Resumé

The article considers two aspects of the establishment in Norway of a mass participatory parliamentary democracy: the changing national and regional patterns of recruitment to parliamentary positions, and the long-term processes of democratization and political mobilization. The influence of high social status upon parliamentary recruitment was replaced by that of high political status. This changeover, however, was modified by a distinct centre-periphery dimension in both social substitution and the process of political professionalization, corresponding to regional variations in the timing and tempo of mass mobilization.

1. Introduction

1.1. The Market for Political Recruitment

This article will take up the relationship between two important aspects of the establishment in Norway of a mass participatory parliamentary democracy between the 1870s and World War II: first, the changing national and regional patterns of recruitment to parliamentary positions, both in terms of occupational, educational, and political backgrounds of individual legislators, and in shifts in party strength and 'regimes' in the legislature; and second, the long-term processes ofdemocratization and political mobilization which created the bases for mass politics and initiated the transformation of the parliamentary elite. The relationship between increased political awareness and participation from hitherto excluded segments of the population, and changes in the social and political composition of the legislature, can be approached in a variety of ways. One perspective useful in establishing a link between societal change and elite transformation is to view the recruitment process as a market situation with on the one hand certain demands upon prospective candidates with regard to qualification and legitimacy, and on the other a supply of individuals with various types of background and experiences. The transactions in the market are the actual election of members of parliament. Both the

demand and supply structure will change over time depending upon the
economic, social, political, and communication conditions in society.

Changes, then, in the election of members of parliament with different types of skills and experiences occur within the framework of shifts in the demand of qualifications and legitimacy for legislators and the increased supply of candidates with new types of acceptable and/or necessary background.

In the second part of the 19th century changes in the electoral law and socio-economic developments created possibilities for political participation by new segments of the male population (Aarebrot, 1973). Finally, in the beginning of the 20th century women were given the franchise. The establishment of formal rights for participation in local and national elections for larger proportions of the population also stimulated the creation of mass political parties and interest organizations (Eliassen & Svaasand, 1975). An increased political awareness and involvement caused both a growth in the demand for candidates with new types of qualification based upon membership and activity in such organizations and local councils, and, at the same time, expanded the supply of potential candidates with previous organizational and institutional experience. This assumed relationship between electoral and organizational mobilization and elite transformation is summarized in Figure 1.

An important element of this model is the impact of party composition in
parliament upon legislative recruitment. Previous studies have indicated

that there exist major differences between the political parties in Norway in their recruitment patterns. Both the demand and supply structures differ considerably because of the origins and socio-economic, cultural, and political bases of the parties. On the one hand there is the party for the traditional elite, the Right party. On the other there is the Left party which grew out of the peasant and urban intellectual opposition to the central elite. Finally, we have the Labour Party which gained parliamentary representation after the turn of the century with bases in the urban working class and the small farmers and fishermen in the Middle, Eastern, and Northern parts of the country. The electoral bases and political attitudes of these three parties have created differences in the determinants of political activity within them (Rokkan & Campbell, 1966). In turn this has influenced the opportunity structure for the prospective candidates in the party organizations because of the demand for different types of qualifications and legitimacy. In his analysis of the Danish parliament, Mogens Pedersen has found that a major proportion of changes over time in the recruitment of incumbents and the types of challengers could be attributed to shifts in the strength of the three parties in parliament. Changes in the opportunity structure within each party were very limited (Pedersen, 1977:26-29). It might be assumed that a high importance will be attached to the party composition of parliament as an explanatory variable also in the Norwegian case.

The paradigm of relationships presented in Figure 1 is the national one. I assume, however, that changes in parliamentary recruitment are caused by shifts in the local patterns of political activity: increased citizen participation in local and national elections in the various constituencies, the establishment of new organizational alternatives - interest organizations and political parties - in the local community, and finally the increase in the amount of political consciousness among the peripheral segments of the population, the peasants and the workers.

Thus, in order to investigate the market for recruitment in more detail I have to elaborate the inträ-system variations in changes in the demand and supply structures. In more concrete terms this means the study not only of the aggregate national pattern of relationships, but also of regional differences in the time sequences and rates of change in the recruitment process to see if these differences can be explained in terms of regional variations in the opening up for hitherto excluded and passive segments of the citizenship of new channels for both political participation and training in leadership skills, and also in terms of their actual use of these possibilities.

