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The thesis What Happened in Northern Norway? is a quantitative analysis of various aspects of the political and demographic development in Northern Norway from 1950 to today. The theories of Ottar Brox and in his seminal work Hva skjer i Nord-Norge? (What Is Happening in Northern Norway?), have influenced regional and national actors in their understanding of the region and their policy development. This thesis aims to analyze what actually happened in Northern Norway in the years following Brox’s work by using a different theoretical framework for the center‒periphery relationship, one developed by another social scientist with roots in Northern Norway, Stein Rokkan, and by applying quantitative methodology. The first paper, “The Striking Similarities between Northern Norway and Northern Sweden,” published in Arctic Review on Law and Politics (2019), uses a comparative perspective to find a very similar pattern of demographic development in municipalities in Northern Norway and Northern Sweden, especially from 1975 to 2015, despite important differences in regional policies applied in the two countries. In the second paper, “The Centre‒Periphery Dimension and Trust in Politicians: The Case of Norway,” published in Territory, Politics, Governance (2019), Northern Norway serves as a case for exploring if there is a spatial dimension in trust in politicians that goes beyond the urban‒rural dimension. The results produced when using the Rokkanian framework reveal lower trust in national and local politicians in Northern Norway than elsewhere in the country, despite controlling for performance, cultural, political, and socio-economic variables. The paper also shows how distance from the capital could replace the dummy variable Northern Norway and, hence, has relevance for trust studies in other countries. The third paper, “The Local Impact of Increased Numbers of State Employees on Start-ups in Norway,” published in Norwegian Journal of Geography (2019), examines the effect of regional policies particularly important in Northern Norway, the relocation of state employees, and the creation of regional universities. The relative number of state employees in a municipality seems unrelated to local growth. Universities, on the other hand, seem to stimulate regional development. The findings indicate that the relocation of state employees may be a rather limited tool for stimulating local and regional growth and, if applied, policymakers should consider how the relocation could stimulate place-sensitive development in individual municipalities. Theoretically, the thesis adds new knowledge to the literature on political trust and to the literature regarding the effects of different forms of regional policies. Empirically, it adds new knowledge about the political and demographic development in Northern Norway. Methodologically, it exhibits the benefits of using quantitative tools to study a region that has mainly been studied qualitatively. Finally, in light of the empirical results, the overall perspective of Stein Rokkan generally seems to be more accurate for describing and understanding the demographic and political development in Northern Norway than the perspective of Ottar Brox. Northern Norway is a developed region also marked by the classical characteristics of a peripheral region, and the demographic development over the last 65 years is strikingly similar to the most similar peripheral region: Northern Sweden. |
