Research projects at KODEM

CAMRIA (Combatting Anti-Microbial Resistance with Interdisciplinary Approaches) is a transdisciplinary research centre in Western Norway where several partners, including permanent academic staff, post docs and PhD students, as well as clinical staff from the two hospitals, work together in one research environment towards a joint objective – addressing the urgent need to combat antimicrobial resistance (AMR). The centre kicked off in May 2022 and has been funded through Trond Mohn Foundation, along with contributions from the University of Bergen, Haukeland University Hospital and Stavanger University Hospital.

The project Media and AMR, financed by the Trond Mohn Foundation, collects data in the Norwegian Citizen Panel.

Read more about CAMRIA and the research projects at CAMRIA at their webpages.

Transport is a significant source of energy consumption and emissions, and modern cities face the increasingly difficult challenge of planning for less transport related to goods delivery. At the same time as modern technology allows us to order delivery of more goods and services right to our doorstep. The project CityFreight (RCN 2020-2024) aims to provide public authorities in smaller cities with a toolbox for managing these conflicting changes in urban life. CityFreight aims to help cities like Bergen to plan for more energy-efficient and sustainable freight transportation. Whilst researchers at NHH will focus on modelling for the flow of logistics, researchers at the Centre for Climate and Energy Transformation (CET) at the University of Bergen will look at the governance barriers to planning for logistics in our modern context. Our research should allow cities to individually consider how best to plan for sustainable freight transport.

CityFreight is funded by the Norwegian Research Council.

CityFreight has collected data in the Norwegian Citizen Panel.

The primary objective of COMPLEX is to establish the effects of EU law on the practicing of national law. COMPLEX investigates whether there is context sensitive variation in interpreting and practicing EU law. What would a theory of administrative behaviour in complex settings look like?

COMPLEX has collected data in the Norwegian Panel of Public Administrators, and is funded by the Norwegian Research Council.

Read more about COMPLEX at their page at the University of Oslo.

DemoTrans is an impact-driven research project that will provide theoretically and empirically robust recommendations on how to reinvigorate democratic governance by improving the accountability, transparency, effectiveness and trustworthiness of rule-of-law based institutions and policies.

Following World War II, globalisation and market liberalisation triggered a period of unprecedented growth. Recently, these trends appear to reverse, whereby globalisation and corporations started to pose challenges for liberal democracy, social cohesion and environmental sustainability. The EU-funded DemoTrans project will provide theoretically and empirically robust recommendations on how to reinvigorate democratic governance by improving the accountability, transparency, effectiveness and trustworthiness of rule-of-law based institutions and policies. Moreover, it will provide robust recommendations on strengthening democratic governance through the expansion of active and inclusive citizenship empowered by the safeguarding of fundamental rights, thus showing pathways to a secure, open and democratic European society.

The DemoTrans consortium integrates key scholars and experts from KU Leuven (Belgium), Utrecht University (The Netherlands), Charles University (Prague), University of Bergen (Norway) and the Tax Justice Network.

The DemoTrans project started on 1st September 2022, and ends 31st August 2026.

DemoTrans has collected data in the Norwegian Panel of Public Administrators.

Read more about DemoTrans at their pages at KU Leuven.

The global biodiversity and climate crisis pose major threats to ecosystems and human lives and livelihoods. Despite a solid global consensus that land-use and land-use change are major drivers of these dual crises, we are currently failing to halt the loss. We argue that this failure to effectively implement environmental policy goals stems from a lack of relevant knowledge and information at the scale, and in a format, of relevance to the local and regional decision-makers holding the key to land-use transformation. ECoMAP will bridge this knowledge gap by (O1) bringing together stakeholders from science, nature management, spatial planning, and the private and public sector to develop a joint cross-disciplinary understanding of the knowledge needed to strengthen the science-policy interface on biodiversity and ecosystems (WP1). Informed by these discussions, we will (O2) develop methodologies for producing high-resolution maps of a range of biodiversity-derived (WP2) and ecodiversity-derived (WP3) variables of relevance for assessing ecological state and condition. We will then (O3) develop methodologies for quantifying ecosystem resilience based on these variables in order to understand ecosystem vulnerability to environmental perturbations (WP4). Finally, (O4), these new mapping approaches and data will be implemented in and communicated through the Ecological Base Map infrastructure (WP5), ground-truthed against data from existing research and monitoring data, and calibrated against needs and opportunities identified nationally and internationally (WP6). The unique aspect of ECoMAP lies in combining and integrating state-of-the-art applications of biodiversity, ecodiversity, and resilience mapping into a common framework, from which we will develop tools and applications supporting evidence-based nature management to safe-guard biodiversity and ecosystem goods and services.