1.2. Social Composition

Changes in the composition of parliamentary elites have been described by different authors in a variety of ways depending upon the aim of their investigation. In some cases the dimensions studied have been at an extremely high level of generality, in others simple indicators of various aspects of the background of legislators. However, the bases for nearly all dimensions of elite composition are aggregated up to the total system level of characteristics of individuals. Party composition indicates the proportion of legislators affiliated with various political parties. Occupational and educational profiles of the legislature represent aggregates of the social background of the members of parliament, and the level of prelegislative political experience shows the proportion of members who had been active in political parties or related interest organizations prior to their entry into parliament. The notion of different political 'regimes', on the other hand, is partly linked to the strength or dominance of various parties, partly to the general background of the elites and the main characteristics of the policy intentions of the different power groups.

Elite transformation can be studied with reference to one or a combination of these various aggregated characteristics of the composition of legislatures. Previous studies have mainly focused on shifts in the social background of the elite, linking this to changes in the occupational and educational structure of the electorate. The theoretical question has been the degree of representativeness of the elite in terms of background characteristics (Hellevik, 1969) or attitudes (Holmberg, 1974).

One main problem when focusing directly on occupation categories is the changing occupational structure of society and shifts in the content of occupational categories over time and across countries. Thus, it is argued that variables based on a more general theoretical construction increase the validity of investigations over a long time span or across different countries. One general concept which has been of value in analyses of elite transformation in Scandinavia is the notion of a confrontation between asn established elite of 'incumbents' and two types of 'challengers' - 'rural' and 'urban' - reflecting changes both in the political system and in the society as a whole. Mogens Pedersen defines the three types of legislators as follows:

'Incumbents: large landowners who held estates, of more than 120 hectares; officers
in the various arms of national defense; factory-owners and merchants;
holders of academic degrees from universities and professional schools.
Rural challengers: all farmers, smallholders, and employees in agriculture apart
from the large landowners: elementary school teachers in the rural parts of Denmark.

Urban challengers: all occupants of elite positions, who did not belong to either of
the two above-mentioned groupings.' (Pedersen, 1977:10).

In this study I will investigate the substitution of incumbents by the two
types of challengers at the parliamentary level.

1.3. Political Professionalization

If we look at the patterns of elite transformation within various Western parliaments over the past 100 to 150 years, changes in the occupational and social structure are perhaps not the most dominant aspect, since they are influenced in turn by another factor, the shifts in the main locus of legitimacy and qualification for recruitment to parliamentary positions. In these terms, changes in the composition of a legislature tend to be unidirectional from a situation where ascriptive social status is the main recruitment criterion to a more complex situation where both social status and political and intellectual achievement are competing factors. This pattern of glacial change corresponds closely to another important element of change, the increased regularization of the exchange of personnel between the legislature and its environment, that is the process of institutionalization of that body (Polsby, 1968).

One important element in this pattern of change is the increased importance of political experience for legislative recruitment. One of the most dramatic aspects of the transformation of the parliamentary elite in Norway is the rapidity with which previous political experience in local councils became a necessary qualification for election to the Storting. However, the various indicators of political background tap only one aspect of this change from ascription to achievement as a source of qualification and legitimacy. Another element is the increased importance of knowledge andskills which went along with an increase in the scope and complexity of the national decision-making process. Stated this way, it is useful to employ the concept of professionalization in order to circumscribe the increased importance of both political and intellectual achievement (Eliassen & Pedersen, 1978).

This concept, however, has been used in so many different ways that it is not very useful unless given an unequivocal definition. The general statement that the legislative elite becomes more and more professionalized as time passes lends itself to at least two major interpretations, both of which have been used as a point of departure here. First, professionalization may be interpreted as an aspect of the increasing workload of legislators. This line of reasoning is based on Max Weber's famous distinction

between politics as avocation and politics as vocation; in this terminology the 'occasional' politician was replaced by the 'professional' politician, who furthermore would not only tend to live for politics, but also off politics (Weber, 1921).

Second, professionalization has been interpreted as an effect of changes in the legislative role. Some would say that the legislative role has tended to converge qualitatively over time with the role of the professional, most notably that of lawyers (Eulau & Sprague, 1964).

Given these changes in the quantitative and qualitative aspects of the legislative role, the argument implied in most reasoning around the concept of professionalization is that changes in the legislative role also bring about changes in recruitment patterns. Professionalization is then meant to be a process which apparently has not much to do directly with changes in the legislative role proper, but refers more to changes in the recruitment pattern of the legislative elite. The argument has often implied that professionalization is a deplorable phenomenon, a change from a 'golden age' in which politicians were mainly drawn from individuals characterized by personal endowment and substantial achievement in the world outside politics towards an era in which politicians tend to become recruited from among the 'party regulars'. Because party loyalty, political experience, and organizational activity became the main assets for prospective candidates, there was •apolitical professionalization of recruitment patterns.

