Immigration and politics – the case of Norway
Frøy Gudbrandsen,
Department of Comparative Politics,
University of Bergen
Paper (draft) prepared for ”Nasjonal Fagkonferanse i Statsvitenskap”, Trondheim 3rd 5th of January 2007.
The political influence on immigration is uncertain. Norwegian political parties disagree on
what influence they actually have on immigration: In a television debate (Holmgang
31.05.2006), the Progress Party’s spokesperson claimed that the recent sharp increase in
immigration was caused by the government’s liberal stand on immigration. On the contrary,
the Christian Democratic Party spokesperson identified fluctuations in the number of conflicts
in the world as the main cause of immigration to Norway. Not only politicians, but also
scholars disagree on the political influence on immigration. There is disagreement on both the
validity of the partisan influence on policy output in general, as well as on states’ capacity to
control immigration. Is it governments or external determinants that decide the size of
immigration? This study aims at answering the question.
International migration has increased globally and has had an impact on society in many
countries. It has proved to be an emotional and sensitive political issue, which makes
research aiming at providing factual information particularly important. There is not only
disagreement on the causes of immigration, but also on what to do with it. For some time
immigration has been a highly contested political issue, in Norway as well as in most
industrial countries. As will be demonstrated, political parties in Norway have had very
different preferences to immigration policy. But has immigration flows changed according to
the political stands of the parties in government?
This paper analyses the effect of changes in the party composition of government on
immigration to Norway. The first part of the paper examines the immigration preferences of
Norwegian political parties. The primary source is party programmes. The second part is a
panel analysis of the impact of changes in government on immigration flows. The period
2
1965-2004 is covered and 185 sending countries are included in the analysis. This model
controls for not only features of the Norwegian society , such as unemployment, but also
features of all sending countries. While ignored in most quantitative studies, the inclusion of
both sending and receiving country variables is crucial for a valid test of the political
influence on immigration. When either sending country variables or receiving country
variables are omitted, the statistical model is underspecified, which causes serious bias in the
results.
The case of Norway may shed light on the political influence on immigration for several
reasons. First, poor data quality is a major obstacle to reliable quantitative analyses of
immigration. But the exceptional quality of Norwegian immigration data provides an
opportunity to overcome this problem. Illegal immigration has the potential of invalidating
official statistics, but although on the increase in recent years, illegal immigration has been
comparatively small in Norway. Second, the country’s geographical position far away from
all major emigration countries gives Norwegian governments the potential of stronger
immigration control than most industrial countries. Third, the constitutional structure of
Norway is favourable for partisan influence (Schmidt 2002:177). The consensus orientation of
Norwegian politics, as well as the frequent coalition and minority governments, may have
blurred out the differences in policy preferences. However, with a centralized state structure,
few majoritarian constraints, the possibility of partisan influence in Norway is likely to be
high (Scmidt 1996:170).1
Countermajoritarian constraints may be “federalism, an influential constitutional court and an autonomous
central bank,” (Schmidt 1996:170).
1
3
POLITICAL INFLUENCE ON IMMIGRATION?
There is scant theoretical literature on the effects of parties and governments on immigration
as such, but the extensive political economy literature on partisan theory and economic
electoral cycles may well be applied other policy areas. This literature argues that politics
does indeed have an influence on policy outcomes (See for instance Hibbs 1992; Garrett
1998). To retain support among their core supporters, politicians must stay loyal to the
ideological basis of their parties: “Partisan models therefore imply a political signal in
economic policies and outcomes correlated with shifts in party control of government,”
(Hibbs 1992:362). Political ideologies and policy preferences of different political parties can
be expected to be reflected in policy outputs2.
The ’parties matter’ literature has primarily been concerned with economic policy, but here it
will be applied to immigration. Since the mid 1980s, all Norwegian parties, with the exception
of the Labour Party 1993 programme, have statements about immigration policy in their party
programmes. Voters in general do not rank immigration as important (Aardal and Valen 1989,
1995; Aardal 1999, 2003). Despite the relatively low interest for immigration as a political
issue, it is likely that parties implement policies in accordance with their party programmes:
“As an official document, it will be difficult for party members to resile from policies in the
party manifesto, while party leaders can be charged with failure to implement published
manifesto pledges when given the chance to do so” (Laver and Garry 2000:620)
.
