Resumé

The problem of cultural identity is central to political science. Three distinct elements of cultural identity are defined: the conceptual, symbolic, and demonstrative. Religion, language, and the teetotalist movement are suggested as indicators of these three components in the Norwegian context. The relative importance of these three aspects of cultural differentiation is analysed with regard to the changes in the Norwegian party system in the years after 1884. It seems that language was the most significant element of cultural dissent in the formative years of the Norwegian party system.

The starting point of this paper is Gabriel Almond's observation (1968,58) that 'every political system is embedded in a particular pattern of orientation to political actions'. This pattern of orientation has conventionally come to be described as the political culture of a society. The political culture forms part of that wider culture which in essence embraces that which is universal and unique in both the personality of individuals and the structuring of social relationships.

Questions concerning culture and its relationship to politics must rely not only upon the tools of political science, but must also involve the techniques and approaches of both collective sociology and individual psychology. In order to satisfy himself on the issue of 'who, what, and where am I', the individual tends to look no further than his own accumulation of attitudes, sentiments, and prejudices which themselves are determined by and are part of his own cultural environment. If we wish to appreciate better the mainsprings of political behaviour, we must frame our analyses in such a way that they take account of how attitudes and

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* An earlier version of this paper was presented at the ECPR Workshop on Religion and Language in Politics, London, 1975.

sentiments shape, sustain, and change the basis of that behaviour. The whole concept of culture assumes that attitudes and prejudices do not occur randomly, but are structured within well-defined and clearly recognisable patterns, both within and across societies. It is therefore also assumed that the impact of culture upon politics, and how it gives shape and meaning to the latter, will be non-random.

During the last two decades or so, the study of political culture has been a major industry among political scientists, especially in the field of development studies. Yet in terms of attempts to study this phenomenon systematically, empirically, and cross-nationally the high watermark was the publication of The Civic Culture (Almond & Verba 1963). However, this admirable study left many questions unanswered, as well as perhaps raising more problems than those it purported to solve. In particular, it can be said that The Civic Culture, as the outstanding comparative study of politics and culture, tends to concentrate upon the relationship between individual and state to such an extent that the wider environmental conditions of culture and society that surround political activity and structures at the macro-level tend to be ignored.

On the whole, the study of culture and politics remains a grey area where we usually can grasp only the shadow rather than the substance of reality. The present paper is intended to be no more than a preliminary effort to explore some disparate elements of culture systematically and empirically within a single analytical framework and a single context. The first section is a general discussion which seeks to define cultural identity and to isolate some of its important constituent elements. The second section will discuss the political role of cultural identity within the single empirical context of Norway.

1. The Question of Identity

The aspect of culture which interests us is identity. The patterns of orientation that it provides to the individual simultaneously cloak him with an identity and offer him a standard by which he may interpret the world and to which he may adjust his reactions. In short, culture is the subjective realm that provides for both individuals and society at large meaning and structuring of events and happenings. Or as Sidney Verba (1965) puts it in the narrower context of political culture, it constitutes that system of beliefs, expressive symbols, and shared values which gives parameters to and structures the situations in which action occurs. These sentiments and attitudes, it is assumed, are held together by some form of constraint or

functional interdependence. In short, cultural identity offers coherence and integration in social life: it is the means by which individuals interpret their experiences and define their preferences and prejudices. Collectively, it imposes upon a society a set of cultural patterns, which in their effect upon the individual within that society are enduring configurations. It is in this collective sense that one must talk of cultural myth. The embodiment of the myth is presented in ritual practices. These rites constitute the motor through which people participate collectively and symbolically in a common enterprise. In turn, participation in the ritual ensures the survival of the myth for at least one further generation (see, e.g, Malinowski 1948). We suggest that cultural identity can be broken down into three component parts which we describe as conceptual, symbolic, and demonstrative.