A second main dimension of changes in recruitment patterns has been the growing number of legislators drawn from professional-intellectual strata. Intellectual knowledge and qualifications based upon higher education is an element of the professionalization syndrome that could be complementary to political experience as a factor relevant to recruitment. But I assume that this intellectual professionalization is brought about by an increased complexity and differentiation of the legislative domain. After the introduction of a parliamentary system different factors have been at work which tend to increase the importance of both political experience and higher education as qualifications for election. This development is caused by a simultaneous increase in both the rate of mass mobilization and the complexity of the legislative domain.

2. The Social Composition of the Parliamentary Elite

2.1. The Gentleman Legislature

As in other Western European countries in the early part of the 19th
century, Norway possessed a legislature dominated by a traditional elite

of state officials, large landowners and merchants. The creation of elected national assemblies had not affected the fundamental structure of the old absolutist state. The traditional elite had been able to expand their formal power positions to include the newly created legislative institution. The exact composition of the incumbents was, however, determined in each country by historical traditions and social structure. Norway had no powerful landed aristocracy: the major force in the elite was embetsmennene', , higher state officials, who controlled both parliament and cabinet.

The Norwegian Constitution of 1814 created a comparatively open access to the electoral channel. Altogether about 45 per cent of all men above the age of 25 were given the right to vote and to be elected to parliament (Kuhnle, 1975). In practice, however, this liberal suffrage was restricted by registration requirements and indirect elections, and the enfranchised population was mobilized only gradually to take part in elections. Shifts in the composition of the parliamentary elite were still more gradual.

In the period from 1814 to the 1870s, about 2/3 of the members of parliament were higher state officials, large land owners or merchants with an important economic position in society. This pattern of recruitment was closely linked to the basic idea behind the creation of national parliaments and more generally the national state. The system was based upon a mutual set of rights and obligations for citizens and thestate. Citizens were those who were involved with the state, either because they owned some property, paid taxes, or were public officials. Their rights were the right to vote and to be elected to parliament. Their duties were to serve the state in their various occupations and positions in society and obey the rules of the state laid down by their fellow citizens in parliament.

The bases of legitimacy for the incumbent elite were that they belonged to the responsible part of the population and had an 'understanding' of the mutual set of rights and obligations. Their qualifications were their experience with the state and society and a knowledge of how the economic and political system functioned. The recruitment process was mainly based on this ascriptive social status.

The demand for this type of personnel was created by traditions and the established values of society. Few of the enfranchised peasants and smaller property holders in the towns questioned the definition of who were the natural leaders in society. Most rural areas recruited local state officials or large landowners as their representatives. The proportion of peasant members of parliament was far less than their share of the electorate.

Measured in terms of occupational and status categories, this initial

recruitment pattern changed only marginally in the first fifty years of parliamentary rule. The number of peasant newcomers to parliament began at about 15 percent, increased slightly in the 1830s as a result of the first political mobilization of the peasant population, but thereafter fluctuated between 10 and 20 percent up to 1860. The number of state officicils was reduced somewhat, but the major shift away from the dominance of the incumbent elite came only gradually after 1860.

2.2. Changes in the Social Composition of Parliament

If we describe the transformation process with the concepts of incumbents, rural and urban challengers, the changes emerge more clearly. Figure 2 shows the shifts in the proportion of these three groups for eight time periods from 1814 to 1977. In the first four periods the reduction in the proportion of incumbents is paralleled by an increase in the proportion of rural challengers. From the turn of the century and onwards, the urban challengers are the expanding group in parliament. Still, the end result is a

much higher proportion of incumbents in parliament than we would have
expected, and this group again increases in the period after 1961.

This pattern is partly due to the fact that higher education is included as a characteristic of the incumbent group, and the importance of education in terms of acquired skill and knowledge has increased during the last century. At the same time, however, the importance of education as a status element has decreased. If we remove the educational criterion from the category of incumbents, the decrease in the high social status group is more dramatic: in the first period after World War I it is about 15 instead of 37 per cent.

The category of rural challengers is made up by both peasants and important leaders in the rural society - the schoolmaster, the parish clerk, local lower military personnel. In the first periods of rural mobilization these people were often the frontrunners in the creation of interest organizations and in the development of local political activities. They constituted about 25 per cent of the rural challengers in parliament from 1860 to the

turn of the century. However, changes in the occupational and social
composition in rural recruitment patterns become more visible, if we
contrast rural and urban developments.

The initial level of recruitment of incumbents in the 1814-48 period was, as shown in Figure 3, lower in the rural areas: its decline was also much more rapid. By the 1880s the proportion of incumbents from the rural areas was only 18 compared to 75 per cent in the cities and small towns. After 1900 there was again an increase in the recruitment of incumbents from the rural areas and a decrease to about 50 per cent in the urban areas. The figures for the rural areas would have been further reduced if the Northern part of Norway had been excluded. There, the transformation process was much more gradual and the recruitment of incumbents always higher than in the rest of the country.

