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Leftist and Rightist Ideology in a Social Democratic State: An Analysis of Norway in the Midst of the Conservative Resurgence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

William M. Lafferty  and
Oddbjørn Knutsen
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Extract

The re-emergence and political re-establishment of conservatism in a number of leading western welfare states has provided the empirical dots on the ‘i's’ of the ideology-is-not-dead-argument. Political issues have clearly become more technical, but their resolution has become anything but consensual. The current political dialogue may be tortuously symbolic, masking more than it reveals and more than technicians feel is good for us all, but this is perhaps more an indication of the balance of power between politicians and technicians than a sign of ideological deflation. We are not concerned in the present paper, therefore, with whether ideology is alive and kicking, but rather with who is kicking for what.

Type
Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , July 1984 , pp. 345 - 367
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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References

1 The survey was carried out by the Central Bureau of Statistics on the basis of a representative sample selected from the national population register. For reasons of design, the age limits for the sample were set at 18 and 65. Given the age-group trends revealed by the data, there is no reason to expect any systematic bias in either a rightist or leftist direction due to lack of respondents over 65.

The project of which the survey is a part has been jointly funded by the Norwegian Research Council for Science and the Humanities (NAVF), the Royal Ministry of Local Government and Labor, and the Institute of Political Science, University of Oslo.

2 Rokeach, Milton, The Nature of Human Values (New York: The Free Press, 1973).Google Scholar

3 Seliger, Martin, Ideology and Politics (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1973).Google Scholar

4 Rokeach, , The Nature of Human Values, p. 5.Google Scholar

5 Converse, Philip, ‘The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Polities’, in Apter, David E., ed., Ideology and Discontent (New York: The Free Press, 1964), pp. 202–61Google Scholar. See also the general discussion of constraint in Lane, Robert E., ‘Patterns of Political Belief’, in Knutson, Jeanne N., ed., Handbook of Political Psychology (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1973), pp. 98–105.Google Scholar

6 Inglehart, Ronald, ‘The Silent Revolution in Europe: Intergenerational Change in Post-Industrial Societies’, American Political Science Review, LXV (1971), 991–1017CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Inglehart, Ronald, The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles Among Western Publics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Unversity Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Inglehart, Ronald and Klingemann, Hans D., ‘Party Identification, Ideological Preference and the Left-Right Dimension Among Western Mass Publics’, in Budge, Ian, Crewe, Ivor, and Farlie, Dennis, eds, Parly Identification and Beyond (London: John Wiley, 1976), pp. 243–73Google Scholar; Inglehart, Ronald and Klingemann, Hans D., ‘Ideology and Values’, in Barnes, Samuel H., Kasse, Max et al. , Political Action (Berverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1979), pp. 203–380)Google Scholar; Dalton, Russel J. and Flanagan, Scott, ‘The Changing Content of Ideological Beliefs in Western Europe, the United States and Japan’, paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Denver, 09 1982.Google Scholar

7 Dalton, and Flanagan, , ‘The Changing Content’, p. 1.Google Scholar

8 Lafferty, William M., ‘Political Participation in the Social Democratic State’, paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, New York, 09 1981.Google Scholar

9 Inglehart, and Klingemann, , ‘Party Identification’, p. 256.Google Scholar

10 Inglehart, and Klingemann, , ‘Party Identification’, p. 260.Google Scholar

11 Inglehart, and Klingemann, , ‘Party Identification’, pp. 264–5Google Scholar; Dalton, and Flanagan, , ‘The Changing Content’, pp. 7–15.Google Scholar

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13 Inglehart, and Klingemann, , ‘Party Identification’, pp. 248–51.Google Scholar

14 Valen, , Valg og Politikk, p. 234.Google Scholar

15 Bjørklund, Tor and Hagtvet, Bernt, eds, Høyrebølgen: Epokeskifte i Norsk Politikk (Oslo: H. Aschehoug, 1981).Google Scholar

16 Inglehart, and Klingemann, , ‘Party Identification’, p. 256.Google Scholar

17 The ranking of the Norwegian parties from left to right is as follows: 1, Worker's Communist Party (AKP-ML); 2, Norwegian Communist Party (NKP); 3, Socialist Left Party (SV); 4, Norwegian Labour Party (DNA); 5, The Left (V); 6, Centre Party (SP); 7, Liberal People's Party (DLF); 8, Christian People's Party (KRF); 9, The Right (Conservative Party) (H); 10, Progressive Party (FRP).

