Party organisations are often said to provide linkage across territorial levels, and thus integrate the different levels in a multi-level political system. That is especially the case in a country like Norway – a unitary state where the same parties compete at the national, county (regional) and municipal levels (see e.g. Allern, E.H & J. Saglie 2012, ‘Inside the Black Box: Parties as Multi-level Organisations in a Unitary State’, West European Politics 35, 947–970). However, even though earlier research has mapped the general organizational structure and patterns of communication within parties, we know less about how such organizational linkage works in specific political issues.
The current Norwegian Local Government Reform (NGLR) is a suitable case for exploring such processes, because it exhibits several cases of disagreement between national parties and their local branches. This reform was a large-scale attempt to merge municipalities, initiated by the central government, and therefore important for the municipalities and municipal party branches. National parties and their local branches were central actors in the decision-making processes. The municipal councils should recommend whether their municipality should be merged, whereas the Parliament should make the final decisions. Some parties were generally in favour of amalgamation, some were against, and some were internally divided – but these constellations varied between municipalities.
In this paper, I focus on whether party organisations functioned as arenas for coordination of party actors at different levels. More precisely, I look into top-down coordination as well as bottom-up influence. To what extent were local and regional party branches tools for implementing the party’s national policy on the NLGR (either promoting or opposing the reform), and to what extent did local and regional party branches attempt to – and succeed in – influencing the party’s national policy?
The paper is based on qualitative interviews in five of the largest Norwegian parties – two government parties (the Conservatives and the Progress Party), two opposition parties (Labour and the Centre Party), and one party supporting the minority government (the Christian Democrats). Three interviews were carried out in each party: one at the party headquarters and two in selected regional branches.
The analyses show that party organizations indeed provided linkage between the national and local levels, but in quite different ways. On the one hand, we find the two most united parties: the pro-reform Conservatives and the anti-reform Centre Party. In both cases, there was little internal disagreement, and local branches could promote the national policy. Both parties nevertheless had local branches that disagreed with this national policy, and this was tolerated by the national leadership. On the other hand, we find the most divided parties, Labour and the Christian Democrats. In these cases, the party organization functioned as an arena for competition between opposing views, and the outcome was a greater emphasis on local self-determination. Accordingly, these parties had less of a national policy to implement. Finally, the Progress Party falls between these extremes.
