Kristoffer Kolltveit

University of Oslo · Department of Political Science

In this article, we study the motivation and performance of researchers. More specifically, we investigate what motivates researchers across different research fields and countries and how this motivation influences their research performance. The basis for our study is a large-N survey of economists, cardiologists, and physicists in Denmark, Norwa...

Political parties face hard choices when balancing desires to influence public policy, to gain executive office and to win votes. The existing literature examining such party preferences has traditionally focused on rather static aspects of the parties, such as size, policy positions and the level of intraparty democracy. This article argues that p...

Political parties face hard choices when balancing desires to influence public policy, to gain executive office, and to win votes. The existing literature examining such party preferences has traditionally focused on rather static aspects of the parties, such as size, policy positions, and the level of intra-party democracy. This article argues tha...

This article investigates strategic communication processes in recent Norwegian governments. More specifically it asks: What is the role of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), and how is this role affected by technological developments and the party-political context? The article is based on interviews with elite sources who have all been close to t...

Communication professionals are increasingly found within government ministries. Based on classic work on bureaucracy and recent literature on mediatisation and personalization, this article develops two ideal types: the government information provider and government spin doctor. These ideals are constituted by six dimensions: recruitment criteria,...

This book examines the contemporary relevance of the concept of the core executive across a range of constitutional contexts, covering examples from Westminster system, continental Europe, and Scandinavia. Much study of core executives focuses exclusively on the Westminster system, but this book expands that scope to take into account nations where...

The chapter draws on 50 élite interviews with ministers, chiefs of staff, permanent secretaries and heads of communication, as well as three rounds of surveys to state secretaries and political advisers. It paints a picture of the Norwegian core executive in which ministers and departments are strong, and the prime minister and his/her office is co...

This chapter presents the concept of the core executive as originally formulated and subsequently revised, drawing attention to the central questions ‘Who does what?’ and ‘With what resources?’. It then elaborates on the three main aspects of the definition: organisations and processes, coordination and conflict. Yet today’s societies are different...

This volume examines three interconnected themes in political science: the nuts and bolts of government, the complex and evolving relationship between politics and administration, and continuity and change in government. Government ministries and agencies are vital components of the executive branch of government that play fundamental roles in the...

The final chapter sums up the main findings from the country cases, identifying converging and diverging trends. We review the key trajectories of change across cases—fragmentation of the political context, summitry and mediatisation—and illustrate the material consequences of these for the composition and operation of core executives. We also asse...

This chapter explores the scholarly labour performed by the concept of the core executive in the 30 years since its inception. First we explore the distinction between the asymmetric power and differentiated polity approaches, arguing that these can be seen as complementary platforms from which the relevant phenomena can be viewed. We then review t...

This article contributes to the emerging scholarship on the gender gap in political ambitions. While appointed party positions offer politically minded people the opportunity to have further political careers outside the elected path, the extent to which women prefer such alternative careers is unclear. This article investigates the gender gap in t...

The growth of ministerial advisors is often seen as a mean to increase control over the bureaucracy. However, to fully understand politicization it is important to focus not only on the actual number of ministerial advisors, but also on their type of party-political background and their actual role within the ministry. The article presents results...

How is government affected by including populists in a governing coalition? We investigate if populist political parties behave "normally" when they attain power, or if they govern differently from mainstream political parties. Empirically, we use survey data from 282 ministerial advisers from three cabinets in Norway. Our conclusion is that populi...

Public bureaucracies have mostly been invisible in research on political communication , but more recently, there has been an increasing interest in their communicative efforts. In this chapter, we review the literature and synthesise the scholarship on Nordic public bureaucracies in relation to political communication. Three research areas are put...

I offentlige byråkratier over hele den vestlige verden har det de siste årene blitt ansatte flere kommunikasjonsrådgivere, ofte med bakgrunn fra journalistikken. Disse aktørene er ansatt som byråkrater, men jobber i enkelte land aktivt med å forsvare ministeren og for å få saker om ministeren eller departementet i mediene. Til tross for økt oppmerk...

Scholars claim that civil servants are increasingly having to engage in media management and be aware of how events are presented in the press, with this media awareness being said to threaten civil servants’ traditional bureaucratic values. In this article, we argue that media awareness is unevenly spread in public bureaucracies, and rather is con...

Ministerial advisors have become an essential aspect of executive branches worldwide, thus making the ministerial advisor office a potential route for young politicians aspiring to an expanding political class. The article studies which professions ministerial advisors migrate to following their ministerial careers, how ministerial advisors’ post-m...

The article compares the careers ministerial advisors before and after politics. Under study is a cohort of 139 ministerial advisors that served in Norwegian governments 2001 to 2009. The results show a post-ministerial migration out of politics, decreases in the shares working in central and subnational government, and increases in the shares work...

