment and representation, lack of motivation among candidates poses a threat to the democratic quality of political systems, because it undermines the voters' ability to exercise democratic control over politicians. The authors argue that rotation in office need not constitute a democratic problem. On the contrary, empirical evidence is presented to show that participation in political council work may in itself have a politically activating effect on the participants. Very few candidacies can be described in terms of political ambition. Instead, motivation is often created and cultivated through participation. Furthermore, rotation in office may lead to the diffusion of political competence and may therefore constitute an alternative source of democratic control.