Norway: Local democracy by trial (and error)

Norway appears to be a strongly integrated country. It is a unitary state, where all municipalities have the same status and are responsible for the same tasks. The aggregate strength of the political parties is almost the same at the local and national levels, and national political trends certainly influence municipal elections. However, there is considerable local variation. Local politics works differently in large and small municipalities. Moreover, local media and local issues are important to voters. Such local factors are invisible in aggregate statistics, as developments in different municipalities cancel each other out. Another source of variation is the tradition of trials, where new institutional solutions are piloted in selected municipalities, making local government a testing ground for democratic innovation.