Pressure from the media affects the daily work of bureaucrats and induces ‘media stress’, with potentially critical effects on the quality of public policy. This article analyses how bureaucrats’ daily work has been adapted to the media (‘mediatised’) and which groups of bureaucrats experience the most media-stress. Reporting the results of an orig...

The design of government portfolios – that is, the distribution of competencies among government ministries and office holders – has been largely ignored in the study of executive and coalition politics. This article argues that portfolio design is a substantively and theoretically relevant phenomenon that has major implications for the study of in...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0267323119861513 Decision-making in public bureaucracies should be guided by rules and formal procedures, securing predictability, impartiality and fair decisions. Studies show that public bureaucracies are highly mediatised – but knowledge about media impact on political outcomes is scarce. In this ar...

Scholars have argued that government agencies face a complex web of reputational concerns regarding how they are perceived by multiple audiences who prioritise different dimensions of their work. Drawing on social identity theory, we argue that civil servants are concerned about the reputation of the agency for which they work, but also about other...

Public agencies have varying degrees of self-determination. In the existing literature this autonomy is often explained by sector and task. Although agencies are increasingly subject to media scrutiny and public attention, the literature on the autonomy of agencies has not focused much on the impact of the media. Visible agencies might be more able...

Political appointees from different parties from that of their minister—cross-partisan appointees (CPAs)—are increasingly found in the core executive. Ministerial advisory scholarship has overlooked CPAs, while the coalition governance literature sees them as ‘spies’ and ‘coalition watchdogs’. This article argues theoretically and demonstrates empi...

Denne artikkelen handler om politiske rådgivere i departementene i Norge, og spør retorisk om rådgiverne er unge broilere eller betrodde medarbeidere. Selv om politiske rådgivere har eksistert i Norge siden etterkrigstiden, er det lite systematisk, statsvitenskapelig forskning som har kastet lys over deres virke i regjeringsapparatet. Statssekretær...

Decentralisation of political and administrative functions from national to regional levels of government has been a major governance trend in Europe over the past decades. Although science policy has generally been an exception from this, parts of science policy have been decentralised to regional levels in several countries. This article studies...

The personalization of politics has received much attention in both the political science and political communication literature, but the focus has almost entirely been on party leaders and prime ministers. This study investigates the personalization of ministerial communication in Norway, a type of decentralized personalization. It combines a surv...

Ministers increasingly rely on advisers for support and advice. In many countries, these political aides are labelled differently. Generally, they serve as close confidants to their political masters and operate in the ‘shadowland’ between politics and bureaucracy. Scholarship has dragged the ministerial advisers out of the dark and described their...

Bo Smith-rapporten foreslår en rekke ulike endringer for å gjøre det danske politisk-administrative systemet bedre tilpasset nye vilkår og krav i samfunnet. I denne artikkelen vurderes flere av disse endringsforslagene i lys av erfaringene fra Norge. Danmark og Norge har en felles arv etter over 400 år med samme monarki, men utviklingstakten i syst...

The Bo Smith report suggests various changes to make the Danish political-administrative system better adapted to new demands in society. In this article, several of these changes are considered in light of experience from Norway. Denmark and Norway share a common heritage, but their systems have developed somewhat differently, not least when it co...

Political appointees in executive government have received increased scholarly attention in recent years. However, few studies have covered non-Westminster systems, and apart from classifications that systemize variation in assignments, theorizing about appointees has been limited. Using large-N survey data, the article finds three distinct roles a...

Strengthening of the executive centre : looking beyond NPM as the explanation for change In several countries, attempts have been made to increase the capacity to coordinate and control public policy in the executive centre. The literature on whole-of-government and joined-up government describes these changes as reassertion efforts to counter the...

Weakening of the cabinet collective and strengthening of prime ministers in parliamentary democracies have often been explained by the personality of state leaders or long-term societal changes such as increased public sector fragmentation, internationalisation and mediatisation of politics. This article points to short-term changes to explain deve...

In several countries, attempts have been made to increase the capacity to coordinate and control public policy in the executive centre. The literature on whole-of-government and joined-up government describes these changes as reassertion efforts to counter the negative effects of former New Public Management (NPM) reforms. The main research questio...

The empowerment of chief executives has been apparent in several parliamentary democracies in recent decades. However, few accounts have been produced of developments in recent Norwegian cabinets. The aim of this article is two-fold. First, changes regarding the concentration of decision-making power in Norwegian cabinets in the past 15 years are e...

Empowerment of state leaders has been apparent over the last decades in various parliamentary democracies. Signs of this development, often labelled ‘presidentialisation’, have been reported in the executive sphere also in Sweden and Denmark in recent years. Few accounts have been made of developments in Norway. This article studies Norwegian cabin...