The conceptual element relates more to the mythical aspects of cultural identity. It may be defined as a set of beliefs which creates an instrumental pattern for both individual and collective behaviour (see, e.g., Converse 1964). While it is possible that several sets of beliefs may feed into the cultural myth, one belief system which can be seen to be significant, both theoretically and historically, is religion. While not denying the possible importance of other belief systems, we shall concentrate here upon religion as part of the conceptual component of culture.

Any religion is constituted of three important elements: ideology, involvement, and internal institutionalization. As long as a religious ideology is coherent, it cannot be faulted in its own terms: it can only be rejected in its entirety, usually on the basis of another belief system. Ideologies, while all tending to contain a high number of injunctions, tend to vary in the degree of their codification or their explicitness as a guide for action; that is, they are more or less comprehensive in their presentation of assumptions and principles governing routine daily behaviour. Religion is also a group phenomenon; worship is communal. Worship therefore entails involvement. Again, there can be variation in the degree of involvement expected or demanded. Involvement has two territorial aspects: first, within a local community in a face-to-face context, and secondly through the church extending to a national or cross-national community. Finally, internal institutionalization of a religion relates to the degree of hierarchy and structured organisation that it possesses.

These three elements are integral parts of any religious organisation. Together, they govern the flow of proscriptive/prescriptive injunctions and conditional/permissive options it issues to its followers. From these elements, one can reach the threefold classification of ideal religious

organisations advanced, inter alia, by Weber (1963) and Troeltsch (1931): ecclesia, sect, and denomination. From our point of view the major interest of these ideal types is the assumptions one may draw about their relationships with the political world. These relationships derive from the structure and self-image of the religious organisation. The ecclesia claims supremacy over the world and seeks to control it. The sect either withdraws completely from the world (emphasising that entry into the next depends upon not being contaminated by the material world) or militant] y fights it in order perhaps to achieve a 'heaven upon earth'. By contrast, the denomination simply accepts the world, and seeks an accomodation with it. Any one or combination of these may be present within the boundaries of a state. When we add the possible religious-secular dimension, we find that in any one state territory there may be one or more of five types of religious structure: homogeneous and indifferent; homogeneous and practising; heterogeneous with two or more religious organisations; heterogeneity with an involvement-indifference dimension; and heterogeneity with a commitment-active antagonism cleavage.

A considerable religious revival took place in Norway in the 1850's and IB6o's. But, for example in contrast to the British case, the new Lutheran fundamentalism was contained within the established Church: Non-Conformist dissidence never became a real option for most Norwegian believers. These developments in turn inevitably affected the structure of the Norwegian Lutheran Church, which displays more characteristics of a sect than is usually the case of a denominational religious organisation. Religious structure in Norway, therefore, is one of dualism within a single religious institution, with liberal theology and high church attitudes being advocated from the centre at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Oslo, and a strong peripheral counter movement based on the voluntary lay organisations within the church, the Societies for the Inner Mission (indremisjonsselskaper). These latter groups even established their own theological academy, recognised by the state church, which today educates more ministers than the university faculty. Thus, the state church Is ridden with strong conflicts, and for the past century fundamentalist Lutheran theology and practice has been and remains a very strong counter-cultural movement in Norway.

The symbolic element represents the enduring expressive aspect of the culture, transmitting its values from individual to individual, and from generation to generation (see, e.g., Edelman 1967). Language is perhaps the supreme expressive component of cultural identity, for it is the basic means of communication. As such it is the most important single factor for

achieving integration - even of already existing conceptual unity. Language is also an expression of individual identity: as such, it can be a potential commitment to political action. With regard to religion its importance is that it is an efficient tool, perhaps the only one, for defining the abstract.

Language, however, tends to be slightly different from religion in two ways. First, a man can subscribe to the one true faith even though everyone else in his neighbourhood does not. By itself this ought not lead to a dilution or destruction of his commitment: he can still enjoy his religion. But the ability to speak a language is of little value if there is no way in which the individual can use it. This simple fact means that the resolution of a linguistic conflict, perhaps even more than of a religious conflict, is a collective decision in which everyone must share, including those who do not speak the language. Hence, people who stake a claim for a language must always do so for other people as well.