Thus, the first major intra-system differences in recruitment patterns are the large urban-rural discrepancies in the recruitment of incumbents to parliamentary positions. The earlier mobilization of the peasant population made a much more dramatic and immediate effect on recruitment patterns than the later mobilization of the urban lower classes. The workers were never able to gain the same relative proportion of the seats in parliament as their peasant counterparts in the countryside. There are, however, also important regional variations in urban recruitment. The reduction in the proportion of incumbents was much more rapid in the Western and Southern peripheries than in the rest of the country.

2.3. Political Parties and Social Composition

Figure 4 shows the proportion of incumbents and rural and urban challengers in the three parties for 6 time periods from 1868 to 1977. Fundamental differences are clearly visible between the parties. The Right party shows a much higher demand for ascriptive social status as a recruitment criterion than the other two. The rural challengers, on the other hand, were at first recruited mainly by the Liberal party, and then by the Labour party. The Socialist party is the frontrunner in the recruitment of urban challengers.

The second important finding is the stability over time in the recruitment patterns in all three party groups during the 1868-1940 period. The only major exception is the reduction from 92 to 65 per cent in the proportion of incumbents within the Right party. Thus, the assumption of party strength in parliament as the main explanatory variable for changes in the recruitment pattern over time seems to have been confirmed.

These differences in recruitment patterns between the three parties are

interrelated with the urban-rural distribution of party support. The question is to what extent a particular recruitment pattern is an attribute of the party generally, or whether it reflects the rural/urban distribution of the seats among the parties. Table 1 shows the proportion of incumbents in each party from both rural and urban areas for the 1868-1940 period. The results indicate that a large proportion of the differences between the parties is due to differences in the urban-rural distribution of their electoral strength. In the period from 1868 to 1885, however, the party variable is of great importance. The initial level of recruitment of incumbents was much higher in the Right party both in the cities and in the rural areas. In the next periods there are some differences between the Right and the Left parties, but they are of less importance than the urban-rural difference. The Labour party has always had a low recruitment of incumbents in both rural and urban areas.

3. The Professionalization of the Legislature

3.1. The Process of Professionalization

The professionalization process is here viewed as a shift in the main sources of legitimacy and qualifications for recruitment to parliamentary positions from the traditional high social status to an increased importance of both political and educational status.

Three dimensions are incorporated in the classification of status groups: Occupational position, political experience, and education. For all three, legislators are dichotomised between high and low status. The first distinction is between legislators recruited from the traditional elite and those recruited from low status groups in the population. The category of traditional high social status is operationalized in terms of the following occupational positions: higher civil servants, other top executives in public service, landlords, large merchants, top executives in private business,

and liberal professions. The low social status group is then defined as the occupational residual. Second, legislators are divided according to their educational achievement into those who had completed an academic education and those who had not. Taken together, the two groups of high social status and high educational status correspond to the incumbent category discussed earlier. Finally, I have made a distinction between those with and those without either experience in local politics or full time occupation in political parties or related interest organizations before their entry into legislative politics.

Although these three dimensions give a maximum of eight possible
combinations of qualification and experience, there is a considerable
degree of overlapping at the level of the individual legislator.

At the parliamentary level these individual characteristics constitute aggregate figures showing relative proportions of the various combinations among members of parliament. For a consideration of the political professionalization process, three groups of legislators are important. We can, on the basis of occupation and political experience, distinguish between a) legislators with high social status and without any political experience prior to first entry into parliamentary positions, that is, the traditional elite; b) those without high social status, but with previous political experience; and finally c) those with both high social and high political status.

In order to investigate the duality in the professionalization process of both intellectual and political professionalization, the category of politicians without high social status is divided between those with only high political status and those who have the additional qualification of higher education. The first category are called professional politicians, the second educated politicians. This elaboration of the three dimensions gives us four different types of members of parliament, three of them with previous political experience: the professional politicians, the educated politicians, the high status politicians, and the group without political experience - the high status legislators.

In Figure 5 I have shown the changing composition of the Storting over
time with regard to these four groups.

The figure indicates a national pattern of a rapid substitution of high social status legislators by professional politicians. The reduction in the proportion of members of parliament with high social status is, however, more sudden and rapid than the subsequent increase of'pure' professional politicians. This result points out the importance - for a fuller understanding of the professionalization process in the Norwegian political system

of the two groups of members with mixed qualifications - of both political experience and either high social status or higher education. The national recruitment pattern does not change directly from a parliament dominated by civil servants and large merchants to a dominance by the group of'pure' professional politicians. We find an intermediate period with a demand for a combination of the different sources of legitimacy and qualification.

