Asbjørn Sonne Nørgaard

Cevea

Despite the proliferation of research on public service motivation (PSM), fundamental questions about its origins continue to evade scholars: Is PSM driven by genetics, socialized through experiences, or both? If PSM is socialized, when does socialization occur? Answering these questions is critical for reconciling the state vs trait debate, and fo...

Despite the proliferation of research on public service motivation (PSM), fundamental questions about its origins continue to evade scholars: Is PSM driven by genetics, socialized through experiences, or both? If PSM is socialized, when does socialization occur? Answering these questions is critical for reconciling the state vs trait debate, and fo...

Where do our political attitudes originate? Although early research attributed the formation of such beliefs to parent and peer socialization, genetically sensitive designs later clarified the substantial role of genes in the development of sociopolitical attitudes. However, it has remained unclear whether parental influence on offspring attitudes...

In this article, we examine the nature of the relationship between educational attainment and ideology. Some scholars have argued that the effect of education on political variables like ideology is inflated due to unaccounted-for family factors, such as genetic predispositions and parental socialization. Using the discordant twin design and data f...

Many studies have shown that political efficacy, interest in politics, and political knowledge are strongly related to political participation. In most analyses, these variables are described as having a causal effect on participation. In this paper, we examine the extent to which the relationship between political attitudes and participation is co...

Where do our political attitudes come from? Early research into the etiology of socially relevant beliefs attributed their origin primarily to the social world in which we develop. The observation that similar beliefs are reflected in our family and immediate social environments suggested that children learn these beliefs through the process of soc...

A substantial body of work has highlighted the distinctive personality trait levels of elected officials, but very little is known about the personality of those who actually implement the political will of these officials, namely, bureaucrats. We sent surveys to all Danish municipal politicians and high-level bureaucrats for whom contact informati...

Existing research shows that ideological orientations are stable after young adulthood. Extending research on the sources of ideological stability, we examine social and economic ideology over a 3- to 4-year period in two twin panels (one Danish and one American). We find evidence for the importance of genetic influences and individual life experie...

The influence of personality traits, position and relations on political and administrative leadership behavior in Danish municipalities

The first extensive analysis of the personality traits of Danish voters and local and national politicians. Using the 60-item Neo-FFI in four unique data sets the book shows how the five personality factors are associated with political engagement, ideological orientation and party choice among voters and how the personality traits of political eli...

Politikerne bliver fra flere sider opfordret til at udøve ledelse og sætte retning for forvaltningen, og i de danske kommuner kan udvalgsmedlemmerne spille en betydelig ledelsesmæssig rolle som ansvarlige for den umiddelbare forvaltning. Men alle udvalgsmedlemmer udøver formentligt ikke ledelse i samme omfang. Såvel rollen som formand som medlemmer...

Politicians who serve in standing executive committees can exercise active leadership but are not compelled to do so. Active leadership may be related to politicians’ personality traits and the position they hold in the committee. We investigate these antecedents of politicians’ use of transformational and transactional leadership using a unique su...

Politicians who sit on standing executive committees can exercise active leadership, but are not compelled to do so. Active leadership may be related to politicians’ personality traits and the position they hold in the committee. We investigate these antecedents of politicians’ use of transformational and transactional leadership using a unique su...

Objective: To study personality traits of Danish parliamentarians (MPs) and examine elite voter congruence and elite differentiation. Whereas previous political elite studies have focused only on the Big Five level we include aspect-level differences. Method: In a highly representative survey of Danish MPs (N=81, response rate= 46.3 pct.) and a rep...

Both Herbert A. Simon and Anthony Downs borrowed heavily from psychology to develop more accurate theories of Administrative Behavior outside and Inside Bureaucracy: Simon, to explicate the cognitive shortcomings in human rationality and its implications; and Downs, to argue that public officials, like other human beings, vary in their psychologica...

This paper examines whether the effect of interethnic encounters on natives' attitudes toward immigration varies with the Big Five personality trait Openness to Experience. We hypothesize that individuals who score high on openness, and who therefore are more appreciative of and responsive to new experiences, react more positively/less negatively t...

Education increases political engagement because it bolsters motivations and cognition on the one hand, and relative resources on the other. However, personality traits have recently been found to partially confound the education effect. Focusing on internal and external political efficacy allows us to disentangle the different effects of education...

In this study we provide new evidence on the much-discussed effect of education on political participation by utilizing the quasi-experiment of twinning. By looking at the relationship between education and participation within monozygotic (MZ) twin pairs we are able to circumvent traditional sources of confounding of the relationship rooted in gen...

Following Hirschman, voters who are discontent with the party they voted for have two options: exit the party and vote for another or stay loyal. The inclination to exit or stay loyal is rooted in the Five Factor Model (FFM) of personality. We test our argument in two panel studies in Denmark and the United Kingdom. We find that citizens open to ex...

The role of government partisanship in the era of retrenchment is debated. It is argued in this article that partisanship matters for only some aspects of policy. Irrespective of ideological bending, governments accommodate structural pressure as well as short-term electoral interests to keep the economy on track and implement austerity measures in...

This article examines if deep-seated psychological differences add to the explanation of attitudes toward immigration. We explore whether the Big Five personality traits matter for immigration attitudes beyond the traditional situational factors of economic and cultural threat and analyze how individuals with different personalities react when conf...

This article examines the foundations of democratic citizenship along three dimensions: generalised trust in other people; norms of citizenship; and participation in organisations. Contrary to previous research, which mainly focuses on situational factors, this article scrutinises how individual predispositions, in terms of personality traits, infl...