ECoMAP is funded by the Norwegian Research Council.

ECoMAP has collected data in the Norwegian Citizen Panel.

Read more at EcoMAPs webpages.

Main research objective of gigaCCS:
Advance Norway’s CCS leadership and support the global implementation of CCS at giga-tonne scale by conducting targeted, interdisciplinary industry-driven research and generating innovation in a centre of excellence dedicated to fostering capacity and world-leading expertise.

A part of this major Research Centre of Excellense for Carbon Capture and Storage works on accept and trust towards carbon capture and storage, and in this work package researchers collect data in the Norwegian Citizen Panel.

Read more about gigaCCS at their webpages.

Building on Norwegian comparative advantages, HyValue aims to develop knowledge, methodology and innovative solutions for hydrogen energy carriers to build and support a competitive hydrogen energy sector. HyValue addresses five grand challenges related to development of a competitive Norwegian hydrogen energy sector:

1. How can we produce hydrogen and ammonia with minimum energy loss and at a lower cost?
2. How can we create a safe and resilient transport and distribution system for hydrogen-based fuels?
3. How can we develop end-user applications for hydrogen-based energy carriers?
4. How can we stimulate investments and build systems with acceptable risk for all stakeholders?
5. How can we build public trust and confidence in a hydrogen economy?

HyValue is a Centre for Environmental-friendly Energy Research, financed by the Research Council of Norway. The project has collected data from the Norwegian Citizen Panel, and plans collection in the Norwegian Panel of Politicians.

Read more about HyValue at NORCE.

Recent data from EU member states showed that one quarter of the working age population had a chronic disease, while 19% reported long-standing health issues. The Norwegian Bureau of Statistics estimates that the employment rate of people with disabilities in working age is approximately 41%.

These national and international statistics indicate that the chronic-disease-work-income nexuses are important in terms of the future sustainability of the European welfare states. There are several proposed explanations for this phenomenon.

The main aims of this proposal is to quantify the economic risks associated with changes in health status in young age, for the individual and for society; to detect factors shielding and exposing workers from these risks; and to explore public attitudes of fairness concerning the chronic disease-work-income nexus.

Double Trouble is funded by the Research council of Norway, and collects data in the Norwegian Citizen Panel.

You can read more about Double Trouble at their NORCE page.

The overall goal of the project is to develop a new understanding of AI based on the experiences of ordinary people. But such an understanding will allow us to better analyze how the spread of AI affects our society and our democracy.

IMAGINE is a 4-year research project that addresses people's perceptions and folk theories about artificial intelligence (AI). By combining representative surveys and in-depth qualitative studies, the project will explore questions such as:

• What attitudes do the Norwegian population have towards AI?
• What happens to people's perceptions when AI becomes part of everyday media experiences?
• What implications does this have for trust and authenticity – for our perception of living in a shared social reality?

The project is organized into three work packages: 1) Citizen Panels, 2) Case Studies and 3) Conceptualizations. Work package 1 contains the project's surveys, and analyses of both quantitative and qualitative data from these. In this work package, IMAGINE collects data in the Norwegian Citizen Panel.

IMAGINE is financed by the Research Council of Norway.

Read more about IMAGINE at their webpages.

ERC Consolidator Grant, 2021-2026.

Democracies require a commitment, on the part of citizens, to uphold norms of tolerance and inclusion. The extent and depth of this commitment is a topic of enduring interest in political science. Previous research on this topic has by and large focused on exclusionary attitudes, and the factors that promote them. By all accounts, such attitudes are stable or in decline in the old democracies of Europe and North America. Despite this, the same countries have experienced increasing support for exclusionary politics and support for far right nativist parties. How can this be?

