Politikk i sentrum og periferi - en analyse av Arbeiderpartiets kommunepartier

Abstract

This thesis aims to identify differences in policy and ideology between different levels of the Norwegian Labour Party along the centre-periphery dimension. To do this I combine local election manifestos with data on respondents favourite political issue taken from the Norwegian Citizen Panel. Manifestos from four local party branches are selected with regard to their peripheral position within Norway. These are the party branches from the municipalities of Bergen, Tromsø, Eidfjord and Hasvik and represent in different ways peripheries in the Norwegian context. I use quantitative data to explore the existing differences in political priorities over time, between centre and periphery and according to party preferences and use this as a basis for studying the manifestos. I find support for my research question in that there are clear systematic differences between the political priorities between the electoral context that the local parties compete in. I argue that the differences contained in the manifestos are connected to the peripheral nature of the parties and municipalities. I further find that environmental policies are less relevant in the smaller municipalities while infrastructure policy is more important. The differences between the northern and southwestern periphery are less visible that the urban-rural cleavage, but the content of the Tromsø-manifesto seem to be more radical along the ideological public-private dimension than the Bergen-branch of the Norwegian Labour Party.