Rune J Sørensen
Biographic Data
| ID | 1047017 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rune J Sørensen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rune J |
| FAMILY NAME | Sørensen |
| SIGNATURE | SØRENSEN R J |
| AFFILIATIONS | BI Norwegian Business School |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0375-7677 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 51 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 275 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 51 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1984 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
When are politicians incentivized to vote? Evidence from individual-level panel data (2015–2023)
When are politicians incentivized to vote? To answer this question, we examine politicians’ electoral participation before, during and after their political career. Our dataset combines individual-level register data for all candidates in the 2015, 2019, and 2023 Norwegian local elections with population-wide turnout data. We show that politicians are significantly more likely to vote when they are running for office (relative to pre- and post-of…
Transitory Income Windfalls and Charitable Giving: Evidence from Norwegian Register Data, 1993–2021
This paper studies the impact of unearned, transitory income shocks on charitable giving using Norwegian administrative data. We exploit the random timing and size of lottery wins and our long time period (1993–2021) to estimate both short- and longer-term impacts. We find no meaningful effect of small windfalls. Yet, windfalls exceeding $10,000 induce a long-lasting increase in the likelihood to donate, the absolute level of donations and the sh…
The Causal Effect of Affluence on Voter Turnout: New Evidence from Lottery Winnings
Affluent citizens commonly record higher election turnout than less affluent citizens. Yet, the causal effect of affluence on voter turnout remains poorly understood. In this article, we rely on Norwegian administrative data to estimate the impact of random, exogenous shocks in (unearned) income on individual-level voter turnout. Exploiting the random timing and size of lottery wins for identification, our main findings suggest that a lottery win…
A post‐politics earnings penalty? Evidence from politicians' lifetime income trajectories (1970–2019)
Politicians are commonly believed to gain financially from holding and/or having held office. We argue that there may often also be economic downsides to pursuing a political career and investigate whether and when politicians can (not) capitalize on their political experience. We thereby study both entry into and exit from political office and directly compare the returns to politics across government levels and types of politicians. Empirically…
Vetting for Virtue: Democracy’s Challenge in Excluding Criminals from Office
How effective are democratic systems in preventing individuals with criminal backgrounds from holding political office? We investigate this question for the case of Norway, which has no legal restrictions against felons running for office. We analyze local election candidates from 2003 to 2019, paired with administrative records of criminal offenses. We demonstrate that individuals with criminal records are systematically penalized at every stage…
Public Employees as Elected Politicians: Assessing Direct and Indirect Substantive Effects of Passive Representation
In many countries, public sector employees are eligible to hold political offices during their employment as civil servants. This often triggers conflict-of-interest concerns that elected public employees might sway policies to their professional benefit. In this article, we build on representation scholarship in political science and public administration to assess such substantive effects of public employees' political representation using deta…
Fertility and immigration: Do immigrant mothers hand down their fertility pattern to the next generation? Evidence from Norway
We examined whether the fertility pattern of immigrant mothers is handed down to the next generation. Our analyses were carried out on population register data. These data contained information on all immigrants to Norway from 123 countries during the period 1935-1995. We examined whether there was a relationship between the fertility rate in the country of origin and the number of children for generations 1.5 and 2 in Norway. We estimated three …
Political (Over)Representation of Public Sector Employees and the Double-Motive Hypothesis: Evidence from Norwegian Register Data (2007–2019)
Countries have widely diverging regulations regarding the eligibility of public sector employees for political office, and the stringency of such regulations remains fiercely debated. Building on a demand and supply model of political selection, this article contributes to such debates by studying whether and how the incentives of public employees as both consumers and producers of public services (their “double motive”) affects their descriptive…
Age and vote choice: Is there a conservative shift among older voters
Ageing is often believed to induce a movement towards the right of the political spectrum. Yet, empirical evidence remains inconclusive due to a dearth of longitudinal datasets covering multiple cohorts. Using eleven rotating panels of the Norwegian Election Studies (1977–2017) and exploiting first-derivative properties of the vote choice function, our empirical approach identifies non-linear life-cycle effects while controlling for cohort and pe…
Public Sector Employment and Voter Turnout
Does working in the public rather than the private sector have a causal effect on electoral participation? Extant evidence using cross-sectional survey data remains unpersuasive due to data limitations and concerns posed by preference-based job selection. We address these challenges using population-wide individual-level register data on voter turnout covering four Norwegian local and national elections between 2013 and 2019. We identify causal e…