Research on partisan influence on the economy come to diverging conclusions (See Blais et
al. 1993; Imbeau et al. 2001) and provide no indications on the extent of political influence on
2
Stimson et al (1995) draw attention to the possible direct effect of public ophion on policies, as politicians are
sensitive to public opinion also between elections. Lack of time series data on public attitudes to immigration
policy makes such a study impossible.
4
immigration. A precondition for partisan influence, is state capacity to control, and on this
point the immigration literature in just as inconclusive as the partisan literature. Political
economists have argued that economic globalization has decreased state capacity to steer
national economy (see for instance Moses 1994). Similar arguments are found in the
migration literature. Sassen (1996; 2000) argues that there is a contradiction between an open
economy and strict control of people flows. Pointing to the example of U.S. agricultural
export, she argues that immigration may be one of the trade offs in the processes of economic
globalization (Sassen 2000:67). Local agriculture in the import countries is highly influenced
by agricultural trade and may transform surplus farmers in import countries into labour
migrants in the U.S. Immigration today is driven by “a complex, deeply embedded, and
transnational process,” and state capacity to control immigration is therefore increasingly
constrained (Sassen 2000:73).
Sassen (1996) has also argued that an international human rights regime, consisting of both
informal norms and binding conventions, limits national control over immigration. Joppke
(1998), and Guiraudon and Lahav (2000) disputes this: “Rather than global processes
constraining domestic action, what we observe in the case of aliens rights is a legally driven
process of self-limited sovereignty”, (Guiraudon and Lahav 2000:189). They find that
national constitutions may constrain policy makers, but still Germany, France and the
Netherlands have demonstrated ability to control migration (Guiraudon and Lahav 2000:190).
Realising that international migration is an international process, governments have increased
international co-operation on immigration. This may have reduced the possibility for partisan
influence on immigration flows. According to Cornelius et al. (2004:15-20), there has been a
significant immigration policy convergence, particularly between European countries. There
5
may be several reasons for this convergence (Meyers 2002), but the result of convergence is
likely to be that political party preferences to a lesser extent influence what policy measures
are introduced in each country.
Implementation problems and unintended consequences have been found to be the main
causes of the “gap hypothesis” (Cornelius et al. 2004:4), which describes the gap between
restrictive policies and increasing immigration that has been experienced in most European
countries that introduced the ‘immigration stop’ in the 1970s. Governments depend on the
bureaucracy for their decisions to be effective. Many aspects of the implementation process
may disturb the link between policy aims and policy output, which in this case is immigration
flows. Howlett and Ramesh (2003:187-193) mention several reasons for an implementation
gap. Actors who disagree with the policy, may seek to influence the implementation. These
actors could be the bureaucrats themselves, or external activists who call on the bureaucrats as
the last point of influence. There are commonly technical or administrative difficulties, both
predicted and unpredicted, that makes implementation slow, incomplete or impossible. The
situation that policies were intended to address could also change, so that policies become
irrelevant or unsuitable for managing reality.
Policies also commonly have unintended consequences (Kelly 2005:869). This happens both
due to politicians lack of knowledge about the issue and because policies have secondary, and
completely unforeseen, effects. An example of the first case is attempts that have been made
to reduce immigration by boosting development in sending countries. Empirical research has
repeatedly supported the development hump hypothesis, which states that development
increases emigration, at least in a short
in the short run (Castles and Miller 2003).
Accordingly, such policies were found only to increase immigration (Martin and Taylor 2001:
6
105). This does, of course, not mean that policies are never efficient. On the contrary, several
studies document policy influence on immigration (see for instance Holzer et al 2000, Brekke
2004, or Thielemann 2004).
As pointed out by Hibbs (1993:363), “(a)ll governments respond to high and rising inflation
with contractive policies, and to prolonged or sharp downturns with expansive ones.”
Likewise, it can be assumed that all governments react to sharp increases in immigration with
restrictive measures. Policy must be adjusted to fluctuations, whether immigration or
inflation. It is therefore possible that changing levels of immigration, perhaps primarily
determined by external factors, influence policy more than changing governments.