The inclusive politics project aims to answer this question by shifting analytical and empirical focus from the intolerant, who demand exclusion, to the tolerant, who profess a commitment to norms of inclusion. It is by understanding the terms on which the latter withdraw their support for inclusive politics, that we can understand the challenges currently facing democratic societies. Focusing on citizens’ openness to the inclusion of Muslim minorities, the project aims to:

1. Take the research on inclusive politics in a new direction, expanding the scope of inquiry to inclusive as opposed to exclusionary attitudes
2. Examine openness to Muslim inclusion across a broad range of themes and issues
3. Identify and account for the limits of inclusion
4. Test key implications of the terms model for the politics of inclusion

INCLUDE has collected data from the Norwegian Citizen Panel.

Read more about INCLUDE at the project webpages.

The LINGCLIM research group undertakes research on narratives and language use related to issues of climate change, energy transition, nature and ecology, in a cross-disciplinary perspective.

The LINGCLIM research group has actively collected data in the Norwegian Citizen Panel.

SFI MediaFutures is a world-class research centre based in Bergen’s Media City, dedicated to developing responsible AI-driven media technology for ethical and effective user engagement, content production, and audience understanding, in collaboration with leading national and international media and research partners.

MediaFutures is an SFI (Centre for Research-based Innovation) at the University of Bergen, funded by the Norwegian Research Council.

The centre has collected data in the Norwegian Citizen Panel.

Read more about MediaFutures at their webpages.
 

The NEWSREC project deals directly with one of the most pressing questions facing the news media today: What are the precise conditions under which news recommender technology are for the better or the worse for the democratic role of the news media? We focus on one of the most heavily debated consequences of news recommenders: individuals' exposure to and sharing of like-minded news (selective exposure and sharing).

NEWSREC is funded by the Norwegian Research Council.

NEWSREC has collected data in the Norwegian Citizen Panel.

Read more about NEWSREC at their webpages.

A project collecting and sharing data on climate change adaptation and climate risk in society. Norsk klimamonitor is part of the The Norwegian Research Centre on Sustainable Climate Change Adaptation (Noradapt).

The project collects data in the Norwegian Citizen Panel and the Norwegian Panel of Politicians.

Read more about Norsk klimamonitor (in Norwgian) here, and about Nordadapt (in English) at their pages.

This project studies the impact of administrative leadership on organizational performance and citizen trust in government. More specifically, PART studies whether and how recruiting administrative leaders from outside the public sector, either from politics or from business, makes a difference for organizational performance, employee motivation, and citizens' trust in bureaucracy. 

In order to study how citizens perceive mixed careers, PART will analyse the effect of recruitment procedures and leaders’ qualifications on citizens’ trust in bureaucracy through survey experiments. This is a unique and novel approach through which PART will generate high-quality knowledge to improve public sector performance and enhance citizens’ trust in government institutions.

PART has collected data in the Norwegian Panel of Public Administrators and the Norwegian Citizen Panel. The project is funded by the Norwegian Research Council.

Read more about PART at their page at the University of Oslo.

The POLCAP project focuses on interest groups representing professions, users and providers of education services in Norway, and compares them to their counterparts in a similar education system (Finland) and in a contrasting one (Germany). It is a comparative mixed-method multi-level analysis, theoretically grounded in literature on interest groups, organization theory and education governance, involving a highly experienced team of researchers from different disciplinary fields.

POLCAP is financed by the Norwegian Research Council, and has collected data in the Norwegian Citizen Panel.

Read more about POLCAP here.

“Representing the Future” is situated at the intersection of political economy and political behavior. It addresses a striking tension between the steady aging of European electorates and the increasing necessity for long-term-oriented policy outcomes. On the one hand, effective democratic representation requires responsiveness towards older voters’ preferences. On the other hand, this can lead to an ineffective representation of young and future generations’ interests, as they are both a numerical minority and have fewer possibilities for electoral participation. 

The project introduces the concept of Generational Political Pluralism (GPP), suggesting that a generationally pluralistic society should consider both the contemporary and long-term effects of policy decisions. To assess the impact of demographic change on GPP in Norway, Europe, and beyond, the project investigates generational cleavages in two integral parts of policymaking: public opinion and political representation. 

