The Norway Local Government Reform: Local Agreements of Intention

In 2014, the government of Norway launched a structural reform of the local government system, as a key component of the Solberg government’s program for modernizing the public sector. Norway’s local government sector comprised 428 municipalities in 2014, with a median population of 4770. The reform has, at least until the time of writing, been based on voluntary agreement between self-defined constellations of local governments. The Ministry of Local Government and Modernisation has used several measures to promote voluntary amalgamations, mainly in the form of “carrots” and “sermons”, such as financial incentives, expert advice and process facilitation. The “stick” – carrying out amalgamations by central level decision in spite of local disagreement – can by law only be wielded by Stortinget, Norway’s parliament. This policy option is however highly contentious, and several parties have decided against supporting locally disputed proposals. At the time of writing, it is commonly assumed that only a very limited number of amalgamations will eventually be decided this way. The reform presents a unique opportunity to improve understanding about how local jurisdictions respond to central-level attempts at governing by the use of non-coercive policy measures. The paper is inspired by approaches used for studying multi-level governance in federal systems. In this literature, the propensity of local units to respond favorably to non-binding central government policy signals is analysed by reference to “internal” determinants – quantifiable characteristics of the local units – as well as “external” determinants, in the form of diffusion mechanisms. Our paper analyses a total of 143 voluntary, non-binding agreements made in the period 23.1.2015-24.10.2016 between two or more local governments, signifying the intent to amalgamate. 299 local governments were parties to these agreements. Although several agreements of intent were ultimately abandoned, in many cases as the result of majorities against in local referenda, these agreements constitute probably the best available empirical evidence of variations in local political responsiveness to central government policy signals in the reform. We assume that early entry into agreements of intent signify a high degree of local responsiveness, and estimate by means of event history analysis how the hazard rate for entering into agreements is affected by internal and external determinants. Co-author: Marie Kjærgaard, KORA, DK