After each election, MPs are assigned to parliamentary committees. These committees prepare recommendations on legislative matters. When there is disagreement, parties or individuals can include separate remarks. These remarks form the basis of the Archive of Remarks in Recommendations.
The basic unit in the archive is a remark. All remarks in reports from Storting’s standing committees, submitted to Storting or Odelsting between 1945 and 2005, are included. For each remark, parties are coded as either participating or not. Remarks are identified by session, report number, report type, committee, and page in the document.
Since 1996, the archive has been expanded to include:
The committees of the Norwegian Parliament (Storting) prepare cases to be debated and decided by the Storting or Odelsting. Each committee’s work corresponds to the responsibilities of one or more ministries, and the process usually begins with a proposal or report from the government.
After each parliamentary election, representatives are assigned to committees in proportion to their party’s size. Each representative serves only one committee, which elects its own chair, deputy chair, and secretary.
A large part of the legislative process takes place in the standing committees. Here, cases are discussed, and information is gathered from ministries, organizations, and industry. Committee members also consult their parliamentary party groups, so the parties’ positions often form the basis for further deliberations.
Committee meetings are closed to the public, no minutes are recorded, only final recommendations with proposals and remarks.
The recommendation includes:
Some cases pass through the committee with unanimous support, but in many cases, there is disagreement. When this happens, the committee splits into two or more factions. The disagreement is formally recorded in the recommendation as a faction remark, a written statement expressing the faction’s position.
The archive was initially compiled by Hilmar Rommetvedt at Rogalandsforskning as part of a European research project. NSD took over in 1985. Originally covering 1945–1977.
We encounter here a well-known problem in empirical social research: the problem of quantifying qualitative information, in this case in the form of text. Data of this type basically has completely different functions than being the subject of empirical research. This also means that the way in which dissent is expressed is to some extent left to individual discretion in the parliamentary committees. This places great demands on the accuracy of the coder. Sikt therefore places great emphasis on accuracy in the coding in order to check for incorrect coding and check for consistency with previous practice in cases of doubt.
Since each remark is coded by party support, the archive can be used to study coalition patterns and party alignment in committees. By analyzing agreement and disagreement, researchers can calculate political distance over time and across topics or committees.
Example 1
In this example, all parties except the Progress Party (Frp) support the statement. This is recorded as agreement between H, Ap, KrF, and SV – and disagreement with Frp.
Example 2
Here, SV and Sp are behind the remark. The other parties in the committee – KrF, Frp, Ap, and H – do not support it. This is recorded as disagreement between SV/Sp and the other parties.
To calculate political distance between two parties (A and B), four possible scenarios are considered for each remark:
Scenarios 1 and 2 represent agreement, while scenarios 3 and 4 represent disagreement and form the basis for calculating political distance.
Example: Sp and SV in the 2004/2005 session
| Participation pattern | Number of remarks |
|---|---|
| Both participate | 2346 |
| Neither participate | 2906 |
| Only Sp participates | 1163 |
| Only SV participates | 1213 |
| Total | 7628 |
Political distance is calculated as the share of disagreements (3 + 4) of the total:
((1163 + 1213) × 100) / 7628 = 31.2 %
This means that Sp and SV disagreed on 31.2 % of the remarks they could have participated in during this session.
Data extracts from the archive make it possible to calculate such distance measures between all pairs of parties, as well as break them down by committee and recommendation type for the last eight parliamentary sessions.
The original calculation includes cases of negative agreement (scenario 2), but this can distort results: two parties not supporting a remark does not necessarily mean they agree on the issue.
Research Director Hilmar Rommetvedt therefore proposed an alternative method:
Only cases of positive agreement and disagreement are included.
The formula calculates:
Then the average of these two percentages is taken.
Example: Rommetvedt’s Index (RI) for Sp and SV (2004/2005)
This method provides an adjusted and more precise measure of disagreement based solely on active participation (positive agreement).
The recommendations from the parliamentary committees are printed as part of the parliamentary proceedings. For each Storting (session), the recommendations are collected in the Storting Proceedings, Volume 6.
All paper versions of recommendations from 1945 to 1995/1996 have been reviewed and comments have been registered. From the 1996/97 session onwards, the comments have been taken from the Storting's website. The electronic downloads after 1996 have made it possible to expand the archive with additional information, including the full-text comments.