#MeToo responses in Norway’s Labor Party as cultural diffusion and improvisation

#MeToo reached Norway in late 2017. Complaints were lodged against a Labor Party deputy leader who had been elected by the party membership. Media coverage became intense, leading to more than 5,000 news stories over a two-month period in a country with 5.4 million inhabitants. Labor Party leaders split over how to respond, whether to engage in rapid crisis management that journalists craved, or to maintain slower customs of membership democracy. The party leader claimed executive authority, demoted the deputy, and boasted about it. Here I argue that the leadership deviated from the Norwegian Labor Party’s organizational customs of membership democracy. At issue for this analysis is a legacy image of the mass party ideal type with a bottom-up ethos of deliberative structures and chains of delegation, where each higher level would be held accountable to the level below, transmitting party members’ influence from local party branches up to mid-level elected representatives, then up to top national leaders in party organs (Wolkenstein 2020; Allern, Heidar, and Karlsen 2016). I examine more than 200 news items that track this chain of events involving a political party organization in globalized protests where social media figure prominently. My analysis takes from institutionalist and pragmatist theories to suggest transnational diffusion of American-style politics, tending to personify politics in top elites as mediatized figures. Over time, this case may be revealed to stand as an example of changes underway where Norwegian political parties become more like marketing to consumers (Safran 2009; Kirchheimer 1966).