Political Alignment and Bureaucratic Pay
Building on agency-theoretical perspectives of public bureaucracies, we argue that politician–bureaucrat preference alignment can have important implications for bureaucrats’ pay. We study such private gains to bureaucrats from their political alignment with elected politicians using detailed data on all 1,632 top administrators active in all Norwegian municipalities over a period of 25 years (1991–2015). Whereas existing studies generally rely o…
Popular Support for Environmental Protection: A Life-Cycle Perspective
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Administrative Delegation of Budgetary Powers and Fiscal Performance
Does delegation of the budget preparation process to top civil servants improve or worsen fiscal performance? We address this question by analyzing high‐quality data on budgetary procedures and fiscal performance over a 25‐year period in Norwegian local governments. This long time period allows exploiting substantial variation in budgetary procedures across time and space. The results show that administrative delegation decreases fiscal deficits …
Who dies early? Education, mortality and causes of death in Norway
We estimated the effects of education on mortality and causes of death in Norway. We identified causal effects by exploiting the staggered implementation of a school reform that increased the length of compulsory education from seven to nine years. The municipality-level education data were combined with complete records of all deaths from 1960 to 2015 from the Norwegian Cause of Death Registry. These data covered the entire life span of persons …
The Impact of State Television on Voter Turnout
In an influential study, Matthew Gentzkow found that the introduction of TV in the United States caused a major drop in voter turnout. In contrast, the current analysis shows that public broadcasting TV can increase political participation. Detailed data on the rollout of television in Norway in the 1960s and 1970s are combined with municipality-level data on voter turnout over a period of four decades. The date of access to TV signals was mostly…
The impact of women above the political glass ceiling: Evidence from a Norwegian executive gender quota reform
Women have historically been underrepresented in democratic assemblies, particularly in top positions with executive powers. Most gender quota reforms address this by mandating a more equal gender representation on election lists. In contrast, a 1992 legislative reform in Norway required parties' candidate lists for the local executive board to comprise at least 40% politicians of each gender. This legal change was not only exogenously imposed by…
Never Change a Winning Policy? Public Sector Performance and Politicians' Preferences for Reforms
Despite the increasing stress on performance in public sector organizations, there is still little empirical evidence on whether—and if so, how—politicians respond to performance information. This article addresses this research gap by linking registry statistics on school performance in Norway's 428 municipalities with data from an information experiment embedded in a survey of local politicians. Findings show that school performance bears only …
Public–private political cleavage: What happens after retirement
Revenue Scarcity and Government Outsourcing: Empirical Evidence From Norwegian Local Governments
It is often said that ‘necessity is the mother of invention’. In this article, we assess whether this also applies to the design of public authorities' service provision. In particular, we evaluate whether revenue scarcity – as an indicator of fiscal stress – induces government outsourcing. In contrast to previous studies, we exploit arguably exogenous variation in local government revenue across time and space to derive stronger inferences on th…
After the immigration shock: The causal effect of immigration on electoral preferences
Partisan bias, electoral volatility, and government efficiency
Educated mothers, healthy infants. The impact of a school reform on the birth weight of Norwegian infants 1967–2005
Political competition, party polarization, and government performance
Persistent rent extraction
Forsvaret 1986–2005
Hvorfor partiene favoriserer de overrepresenterte valgdistriktene Antallet stemmeberettigede per mandat varierer betydelig mellom norske valgkretser. Dette har betydning for fordelingen av goder og byrder ved politiske vedtak. Det er to forklaringer på geografisk fordelingspolitikk. I distriktsmodellen antas at små valgdistrikter etterspør store offentlige prosjekter fordi velgerne bare betaler en liten del av skatteregningen. I partimodellen er …
Revenue Scarcity and Government Outsourcing: Empirical Evidence From Norwegian Local Governments
It is often said that ‘necessity is the mother of invention’. In this article, we assess whether this also applies to the design of public authorities' service provision. In particular, we evaluate whether revenue scarcity – as an indicator of fiscal stress – induces government outsourcing. In contrast to previous studies, we exploit arguably exogenous variation in local government revenue across time and space to derive stronger inferences on th…
Do parties matter for local revenue policies? A comparison of Denmark and Norway
This article investigates the impact of party ideology on revenue politics. Theoretically, claims can be made that party ideology should matter for revenue policies. First, leftist governments are more favourable towards government intervention and a large public sector. To accomplish this, leftist governments need more revenue than bourgeois governments. Second, revenue policy is a redistributive policy area well suited for ideological positioni…
The demand for local government goods: The impact of parties, committees, and public sector politicians
