Coalition formation in Norwegian municipalities: national blocs or local variation?

Norway has a multi-party system with nine parties represented in the national parliament. These nine parties, together with local lists and minor parties, are also the main actors in municipal politics. The country’s 357 municipalities vary considerably in size, from 700,000 to around 200 inhabitants. The Norwegian case is thus well suited for exploring variation in local coalition formation and comparing municipal and national coalitions. Nevertheless, there is a lack of research on local coalition formation in Norway. This is partly owing to the absence of formal governing coalitions in most municipalities, and partly because there is no regular collection of data on municipal party cooperation. In this paper, our aim is to explore whether local coalitions in Norway follow the national pattern of coalition formation, with alternation between a centre-left and a centre-right bloc. Moreover, we analyse the impact of municipal size. Given that politics in small municipalities more often may be characterized by personal relationships and pragmatic approaches rather than political ideology, we expect that coalitions across national bloc formations occur more in small than in large municipalities. Norwegian municipalities can choose between two models for organizing their executive branch. In the traditional model, the municipal council elects an executive committee by proportional representation. The alternative model – only used in Norway’s three largest cities – is parliamentary rule, where a formal coalition – a city government – is formed and executive power is concentrated. The traditional model corresponds to a consensual model of democracy. Nevertheless, there is often a clear division between government and opposition also within this apparently consensual framework. The municipal council elects the mayor and the deputy mayor, and agreements between parties are often needed for these elections. Accordingly, the election of mayors creates a governing coalition (or single-party rule) and an opposition within the executive committee. The political element of this coalition formation nevertheless varies. In some cases, it is merely a technical cooperation to fill these posts, without any common policy objectives. In other cases, local coalition formation involves formalized policy agreements, or at least common policy intentions. We use three data sets to analyse our research questions. First, Statistics Norway collects data on the party affiliation of mayors and deputy mayors. We therefore use combinations of the mayor’s and deputy mayor’s party as a proxy for local coalitions, even though a coalition often includes more than two parties. These data are available for the period 1987–2023. Second, the Norwegian Association of Local and Regional Authorities collected information on the parties that entered agreements on the election of mayors after the 2023 elections, covering all municipalities. This enables us to present a more nuanced pictures of to what extent local coalition formation in Norway follows national party blocs or local idiosyncrasies. Third, we conduct a qualitative analysis of written agreements on mayoral elections in selected municipalities, to explore the policy elements of such agreements.