Two interconnected work packages will (i) test how age, generation, and period affect generational cleavages in public opinion and (ii) compare and explain how the preferences of citizens belonging to different generations are represented by political decision-makers. The empirical analyses draw on a combination of observational, behavioral, and experimental data and will use a range of innovative methods to make descriptive and causal inferences.

"Representing the Future" is funded by the Trond Mohn Foundation. The project collects data in the Norwegian Citizen Panel and the Norwegian Panel of Politicians.

You can read more about "Representing the Future" here.

The SCORE project is designed to provide new insights into factors influencing the degree of opposition against restrictive consumption reduction measures and the polarizing potential of such measures. There is a relatively good theoretical understanding of the psychological and social mechanisms influencing how people react to climate policy measures. However, we still need more knowledge of how these mechanisms play out in a high-consumption country like Norway and with regard to policy instruments that restrict individuals’ choices as consumers.

SCORE uses psychological and sociological perspectives to analyze the opposition against and the polarizing potential of relevant political measures to reduce consumption in Norwegian society. We use experimental surveys and a large-scale deliberative survey to identify how policy design and framing can influence opposition across diverse groups and test how information and deliberation can influence attitudes towards relevant measures. The project will: 1) identify opposition against and the polarizing potential of different measures, 2) give a better understanding of the reasons for opposition and polarization between groups, and 3) investigate experimentally how measures can be designed and communicated in a less provocative way to diverse groups.

SCORE has collected data in the Norwegian Citizen Panel, and is funded by the Norwegian Research Council.

Read more about SCORE at NORCE.

Democracies are under pressure worldwide: The political landscape is rapidly changing, with new parties emerging and old ones suffering, as voters turn away from established parties. We also witness a significant gender-gap in political endurance, meaning that women’s careers as elected representatives in parliaments tend to end quicker than men’s. This gap between men’s and women’s political endurance challenges the quality and legitimacy of democratic processes as it limits women’s chance of having a profound political impact. 

The European Research Council (ERC) funded research project “Gender-Gap in Political Endurance: a novel political inclusion theory” (SUCCESS) provides a comprehensive analysis of why, how and if structural factors affect the endurance of political careers and why endurance matter for political impact. 

SUCCESS has collected data in the Norwegian Citizen Panel and the Norwegian Panel of Politicians.

Learn more about SUCCESS at their webpages.  

In this research project, an international research team will provide a comprehensive, multi-method examination of if and how gender shapes political violence targeting politicians in carefully selected countries in two regions (Africa and Europe).

Cost of Politics has collected data in the Norwegian Panel of Politicians, and is funded by the Research Council of Norway.

Read more about Cost of Politics at their CMI webpage.

In the TRUST project, we study why protest movements choose different protest strategies and tactics, and the potential consequences of these choices. Well-functioning democracies require political engagement and a certain degree of resistance. An important question is nevertheless whether certain forms of protest may affect democratic decision-making processes negatively and reduce public support for the climate issue.

TRUST is financed by the Norwegian Research Council, and collects data in the Norwegian Citizen Panel.

Read more about TRUST at their NORCE-webpage.

Acute sinusitis is a leading cause of antibiotic treatment in primary care, although most patients do not benefit from antibiotic treatment. There is a need to reduce the amount of prescribed antibiotics, due to the increasing challenges of antimicrobial resistance. This project will test a novel treatment option for acute sinusitis, which is shown to be superior to systemic antibiotics in a pilot study; chloramphenicol eye drops.

This project in medicine was funded by the Research Council of Norway, and they used the Norwegian Citizen Panel to learn more about what people know about antibiotics.

Read more about BASIC here.

This was a small research project with comparative survey experiments in Norway and California, financed by the Peder Sæther scolarships as a collaboration between the University of Bergen and UC Berkeley. The project collected data in the Norwegian Citizen Panel.

Main researchers were Kim Voss and Irene Bloemraad from UC Berkeley, and Elisabeth Ivarsflaten and Susanne Bygnes at UiB.

Living with climate change has become a crucial issue worldwide. Climate change concerns all aspects of our lives and affects how we think about our personal lifestyle choices and political behavior, how we perceive of the fate of our planet and the future of humanity. Recent research shows that, when asked about solutions to tackle climate change, Norwegian citizens generally say “we must all contribute”. However, what does this mean more specifically?