The partisan theory suggests that politics could matter for immigration, but so far we can only
conclude that the validity of this theory, when applied to immigration, is uncertain.
PREFERENCES OF NORWEGIAN PARTIES
Immigration has been a central, and sometimes a decisive, issue in recent elections in Europe.
In Norway, immigration has only been the major issue once; in the 1987 local election. The
election followed a dramatic rise in the number of asylum seekers that in turn put immigration
high up on the media agenda. In the general election two years later, an all time high of 9%3
of the electorate considered immigration important for their choice of party. In the 1997
general election, liberalization of asylum policy was one of the central issues of the winning
coalition, but this did not necessarily reflect the interest of the electorate. Only six percent
considered immigration important. Immigration has, however, been more important to the
supporters of certain parties. For instance, 20% of the Progress Party voters and 10% of the
3
Berfore 1989, less than 1% regarded as immigration important ( Aardal and Valen 1995:166, Aardal 1999:2021).
7
Socialist Left party voters considered it important in 1997 (Aardal 1999:24).
A precondition for testing the influence of political parties on immigration is knowing their
preferences. The left right scale, which as been the focus of attention in studies of economic
policy, cannot be applied directly to immigration. The first part of this study is therefore an
analysis of the positions of Norwegian parties on immigration. Party preferences on
immigration have been described in case studies of Norwegian politics (Hagelund 2003;
Tjelmeland and Brochmann 2003). This is not, however, sufficient to determine the intention
of Norwegian political parties.4 Here, the primary data source for establishing the positions is
party manifestos.
Immigration was first mentioned in the party manifestos in 1973, but since 1985 the issue has
been covered in all party manifestos. The parties’ views on three types of immigration will be
studied: labour immigration, refugee/asylum and family reunion. Statements were coded as
restrictive, liberal or neutral. The statements in one party manifesto were compared to
statements in the other Norwegian party manifestos. Accordingly, the codes must be
interpreted as liberal or restrictive relative to other Norwegian parties. All instances of
ambiguity were coded neutral so that only clearly restrictive and clearly liberal statements
were given these codes. No mention of immigration in a party programme may have to
explanations: 1) that immigration is not seen as relevant, or 2) that there is no agreement on
the issue within the party. In both cases, ‘neutral’ is considered the most appropriate code.
As all three types of immigration were not always mentioned in the manifestos, newspaper
Tjelmeland and Brochmann’s coverage of the preferences is rather brief. Hagelunds study is a discurse analysis
of the immigration debate, which provides information a bit on the side of what needed for this study.
4
8
articles are a secondary, supplementary source5. Most newspapers’ made their articles
electronic from 2004, but newspaper articles from Aftenposten are available electronically
from 1983, from Dagens Næringsliv from 1988 and a few newspapers from the early 1990s.
Statements from central politicians, speaking on behalf of the party, were coded.
Consequently, claims about other parties and initiatives from local politicians were ignored.
The preferences of the parties as expressed in newspaper articles were to a large extent
consistent with the statements in the manifestos.
Table 1 Preferences according to party program statements
1973
Progress
Party
Labour imm.
1977
R
1981
R
N
1985
R
R
R
1989
R
R
1993
R
R
R
1997
R
R
R
N
L
Lr
R
r
R
L
N
Nr
N
R
r/l
L
r
Nl
L
L
L
l
L
L
r
l
r
L
Refugee/asylum
Family imm
Labour imm.
Conservative
Refugee/asylum
Party
Family imm
R
Labour imm.
Labour
Refugee/asylum
Family imm
L
l
L
N
Labour imm.
Liberal Party Refugee/asylum
Family imm
Christian
Dem. Party
R
N
Labour imm.
Refugee/asylum
Family imm
Labour imm.
R
R
R
Centre Party Refugee/asylum
Family imm
Labour imm.
Socialist left
Refugee/asylum
party
L
R
L
L
L
N
r
l
L
N
L
L
L
L
L
L
L
L
Radical left
L
Refugee/asylum
party
L
Family imm
R = restrictive, L = liberal, N = neutral statements. Capital letters= from party programmes.
Family imm
Labour imm.
