Kristoffer Kolltveit
Biographic Data
| ID | 4371093 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kristoffer Kolltveit |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kristoffer |
| FAMILY NAME | Kolltveit |
| SIGNATURE | KOLLTVEIT K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oslo |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8051-4818 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 169 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Balancing Acts
Despite an upsurge in social media studies, little is known about how cabinet ministers balance their multiple professional roles—as ministry heads, cabinet members, and party politicians—on social media platforms. In this article, we first develop an analytical framework, grounded in the principal–agent theory and earlier research on political communication, that differentiates between cabinet ministers’ different communicative roles as well as …
Radical or aligned? Assessing issue congruence between youth wing elites, parliamentary candidates and voters in Norway
Party youth wings are generally said to be more ideologically extreme than their mother parties. Youth wing elites, however, can have career reasons to align with mother party elites and voters. Although there is a growing body of literature focusing on party youth wings and an established literature on issue congruence, few studies have compared the opinions of youth wing elites with those of their mother party elites and the electorate. We ask,…
The professional profile, competence, and responsiveness of senior bureaucrats
How do the professional backgrounds of senior bureaucrats affect their competence and political responsiveness? This article fills a gap by examining these questions in a meritocratic context that accommodates nuanced but potentially consequential variations in the recruitment of senior bureaucrats. Using a paired survey experiment with citizens, representatives, and administrators in Norway, the article demonstrates that agency heads are perceiv…
Explaining research performance
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, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, and the UK. The analysis shows that researchers are primarily motivated …
Policy, office and votes
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 party actors' sophisticated estimations of whether to enter into coalition can be affected by fluctua…
Norske ungdomspolitikere
Between spin doctor and information provider
Communication professionals are increasingly found within government ministries. Based on classic work on bureaucracy and recent literature on mediatization 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, values, loyalties, reputational concerns, interactions, and tasks. A study of nonpartisan communica…
Populists in Government
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 populists govern normally on some governance dimensions and exceptionally on others. Populists in office h…
Gender and ambitions for elected and appointed political positions
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 the political ambitions of young people in Norway. Studying the gender gap in a country with numerous…
The Political Dynamics of Portfolio Design in European Democracies
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 institutional design and coalition politics. The authors use comparative data on portfolio design refo…
Public Office as a Stepping-Stone? Investigating the Careers of Ministerial Advisors
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-ministerial careers compare to their pre-ministerial careers, and if the variance in careers can be e…
Mounting media pressure
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 article, we study if, how and why media affect agendas, resource allocation and case decisions within public bureaucracies. Empirically, we apply a mixed method appro…
Why do civil servants experience media-stress differently and what can be done about it
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 original and large-scale survey (N=4,655) this article demonstrates that levels of media-stress vary amo…
Understanding reputational concerns within government agencies
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 actors in the political–administrative system. Focusing on hierarchy, socialisation, and independen…
The spy who loved me? Cross‐partisans in the core executive
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 empirically that this conceptualization is overly limited. The empirical basis is a large‐N survey of po…
Ministerial advisers in executive government
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 background and functions. Still, the field of scholarship has a Westminster bias, is characterized …
Serving the Media Ministers
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 survey of communication workers; in-depth interviews with politicians, communication workers, political …
Political appointees in executive government
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 among political appointees in Norway: ‘stand in’, ‘media adviser’ and ‘political coordinator’. The ar…
Strengthening of the executive centre
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 question discussed in this article is whether the strengthening of the executive centre also should be expl…
Concentration of power in cabinets
Presidentialisation in the Executive Sphere? Evidence from Norwegian Cabinets
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 cabinets for the last 25 years in light of the so‐called ‘presidentalisation thesis’. The article finds n…
The Political Dynamics of Portfolio Design in European Democracies
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 institutional design and coalition politics. The authors use comparative data on portfolio design refo…
Political appointees in executive government
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 among political appointees in Norway: ‘stand in’, ‘media adviser’ and ‘political coordinator’. The ar…
Ministerial advisers in executive government
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 background and functions. Still, the field of scholarship has a Westminster bias, is characterized …
Public Office as a Stepping-Stone? Investigating the Careers of Ministerial Advisors
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-ministerial careers compare to their pre-ministerial careers, and if the variance in careers can be e…
Serving the Media Ministers
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 survey of communication workers; in-depth interviews with politicians, communication workers, political …
Populists in Government
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 populists govern normally on some governance dimensions and exceptionally on others. Populists in office h…
Why do civil servants experience media-stress differently and what can be done about it
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 original and large-scale survey (N=4,655) this article demonstrates that levels of media-stress vary amo…
The spy who loved me? Cross‐partisans in the core executive
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 empirically that this conceptualization is overly limited. The empirical basis is a large‐N survey of po…
Understanding reputational concerns within government agencies
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 actors in the political–administrative system. Focusing on hierarchy, socialisation, and independen…
Presidentialisation in the Executive Sphere? Evidence from Norwegian Cabinets