This paper analyses the spending preferences of local government elected politicians. It is argued that the median voter model is inappropriate in multi‐party systems that provide multiple government services, and that the preferences of the representatives are consequential to local resource allocation. We develop a micromodel in which service demand is conditioned by exogenous public revenue, prices, and demographic factors. We hypothesise that…
Age and vote choice: Is there a conservative shift among older voters
Ageing is often believed to induce a movement towards the right of the political spectrum. Yet, empirical evidence remains inconclusive due to a dearth of longitudinal datasets covering multiple cohorts. Using eleven rotating panels of the Norwegian Election Studies (1977–2017) and exploiting first-derivative properties of the vote choice function, our empirical approach identifies non-linear life-cycle effects while controlling for cohort and pe…
Competitive Tendering in the Welfare State: Perceptions and Preferences among Local Politicians
Competitive tendering for public services has triggered a heated academic debate. In political economy, competition is claimed to improve efficiency. If this is true, why are most governments faithful to the monopoly model? Political economists suggest that public sector employees and unions influence the preferences of the elected politicians. In new institutional theory, competition is claimed to undermine democratic governance. If this is true…
The impact of women above the political glass ceiling: Evidence from a Norwegian executive gender quota reform
Women have historically been underrepresented in democratic assemblies, particularly in top positions with executive powers. Most gender quota reforms address this by mandating a more equal gender representation on election lists. In contrast, a 1992 legislative reform in Norway required parties' candidate lists for the local executive board to comprise at least 40% politicians of each gender. This legal change was not only exogenously imposed by…
After the immigration shock: The causal effect of immigration on electoral preferences
Educated mothers, healthy infants. The impact of a school reform on the birth weight of Norwegian infants 1967–2005
Political Alignment and Bureaucratic Pay
Building on agency-theoretical perspectives of public bureaucracies, we argue that politician–bureaucrat preference alignment can have important implications for bureaucrats’ pay. We study such private gains to bureaucrats from their political alignment with elected politicians using detailed data on all 1,632 top administrators active in all Norwegian municipalities over a period of 25 years (1991–2015). Whereas existing studies generally rely o…
The Impact of State Television on Voter Turnout
In an influential study, Matthew Gentzkow found that the introduction of TV in the United States caused a major drop in voter turnout. In contrast, the current analysis shows that public broadcasting TV can increase political participation. Detailed data on the rollout of television in Norway in the 1960s and 1970s are combined with municipality-level data on voter turnout over a period of four decades. The date of access to TV signals was mostly…
Political competition, party polarization, and government performance
The political economy of intergovernmental grants: The Norwegian case
The centralization of local public finance is commonly justified in terms of equality. The welfare state regulates local government and allocates grants in a way that sacrifices efficiency to achieve equality. The political economy model suggests that democratically elected national politicians may pursue policies that diverge from this. This article outlines a version of the political economy model based on seat‐maximizing politicians in central…
Popular Support for Environmental Protection: A Life-Cycle Perspective
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Public Employees as Swing Voters: Empirical Evidence on Opposition to Public Reform
Local government consolidations: The impact of political transaction costs
Bargaining Strength in Budgetary Processes: The Impact of Institutional Procedures
Studies of government budget-making recurrently describe it as a bargaining process between `guardians' and `advocates'. Yet this observation has not been implemented in formal modelling of budgetary processes. This paper employs a Nash model to analyse local government budgeting. The model is implemented by assuming two different sets of assumptions about the conflict points. The paper evaluates the explanatory power of the two interpretations b…
Public Sector Employment and Voter Turnout
Does working in the public rather than the private sector have a causal effect on electoral participation? Extant evidence using cross-sectional survey data remains unpersuasive due to data limitations and concerns posed by preference-based job selection. We address these challenges using population-wide individual-level register data on voter turnout covering four Norwegian local and national elections between 2013 and 2019. We identify causal e…
Fiscal illusions: Nothing but Illusions
The argument that people underestimate the costs of providing public goods, and overestimate the benefits of government programmes, has received widespread attention in the political science literature. According to this argument the (misinformed) citizen demands greater amounts of public sector goods than if he or she had been completely informed. Democratic competition leads political parties to adjust to the perceived demands of the voters rat…
Macroeconomic Policy and Government Popularity in Norway 1963–1986
Following the mainstream modelling of ‘politico‐economic interaction’, the author reviews the major analyses of the Scandinavian countries. Noting that empirical findings diverge, both for the reaction function and the popularity function, the article estimates these relations on Norwegian data. For the popularity function, the analysis suggests that rates of inflation have a weak, but statistically significant impact on the popularity of governm…
