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The research project “Power of Parties (PoPs): The Origins of a Nordic Welfare State” studies how political parties helped shape the Nordic welfare state model. The project provides new historical insights: It looks at the differences between socialist (left-wing) parties and non-socialist (right-wing) parties, how parties gradually became well established organizations (institutionalized), and how they placed their own people in local government to influence policy development and implementation.
An innovative research method makes this study possible. In many Norwegian local elections in the past, it happened that two parties won an equal number of seats. In such tie situations, the mayor was chosen by drawing lots – essentially by flipping a coin. This random outcome works like a “natural experiment,” letting researchers study cause and effect. The team is gathering new historical data from archives, such as local tax records and appointments to local offices. By comparing municipalities where different parties came to power purely by chance, they can find out how the party in power affected the development of taxes, welfare measures and other key decisions.
Relevance today: By understanding how party politics shaped the welfare state in the past, we gain perspectives that illuminate current debates about the welfare state. The findings can tell us whether and how different political directions led to different welfare policies. This knowledge makes us better equipped to discuss how todayʼs and future political choices might influence the further development of our welfare state.
PoPs working papers
Carl Jeppesen, the first social democratic mayor of the capital of Oslo in norway (1917-1919).
THE CAUSAL EFFECT OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY ON WELFARE STATE DEVELOPMENT
THE CAUSAL EFFECT OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY ON WELFARE STATE DEVELOPMENT
Did social democrats in office push for more generous and universal benefits? Or was welfare state development largely independent of whatever party held office? We investigate this seminal question in the social sciences using two major advances. First, we introduce an extensive hand-collected archival dataset covering all municipal welfare benefit programs in Norway between 1910 and 1970. The dataset provides detailed measures that capture benefits levels, eligibility, conditionality and means-testing rules, allowing us to distinguish program adoption from changes in generosity and inclusiveness of provision. Second, we exploit tied mayor elections resolved by lotteries as a natural experiment to estimate the causal effect of mayoral partisanship on welfare benefit policies. We complement this design with a regression discontinuity approach and use descriptive full-sample regressions to investigate whether partisan patterns are stable broader sample.
Protest meeting of organized workers during the 1920 railroad strike
With a Little Help from My Friends: How Political Power Affects Strikes
With a Little Help from My Friends: How Political Power Affects Strikes
We test the causal effect of socialist party incumbency on strikes and collective bargaining outcomes in early twentieth-century Norway by exploiting tied mayoral elections resolved by lotteries. Using this natural experiment, we find that randomly winning socialist mayors reduce the probability of strikes in subsequent years by roughly two-thirds. Contrary to prevailing explanations, this decline is not driven by union wage moderation. Instead, we argue that when political conditions strengthen workers’ bargaining power, employers facin gempowered labor have stronger incentives to preemptively concede to wage demands, resulting in fewer militant disputes. Party control of local office thusshaped industrial relations and labor market conflict.
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