N
L
L
r
L
L
L
L
L
L
L
2001
R
R
R
L
Nr
r
N
r
L
L
L
L
L
R
N
N
r
L
Lr
L
L
L
5
The relevant articles have been traced through the electronic news archive Atekst (www.atekst.no), where 17
daily newspapers are searchable. The key words for the searches were each party name with all the following
words: refugees, refugee policy, asylum, immigration, immigrant, immigration policy, foreign workers, guest
worker, labour immigration, family reunion.
9
There are some common trends in the Norwegian parties’ attitudes to immigration: The
parties are less concerned with family reunion than with labour migration and refugee/asylum
migration, although this is the most important type of immigration to Norway. The parties
also tend to be more liberal towards refugee/asylum migration than towards labour
immigration. But there are also clear differences between the parties.
Two parties have had stable preferences on the subject of immigration throughout the period:
The Progress Party has been consistently restrictive, and the Liberal Party has, as its party
name indicates, been consistently liberal. Before 1989, the Conservative Party only had
statements about refugee policy in the manifestos, and these were liberal. In the 1989
manifesto, however, the party called for restrictive policies on both labour and refugee/asylum
immigration, and in newspaper articles also demanded tightening of family reunion
legislation. During the 1990s the Conservative Party became overtly liberal to labour
immigration, and more neutral regarding refugees. The Labour Party has left out immigration
from more programmes than any of the other parties. Pearlmutter (1996:377) claims that this
is common for large mass parties because “they face cross-cutting cleavages that affect their
core constituencies.” He points to a possible conflict between “unions who favour restrictive
policies, and liberals and ethnic groups who favour expansionist policies,” and this could well
be the case with the Norwegian Labour Party. In the three programmes from 1985 to 1993 the
party demanded restrictive labour immigration policies, and this stand was confirmed in
newspaper articles until 2005. Regarding refugee/asylum policy, the party has been shifting
between liberal, restrictive and neutral, but has in general not granted this issue much
attention neither in the manifestos nor in newspaper articles. The same goes for family
reunion. The Christian Democratic Party supported restrictive labour immigration policies in
the 1977 manifesto and had a few neutral statements during the 1980s and 1990s until a
10
liberal shift in the 2001 manifesto where it called for liberalisation of labour immigration.
Since 1989, the Christian Democratic Party has been clearly liberal towards refugee/asylum
immigration. Surprisingly, considering that it is a family oriented party, family reunion was
only mentioned in one manifesto.
The Centre Party was clearly negative to labour
immigration in the manifestos from 1973 to 1981. Then there was no mention of the issue
until an ambiguous statement in the 2001 manifesto, but the party repeatedly expressed their
restrictive stand in newspaper articles. Regarding both refugee/asylum immigration and
family reunion, the Centre Party has been liberal, and has been more concerned with
protecting the right to family reunion than any other party. The Socialist Left Party has been
predominantly liberal towards all types of immigration, but supported restrictive policies on
labour immigration in the 1977 manifesto. Newspaper articles suggest that this view was
revitalised in 2001, when several parties wanted to liberalise labour immigration.
PREFERENCES OF NORWEGIAN GOVERNMENTS
The partisan theory suggests that there is a connection between what parties declare in their
pre election manifestos, what policies the winning party pursue in government and, finally,
policy output. The preferences of governments, as derived from party programmes and
newspaper articles, are presented in the table further down.
The process of influence is more complicated when several winning parties form a coalition
government (see Hofferbert and Klingeman 1990). Out of the 14 governments between 1965
and 2005, six governments were coalitions. In such cases several party programmes may
influence government policy. The minor parties want returns from being in government, and
therefore the party program of a minor party may well be determining the immigration policy
of a coalition government, but generally the dominant party can be expected to have a
11
stronger influence on policy than minor parties. When the parties in a coalition government
had differing preferences, the largest party was given more weigth. The bargaining result may
be stated in a government declaration but in Norway such declarations have traditionally been
rather brief and immigration has not been covered once.
