Opposition in government: Explaining party distinctiveness behavior in multi-party governments, Norway 1983-2023

A substantial body of literature has explored how political parties balance their policy, office, and vote motivations. However, this research has mainly focused on the decision of whether or not to govern. There has been significantly less attention given to how political parties balance these factors while governing, which raises the question of how individual governing parties maintain unity within a coalition government without compromising their own political identity and risking electoral losses in the future. Considering that distinctiveness behavior is driven by the pursuit of votes, we hypothesize that negative opinion polls will lead to an increase in distinctiveness behavior. This behavior is defined as political parties deliberately showcasing policy positions that deviate from those of the governing coalition they are part of. Additionally, we expect the intensity of party distinctiveness behavior to amplify as elections approach and the urgency of seeking votes grows. Moreover, we anticipate that distinctiveness behavior is influenced by government characteristics, such as their parliamentary basis and the number of parties involved. To empirically examine these hypotheses, we analyze data from 13 multi-party governments in Norway spanning the period from 1983 to 2023. Our analysis relies on a unique dataset derived from monthly opinion polls measuring electoral support, as well as three distinct data sources related to the parliamentary arena: parliamentary votes, questions in parliament, and private member bills. Logistic regression models are employed to test the hypothesized relationships. The results of our analysis indicate that negative opinion poll results slightly increase the probability of government party representatives showcasing distinctiveness behavior.