Institutional change and system support

Project summary

It is a common assumption in political science that the manner in which political institutions are organized, influences both policy content and political processes. On the other hand, we also know from the literature that what happens when institutional rules change, is not always in accordance with the expectations on institutional design. Hence, there is a need to study the relationship between “pure” institutional effects on one hand and processual and contextual reform effects on the other.

Objectives and design

The aim of this project is to analyze how and why reorganization of political institutions influences support for the reformed institutions.

We have done this through an empirical study of the change from an alderman model to parliamentary rule in Norwegian cities and regions. We adopted a mixed methods design, where a survey to politicians in all seven reformed Norwegian governments were combined with a case study of reorganized governments with high and low levels of support for parliamentary rule.

Project summary/findings

We found that support for the institutional model in the reformed governments depends on the reform’s effect on different political positions. Politicians in position are more positive toward parliamentary rule than members of in opposition, and politicians from the big parties are more positive compared to representatives from smaller ones. Institutional change affects the interests of these groups in different ways. In turn, the effects that reform has on different interests influence their support for the reformed institutions. System support is also affected by how the change process is implemented. An inclusive political leadership that builds oversized coalitions and allocate positions like committee chairs to the opposition results in stronger support for parliamentary rule. The overall finding is that both “pure” institutional effects and contextual factors influence support for parliamentary rule. Support increases when readiness and capacity for change is high. The reform must also include relevant actors in a way that meets demands for procedural fairness. The practical implication for reformers is to communicate why the organization needs a reform, to arrange for sufficient implementation capacity and to include relevant participants in decision making and change processes.