It can be expected that the party of the minister responsible for immigration affects
immigration more than other parties in government. Until 2001, this was the Minister of
Justice. Between 2001 and 2005 the Minister of Regions and Municipalities was the
responsible minister, and since then it is the Minister of Work and Integration. The partisan
influence through the responsible minsiter will be tested in the empirical analysis later. One
administrative adjustment of immigration policy should also be mentioned. Until 1998 the
final appeal body of immigration cases was the Justice Department, implying that the Minister
of Justice had the final say in controversial immigration cases. When the Immigration
Appeals Board was established in 1998, politicians were released from the burden of making
decisions in individual cases6. In particular in cases with substantial media coverage, there is
reason to believe that the fear of becoming unpopular among the electorate could influence
the minister’s decision. For better or worse, ministers had a larger potential to influence
immigration before 1988.
6
In 2004, politicians regained the rigth to instruct both the Immigration Appeals Board and the Directorate of
Immigration in the interpretation and judicial assessment of legislation.
12
Table 2 Preferences of governments
Year
Labour
immigr.
Asylum/refugees Family reunion
1973
1974
1975
1976
1977
1978
1979
1980
1981
L
1982
L
1983
R
L
L
1984
R
L
L
1985
R
1986
R
1987
R
1988
R
1989
R
1990
R
R
r
1991
R
L
N
1992
R
L
N
1993
R
L
N
1994
R
r
l
1995
R
r
l
1996
R
l
l
1997
R
l
l
1998
L
L
L
L
L
1999
L
L
2000
R
N/l
2001
L
N/L
L
2003
L
N/L
L
2004
L
N/L
L
2005
L
N/L
L
R=restrictive, N=neutral, L=liberal, empty cell= no relevant statemensts.
Capital letters: from party programmes.
GENERAL DETERMINANTS OF IMMIGRATION
To trace possible political effects on immigration flows, it is necessary also to consider what
else determines the flows. The economy in the country of emigration influences the number
of emigrants, but not necessarily to the number of immigrants to Norway in particular. The
development hump hypothesis suggests that countries at a middle level of development
13
produce more emigrants than countries at a high and low development level (REF). At a
middle level of development, more people have the means to emigrate while a large
proportion of the population has something to gain from emigrating to for instance Norway.
At a high level of development, the gains from emigration may be considered lower. Applied
to the case of Norway, it may be expected that immigration to Norway is low from poor and
rich countries, but high from countries at a middle level. It should be stressed, however, that
other factors, such as for instance distance, probably are far more important. The level of
economic development of the sending country may be decisive for the total number of
emigrants from a country, but this does not mean that any of them go to Norway.
War and repression creates refugees and are therefore expected to influence immigration to
Norway. Since 1975, the right to asylum has been one of the two most important
“immigration gates” to Norway. Refugees are admitted in two ways: trough individual asylum
applications or through the UN quota system. The size of the quota is determined by the
Norwegian parliament. Individual asylum seekers are given a residence permit if they are
considered in danger, and the number of permissions granted therefore depends on the
number of asylum seekers that arrive in Norway.
Demographic development may influence international migration in primarily two ways:
“directly, by raising the young adult share; and indirectly, by glutting the home labour market
and thus worsening employment conditions there,” (Hatton and Williamson 2003: 7). The
high emigration prosperities of twenty-year olds can be explained by the fact that young
people generally have weaker ties to the place where they live, as they have invested less in
work place and housing. Fewer family commitments may also allow higher mobility than in
later phases (See Pandit 1997: 431). Population growth in sending countries is therefore
14
expected to influence immigration to Norway.
Immigration can be explained partly by economy differences between sending and receiving
countries. Labour surplus and lower wages in sending countries, and labour demand and
higher wages in receiving countries drive migratory flows (REF). However, for
macroeconomic changes to cause changes in immigration, borders need to be relatively open.
With the labour immigration stop in 19757 this primary precondition for the economy to
influence immigration was also removed. That is, Norway has had a common labour marked
with the other Nordic countries since the 1950s and with the EU from 1994. Immigration
from these countries is therefore likely to be more influenced by economic changes.
But macroeconomic changes may have influenced immigration also from countries outside
the EU, as both refugees and family members of Norwegian residents could still immigrate
after 1975. Refugees may, at least in theory, chose between a number of possible countries of
immigration, and the economic situation in the various countries may influence choice. A
country could therefore attract more asylum seekers in periods of low unemployment 8. When
deciding what country a family should settle in the economic situation in both countries may
matter. However, if the two countries are on very different levels of economic development,
economic variations do not change the overall differences between the countries.
