Linking Coalitions to Policy Output: The Case of Local Government in Norway

Abstract

The main emphasis in coalition studies has so far been on national coalitions—with the local level being rather overlooked—and in most studies estimating the impact of local politics researchers have used various indicators of the electoral strength of parties as their main political variable. In this analysis we investigate the genuine composition of coalitions in each and every municipality in Norway, describing which parties serve as the majority base for the mayor and the deputy mayor. This approach gives us the opportunity to investigate both the impact of the genuine political office holders, as well as the structural properties of coalitions, on policy output. Using a decomposition of school expenditure suggested by Falch and Ratts0, we are able to ask in what ways money is spent inside the sector, in addition to how much money is spent. The empirical results show that coalitions can be linked to policy output; the preferred spending objects vary both according to the parties forming the coalition and the structural composition of the coalition.