3.2. Mass Mobilization and Political Professionalization

How and to what extent is it possible to explain this national pattern of political professionalization within the framework of the societal arid political changes which took place in Norway in this period? The previous discussion assumed that professionalization is primarily a response to a growth in the political interest and activity of the masses and that mass mobilization created a demand for new types of qualifications, and new types of political leaders. Mass mobilization implies a widening of the

possibilities for participation and an increase in the use of the possibilities. As electoral participation grows, and as mass parties and interest organizations are established and develop, the pressure upon the legislature increases. Political professionalization is part of the response to this development.

At the local level many new channels for political activity were created during the middle and later part of the 19th century. The most significant was the establishment of local councils, but farming, religious, and teetotalist organizations were also important centres for political training. Among the industrial workers many different layers of organizations, with the trade unions proper at the front, provided valuable training grounds. The party-affiliated press of the farmers and workers functioned in a similar manner.

All these new institutions and organizations were bound to have an effect upon political recruitment. They influenced the supply of officeseeking individuals by making it possible for new and functional qualifications to develop. By increasing and broadening the political awareness and activity of the population, they provided for a shift in the demand, as new types of qualifications and legitimacy developed.

Let us first investigate the national pattern of these relationships. In a previous article we built a few simple regression models for an assumed year by year relationship between electoral mobilization and political professionalization (Eliassen & Pedersen, 1978). In the simplest form we hypothesized a direct linear or curvilinear relationship between these two processes. But this model of direct relationship gains only limited empirical support if we look at the total level of professionalization, that is the total proportion of legislators with political experience. For the indicator on the proportion of professional politicians, however, the degree of explained variance is substantially higher. It clearly emerges that in Norway the increase in popular electoral participation was accompanied by an increase in the recruitment of legislators who based their career on political status rather than social and/or educational status: that is, they were 'pure' political professionals. If we add the strength of the Left and Labour parties in parliament to the model, the proportion of explained variance increases for both indicators. The general result of the analysis in the case of Norway was summarized as follows:

'. . „ we have in Norway found a close correspondance in time between the level of electoral mobilization and the level of recruitment of political professionals, and in particular those professionals who relied primarly in their career on political qualifications without support from additional social or educational status. The

second decisive factor in the Norwegian professionalization process apparently was the organizational mobilization of the peasants. The entry of the Socialists on the political arena did only bolster the trend towards professionalism marginally'. (Eliassen & Pedersen, 1978).

These results suggest that the development of the peasant movement and the formation of the Left party were of decisive importance for the political professionalization process in Norway. As shown in Figure 6, however, there existed after the 1860s a much larger recruitment of professional politicians within the Left than the Right group in parliament. The maximum level of recruitment of professional politicians was reached in the period prior to the actual formation of political parties on the parliamentary scene. Thus, the important factor is probably the organizational mobilization in the countryside in the pre-party period rather than the actual creation of a Liberal party in parliament and at the national level in the 1880s.

We find that the recruitment of professional politicians within the Right party reached its maximum level in the period immediately after the establishment of political parties. The level of recruitment is, however, substantially lower at all points in time within the Conservative party. By far the largest proportion of professional politicians is found within the Labour party. Thus, my assumption about the selection pattern within this party has been confirmed, despite the finding from the regression analysis of only a marginal additional impact of the size of the Socialist group on the total level of professionalization in parliament. Taken together, these findings indicate that there are some major urban-rural differences in both the level of recruitment of professional politicians, the timing of the professionalization process, and the degree of recruitment of legislators with mixed qualifications of high social status, higher education, and political experience.

3.3. Intra-System Variations in the Professionalization Process

In discussing the professionalization process, I hypothesized an inverse linear relationship over time between the proportion of high status members and the proportion of legislators with political experience as their main source of legitimacy and qualification. The result from the investigation at the national level was, however, that the major reduction in the proportion of legislators with high social status took place before the large increase in the proportion of 'purely' professional legislators. This timelag' in the substitution process at the national level was due to an intermediate recruitment of legislators with different types of mixed qualifications of political experience, education, and high social status. This gives support for a 'two-step' substitution model: first, from a parliament dominated by high status legislators to an increased recruitment of legislators with both political experience arid higher education and/or high status occupation; Second, a further shift towards increased recruitment of 'purely' professional legislators. Several possible combinations of regional and urban-rural models of professionalization could have made up this national pattern of a two-step development. I hypothesize, however, that the basic distinction runs between a rural pattern of direct substitution of high status members by professional politicians, and an urban development with only a gradual increase in the recruitment of professional politicians and a substantial demand for legislators with mixed qualifications.

