PARTY FOLLOWERSHIP AND LEADERSHIP IN NORWAY - A POLITICAL-CULTURE APPROACH

This article measures the relative sizes of the four cultural follower ships of individualism, fatalism, hierarchy and egalitarianism among t he Norwegian political parties by means of the European Values Systems Study surveys conducted in 1982 and 1990. First, this analysis shows that among the electorate at the end of the 1980s, the cultures of ind ividualism and egalitarianism have grown stronger at the expense of fa talism and hierarchy. These estimates of political followership suppor t the claim that Norwegian politics has become more competitive, more volatile and less benign. The correlations between the estimates of cu ltural followership and measures of party leadership show that individ ualism and egalitarianism are anti-leadership cultures in that these c ultures correlate with the number of party chairs and inversely correl ate with party leadership tenure and experience. Furthermore, the resu lts show that fatalism and hierarchy are pro-leadership cultures in th at they correlate with party leadership tenure and experience, and inv ersely correlate with the number of party chairs.