Our new and challenging methodological cross-disciplinary approach consists of a combination of Facebook data and open-ended survey questions, that targeted respondents (citizens, politicians, journalists) can answer in their own words. The project puts a particular focus on the views of young people. We use tools for language analysis generated through linguistic polyphony (multivoicedness), topic analysis, framing and narrative theory, combining quantitative (semi-) automated and qualitative methods.

CLIMLIFE collected data in the Norwegian Citizen Panel.

You can read more about CLIMLIFE here.

CLIMLIFE at the pages of the Research Council of Norway.

A small research project by Erik Knudsen about commercial looking like ordinary news, and how this affects trust. The project used the Norwegian Citizen Panel.

Financed by "Rådet for anvendt medieforskning" (RAM)

The project “Democratic Algorithms” (Demokratiske algoritmer) is based on a survey sent to a population-representative sample of residents in Norway. The survey consisted of three parts:

• One part addressed the relationship between NAV and the residents.
• Another part focused on general attitudes and knowledge about machine learning and artificial intelligence.
• The third part consisted of experimental scenarios that are or could become realistic in the NAV context, with the aim of eliciting assessments of the use of machine learning.

The project was funded by NAV, and you can find the report that was written on democratic algorithms here.

How the populist radical right affects political support, polarization and notions of democracy

The main aim of the DEMoPOP project is to investigate how the dynamics generated by the continuous electoral success of radical right populist parties in Europe affect citizens' political trust, political attitudes, views of the democratic system, and polarization. By focusing on the consequences of the growth of radical right populist parties as well as bridging the fields of populism studies and political support, the project deals with questions that in the end will be of importance for the legitimacy of European democracy. The research within the project relies on a wide range of data, e.g. large scale cross-national surveys, panel survey data, survey experiments, open ended survey questions, and online text data.

DEMoPOP vas financed by the Research Council of Norway, and collected data in the Norwegian Citizen Panel.

Read more about DEMoPOP here.

Democracy is widely percieved as the only legitimate system of government, but citizens in many countries are dissatisfied with the way the political system works in practice. Frustrated citizens who do not see their political interests being accommodated within the current structures may lose faith in the current political system. Supporters of democracy must therefore continously reinvent the democratic process to make them sufficiently inclusive to provide structures that are considered legitimate by all groups in society.

We investigate to what extent democratic innovations, such as the Byborgerpanel, can improve the local democracy and strengthen the sense of genuine representation, and thereby increase the citizens’ acceptance of policy decisions.

DEMOVATE used the Citizen Lab at DIGSSCORE to test "Byborgerpanelet".

Read more about DEMOVATE here.

And read more about Byborgerpanelet here.

What is a fair algorithm? Algorithms are increasingly being used by governments to make decisions that impact individual citizens' lives. Thus, we are on the verge of a revolution in the public sector, where computers will take over many of the governance tasks previously assigned to human bureaucrats. With it, the conditions for impartial and transparent treatment of citizens are changing. Increased capacity to process relevant information enhances the potential for making more accurate and efficient judgments. Yet, we also run the risk of creating a black box society where citizens are being kept in the dark about the decision-making processes, potentially undermining the legitimacy of governmental institutions among the citizens they serve. While significant attention in the recent few years has been devoted to theoretical discussions on fairness, accountability, and transparency related to algorithmic decision making, little is still known about citizens’ views on this issue. There is thus an imminent need to study these emerging governance developments from a political science perspective, and that is what this project sets out to do. The Center for Deliberative Democracy at Stanford University and The Digital Social Science Core Facilities (DIGSSCORE) at the University of Bergen are involved in the project, ensuring high data quality from top social science infrastructures.

fAIrgov collected data in the Norwegian Citizen Panel.

The project is finished, and you can read more about fAIrgov at NORCEs webpages.

You can also read more (in Norwegian) about their final conference here, and watch a recording with discussions on what it takes for the Norwegian public sector to be ready for the AI revolution?

A comprehensive assessment of direct and indirect impacts of afforestation. 

HiddenCosts used the Norwegian Citizen Panel to collect data from survey experiments about peoples attitudes to forest and landscapes.

