The relationship between Scandinavian governments and civil society has traditionally been organised through corporatist committees where representatives of government and societal interests came together to negotiate and make deals. The central feature of this 'societal corporatism' is a small number of key organisations getting privileged access to negotiate with the government, and Philippe Schmitter’s seminal work on the topic touted Norway as one of its finest materialisations.
However, from around 1980 onwards the Norwegian corporatist structure has been scaled back, with the number of governmental committees shrinking dramatically. Civil society organisations still have access to the same share of governmental committees, but the total number of such committees dropped from 542 in 1983 to 186 in 2005. Recent research suggests that this narrowing of the corporatist channel has caused organised societal interests to adapt their political strategies in different ways, but little is as of yet known about how it has affected different interest groups’ chances to exert influence in the Norwegian political system.
This is the knowledge gap this paper begins to fill. Drawing on interest group theory, it explores interest group influence over four decades in a central policy area for the Norwegian welfare state: health care policies for those who struggle with drug- and alcohol addiction. In so doing, it answers two research questions, the first of which is descriptive: which types of interest groups have managed to influence Norwegian drug- and alcohol policies in the period 1970-2010? The second is explanatory: To what extent has the narrowing of the corporate channel over the past four decades affected different types of interest groups’ ability to influence Norwegian drug- and alcohol policies?
