This paper explores the relationship between party government, bureaucratic autonomy and political appointments to the state administration in Denmark, Iceland and Norway. According to Shefter’s influential work in this field, bureaucratic autonomy is a major determinant of political appointments and the Nordic countries are, partly with the exception of Iceland, traditionally believed to be virtually free of political patronage. Although there are a few, relatively well-regulated posts marked for political purposes (such as ministerial assistants) in these countries, the prevalence of meritocratic public appointments due to strong professionalized bureaucratic traditions are undoubtedly part of the Scandinavian self-image. However, this belief is not based on much empirical research. Presenting a comparative study of public appointments in the West-Nordic states of Denmark, Iceland and Norway – based on a new expert survey conducted within nine major policy areas – this paper partly qualifies the common wisdom. The question first is whether politicians actually appoint to positions in the various organs/levels of state administration and semi-public institutions. To capture the distinction between further politicization and party politicization, the analysis follows up by distinguishing between the individual minister, the cabinet and the party as appointing political agent and by mapping the agent’s motivations and selection criteria. We show that Iceland uses appointments by politicians to the permanent bureaucracy to ensure political control to a significant degree. Denmark seems to maintain an administrative system where political appointments, in every sense, are rare, whereas in Norway, the government and individual ministers seemingly make use of a formal prerogative to appoint when key positions fall vacant across policy areas, yet only occasionally based on party-political considerations and selection criteria. In the last part of the paper, we suggest some explanations for the variation we identify in ‘political appointments’ within and across these largely similar political systems based on bureaucratic autonomy.