You can see publications and more information about HiddenCosts at their CRISTIN page.

This project views integration as a two-way process. Inclusion is not only a question of how immigrants adapt, but also how natives react. With regard to immigrant adaption we are concerned with the effects of policy tools to improve inclusion, and how characteristics of 1) the immigrants themselves, 2) their country of origin, and 3) the local community in which they settle affect political and economic incorporation. 

The project collected data in the Norwegian Citizen Panel.

Immigrant INCLUSION at NORCEs webpages.

This was a project at the Department of Clinical Science at the Faculty of Medicine, which used the Norwegian Citizen Panel for user participation and to learn more about what Norwegians know about endometrial cancer.

This project will consist of two interconnected pillars; the first will concentrate on how recently arrived asylum seekers have imagined and experienced Europe. We will pay particular attention to how the decision-making process regarding why, how and where to go is made and how asylum seekers experience arriving and establishing themselves in Norway. The pillar will focus on Syrian nationals, the largest group arriving to Europe and Norway in 2015 and 2016. Syrians relatively high chances of being granted asylum in Norway will allow us to follow people as they settle in Norway throughout, and beyond, the project period. The second pillar of the project will investigate how members of local communities in Norway have imagined and experienced the arrival of the refugee crisis to Europe and to their local communities in Norway. The project will take three different local communities in Norway as its point of departure, focusing on urban and rural areas where facilities for asylum seekers were/are estbalished. The main area of research will be on the west coast of Norway which, during the peak year 2015/2016, offered both relatively large urban facilities and an several rural facilities of different categories and sizes. By studying encounters between local communities and asylum seekers who become settled refugees this project will outline key elements of best- and worst case scenarios of social intergration between newcomers and Norwegians. The particular strengths of the study will lie in i) drawing on a multitude of methods and ii) in taking into account perspectives of both recently arrived asylum seekers/settled refugees and local community members on all sides of the political spectrum in order to piece together analyses and communicate results of high relevance to scholars, policy makers and user groups.

IMEX collected data in the Norwegian Citizen Panel.

Read more about IMEX at their UiB webpages, and at the IMEX pages at the Norwegian Research Council.

Median Research Centre (MRC) was the Coordinating Organization of the “Less Hate, More Speech” project. The other partners were University of Bergen (Norway) and the Central European University (Budapest, Hungary). A first collaboration of Norwegian academics, Romanian scholars and media organizations, the project was an academic inquiry with immediate applied relevance, focusing on the influence of discursive choices by media and politicians on public expressions of anti-democratic and intolerant views. 

The MRC research team leader was Dr. Marina Popescu, the director of MRC. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Essex in the United Kingdom.

The University of Bergan research team leader was Dr. Elisabeth Ivarsflaten. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Comparative Politics at University of Bergen and holds a D.Phil. in Politics from Nuffield College at the University of Oxford.

The Central European University research team leader was Dr. Gábor Tóka, a Professor of Political Science at the Central European University. He holds a PhD in Sociology from Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary.

The project used data from the Norwegian Citizen Panel.

You can read more about the Less Hate, More Speech-project here, or at the Less Hate, More Speech grant page.

LimnoPlast was a project studying microplastics, and risk perception regarding microplastics. For this, the project collected data from the Norwegian Citizen Panel.

Read more about LimnoPlast at their CRISTIN page, and about the PhD-project by Marcos Felipe Rodríguez.

This was a project that explored Norwegian citizens understanding of and opinions about energy and energy transition.

Pathways collected data in the Norwegian Citizen Panel.

Read more about Pathways at the CRISTIN pages.

This project has explored factors that influence attitudes towards carbon capture and storage in Norway and Germany. The main picture is that the majority of Norwegians are positive towards carbon capture and storage, we typically find that around 60 to 70 per cent are positive somewhat depending on how the question is phrased. In Germany, we find that around half are positive towards the technology. There is a very big difference in how familiar the population in the two countries is with the technology. Only 15 percent of Norwegians state that they have never heard of the technology, in Germany this figure is 63 percent.

PerCCSeptions collected data in the Norwegan Citizen Panel.

Read more about PerCCSeptions at their NORCE-page.