The second difference derives from a consideration of motivation for action. The motivation for political action by a church can come from its own conceptual myth, as for instance in the case of the Miinster Anabaptists; a church does not necessarily require a catalyst. But language does. Linguistic differences become political either when there is discriminatory access to state power or discriminatory benefits in state outputs. In this sense we see, as has often been pointed out, that the political saliency of language is almost entirely a modern phenomenon. People must have already achieved a certain degree of awareness in order to detect the existence of discrimination along linguistic lines.

There exist two recognised standards for written Norwegian: bokmål and nynorsk. During the long union with Denmark up to 1814, written Danish had become the linguistic standard used in Norway. In the 1830's and 1840's this standard was modified to include both the addition of some 'old' Norwegian words to the vocabulary and certain orthographical changes. This policy of language revision has been pursued and supported mainly in the centre and is the basis of Riksmål and the present Bokmål form of written Norwegian, used today by more than 80 per cent of the population. An entirely different approach to the creation and maintenance of a linguistic standard was adopted by the linguist Ivar Aasen in the 1850's. He sought the roots of anew Norwegian language (Nynorsk) in the language of the medieval Kingdom of Norway which had existed prior to the union with Denmark. His method of language construction involved selecting dialects from the more isolated rural areas of Southern Norway. These vernaculars were to form the basis of the Nynorsk standard on the

grounds that they were the least contaminated by Danish. Nynorsk, representing a more radical break with the Danish standard, became the written standard for large parts of the Western fjordland and Eastern valleys. Aasen's grammar and dictionary were published around 1850, and in terms of popular usage the Nynorsk movement peaked between 1900 and 1920. Today Nynorsk is a minority standard, used mainly in peripheral areas of Southern Norway, but it is fully and officially recognised as a form of written Norwegian (cf. Haugen 1966). Language and religion in Norway, while perhaps not as differentiated as in other states, have nevertheless tended to coincide, providing a powerful stimulus for political differences and political action.

In Norway at least, these two cultural components have been strengthened by a third aspect which we call demonstrative action and effect..By demonstrative we mean a more specific expressive component, which in a sense takes the form of a rite, giving body and substance to the myth. The demonstrative act, which may be described as action-controlling or action-directing, is communicated through the expressive aspect of culture. Through participation in the demonstrative, allegiance to the conceptual beliefs is reinforced or renewed. In a sense, therefore, people acquire a kind of tribal badge which gives them both confidence and a sense of belonging to something worthwhile.

The demonstrative element is a sustaining force for organisations (including the state). It refers to those specific actions which are commemorative, either of specific unique events in the past, or of a past and/or ongoing tradition and/or culture. In either instance, what is significant is not the truth of the past, but the present interpretation of that past event or tradition. The first aspect may be described as historical maintenance, the second as structural-behavioural maintenance. The former is specific, the latter diffuse. Our contention is that where people's minds can be focused upon a specific historical event, then the need for voluntary associations (i.e. non-state) to foster its memory on a continuous and enduring basis is reduced. By contrast, where there is no single focal point which can be pin-pointed on the symbol, the necessity of organisations, in order to nurture assiduously the survival of the tradition, correspondingly increases. Perhaps the point may be made more strongly by comparing the attitude of the British state to the celebration by Ulster Protestants of the Battle of the Boyne (moving from indifference to, in recent years, hostility) with the strong Soviet endorsement and sponsorship of the commemoration of the October Revolution of 1917. In both instances, what is significant is not what actually happened in 1690 or 1917, but the interpretation