The results in Figure 7 confirm the urban character of the two-step
model of professionalization. The rural areas show a much more rapid
pattern of transformation from high status to professional politicians. In

the cities a comparatively high level of recruitment of the pure professional category was not reached until the interwar period: even today, the group of members with political experience as their only qualification and the two groups with mixed qualifications are equally large in the urban group of legislators.

Turning to the regional variations in this pattern, we find that the Southern, Western, and Trøndelag regions are most in accordance with the original hypothesis of a 'one step model' of professionalization. There exists a nearly straight inverse relationship in the early periods between the recruitment of high status legislators and the professional politician category. This pattern of a sudden and direct substitution of the traditional elite by professional politicians is also visible in the Northern region between the first and second periods, but there the reduction in the recruitment of high status legislators is much larger than the increase in the 'purely' professional category. The results from the central regions of 'Oslofjord' and 'Indre Østland' indicate a more complex pattern of stepwise and gradual substitution of high status members.

Apart from the case of the North, regional variations in the urban pattern of substitution are restricted. We find, however, in the 1868-1900 period a larger recruitment of educated politicians and a correspondingly lower recruitment of high status politicians from the cities in the South and the West than from the two Eastern and the Trøndelag regions. The peripheral character of the shift in the periods up to the turn of the century from the traditional elite to professional politicians and educated politicians contrasts to the central pattern of the substitution of a traditional elite by high status politicians in the cities in the Eastern regions, especially Oslo.

In a cross-classification of regions and the different types of localities the centre-periphery direction of the intrasystem variation has gained further support: the two-step model is most marked in the larger and smaller cities in the central regions, and the one-step model is most visible in the rural areas of the periphery.

At least one further aspect of the professionalization process has to be mentioned: the differences in the timing of the increase in the recruitment of professional politicians. This process began much earlier and was much more rapid in the rural areas than in the cities. In the 1848-1867 period, 54 per cent of the total recruitment of new members of parliament from the rural areas were professional politicians, and by the 1885-1900 period this proportion had passed 75 per cent. The corresponding figures for the cities are 25 and 23 per cent, respectively.

4. Political Professionalization and the Mobilization of the Low Status Groups in the Population

4.1. The Electoral Mobilization of the Peasant Population

These results indicate that one of the most fundamental differences in the process of political professionalization in Norway lies between the rural and the urban areas of the country. In order to explain these differences in the demand and supply structure we must take iinto account at least three important aspects of the changing political context in the cities and the rural districts: first and foremost, the earlier inclusion of the peasants into the electorate, and, subsequently, their earlier electoral mobilization; second, the larger impact and importance of the introduction of local self-government in 1837 in the countryside than in the cities; and finally the timing and tempo of the organizational mobilization of the peasant population in relation to organizational developments in urban areas.

In their article 'The Mobilization of the Periphery', Rokkan and Valen emphasize the relationship and the possibilities of time-lags between the electoral, organizational, and elite mobilization of the different segments of the population (Rokkan & Valen, 1962:182). In the period from 1829 to 1882 we find three moderate waves of electoral mobilization in the rural districts which correspond closely with the changes over time in the recruitment of peasant newcomers to parliament and the increase in the proportion of professional politicians from the rural areas. The first increase in rural turnout came in 1829, and at the same time the peasants started the process of electing representatives from their own class and heritage: 'At first the enfranchised peasants tended to vote for their 'betters'. For close to two decades after 1814 the rural electoral colleges sent more officials than freeholders to Parliament. The first movement of rural protest came in 1832. There was a perceptible increase in the participation in the countryside and a decisive change in the recruitment of representatives; the proportion of freeholders and other farmers rose and the proportion of officials declined' (Rokkan, 1967:370). The proportion of peasant newcomers to parliament reached a maximum level of 65 per cent of the total number of newcomers from the rural areas at the election of 1832. While rural electoral participation slowed down in the 1830s and 1840s, the direction of change in the rural political context was unmistakable.

The first phase of political professionalization in the rural areas came only one decade after the introduction of local self-government in 1837: a constant level of recruitment of professional politicians from the countryside, 50 per cent, was reached by mid-century. The next wave of professionalization

in rural recruitment to parliament came between 1868 and 1876. This increase in the demand for members of parliament with previous political experience as a qualification can be explained in terms of a lagged effect of the increase in the electoral participation and the organizational mobilization of the peasant population in the 1860s. Within the peasant group of legislators we find the same patterns of increased professionalization up to a maximum in the 1880s of 95 per cent professional peasant politicians. Throughout this period we find a constantly lower level of recruitment of'pure' professionals from the cities, and in the 19th century these areas reached a level of 25 per cent recruitment of professional politicians among newcomers to parliament only in 1882. Thus, the effect on the profe s sionalization process of the first large wave of electoral mobilization, from 1879 in the countryside and already from between 1870 and 1882 in the cities, was more immediate in the rural areas. The final spurt in the recruitment of professional peasant politicians came at the election of 1882, and the decisive change with regard to the total group of rural legislators came one election later, in 1885.