In June 2017, Yvette Peters started the project The Politics of Inequality. How Representative Democracy (Mal-) Functions in Europe, funded by the Trond Mohn Foundation and University of Bergen. This project deals with some of the most pressing issues facing democracies today: political inequality and the lack of representation. It investigates the state of representative democracy by studying citizen-state relations. More specifically, the project focuses on representation (do citizens get what they want?) and political equality (do people get what they want equally?).

This project started what is now the Norwegian Panel of Politicians, and collected data in that panel and in the Norwegian Citizen Panel.

Politics of Inequality at Yvette Peters pages
Politics of Inequality at University of Bergens pages

Although democracy is globally perceived as the only legitimate system of government, there is widespread discontent with the performance of democracy. One of the most striking developments in political culture during the last couple of decades has been the increase in "dissatisfied democrats", i.e. citizens who believe in the core values of democracy but nonetheless remain dissatisfied with the way the democratic political system works in practice. On top of this, we have observed low, and in many countries decreasing, levels of trust in fundamental democratic institutions such as political parties and governments for quite some time all over the world, not least in the wake of the financial crisis. Arguably, the most pressing challenge to contemporary governance comes from the many citizens, who have grown distrustful of politicians and institutions, and express discontent with the performance of democratic government and the democratic process in itself. While the widespread public discontent with the functioning of democracy and its institutions is widely acknowledged among scholars, there is disagreement about the causes and effects. In a nutshell, the PROLEG project will address this issue and generate new knowledge that can be used to improve governance in the future. This will be accomplished by conducting experimental and observational studies on the mechanisms of accepting decision-making procedures. The data will mainly be generated within the unique infrastructure of DIGSSCORE at the University of Bergen. This core social science facility takes advantage of changes in technology and research methodology that combine to bring computer laboratory research and survey studies closer together.

PROLEG collected data in the Norwegian Citizen Panel.

The project is finished, but some information can be found at PROLEGs pages at the Norwegian Research Council.

Regions have become a central pillar of democracy. Directly elected regional representatives can be found in 23 out of 37 European states which rule over 438 million out of a total of 532 million citizens (82 percent). Powers for regional assemblies and executives have increased in 19, remained stable in two, and decreased in only two states since 1970. Subnational government within the European Union accounts for a third of public spending, two thirds of public investment expenditure, and more than half of public employment.

The Strengthening Regional Democracy-project collected data in the Norwegian Citizen Panel and the Norwegian Panel of Politicians. 

The project was funded by the Trond Mohn Foundation.

Read more at the UiB page about Strengthening Regional Democracy.

Based on the previous work of the PI (Elisabeth Ivarsflaten) and her team (Paul M. Sniderman and Stefan Dahlberg), we hypothesize that native citizens in Norway and elsewhere in Western Europe are more open to inclusion, also of Muslim minorities, than has been recognized so far. The project draws on concepts and ideas from normative political theory to identify the most relevant lines of inquiry, but it engages with this theoretical work in an empirical manner asking not what the public ought to accept, but what the public does accept. Two major challenges will be addressed: (1) which terms matter most to the majority public in questions of Muslim minority inclusion and why? (2) how can the findings on acceptable terms of inclusion be squared with evidence of extremism and the demonization of Muslims in Norway and Europe today? The central methodological approaches will be survey experiments and a combination of qualitative and Big Data analysis of online content. The project will contribute new knowledge not only about the nature, extent, and limitations of anti-Muslim mobilization, but also, for the first time, about the nature, extent, and limitations of openness to the inclusion of Muslim minorities in contemporary society.

TERMS was financed by the Norwegian Research Council, and collected data in the Norwegian Citizen Panel.

Read more about TERMS at their webpages.

This was a research project in the Nordic Societal Security Programme by Nordforsk. The project collected data in the Norwegian Citizen Panel.

Democracies, including the Nordic countries, are under pressure from terrorist activities. Not only terrorist attacks, but also the sheer threat of terrorism places strains on democratic government. Protection of citizens is a paramount task for the state. If citizens feel at risk and law and order is under threat the authority of government might possibly be undermined. In democratic states however, measures to safeguard citizens against violent threats run the risk of weakening the very foundation for democracy. Stern policy measures like searches without warrants, arrests, telephone tapping, and prolonged detention without charge or trial may be rational methods for defending the safety of citizens but they are also infringements on civil and political rights. Hence, the clash between safety and freedom is most significant felt in democratic states.