of those events and its effect upon the contemporary political culture. The way in which happenings or memories may change over time may be illustrated by a consideration of the temperance/teetotalist movements in Scandinavia. In their formative years of politicisation, they were regarded by the state with indifference, if not contempt. As they grew in strength and gained important political victories, state policy began to reflect their point of view to the extent that temperance, if not total abstinence, has been official state policy for most of the twentieth century. As Gusfield (1972) points out in his classic account of the American temperance movement, one of the major appeals of this kind of demonstrative effect is related to the idea of an alternative hierarchy of social status. Clearly, such ritual demonstrations may relate to more than language or religion, but whenever they do occur, they are a mythstrengthening factor of exceptional potency. The demonstrative action of Norwegian politics, which relates strongly to language and religion, focuses primarily upon moral aspects of social behaviour. Our indicator of this is the issue of teetotalism and the temperance/abstinence movements.

The first active Norwegian temperance movement appeared in the 1840's. Prominent among its supporters were ministers who reacted against the liberalist legislation facilitating the establishment of distilleries. The thrust of this temperance movement was directed mainly against the excessive use of spirits and was firmly embedded in the central culture. It was a movement to protect the people of the periphery, not to mobilise them. By contrast the later teetotalist movement did seek to mobilise the periphery. This movement for total abstention from, and subsequently prohibition of, all manufacture, sale, and consumption of alcohol was formed around 1860 and it succeeded in capturing the centre through its victory in a referendum in 1918. The referendum ushered in a period of total prohibition that lasted until 1926. Traditionally teetotalism has been strongest in the South and the West of the country, but it is also worth noting that this counterculture is the only one of the three building blocks of a Norwegian peripheral identity which has succeeded in mobilising socialists as well as non-socialists (Valen & Rokkan 1974).

Our assertion is that these three aspects are not only essential components of cultural identity, but also that they are interlinked. Figure 1 suggests tentatively how this relationship may be portrayed diagrammatically.

Clearly, we have said nothing new up to now, either in the general
discussion of culture, or in its relationship to politics. However, we feel
that much of the literature to date, having put forward its concepts, has

proceeded to analyse them separately. Let us look at our indicators of the conceptual and expressive component. In practical terms, it is interesting to see how historically religion and language have been related in Europe. This is not surprising, for language is the only way in which a religion can be communicated from one individual to another. In turn, the teachings of a church may often act as the model or mainspring for the spoken and written language: for example, Luther's translation of the Bible provided the standard for modern German. Conversely, the survival of a language may well depend upon whether its literature has included the major religious books. The invention of the printing press and the Reformation provided powerful linguistic stimuli in those areas of Europe which broke away from the Catholic Church and its use of Latin as a lingua franca. For example, the continued vitality of Icelandic and the survival of Welsh are due in part to the early appearance of the Bible in those languages.

The importance of both language and religion in the generation of national territorial boundaries and of intra-state political cleavages has long been recognised, not least in the stimulating and impressive analyses of Stein Rokkan (1970; 1975). In his efforts to generate a model explaining both the processes of state- and nation-building and the emergence of potentially salient political cleavages in Western Europe, Rokkan draws upon a Parsonian inspired schema which utilises four components, each of which covers a whole complex of functional problems. One of these components is designated as culture. From both the diagrammatic representations of the model and from his tabular presentations of Western

European developments, it is clear that for Rokkan the key expressions of culture are language and religion. His analyses clearly demonstrate the importance of each in the processes of cultural boundary-building. What is needed are further efforts that consider the simultaneous impact of language and religion. Clearly, both can be a force for unity. While this may be of major historical importance in the process of state-building and the establishment of national-cultural boundaries, we are more interested in the opposite instance where both language and religion are forces for disunity or political division.

Finally, we should emphasise that the demonstrative component is rather different from the other two, being dependent upon them. The demonstrative act simultaneously derives from, buttresses, and feeds into the conceptual and expressive. Nevertheless, such acts remain an integral part of cultural identity, and as such are politically salient. For example, in Northern Ireland, the specific historical event of the Battle of the Boyne relates to (or perhaps more accurately, has come to seem to relate to) the conceptual world of religion. Its commemoration, through for instance the Orange parades, is derived from this, and serves to keep the memory alive and to sustain the purity of the conceptual world. The parades are actiondirecting or action-controlling demonstrations.