So far the political profe s sionalization of recruitment to parliament has been reviewed in terms of an increase in the total proportion of 'pure' professionals. Turning to the total group of members of parliament with some kind of previous political experience, there are again moderate discrepancies between rural and urban districts. The main explanation of these differences in the models of substitution and the patterns of professionalization lies in a higher demand for and supply of members of parliament with both the qualification of high political status and either high educational or high social status in the cities than in the rural districts of the country.

The next element in an explanation of the earlier and more rapid process of political professionalization in the rural areas is the importance of the introduction of local self-government in 1837. All citizens entitled to vote at the national level could also take part in the local elections. Participation in these elections, however, was much lower than in national elections. There exists no detailed account of the level of citizens' participation in the local elections in the lS>th century, but reports from various provinces indicate that turnout was much higher in the countryside. The desire for the reform had been much stronger among the peasants and the civil servants in the rural districts, who saw it as a means of increasing citizens' participation and involvement in political life and of reducing central governmental influence (Steen, 1968:21- Thus, we might assume that the larger impact of this reform on the political consciousness and the

numerical participation and activity of the peasant population could explain
some of the urban-rural variations in the; process of political professionalization.

4.2. Organizational Mobilization

The formation and development of mass organizations was the third step in the gradual process of the political mobilization of the rural population. After the increased turnout among the peasantry in the 1830s and the introduction of local self-government from 1837, the first attempts at the organizational mobilization of the low status group in the rural districts (and also to some extent degree in the cities), came in the 1840s and 1850s. The new associations at the local and national levels were based on four main elements of low status protest: religious sectarianism, countercultural reactions, economic inequalities, and political dissatisfaction. The pacemakers were mainly the low-church sectarian associations, the teetotal societies, and agricultural organizations (landhusholdningsselskapene). Organized cultural opposition to the central elite came later in the 1860s with the establishment of organizations for the defence of the rural 'nynorsk' language against the central, urban 'riksmål' language.

The first organizational mobilization of peasants and workers along economic and political cleavage lines came in 1848 with the 'Thrane movement' (Bjørklund, 1951). Around 1850 this organization had 273 local branches and more than 20,000 members, mostly in the smaller cities and the countryside of the East, especially in the rural districts of the Inner Eastern region. The second phase of peasant political mobilization came in 1865 with the establishment of the 'Friends of the Peasants' movement ('Bondevenneforeningen'). By 1871 it had more than 300 local branches and 21,000 members both in rural areas in the South and West, as well as the East. While the activity of these organizations decreased, they had been of major importance for the political mobilization of the low status population, in particular the freeholders and the unprivileged groups in the rural areas, the 'husmenn' and the land labourers (Jansen, 1965).

The organizational mobilization of the workers in the cities started later in the 1870s with the establishment of Worker Societies (Arbeidersamfunn) and trade unions. The final organizational mobilization of the workers came around the turn of the century at the same time as they entered the parliamentary scene for the first time (Bull, 1968).

So far we have received some support for the assumption that the earlier
and more rapid electoral and organizational mobilization of the rural low
status population and the larger impact in the countryside of the shift to

local self-government could explain the more immediate recruitment of
professional politicians to parliamentary positions from the countryside
than from the cities in Norway.

4.3. Party Formation and Political Professionalization

The rural districts and the Southern and Western regions of the country were earlier identified as the geographical areas with a 'one step' model of substitution of high status legislators by professional politicians. They were also the areas with the earliest and most rapid increase in the recruitment of professional politicians, though closely followed by the Inner Eastern and 'Trøndelag' regions. These territories were also the strongholds of the Liberal party in the 1880s and 1890s. At the general elections of 1882 and 1885, the Liberal Party received around 70 per cent of the votes from the rural districts in these four regions (Rokkan, 1967:394). The regional differences are also visible in the case of the cities, where the Liberal strongholds were in the smaller towns of the South, the West, and 'Indre Østland' (Svaasand, 1973:81- There is, then, a relationship between the electoral strength of the Liberal party and the timing and intensity of the process of political professionalization. Furthermore, there is also support for the assumption that this relationship was caused by a substantially higher recruitment of professional politicians within the Liberal than within the Conservative party, even though professionalization had begun in the 1860s before the establishment of party organizations.

