Christer Daatland, a political scientist from Stavanger, Norway, gave as an insight into the Norwegian parliamentary elections held on 13 September. He outlined the main campaign issues, analysed the developments of the party system, and revealed what we should expect from the new government.
After the unexceptional 8 years in government, the centre right parties were defeated, and the earlier coalition of the Labour, the Centre and the Socialist Left parties may return to power. This time, however, the Labour will not be in a dominant position, thus the expected prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre will be more dependent on the will of the coalition partners. The negotiating parties have disagreements over the wealth tax, climate taxes, rural policies, and EU relations. With the right of centre opposition and the growing far-left in opposition and the smaller, the Labour will need a careful balancing to maintain government stability for the next parliamentary term. The leader of the Progress Party resigned after 15 years, and the party lost its third position at the election. The Christian Democratic Party fell out of parliament, while the formerly Maoist Red Party went up from 1 to 8 seats in the legislature. A new, single-issue party, the Patient Focus entered parliament for the first time with one representative from Norway’s northernmost region of Finnmark. The small parties will make no major impact on the legislative process.
The Norwegian-EU relations are unlikely to change, and the dispute between the two respective governments over the suspension of Norwegian Fund support to Hungary will certainly remain unresolved.
With the help of guest experts and politicians, in the podcast series of MCC’s Centre for Political Science we endeavor to analyze which actors are the real winners of the parliamentary and municipal elections taking place this year in different European countries and what exactly can be considered a real victory after the ballot counts.