2. Identity and the Formation of the Norwegian Party System

The latter half of the nineteenth century is an appropriate period in which to analyse the cultural conflict between centre and periphery. In the first instance this period witnessed the organisational genesis of all three counter-cultural movements. More generally, their birth occurred during an era of nationalism, and it is interesting to consider the interplay between the nationalist, pan-Scandinavian, and romanticist sentiments of the central elites and the attempts to create peripheral identities. The latter, based partly on these nationalist sentiments, were nevertheless also a reaction against central dominance. Finally, these decades also saw the hardening of the conflict with Sweden over the nature of the Union and the successful introduction of parliamentarism as a system of government.¹

In order to examine the role of cultural identity during this formative period of Norwegian politics, we shall first seek to isolate the central nation-building agents as well as the counter-cultural elements of the periphery. Second, an attempt will be made to construct and operationalise a scale of countercultural identity building, by means of the availability of local institutions for cultural defence. Finally, the formation

and changes in the early Norwegian party system of the 1880's and 1890's will be related to the cultural scale. To what extent did the institutionalisation of collective cultural identity influence the internal cohesion of the Liberal party? Was the Moderate splinter party of the 1890's an expression of cultural dissent or merely a party of regional interests? Which of the three cultural elements was the strongest in creating a base for changes in the party system?

The year 1884 was an important turning point in Norwegian political history. The victorious Liberal party, an unwieldy coalition of urban professionals and farmers, reached the summit of its power. But as early as 1888 the relationships within the government coalition had deteriorated to a point where an open split seemed unavoidable. On the parliamentary level the factionalisation of the Liberal party was largely caused by cultural issues: a new church law, transferring some of the traditional authority of the local minister to a predominantly lay congregation council, and a proposal to grant a state scholarship to the author Alexander Kielland, notorious because of his violent attacks on the ministers of the church, and especially on the lay Lutheran movement.

We shall try to explore the extent to which these parliamentary differences
were based upon conflicts at the electoral grass-roots.

Table 1 summarises the basic differences in cultural identity across the three elements discussed in the previous section, distinguishing between the cultural profiles of the centre and the periphery. Three demands were made by the periphery upon the centre, each corresponding to one element for the cultural profiles.

a) - At a minimum, the recognition of Nynorsk as an official language on
equal footing with Riksmål.

b) - More influence by lay members of the congregations in each parish,
and

c) - Protection from alcoholic beverages by means of locally controlled
and restricted sale outlets. In addition, the demand was raised for
further and heavy increases in taxes upon alcohol.

These demands threatened three pillars of nineteenth century Norwegian
society:

a) - The need for central symbolic hegemony in a situation where language
was an important nation-building tool and where the modernisation
process still was a predominantly urban phenomenon.

b) - The authority of government officials, in this case the local ministers.

c) - Economic liberalism and the free establishment of distilleries as an
important device in the monetarisation of the rural areas and the
development of market flexibility for grains and potatoes.

Not only did cultural conflict appear imminent: it seemed to be unavoidable.

Whether they desired it or not, the political parties were forced to align
themselves on these issues and between centre and periphery (see Table
2).

The splintering of the Liberals into a Moderate and a 'Pure' party in 1888 will serve as a focal point for the study of political consequences of cultural conflict in Norway in this period. First, it is of importance to note that some of the first steps towards acceptance of Nynorsk as an official language were taken during the intense period of reform following 1884: a united Liberal party had rallied behind the new government in passing resolutions to this effect. Second, it is equally clear that the same group supported a series of tax and customs increases on alcoholic beverages. Third, the relationship between the first 'parliamentary' government and its parliamentary group grew increasingly more strained over religion.

Table 3 illustrates this tension by pointing to the differential ease of
passage for issues concerning the three cultural elements from 1885 up to
the 1888 split.