Almost 40 years ago, evidence from large studies of adult twins and their relatives suggested that between 30 and 60 % of the variance in social and political attitudes could be explained by genetic influences. However, these findings have not been widely accepted or incorporated into the dominant paradigms that explain the etiology of political id...

Denmark and Norway have experienced significant political changes during the past three decades, changes that affect the constraints and opportunities organized interests are facing. Corporatist representation in the policy-making process has declined, and changes in executive-legislative relations have increased the power of parliaments. Organized...

Studiet af politisk adfaerd bygger på antagelsen om, at individers grundlaeggende dispositioner er ens. Adfaerdsgenetikken saetter spørgsmålstegn ved denne one size fits all-antagelse. Politisk adfaerd er ligesom adfaerd på andre områder et produkt af individuelle forskelle i både arv og miljø. Den politiske adfaerdsforskning bør tage grundlaeggend...

Recent studies have shown that variation in political attitudes and participation can be attributed to both genes and the environment. This finding raises the question of why genes matter to participation, and by which pathways. Two hypotheses suggest that feelings of civic duty and sense of political efficacy intermediate the relationship between...

Interest in politics is important for a host of political behaviors and beliefs. Yet little is known about where political interest comes from. Most studies exploring the source of political interest focus on parental influences, economic status, and opportunity. Here, we investigate an alternative source: genetic transmission. Using two twin sampl...

We compare a recent Danish twin survey on political attitudes and behaviors to a nationally representative survey covering similar topics. We find very similar means and variances for most of our constructed scales of political attitudes and behaviors in the two surveys, although even small differences tend to be statistically significant due to sa...

Denmark, Norway and Sweden are still among the most corporatist democracies in the world. Although corporatism has declined in Scandinavia over the last decades, it still exists, albeit at a lower level. Based on comparative and longitudinal data, we argue that this is a consequence of the disruption of some of the prerequisites to corporatist exch...

Mass media have become more important in political communication in western democracies in recent decades. Parliamentarians need to pay attention to the norms and demands of the media and conform to the ‘media logic’. Politicians allegedly lose communicative autonomy in their interaction with the media and the literature suggests that they regret t...

Corporatism may be seen as variety of capitalism in which specific structural prerequisites such as unionization, centralization, and strong states combined with bargaining and concertation produce certain economic outputs. Corporatism may also be seen as a variety of democracy in which interest groups are integrated in the preparation and/or imple...

Abstract will be provided by author.

Fagbevægelsens systematiske tab af politiske magtressoucer og indflydelse gennem de seneste 30 år forklares typisk som et resultat af økonomisk globalisering og fremvækst af nye produktionsformer og adfærdsmønstre, medførende fragmentering af fagbevægelsens organisationer, medlemsflugt og et opgør med den klassebestemte stemmeafgivelse. Men sådanne...

Hvorfor stemmer oppositionen for regeringens lovforslag? Korporatisme og parlamentariske forlig i Danmark, 958-999 Denne artikel stiller spørgsmålet om, hvilke strategier mindretalsregeringer anvender for at opnå flertal bag sine lovforslag. Ifølge Arend Lijphart kan kor-poratisme og policy koalitioner vaere alternative veje til at opnå bred parlam...

Scientific debate requires a common understanding of what constitutes good research. The purpose of this article is to establish such an understanding. The purpose of political science is to uncover, understand and explain the conformist aspect of social behavior, well aware that not all behavior is systematically determined by society. Good politi...

What explains the remarkable resilience of the Danish welfare state, and what does this tell us about the future of the welfare state in general? How did this welfare state survive a quarter century that saw the collapse of its economic foundations in Keynesian demand management and full employment, and the erosion of its political foundations in t...

Delegation is an ubiquitous social phenomenon linked to the growing differentiation of modern societies. Delegation is one of several different modes of organisation that exist to make collective action successful, but has been overlooked and under-researched. Using a rational choice institutional analysis and principal agent models, this book bri...

Public Administration research in Denmark has a relatively short history. It was first initiated in the 1970s and was developed from public law. However, from an initial homogeneity it has become increasingly pluralistic in its approach due to three factors: a strong orientation towards the study of institutional reform in the public sector, inspir...

Decentralization to local government increases flexibility and responsiveness, and, by implication, policy diversity. However, a local governing structure is but one of several institutions that structure government. Central policy makers are not absent simply because policy authority formally rests in local governments. Government regulation, coll...

Die Bedeutung von Verbänden und Vereinen für die politische Stabilität und den Wohlstand Dänemarks ist kaum zu überschätzen. In einigen wirtschaftlichen Bereichen waren Verbände und Vereine sogar zeitweise zentrale Institutionen der Modernisierung. Beispielsweise war die Genossenschaftsbewegung die Antriebskraft für die Umstrukturierung der dänisch...

The role of the Social Democrats in the establishment of the Scandinavian welfare state has been challenged in recent years. Institutional legacies have conditioned post-war Social Democratic reforms, and the bourgeois parties have played a larger role than so far acknowledged. By exploring the origin of five core policies of the early Danish welfa...

In this article we look closer at the overall question of how more than a quarter-century's EU membership has affected national decision-making processes. The specific questions to be addressed concern membership's effects on delegation and accountability relationships between voters, MPs, the cabinet and the civil service. We use the general appro...

In recent years institutions have regained their lost prominence throughout the social sciences. A host of rules, routines, and norms shape social and political interaction, the new institutionalists agree. However a sociological and a rational choice approach have disagreed on a number of issues, most notably on how institutions shape political ac...

The state system and global capitalism are the two dominant institutional pillars of modernity in the international realm. These institutional structures, however, are the outcome of a contingent and historical process. New problems, perceptions and demands could pave the way for new ways of configuring political and economic space, and hence new p...