In order to investigate the additional effect of the formation of political parties at the national and local level on the process of political professionalization, we can contrast intra-system variations in the recruitment of professional politicians within the 'Left' and 'Right' groups in parliament in the pre_-party period with the recruitment pattern after 1885. Table 2

shows the recruitment of professional politicians within the three parly groups in rural and urban areas in the 1868-1940 period. First, we find a much larger recruitment of 'pure' professionals within the 'Left' group, from both rural and urban districts in the pre-party period. In this period the 'Left' group reached its peak in the recruitment of professional politicians from rural areas. The differences are, however, greatest in the urban areas. The decisive shift in the Left recruitment pattern came at the election of 1868 in the smaller cities and as early as that of 1859 in the rural areas. Subsequently, there was a slight decrease in the recruitment of professional politicians before the election of 1876, after which the second wave of professionalization began within the rural Liberal group of members of parliament. Within the Right group of legislators the recruitment of professional politicians from the cities has always been low. The largest increase for this party in the rural areas came in the 1880s. So far the results lend support to the assumption that the Liberals were the frontrunners in the process of political professionalization. On the other hand, the figures also underline the importance of the early electoral and organizational mobilization of the peasant population, not only for the recruitment of professional politicicians within the rural Liberal group, but also for the rural Conservative group.

In the period after the introduction of political parties at the local and national levels, several changes took place in professionalization patterns. First, Table 6 shows that in the 1885-99 period the proportion of professional politicians within the rural Conservative group had almost reached the same level as that for rural Liberal legislators: at the same time the urban Liberal recruitment of'pure' professionals was markedly reduced. Political professionalization within the Conservative party seems to be related primarily to the development of party organizations and the increased polarization in Norwegian politics in the 1880s. The remarkable finding is, however, that the Conservative party shows a much more marked increase in the recruitment of professional politicians in the countryside than in their city strongholds where they had the strongest organizational network. This indicates that professionalization within the rural Conservative group was a response to the shifts in the Left recruitment patterns in order to compete for the votes from the peasants and other low status groups in the countryside.

The regional differences in the professionalization patterns also lend some support to this assumption. We find a general rural pattern of a larger increase in the Conservative recruitment of professional politicians from the 1868-84 period to that of 1885-99 in the Liberal strongholds in the

periphery than in the Conservative-dominated areas of the central
regions.

Discussions on the problem of the political professionalization of the recruitment to parliamentary positions has mainly emphasized the emergence of Socialist parties as an explanation for the change in recruitment criteria (Mannheim, 1956:200-205). However, this study suggests that in the Norwegian case, the main shifts in the composition of parliament took place before the entry of the Labour Party into parliament in 1903. In the countryside the proportion of high social status legislators had been reduced to almost zero and the dominant group of rural legislators around the turn of the century were professional politicians, closely followed in some regions by educated politicians. In the cities, the two-step substitution of high social by high political status had brought about a more mixed recruitment in the last decades of the 19th century: members of parliament had both political, educational and/or high social status. The final step in the professionalization process in the cities did not come until the interwar period. Both the Liberal and the Labour parties played an important role in this second phase of increased urban recruitment of professional politicians. As shown in Table 2, the proportion of professional politicians in the Labour party in the 1900-1918 period is 87 per cent compared to 41 in the Liberal party and only 13 per cent in the Conservative Party. In the next period the recruitment of'pure' professionals from the Labour party again constitutes 87 per cent, and the recruitment in the Liberal party 27 per cent. Thus, we can clearly identify the impact of the Socialist party on the professionalization process in the cities in this century. Political professionalization seems to be linked firstly with the electoral and then with the organizational mobilization of the rural population, and only later with the urban mobilization of the workers in the cities.

One element of regional differences in the timing of the professionalization process could also be explained by the emergence of the Labour party. The late but rapid increase in the recruitment of professional politicians after the turn of the century in the Northern region is mainly due to the recruitment of Labour party legislators from this area. Both in the rural and in particular the urban areas of Northern Norway the vast majority of the new Labour legislators were professional politicians without any other type of educational or high status qualification for election.

This paper has focused on changes in the recruitment of parliamentary positions in terms of a substitution of high social by high political status, a change from a situation where the traditional elite of high status legislators was the dominant group of members of parliament to a gradually increasing

importance of low status groups and professional politicians. Within this framework of analysis, there is a distinct centre-periphery dimension in both social substitution and the process of political professionalization across regions and between urban and rural areas. Further, this pattern of an earlier and rapid change in the social composition of parliament and in the professionalization of recruitment in the geographical peripheries of the society is in close, but partly lagged, correspondence with the timing and the tempo of political mass mobilization in these areas.

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