There existed an important difference between defending the Lutheran State church and the two other elements. Religion could be attacked from two sides: by orthodox members of lay Lutheran organisations and by secularists and secular groups. The latter, anti-religious position, could

not realistically be parallelled by a 'pro-drinking' and an 'anti-language' attitude. In the Netherlands it is a well-known fact that Catholic and Protestant parties formed coalitions at a relatively early stage to act as a barrier against an advance of the secular zuil. The basic dilemma of the Norwegian Liberal party was accentuated by the division of its parliamentary group into two camps: an anti-church group and one faction

advocating the inclusion of features more relevant to sects in the practices and structures of the denomination. The conciliatory middle of the road position of simply defending the existing Lutheran State church was left to the Conservatives.

To what extent did the split over religion determine the votes cast for the Moderates in the constituencies in the 1890's? Valen & Rokkan (1974) have pointed to the high priority that all three cultural elements must be given in descriptions of present-day cleavages in Norway. In an attempt to answer this question we have constructed a 'cultural scale' with a value for each commune based on the presence or absence of structures serving the needs of each of the three elements.

The operationalisation of the cultural scale has been included in Table 4. Additionally, if the scale is to be interpreted on an ordinal scale level, it implies the following hierarchy: (1) Language identity. (2) Religious organisations. (3) Teetotalers' associations.

In Table 5 this cultural scale is used to study variations in party strength for the elections of 1885, 1891, 1894, and 1897. The Conservative party received a major part of its votes in communes with no usage or late application of Nynorsk. The Liberals derived considerable support in Nynorsk-oriented local communities in the election of 1885. After the split the cultural variable loses most of its impact on the Liberal party. There is a rather weak tendency towards a marginally better performance in communes with no Lutheran lay organisations. The Moderates seem to be the only party more or less completely dependent upon the cultural cleavage. In the most secular communes the party's share of the vote is close to zero. Of the three cultural elements the public usage of Nynorsk is by far the most prominent.

To ascertain that the systematic variations in party support across the cultural scale values were not merely due to extreme outliers in some of the sub-groups, we have included the correlation coefficients for the variables as a control.

From an inspection of the correlation coefficients in Table 6 it may be
concluded that the main findings of Table 5 can remain unchanged.

Two highly relevant questions should be raised about the close relation
between the cultural scale and Moderate support:

(1) Are we dealing with a spurious relationship that merely expresses a
strong regional distribution of the cultural scale as well as the Moderate
vote?

(2) To what extent was the Moderate strength influenced by the fact that the party did not build a viable organisation? And what was the impact on the Moderates' ability to take advantage of existing mobilising organisations for cultural defence? Was the absence or presence of organisations for the other parties an advantage or a disadvantage for the Moderates?

The first question is taken up in Table 7. To facilitate the analysis we have divided Norway into the six regions normally used in the study of the country's political development. Numbers have been assigned to the regions according to their spatial distance from the capital area: Oslo Fjord, East Inland, Trondheim Fjord, South, West, and North. Clearly there exist structural effects that derive from the regional context for each community. Only one of the communes in the central Oslofjord region had registered public Nynorsk usage. The opposite was true for the West. In this region 108 of 116 communes had supported the Nynorsk language. The South contains 39 communes: 34 of these are characterised by the presence of both lay Lutheran and teetotalist organisations.

But despite this interdependence between the cultural scale and regional context, some interesting variations in Moderate support can be observed. Bearing in mind that the raison d'etre for the Moderates on the parliamentary level was a split over religion, a reasonable hypothesis would infer that the voters responded primarily to this cultural element. Communes with established lay Lutheran organisations should have contributed more voters to the Moderates. Some of the more striking deviations from this pattern are listed in Table 8.

From the analysis in the tables and the comments in Table 8 it is obvious that the electoral base of the Moderate party was more complex than our original hypotheses would indicate. To understand these deviations it will be necessary to spell out the importance of the relationships between the various cultural elements. The effects of the party split varied in magnitude according to a more complex interplay of cultural movements.