Who dies early? Education, mortality and causes of death in Norway
We estimated the effects of education on mortality and causes of death in Norway. We identified causal effects by exploiting the staggered implementation of a school reform that increased the length of compulsory education from seven to nine years. The municipality-level education data were combined with complete records of all deaths from 1960 to 2015 from the Norwegian Cause of Death Registry. These data covered the entire life span of persons …
Political (Over)Representation of Public Sector Employees and the Double-Motive Hypothesis: Evidence from Norwegian Register Data (2007–2019)
Countries have widely diverging regulations regarding the eligibility of public sector employees for political office, and the stringency of such regulations remains fiercely debated. Building on a demand and supply model of political selection, this article contributes to such debates by studying whether and how the incentives of public employees as both consumers and producers of public services (their “double motive”) affects their descriptive…
Organizational Behavior and Economic Growth: A Norwegian Perspective
By using game‐theory, it is indicated that encompassing organizations may participate in dilemma games with free‐rider problems. Next, examinations of institutional details of Norwegian corporatism point out that creative or productive strategies may be quite likely even among small interest organizations. In the last section it is argued that the assumption of economic growth being a collective good is more acceptable the larger the public secto…
Public–private political cleavage: What happens after retirement
Partisan bias, electoral volatility, and government efficiency
Targeting the lobbying effort: The importance of local government lobbying
Local government is subject to extensive lobbying, which is reasonable given the greater importance of the local public sector in large welfare states. Most of the scholarly attention has been focused on lobbying at the national level, often addressing the impact of interest groups on public policies. This article discusses a decision–making model where interest groups optimize their lobbying efforts given the way that different local governments…
The Application of Game‐Theory in the Study of Hierarchical Decision‐Making
The article discusses hierarchical decision‐making within a rational‐choice framework. The interaction between Superior and Subordinate is assumed to be influenced by three types of uncertainty regarding preferences, choice and ‘what happened’. A game‐theoretical analysis indicates that the Control Game may represent the decision situation of the superior and the subordinate actors, particularly when modelled as a one‐shot game with simultaneous …
Organizational Behavior and Economic Growth: A Norwegian Perspective
By using game‐theory, it is indicated that encompassing organizations may participate in dilemma games with free‐rider problems. Next, examinations of institutional details of Norwegian corporatism point out that creative or productive strategies may be quite likely even among small interest organizations. In the last section it is argued that the assumption of economic growth being a collective good is more acceptable the larger the public secto…
Macro‐economic decision‐making in Norway: An Analysis of Economic Decisions Within the Politico‐economic Framework
The aim of the study is to analyze when and why Norwegian governments carry out expansive decisions rather than contractive ones. Following the politico‐economic approach, it is proposed that both the governmental re‐election prospects and economic indicators may influence macro‐economic decision making.The article attempts to employ this framework in an empirical analysis of events data, i.e. in an analysis of 318 decision events spread througho…
Macroeconomic Policy and Government Popularity in Norway 1963–1986
Following the mainstream modelling of ‘politico‐economic interaction’, the author reviews the major analyses of the Scandinavian countries. Noting that empirical findings diverge, both for the reaction function and the popularity function, the article estimates these relations on Norwegian data. For the popularity function, the analysis suggests that rates of inflation have a weak, but statistically significant impact on the popularity of governm…
Central place theory and local government spending ‐ A theoretical and empirical critique
Local Government Equality: Why Should Disparities be Accepted
The article discusses the justification for disparities in the local government supply. Equality can be defined as equality in the individual's `terms of trade' in respect of the municipality (benefit/effort equation), and the distribution of specific local government services. There are four normative considerations which may determine the degree of inequality: (a) the residents of municipalities may have different preferences for various munici…
Fiscal illusions: Nothing but Illusions
The argument that people underestimate the costs of providing public goods, and overestimate the benefits of government programmes, has received widespread attention in the political science literature. According to this argument the (misinformed) citizen demands greater amounts of public sector goods than if he or she had been completely informed. Democratic competition leads political parties to adjust to the perceived demands of the voters rat…
Coping with Poverty: The Impact of Fiscal Austerity on the Local Budgetary Process in Norway
This article examines the impact of public sector austerity on the budgetary process in local government. We initially propose that resource squeeze influences the criteria of resource allocation. More specifically, we suggest that austerity tends to generate a greater emphasis on performance‐based criteria such as cost‐benefit assessments, while arguments relating to production costs, previous commitments and relative standards of service supply…