As stated by the network theory (see for instance Arango 2000: 291), migration flows
between two countries tend increase over time, independently of the causes mentioned above.
7
The only exception was highly educated personel that was very much needed in Norway, primarily in the oil
industry. About a 1000 specialists were admitted a year.
8
Although wage levels and employment opportunities vary between these countries, immigrants must be very
well informed to choose the country of destination according to such relatively subtle differences.
15
Formal and informal networks between migrants and their home countries developed and
sustained, and the networks ease the migration process for new migrants. All forms of
migration are influenced by previous flows, but family immigration is particularly dependent
upon previous migration9.
DATA AND METHODOLOGY
The partisan influence on immigration will be tested through a quantitative analysis of panel
data, using within group regression. This model is considered most appropriate, because it is
expected that there are constant, country specific facors that influence immigration, that
should be controlled for. Like with time differencing, within regression has the serious
disadvantage that variables that are constant within groups and across time cannot be
estimated. Distance and historical ties to Norway are two relevant variables that must be
excluded when within regression are chosen. However, this is not problematic as long as the
excluded variables are control variables. Here, none of the variables of interest are constant.
The great advantage with within regression, is that all constant factors are controlled for. The
problem of omitted variable bias is therefore partly removed10.
The inclusion of a lagged dependent variable in a within regression model is likely to be in
conflict with the assumption that the independent variables are uncorrelated with the errors.
This is a particularly large problem in short panels, and is reduced as the number of time units
increases. Theoretically, a solution to the problem is the use of instrument variables, but good
9
Family immigration consists of two groups: family reunion and formation of new families. The number of
family reunions is by nature strongly influenced by previous immigration, as an immigrant is reunited with
his/her family, while immigration through the formation of new families also depends on travel, the internet, and
work and studies abroad.
10
The omission of relevant time variant variables, on the other hand, leaves the model underspecified and gives
biased results.
16
instruments are difficult to find11 and IV estimates are therefore commonly inefficient. Baltagi
(2005:136) sates that “even for T=30, this bias could be as much as 20% of the true value of
the coefficient of interest.” Here we have 40 time units. This is very high compared to most
panel analyses in the social sciences, and the bias can be expected to be much lower than in
Baltagi’s example. The costs of instrument variable estimation appear to be higher than the
cost of biased estimators. I therefore prefer not to use IV estimation.
When using time series data autocorrelation must be tested. When using a lagged dependent
variable, Wooldridge (2006:421) suggest regressing the lagged residuals, as well as the other
variables, on the residuals to test for autocorrelation. The t values of the lagged residuals are
low, -0,72, which means that first order autocorrelation is not present. With one year time
intervals, higher order autocorrelation is unlikely. Heteroskedasticity, on the other hand, is
found to be present, as the regression results with and without corrected standard errors are
very different. The standard errors will therefore be corrected for panel heterskedasticity.
The panel consists of 185 sending countries of immigrants to Norway. Around 87% of these
countries have values on all variables for all years in the period 1965-2005. The main reason
for not staying in the panel is the fact that the country did not exist throughout the whole
period. It has it proved difficult to find data on states that have seized to exist, such as the
USSR. It is also practically impossible trace data about geographical areas before they
became independent states, such as East Timor. Some countries could not be included at all
due to missing values on the independent variables. In particular, there is a lack of data on
very small states. This could cause seriously biased results, as the case selection is correlated
with one of the intended control variables, population size. However, as will be seen later, this
11
Instruments must be correlated with …, but at the same time uncorrelated with ….
17
variable appeared not to be significant and therefore excluded from the final analyses. An
authoritarian regime type, and in particular communist regime, seems to cause missing values.
Data availability tends to be correlated with economic development, but this is the case here.
The dependent variable, immigration to Norway, is measured by the variable ‘First time
immigration by country of birth’ from Statistics Norway. This variable has the advantage that
it is comparable and reliable for the whole period 1965-2005. A similar variable,
‘Immigration by last country of settlement’ would perhaps be a more valid operationalization.
If the immigrants did not live in their country of birth, factors related to their country of last
settlement would be more appropriate to control for. However, the latter variable has not been
subject to the same quality control as the variable to be used. The correlation between country
of birth and country of last settlement is very high.
