What are the effects of changing democratic institutions? Norway makes for an interesting case to examine this question at the local and regional level, because there the traditional dominant Aldermen model has been exposed to two alternative models recently: 70 municipalities have tried directly elected mayors during the past 12 years, and a parliamentarian model has been implemented in two cities and four counties on a permanent basis during the last three decades. The reformers were aiming for a vitalized democracy. Building on the evaluation reports and scientific publications on these reforms, we will attempt to sum up the effects on the quality of democracy. The direct election of major reform can be interpreted as an effort to make the consensus-based Aldermanian system even more consensual, while the mayor with a direct mandate from the voters implies a division of power. The results do however not show such a consensual effect. The reason is mainly that the direct elected mayors did not get substantial power, nor were they sufficiently independent from the party groups of the Council. We find that the direct elections of mayors have had positive effects on the internal democracy, both by making the constitution of the new council a much easier process, and by finding simpler and better solutions to various processes. The introduction of parliamentarism in the counties has clearly resulted in a more majoritarian type of political policymaking, just like the reformers were aiming for. However a frustrated opposition is the flip side of the coin. In the cities the consensual type of governments seems to prevail, and there seems to be a broad support for the new parliamentarian government system. On the other hand there seem to be almost no effect on external democracy (relationship between the politicians and the voters) with any of the new models.