18 Inglehart, and Klingemann, , ‘Party Identification’, p. 259.Google Scholar

19 Inglehart, and Klingemann, , ‘Party Identification’, p. 261.Google Scholar

20 See Inglehart, , The Silent Revolution, pp. 399–401.Google Scholar

21 Knutsen, Oddbjørn, ‘Materialisme og Post-Materialisme i Norge: En Kritisk-Empirisk Analyse av Ronald Ingleharts Teori om “Den Stille Revolusjonen”’, Report No. 10 (1982) in ‘Report Series’, Institute for Social Research, Oslo.Google Scholar

22 See Knutsen, , ‘Materialism og Post-Materialism’, pp. 81–6Google Scholar for the index construction.

23 See Stone, William, The Psychology of Politics (New York: The Free Press, 1974), Chaps 7 and 8.Google Scholar

24 Inglehart, , The Silent Revolution, p. 42.Google Scholar

25 To cite but a single example (from Inglehart, and Klingemann, , ‘Party Identification’, p. 257Google Scholar): ‘key issues may vary from one society to another, making cross-national comparison (contd.) (contd.) difficult. And issues change not only in saliency; they may even change polarity in relation to the left-right dimension. For example, it has been argued that the essence of the left-right dimension lies in disagreements over the scope of government intervention in the economy … This notion has not held up very well: a few decades ago, emphasis on centralized controls and planning, in the hands of a strong executive branch, certainly was associated with the left; today the left often takes the lead in resisting excessive centralization of power’.

From our perspective, we would make the point that it is exactly the lack of ambivalence as to the necessity of the centralization of power in relation to major systemic goals which characterizes social democratic ideology as opposed to both populist leftism and liberalism. In this regard, the attempt to label postmaterialism as leftism suffers from a certain American left-liberalist bias.

26 Detailed lists of the occupations included in each category are available in Lafferty, William M. and Knutsen, Oddbjørn, ‘Yrke som Variable’Google Scholar, Working Report No. 6 from the project on ‘Democracy in Norway’, Institute of Political Science, University of Oslo.

27 Inglehart, Ronald, ‘Post-Materialism in an Environment of Insecurity’, American Political Science Review, LXXV (1981), 880–900CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For other ‘new-class’ contributions, see Bruce-Biggs, B., ed., The New Class? (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979)Google Scholar and Giddens, Anthony and Mackenzie, Gavin, eds, Class and the Division of Labour (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982)Google Scholar. The contribution in the latter by Goldthorpe, John (‘On the Service Class, Its Formation and Future’)Google Scholar is of particular relevance. For a recent Norwegian study which takes no consideration of either the ‘service class’ or the public-private split, see Tom Colbjørnsen, Hernes, Gudmund and Knudsen, Knud, Klassestruktur og Klasseskiller (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1982).Google Scholar

28 Knutsen, Oddbjørn and Lafferty, William M., ‘Høyrebø1gen i et Generasjonsperspektiv’Google Scholar in Bjøklund, and Hagtvet, , eds, Høyrebølgen, pp. 235–62Google Scholar; Knutsen, Oddbjørn, ‘Barn av Økonomisk Depresjon og Barn av Økonomisk Velstand’, Working Report No. 5 from the project on ‘Democracy in Norway’, Institute for Social Research, 1981.Google Scholar

29 The poignancy of our concluding remarks has recently been demonstrated by an editorial comment in the leading Norwegian conservative paper, Aftenposten. With direct reference to our earlier report, the leader states: ‘The analysis claims that any attempt to reform the welfare state in accord with purely liberalist principles will be met with opposition among the numerous public employees. And this is undoubtedly correct. But what about absolutely necessary changes in the system which can, by definition, involve discontinuancies and compensatory adjustments where socially defensible, so as to be able to solve other, more pressing, problems? Up to now there has been a tendency for nearly every change to touch off massive opposition and cries of “crisis” from the groups in question. Such crisis-maximizing behaviour will, in the long run, however, mean the opposite of “maintaining and further developing the welfare state”’. (Aftenposlen, 31 05 1983Google Scholar, original italics. For the record, we wish to point out that the earlier report – as here – makes a distinction between the ‘welfare state’ and the ‘social democratic state’, and that we employ only the latter term.)