First, however, we must study another possible source of error: the degree of political organisation present in each community at the time of the formation of the Moderates. The Moderate leadership pointed out on a number of occasions the evils of organising as a political party, and it is true that the splinter movement did not organise directly. But to what extent was popular support for the party related to the existence of other cultural organisations and political parties in each commune? Table 9

provides an empirical base for answering this question. The following
observations can be made:

(a) - the Moderates were strongest in communities where the Liberal
Party had already organised and where no other party organisation
had as yet penetrated.

(b) - in non-penetrated communes, language was the most important
cultural element. Teetotalism represented the second strongest influence
and organized religion was of least importance.

(c) - in communes with only a Liberal party organisation, language dominated. An interaction pattern was present in that there was a tendency that absence of teetotalist organisations had a mobilising effect where Nynorsk had been used officially. In communes with low language organisation, the presence of teetotalist and religious organisations had some effect. Throughout this group of communes religion had a direct effect.

(d) - in communes with Conservative organisational dominance the average level of Moderate support was weaker. Language usage dominated the Moderate support base in the 1891 election. By 1897 this had changed and the lay Lutheran organisation base dominated Moderate support;

(e) - in local communities where both the major parties were represented
the Moderates received the lowest level of support. Moreover the
pattern of support seems to be random.

The forces associated with party organisations contributed to the retention of language as the principle cultural source of Moderate support: the organised presence of the enemy, the Liberal Party, and the degree to which communes had been 'politicised' by party organisations.

3. Systems of Action and Information

In cybernetics it is an established practice to describe the functioning of any structure in terms of two sub-systems: the system of action and the system ofinformation. While the former has been subject to great attention from the social sciences, the latter has remained more obscure in the literature. Parson's famous paradigm (1964, 3-24) and Easton's political system (1965) have provided useful tools for describing complex macroprocesses in the social sciences. Most of the emphasis, however, has been put on describing the dynamic fluctuations of decisions, manpower,

money, etc. with the relationship between input resources and the attainec
goals in the form of outcomes, policies, etc. as a major concern. The
political system of action has been thoroughly described.

What, then, would be the elements of a political system ofinformation'

First, this system would not deal with political action: it would be concerned with 'symbols', that is, evaluations of or at least statements about action. Second, this stream of symbols would run counter to the stream of action. Third, in the performance of its information function a vital element of control would be introduced into the political system. Fourth, the degree of correspondence between the performing system of action and the controlling system of information would provide an indication of the efficiency of the total system.

Thus two basic orientations or models of peripheral attitudes may
be distinguished. How these have operated in Norway is indicated in
Figure 2.

1. Action System Orientation

The challenge of penetration was perceived by a given local community as a demand by the centre that it accept a new behavioural pattern associated with modernisation. A typical case would be the observation by a rural community of urban standards of living in a centre brought closer through improved communication.

Three different reactions are possible: a) outright rejection of the new way of life, b) willing acceptance of modernisation, c) using some tools of modernisation, such as the establishment of a mass organisation, to counteract some of the most undersirable effects of the societal change. In the Norwegian case, this is represented by the establishment of teetotalist associations as a response to alcoholism as a social problem. It is important to note that the establishment of a counter-strategy in the framework of an action system would tend to define the conquest of the centre as an end. The only definite way of solving the problem of alcoholic consumption as a behavioural problem would require political control of the entire system.

2. Information System Orientation

Symbolic standardisation was a means employed by the centre to strengthen a national identity. This was of course largely incompatible with existing local symbolic identities, such as dialects. Standardisation did not necessarily affect traditional behavioural patterns, but by its mainipulation of symbols the process did influence the basic fabric of local communities. Some communities chose to support an alternative standardisation, Nynorsk, that would require less symbolic adjustment on their part. These local areas used the demand for official recognition of and parity for Nynorsk as their counter-demand vis-å-vis the central authorities.