Improving Government Resource Allocation: The Impact of Alternative Budgetary Methods
Do Local Politicians Respond to Citizens' Demands? A Microanalysis of Norwegian Local Government
The correspondence between citizens' preferences and the preferences of the elected politicians is a critical concern of democratic institutions. Models founded on the central tendency of politicians' behaviour in elections, such as the median‐voter model and the model of the “uncovered set”, predict that politicians respond to local demands. Other models, notably those that assume imperfectly informed citizens and representatives, predict lack o…
Can a Public Health Care System Achieve Equity: The Norwegian Experience
Equity in health care provision is an important policy goal in Norway. This article addresses equality in the services provided by primary care physicians. These services are the responsibility of local government financed mainly through public funding. Patient fees are low. The local government system results in geographical variation in the number of physicians relative to local health demands. The authors present the hypothesis that this gener…
The demand for local government goods: The impact of parties, committees, and public sector politicians
This paper analyses the spending preferences of local government elected politicians. It is argued that the median voter model is inappropriate in multi‐party systems that provide multiple government services, and that the preferences of the representatives are consequential to local resource allocation. We develop a micromodel in which service demand is conditioned by exogenous public revenue, prices, and demographic factors. We hypothesise that…
Bargaining Strength in Budgetary Processes: The Impact of Institutional Procedures
Studies of government budget-making recurrently describe it as a bargaining process between `guardians' and `advocates'. Yet this observation has not been implemented in formal modelling of budgetary processes. This paper employs a Nash model to analyse local government budgeting. The model is implemented by assuming two different sets of assumptions about the conflict points. The paper evaluates the explanatory power of the two interpretations b…
Targeting the lobbying effort: The importance of local government lobbying
Local government is subject to extensive lobbying, which is reasonable given the greater importance of the local public sector in large welfare states. Most of the scholarly attention has been focused on lobbying at the national level, often addressing the impact of interest groups on public policies. This article discusses a decision–making model where interest groups optimize their lobbying efforts given the way that different local governments…
Aggregating Spending Preferences: An Empirical Analysis of Party Preferences in Norwegian Local Governments
Competitive Tendering in the Welfare State: Perceptions and Preferences among Local Politicians
Competitive tendering for public services has triggered a heated academic debate. In political economy, competition is claimed to improve efficiency. If this is true, why are most governments faithful to the monopoly model? Political economists suggest that public sector employees and unions influence the preferences of the elected politicians. In new institutional theory, competition is claimed to undermine democratic governance. If this is true…
Kontraktsvalg og tjenesteproduksjon i allmennlegetjenesten
The political economy of intergovernmental grants: The Norwegian case
The centralization of local public finance is commonly justified in terms of equality. The welfare state regulates local government and allocates grants in a way that sacrifices efficiency to achieve equality. The political economy model suggests that democratically elected national politicians may pursue policies that diverge from this. This article outlines a version of the political economy model based on seat‐maximizing politicians in central…
Public Employees as Swing Voters: Empirical Evidence on Opposition to Public Reform
Markedsreformer i offentlig sektor. Elitistisk motebølge, velferdskoalisjonens interesser eller partienes konkurranse om velgere
Sentraliseringsparadokset – Hvorfor staten overtar styringen fra kommunene
The paradox of centralisation: Why national government intervenes in local government. Rune J. Sorensen and Signy Irene Vabo Most democratic systems including Norway are based on geographical representation. Since national regulations of local government are likely reduce welfare of parts of the electorate, we would expect members of the national assembly to protect the autonomy of local governments. Recent developments go against this expectatio…
Local government consolidations: The impact of political transaction costs
Do parties matter for local revenue policies? A comparison of Denmark and Norway
This article investigates the impact of party ideology on revenue politics. Theoretically, claims can be made that party ideology should matter for revenue policies. First, leftist governments are more favourable towards government intervention and a large public sector. To accomplish this, leftist governments need more revenue than bourgeois governments. Second, revenue policy is a redistributive policy area well suited for ideological positioni…
Region søker oppgaver
Geographical redistribution with disproportional representation: A politico-economic model of Norwegian road projects
Economics (42 works) · Political science (42 works) · Politics (34 works) · Public economics (26 works) · Law (25 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (24 works) · Law (21 works) · Norwegian (21 works) · Fiscal Policies and Political Economy (17 works) · Local Government Finance and Decentralization (17 works)