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The Centre Parties of Norway and Sweden1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Neil Elder  and
Rolf Gooderham
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Extract

THERE ARE THREE REASONS WHY THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN WRITTEN. FIRST, the Centre Parties, with their origins in rural interests, have provided a natural channel for the articulation of issues difficult to accomodate within the framework of a two-party system. These issues include decentralization, environmental protection and a questioning attitude to growth. Secondly, these parties provide an interesting study of attempts to adapt from a traditionalist base to the modern world. In the process they have come to play an important part in coalition formation in their respective countries. The Norwegian Centre Party, for example, provided the Prime Minister for a coalition from 1965 to 1971 in the person of Per Borten, while the Centre Party of Sweden achieved power in 1976 at the head of a three-party coalition under the premiership of Thorbjörn Fälldin. Finally, they have been little explored academically either in their own countries or in English-language source literature.

Type
Article
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , 01 April 1978 , pp. 218 - 235
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1978

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References

2 No books devoted to the Swedish Centre Party have so far appeared. The Norwegian case is covered in English by H. G. Greenhill, The Norwegian Agrarian Party ‐ A Case Study of a Single Interest Party, University of Illinois Ph. D., 1962 (unpublished) and in Norwegian by Gabrielsen, B. V., Menn og Politikk. Senterpartiet 1920–1970, Aschehoug, Oslo, 1970.Google Scholar The EEC issue is covered by Trøite, J. & Vold, J. E., Bønder i EF strid, Oslo, 1977.Google Scholar

3 >Valen, H. & Katz, D., Political Parties in Norway, Universitetsforlaget, 1964, p. 256.Google Scholar

4 Petterson, Olof, ‘The 1973 General Election in Sweden’, Scandinavian Political Studies, vol. 9, 1974, pp. 219–228.Google Scholar See also footnotes 7 and 8.

5 H. G. Greenhill, op. cit.

6 Populism ‐ its Meanings and National Character, G. Ionescu and E. Gellner (eds.), Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969. Especially chapters by Worsley, ‘The Concept of Populism’ and Wiles, ‘A Syndrome, not a Doctrine’.

7 In a private conversation.

8 See Stein Rokkan, ‘Norway, Numerical Democracy and Corporate Pluralism’, in Dahl, R. A. (ed.), Political Oppositions in Western Democracies, Yale University Press, 1966.Google Scholar

9 Bo Särlvik, ‘Sweden: The Social Bases of the Parties in a Developmental Perspective’, in Rose, R. (ed.), Electoral Behaviour: A Comparative Handbook, Free Press, New York, 1974.Google Scholar Bo Särlvik, ‘Recent Electoral Trends in Sweden’, in Cerny, Karl H. (ed.), Scandinavia at the Polls, American Enterprise Institute, Washington, D. C.Google Scholar

10 Pettersson, Olof & Särlvik, Bo, ‘När de borgerliga vann’, Statsvetenskaplig Tidskrift , Lund, 1977: 2, pp. 79–92.Google Scholar

11 Dag Seierstad, at a meeting on the outcome of the election to the Storting in September 1977, reported in Norges Handels og Sjøfartstidende, 26.9.77.