Choosing the rock over the hard place - How cross-pressured local politicians choose government loyalty over local voters’ preferences on municipal amalgamations reforms. Lessons from a survey experiment in Norway

On the background of a recent major structural municipal amalgamation reform in Norway, we conduct a survey-experiment on Norwegian politicians (N=1978). We use a base line question to measure the respondent’s view pro or against municipal amalgamations. Then the respondents get two random treatments. First, they get treatment whether the municipal amalgamation was decided by the local parliament or the national parliament. Second, they get a random treatment about a local referendum either in favour or against a municipal amalgamation in their municipality. Finally, the respondents are asked if they would vote in favour or against municipal amalgamations. Unsurprisingly we find that almost all representatives will vote in line with the voters if they share the same opinion on municipal amalgamation reform. Second, we find that whether the amalgamations were decided by local or national parliament does not affect the respondent’s views. Third, around half the representatives will change their minds if the voters have opposite views. We define these representatives as the movers. Fourth, we analyse who the movers are. Our main finding is that under cross-pressure local politicians representing the government parties are more likely to choose the view of the government over the view of the people.