Total dominance of the Norwegian polity was not a necessary condition for achieving their end. The language question in Norway was not primarily a problem of attaining material goals, such as various advantages for the peripheral areas. It was mainly an expressed wish to define a new Norwegian identity based on the periphery (which was considered the 'real' base of nationhood). The final question that should be answered would then be: why did the symbolic issue of Nynorsk gain prominence over teetotalism and religion in the electorate?

It is tempting to link the answer to Lerner's (1958) theory of political participation and modernisation. The period under study is represented by the first two phases in Lerner's conceptual scheme: urbanisation and literacy. But in the Norwegian case school reform preceded urban development. The law enacting educational instruction for all children was passed as early as 1827 (for rural areas) and 1847 (for the cities). The process of growth did not gain momentum until the latter half of the nineteenth century. In the 1890's the main threat perceived by rural communities was related to linguistic standardisation propagated through the school system. The dominance of the school system must have seemed more formidable in Norway than in most other European countries, since the overwhelming majority of the population belonged to the Lutheran state church. The prolonged fight between state and church over the right to 'standardise' through the school system that was familiar to most European countries with a viable Catholic church, was never present in Norway. Peripheral protest in the form of demands for equality for Nynorsk became the locus of the identity crisis.

This analysis indicates that even though religious differences were important on the parliamentary level, the cleavage did not seem able to penetrate very efficiently to the electoral grass roots. Indeed, after the Moderates disappeared around the turn of the century, no new political party with a religious base was established until 1933 and the emergence of rhe Christian People's Party. In our view, this deficiency of the lay Lutheran movement lay in its inability to communicate the idea that establishment of congregation councils was an answer to a serious threat against the periphery by the centre. Norway was, after all, completely dominated by the Lutheran state church. Social problems associated with alcoholism and the amount of symbolic adjustment required by one's children in school were both issues of more immediate concern to people in the periphery. Our data indicate that the Moderates were seen as a vehicle that could respond to these threats, regardless of their origins as an orthodox Lutheran splinter party. One way of interpreting the function of

the parliamentary conflict over congregation councils would be to consider
it as a 'signal' that served as a rallying point for all groups formulating
counter-cultural demands.

When the Nynorsk issue seems to have more effect than teetotalism in predicting Moderate support, it must be related to the historical context of both movements in the 1890's. The demands for parity for the two languages in the schools as well as in public service in general reached a first peak during this period. Later, teetotalism became the most important of the three cultural elements in Norway. During the 'Prohibition Era' it succeeded in conquering the political system by means of a referendum (Valen & Rokkan 1974). Organised total abstention from alcohol was strongly related to the definition of the use of alcoholic beverages as a social problem. This problem definition in turn was based on changing life styles associated with urbanisation. Consumption of alcohol became more conspicuous in the cities than in the traditional rural communities, where drinking was socially acceptable in well-defined contexts linked both with life-cycle events, such as weddings and funerals, and with growth-cycle events, such as harvest and spring. Modern urban life disrupted many of these established contexts, and increasingly the use of alcohol became a social problem. It is indicative of teetotalism as primarily a protest against changing behavioural patterns that most support came from the rural areas. The process of urbanisation had not yet reached a stage where teetotalism could dominate the counter-cultural demands. In any case, the 'pure' Liberals also supported abstention from alcohol, so reducing its usefulness to the Moderates as a mobilising catalyst. Since lay Lutheran issues did not succeed in sufficiently polarising the electorate, and since the time was not yet ripe for the teetotalers, the symbolic adjustment and the demand for official bilingualism dominated the organised base of cultural politics in Norway in the 1890's. This analysis of electoral strength at the communal level indicates that language seems to have been the bedrock of cultural dissent.

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NOTE

1. There are several good and comprehensive studies of nineteenth century Norwegian history. One of the more interesting, because it is written largely from the point of view of the counter-cultural movements, is Bergsgård 1964. For a detailed account of the 1880s and 1890s see Danielsen 1964.

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