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 cabinets for the last 25 years in light of the so‐called ‘presidentalisation thesis’. The article finds n…
Between spin doctor and information provider
Communication professionals are increasingly found within government ministries. Based on classic work on bureaucracy and recent literature on mediatization 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, values, loyalties, reputational concerns, interactions, and tasks. A study of nonpartisan communica…
Gender and ambitions for elected and appointed political positions
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 the political ambitions of young people in Norway. Studying the gender gap in a country with numerous…
Strengthening of the executive centre
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 question discussed in this article is whether the strengthening of the executive centre also should be expl…
Mounting media pressure
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 article, we study if, how and why media affect agendas, resource allocation and case decisions within public bureaucracies. Empirically, we apply a mixed method appro…
Concentration of power in cabinets
Radical or aligned? Assessing issue congruence between youth wing elites, parliamentary candidates and voters in Norway
Party youth wings are generally said to be more ideologically extreme than their mother parties. Youth wing elites, however, can have career reasons to align with mother party elites and voters. Although there is a growing body of literature focusing on party youth wings and an established literature on issue congruence, few studies have compared the opinions of youth wing elites with those of their mother party elites and the electorate. We ask,…
The professional profile, competence, and responsiveness of senior bureaucrats
How do the professional backgrounds of senior bureaucrats affect their competence and political responsiveness? This article fills a gap by examining these questions in a meritocratic context that accommodates nuanced but potentially consequential variations in the recruitment of senior bureaucrats. Using a paired survey experiment with citizens, representatives, and administrators in Norway, the article demonstrates that agency heads are perceiv…
Presidentialisation in the Executive Sphere? Evidence from Norwegian Cabinets
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 cabinets for the last 25 years in light of the so‐called ‘presidentalisation thesis’. The article finds n…
Concentration of power in cabinets
Strengthening of the executive centre
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 question discussed in this article is whether the strengthening of the executive centre also should be expl…
Political appointees in executive government
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 among political appointees in Norway: ‘stand in’, ‘media adviser’ and ‘political coordinator’. The ar…
Ministerial advisers in executive government
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 background and functions. Still, the field of scholarship has a Westminster bias, is characterized …
Serving the Media Ministers
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 survey of communication workers; in-depth interviews with politicians, communication workers, political …
The spy who loved me? Cross‐partisans in the core executive
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 empirically that this conceptualization is overly limited. The empirical basis is a large‐N survey of po…
Mounting media pressure
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 article, we study if, how and why media affect agendas, resource allocation and case decisions within public bureaucracies. Empirically, we apply a mixed method appro…
Why do civil servants experience media-stress differently and what can be done about it
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 original and large-scale survey (N=4,655) this article demonstrates that levels of media-stress vary amo…
Understanding reputational concerns within government agencies
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 actors in the political–administrative system. Focusing on hierarchy, socialisation, and independen…
Gender and ambitions for elected and appointed political positions
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 the political ambitions of young people in Norway. Studying the gender gap in a country with numerous…
The Political Dynamics of Portfolio Design in European Democracies
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 institutional design and coalition politics. The authors use comparative data on portfolio design refo…
Public Office as a Stepping-Stone? Investigating the Careers of Ministerial Advisors
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-ministerial careers compare to their pre-ministerial careers, and if the variance in careers can be e…
Norske ungdomspolitikere
Between spin doctor and information provider
Communication professionals are increasingly found within government ministries. Based on classic work on bureaucracy and recent literature on mediatization 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, values, loyalties, reputational concerns, interactions, and tasks. A study of nonpartisan communica…
Populists in Government
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 populists govern normally on some governance dimensions and exceptionally on others. Populists in office h…
Policy, office and votes
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 party actors' sophisticated estimations of whether to enter into coalition can be affected by fluctua…
Explaining research performance
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, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, and the UK. The analysis shows that researchers are primarily motivated …
Balancing Acts
Despite an upsurge in social media studies, little is known about how cabinet ministers balance their multiple professional roles—as ministry heads, cabinet members, and party politicians—on social media platforms. In this article, we first develop an analytical framework, grounded in the principal–agent theory and earlier research on political communication, that differentiates between cabinet ministers’ different communicative roles as well as …
Radical or aligned? Assessing issue congruence between youth wing elites, parliamentary candidates and voters in Norway
Party youth wings are generally said to be more ideologically extreme than their mother parties. Youth wing elites, however, can have career reasons to align with mother party elites and voters. Although there is a growing body of literature focusing on party youth wings and an established literature on issue congruence, few studies have compared the opinions of youth wing elites with those of their mother party elites and the electorate. We ask,…
The professional profile, competence, and responsiveness of senior bureaucrats
How do the professional backgrounds of senior bureaucrats affect their competence and political responsiveness? This article fills a gap by examining these questions in a meritocratic context that accommodates nuanced but potentially consequential variations in the recruitment of senior bureaucrats. Using a paired survey experiment with citizens, representatives, and administrators in Norway, the article demonstrates that agency heads are perceiv…
Political science (19 works) · Law (16 works) · Politics (16 works) · Law (14 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Public Administration (12 works) · Public Administration (12 works) · Public relations (10 works) · Government (linguistics (9 works) · Public Policy and Administration Research (9 works)