The dependent variable has a mean of 78. On average, 78 people immigrate to Norway from
each sending country a year. The standard deviation of 277 shows a very high dispersion.
Many countries only send immigrants to Norway occasionally, while hundreds of immigrants
arrive every year from countries such as Denmark, Sweden, Pakistan and the UK.
The partisan theory is tested by two sets dummy variables. The first tests whether the different
party compositions of the government have influenced immigration flows. The variables
measure the effect of 1) a coalition of centre parties, 2) a coalition including the Conservative
party, and 3) a labour party government12. The other set of dummy variables tests whether the
government preferences that were established earlier lead to changes in immigration. The
variables state whether the governments preferred liberal, neutral or restrictive policies.
12
The Labour party was never in a coalition government before 2005.
18
Economic development in the sending countries is measured by Purchase Power Parity from
Penn World Tables, as well as a squared version of the variable to estimate a possible curve
linear effect. A dummy variable indicating whether more than 1000 people died in battle that
year measures war in sending countries. The data comes from the Uppsala/PRIO Armed
Conflict data set. Demographic development is operationalized as annual population growth,
using data from the UN. The state of the Norwegian economy is operationalized as annual
GDP growth, with data from the World Development Indicators, and unemployment share of
labour stock, with data from NAV.
The network theory is operationalized as a lagged dependent variable. A lagged dependent
variable may cause biased results when included in a within regression model. The bias
decreases with increasing number of time units.
Immigration has increased on a global level, due to a number of reasons, many related to
globalization. Cheaper travel, internet communication, and higher telephone availability are
some factors. A trend variable is included to capture the effect of such factors. Immigration
from Bosnia in 1993 was extremely high, and a dummy variable is included to control for this
inflow. EU membership is also controlled for through a dummy variable.
PLEASE NOTE: The following sections are based on preliminary analyses (I have not
yet included all control variables I intend to include). It is therefore very brief, and
tables with results are not presented. I do not, however, expect the findings to change
dramatically when I include the other variables.
19
ANALYSIS
The first part of this study established that there is a possibility that party political preferences
have an effect on immigration flows. The following hypotheses will now be tested:
H1: The party composition of government influence immigration to Norway.
H2: The preferences of parties in government influence immigration to Norway.
H3: The preferences of the party that holds the minister responsible for immigration influence
immigration to Norway.
Although there are arguments in favour of a partisan influence, the parties matter literature,
migration theories as well as previous empirical studies suggest that it could be difficult to
reject the null hypothesis.
In a regression analysis of the control variables, the lagged dependent variable, PPP and its
square, unemployment in Norway, EU membership, the Bosnia crisis and the trend variable
were found to have significant effects on immigration to Norway. The effects were also in
accordance with theoretical expectations. GDP growth was not significant, but this may be
explained by the high correlation with unemployment. More surprisingly, war was also
insignificant. The R square of the regression of significant variables gives an R square of
0,76.
None of the political variables were found to have significant and expected effect on
immigration. “Non socialist government” had a positive effect and was significant at a 10%
level, one tailed test, but with 6018 units this is considered a too liberal significance level.
20
“Restrictive government” wad a t value of 2,62, but the positive effect is not compatible with
expectations.
CONCLUSION
Norwegian parties were found to have differing views on immigration policy, according to
both party programmes and politicians statements in newspapers. However, the empirical test
of the partisan theory, applied to immigration, provided no support for the theory. When in
government, parties have not translated their preferences into changes in immigration. The
empirical analysis covered a long time period, and both sending country and receiving
country variables were controlled for. Neither the composition of government nor the
government parties’ preferences change the total number of immigrants to Norway. Centre
party governments have not increased immigration, and conservative governments have not
successfully reduced immigration. Other factors determine the fluctuations. Many arguments
against the partisan theory have been presented, such as the possible lack of state capacity,
implementation problems and policy convergence. The results of the regression analyses are
therefore far from surprising.
The analysis of the party programmes revealed, however, that one party may favour restrictive
labour immigration policy, but at the same time liberal refugee policy. It is still possible,
therefore, there is a partisan influence on particular types of immigration that could not be
captured when looking at total immigration, which was done here. This possibility should
probably be tested before drawing final conclusions.
21
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