An important research question is to what degree democratic states are resilient as democracies against the challenge of terrorism. The project address this overreaching question through three work packages.

The first study whether perceived threats, such as terrorism, invokes fear in citizens and to what degree they are willing to curtail civil and political rights in the face of terrorist threats?

The second part of the project looks at counterterrorist legislation in western democracies (including the Nordic countries) and in what ways restrictive legislative measures affects citizens' trust, beliefs in democracy, and the legitimacy of the state.

The third sub-project spotlights institutional arrangements and aims to analyse what effects of variation in institutional setup has for people's fear of terrorism.

Read more about "The challenge from terrorism" at their Nordforsk-pages.

The research project THERAPY examines how voters respond to environment, energy and climate policies ("environmental policies", for short). Anecdotal evidence, such as the Yellow vests and Nok er nok! movements in France and Norway, suggests that environmental policies can cause rifts between people and politicians. Meanwhile, the window of opportunity for avoiding dangerous climate change is closing, and it is therefore important to identify environmental policies that people are ready to accept. Identifying such policies may lead to accelerated environmental policy output and avoidance of unjust environmental policies.

The project collected data in the Norwegian Citizen Panel.

THERAPY at NORCE
THERAPY at their CRISTIN page

The project "Truth and Reconciliation in a Democratic Welfare State: The Indigenous Sami, the Kven/Norwegian Finns Minority and the Majority in Norway (TRUCOM) (2020-2024)" aimed to research how Norway, a well-established democratic state, by establishing the Commission to Investigate Norwegianization Policy and Injustice towards the Sami, Kvens, and Norwegian Finns (Truth and Reconciliation Commission), attempts to address the effects of a prolonged policy of Norwegianization targeted at the Sami as indigenous people and the national minority group of Kvens/Norwegian Finns. 

The main question of the project was: How and in what ways will the Norwegian Truth and Reconciliation Commission lay the groundwork for truth and reconciliation between the Sami and the Kven/Norwegian Finns on one side, and the majority population on the other? The question has been answered as planned and coincided with three stages of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission: (1) its origin, (2) its activities, and (3) its report and recommendations.

TRUCOM collected data in the Norwegian Citizen Panel. 

Read more about TRUCOM at the webpages of the University of Tromsø.

SANE-Clim analyses what can be done and how in order to facilitate the necessary climate and energy transition. In order to foster change, two key pillars are essential: a) a better understanding the structure and evolution of the existing legal system (i.e. the ‘structure’ of the rule of law), and b) a better understanding of the drivers and shapers of public and social acceptance (i.e. ‘acceptance’ by citizens). In sum, a better understanding of the ‘Structure-Acceptance Nexus’.

This project contributes to both pillars. It is precisely structured around the structure-acceptance diptych. 

SANE-Clim has collected data in the Norwegian Citizen Panel.

Read more about SANE-Clim here.

Stefan Dahlberg, professor at Mittuniversitetet in Sweden used the Norwegian Citizen panel to study open text answers through his research project "Studying Opinions and Societies Through Communicative Behavior Online". 

A Paneuropean research project, involving Belgium, France and Norway

This research project has the theoretical and transformative aim to improve the scientific understanding of obstacles and disincentives to climate change mitigation and to understand how multimodal devices can operate on them, through the interdisciplinary collaboration between linguistics and social psychological approaches. The project will provide a practical tool in the form of an open-source research toolbox proposing advice, models, and resources to public authorities and concerned citizen on climate change communication strategies.

Through linguistic and discursive analyses of survey discourse (i.e. answers to open-ended questions) and of social media (Twitter), combining narrative and polyphonic perspectives, the aim of WP2 (Norway) is to contribute to an innovative understanding of European citizens’ opinions about obstacles versus opportunities to reducing GHG emissions and thus to the climate change mitigation.

The project collected data from the Norwegian Citizen Panel.

Read more about 2o2cm here or at the 2o2cm page at change4climate.eu.