Norwegian Parliamentary Debates Dataset 1945–2024
with Jon Fiva and Henning Øien, Accepted, Nature Scientific Data (2024) [DATA]
Data set with all Norwegian Parliamentary speeches in the period 1945 – 2024. We also include speaker and speech meta data (e.g., committee membership, district, minister, elected, deputy…).
Legislative party groups and party cohesion, book chapter (2024)
with Martin Søyland, Oxford Handbook of Norwegian Politics
How Does Party Discipline Affect Legislative Behavior? Evidence from Within-Term Variation in Lame-Duck Status with Jon Fiva, Quarterly Journal of Political Science (2024)
Nedregård, O., & Abrahamsen, B. (2018). Frafall fra profesjonsutdanningene ved OsloMet. ISO 690
Group Identities and Parliamentary Debates (2024)
with Jon Fiva and Henning Øien, 3rd round RR, Journal of Politics
Staying in Line or Straying for Votes: Party Discipline and Dyadic Representation (2024)
How does strong party discipline affect legislators’ responsiveness to local concerns? In list-based proportional representation systems, the election of candidates depends largely on their position on the ballot. This gives parties strong tools to discipline their elected officials, which can distort the link between the constituency and the representative. I test this hypothesis by studying speech allocation between legislators with heterogeneous incentives to deviate from the party line during local economic downturns in the party-centered environment of Norway. I find that only representatives with comparatively strong incentives to align with party elites at the expense of local voters speak more about unemployment when their ditricts are experiencing during local economic downturns. Deviations from the party line are rewarded by local voters but penalized by the party, which tightens floor access for deviating MPs. This demonstrates how strong parties in PR can obstruct the constituency-representative link in the pursuit of maintaining a coherent party brand.
Chilling in the Shade: Climate change resilience and climate change beliefs (2024)
A large literature shows that risk perceptions are important to understand individuals’ attitude formation. How does resilience to climate change affect citizens’ climate attitudes? I show that the ability to address the negative consequences of climate change, and not vulnerability to climate change, is important to understand climate change perceptions. Citizens in developed Western economies with a high degree of climate change resilience are less likely to see humans as the main driver of climate change and are less likely to call for strengthened public and private action to mitigate emissions. These findings are important to understand the lack of climate ambition by shedding light on how strengthened resilience can compensate for vulnerability but at the risk of compromising future support for green policymaking.
The effect of legislative misalignment on the representation of constituency interests
with Vardges Levonyan
How do elected representatives respond when they learn that they are misaligned with their constituencies? While existing research has documented various mechanisms promoting alignment between public opinion and legislative behavior, including electoral turnover, candidate self-selection, and elite influence on public opinion, less is known about how politicians handle misalignment. Previous studies suggest two primary responses: updating positions to match constituent preferences or discounting opposing views. We propose and investigate a third response: strategic issue avoidance. Using the 2016 Brexit referendum as an information treatment that creates within-issue, within-election period, within-MP variation in alignment, we study how MPs responded to sudden, measurable incongruence with their constituencies. We find that MPs who learn that they are misaligned with their districts avoid issues on which they are misaligned, relative to their aligned counterparts. When speaking about the misaligned issue, they avoid stance-taking on the issue. They also avoid mentioning their constituency. Our results show how misaligned MPs abstain from controversial issues to avoid drawing attention to topics where there is a mismatch between the legislature and the constituency.
Fueling politics: Political ideology, election dynamics, and oil search licenses
According to classical political science, legislators can improve their re-election chances using economic mechanisms. So called economic voting – that voters reward and punish incumbents based on the performance of the economy – has received considerable empirical support. However, with a heterogenous voter base, certain policies run the risk of alienating voters when voters care about the costs of policies across multiple dimensions and not only the net economic effect. Studying policies with high economic gains, but high environmental costs, I find that coalitions with a more heterogenous voter base are less inclined to use such policies to mobilize voters in election years. The incumbent is more likely to prioritize economic value over environmental concerns when struggling on the polls, but the effect is stronger for coalitions with a strong ‘pro-economy’ voter base. In contrast, coalition with heterogenous supporters tend to push environmentally compromising policies early in the election term. These results are important to understand how electoral accountability shapes trade-offs between green policymaking and economic gain.
The female vote and PR adoption
with Mona Morgan-Collins
Did women play a role in the adoption of proportional representation system? In this paper, we explore how women’s suffrage at the turn of the 20th century shaped politicians’ propensity to vote for the adoption of proportional electoral system (PR) in Norway. Extant literature uncovers two broad explanations for adoption of PR. One emphasizes strategic/instrumental incentives of parties and employers (e.g. Leemann and Mares 2014; Cusack et al 2010; Boix 1999; Cox et al 2018). The other emphasizes normative-based demands from voters and politicians (Blais et al 2004; Bol et al 2015). However, neither account considers the role of women. Whilst most Western countries that adopted PR at the turn of the twentieth century did so before women gained equal voting rights, this was not always the case. A notable exception is Norway (see Skorge 2023, Teele 2023), where women’s suffrage (1909, 1915 election years) was adopted before the switch to PR at the national level (and partly also local level) (1921 election year). We fill this gap by studying the role of women in the adoption of PR in Norway. Utilizing sex-separated data on turnout and roll calls of legislative support for PR, we find that politicians were more likely to support PR adoption in districts where women’s turnout was high. By showing that men’s turnout is not correlated with politicians’ propensity to support PR, we cast doubts on the possibility that these results reflect men’s preference for PR or demands for greater democratization of a highly active electorate.
The causal effect of trust in government on green policymaking
Minority Strategies and Political Representation
with Apurav Yash Bhatiya and Sarah Schneider
Guilt, Regret, and Climate Action
with Can Zengin
“Snakker mer om næringer de eier aksjer i”, Dagens Næringsliv (2023)
“Hyttepåske for hvem?”, NRK (2021)
“Må det en krise til før politikerne våkner?”, Aftenposten (2020)
“Amerikanske tilstander”, Dagsavisen (2019)
“Faglig interesserte studenter fullfører oftere utdanningen”, forskning.no (2018)