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In this paper, a situation is examined where standard operating procedures in governmental organizations were challenged. On such occasions an organization is not simply a vehicle for solving well-defined problems as efficiently as possible. We see competing definitions of the problems, the best solutions, expertise and the rules of procedure. Outcomes are not limited to the immediate substantive outcomes. As important is the establishing of future social relationships and definitions of the situation. While classical administrative and democratic theory suggest that changes in standard operating procedures may be instantaneous, we believe this type of change to be the exception rather than the rule. In this article, it is suggested that the garbage can model at least under some conditions be an adequate description of the decision making in a polity experiencing challenges of established routines. This is illustrated by the decision making processes concerning the location of Norway's third medical school. In this case, new definitions of the problems involved were raised, new participants activated, and the outcome so clearly suggested by existing standard operating procedures not selected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Authors present and discuss in this paper a set of data on turnout, party membership and candidate recruitment in Norway. Their approach is essentially ecological: they present their statistics by local administrative units and will be particularly concerned to highlight differences between the central, urbanized districts and the peripheral, sparsely populated districts. The authors' primary concern has been to throw light on the lags in the activation of the last entrants into the political arena, the women, and authors think that they have gone far enough in this context to demonstrate the consistency of the differences in recruitment rates between central and peripheral areas of the national territory. Some, but not all, the differences highlighted in this article might have been more fully accounted for if they had been able to get access to data on the educational and the occupational background of each participant at each of the levels distinguished, but whatever they could do in that direction would not affect the basic ecological design: the institutions of mass suffrage have to function in geographically, culturally and economically very different conditions and these conditions tend to affect both the range of alternatives open to the enfranchised citizens and the cost of each alternative.

This paper takes its point of departure in the current concern within political science and political sociology with a phenomenon, or rather a duster of related phenomena, which has been very noticeable in many post-World-War II western political systems taking the reference of Norway. This is the trend towards decreasing political conflict and increasing political consensus. This trend has been given various names. The essence of the author's criticism, so far as Norway is concerned, is that too much emphasis has been placed on the purely social and economic aspects of the historical development and too little on the character of the political institutions. In the Norwegian case the study of social movements has mainly the relevance to the problems of Norway because of the weakness of ascriptive values in the Norwegian civil servant upper class, and later in the business upper class, their ability to withstand the pressures from below and their tendency to co-opt the new elements have been rather marked traits of their political strategy, and their relatively un-military orientation due to the absence of military traditions and of a strong army has reinforced this tendency to appease rather than to fight back. A more political orientation is needed in order to account for their future fate, as in the case of the Norwegian trend towards political consensus.

The purpose of the present paper is to examine recent developments in Norwegian nuptiality and fertility and to try to assess whether the population is replacing itself. For intercensal periods, reliable detailed statistics on marriages and births exist, but the estimates of the age distribution are less reliable, and there are no estimates of the distribution by marital condition. The greater increase in marriage rates and proportions ever married for women compared with men is explained by the fact that in 1950 the sex ratio in the age groups where most marriages take place was more favourable to the female sex than it had ever been before in this century. The next step was to compute re-marriage rates. This was done by relating, for each age, the number of marriages other than first marriages among women to the number of widows and divorced women at the census, and the number of subsequent marriages among men to the number of widowers and divorced men. In view of the great rise that has taken place in marriage rates, and the uncertainty as to whether these rates can be maintained in the future when the unmarried persons in the higher age groups will to a larger extent consist of a "hard core of unmarriageable persons," it seems reasonable to assume that the number of marriages will not be higher than that obtained from the female marriage rates of 1946-7.

[Few experiments in participation have taken place, and even fewer have been controlled in a scientific manner. One of the exceptions is the "industrial democracy" project undertaken in several Norwegian enterprises by Professor Finar Thorsrud of Oslo, Norway, with the assistance of the Tavistock Institute of London. This project represents an especially interesting attempt to reconcile the economic objectives of creativity and efficiency with the human objectives of development, responsibility, and free initiative. When viewed in such a perspective, participation can acquire its most concrete and undoubtedly most dynamic dimensions. The following paper presents the problems to which the experiments relate, as well as a summary of Professor Thorsrud's presentation before the Belgian Productivity Board (OBAP - Office Beige pour l'Accroissement de la Productivité) in December 1968.] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with the recent widespread increase in marriage rates in the Western world. A convenient method of studying aspects of the recent history of marriage is provided by easily available data regarding the proportion of single persons at various dates. The article uses these data to disentangle two effects in the marriage boom: the extent to which the cohorts whose marriages have formed the main contribution to the marriage boom are marrying more, i.e. whether the proportion who will ultimately remain single is likely to be lower than in previous generations, the extent to which the mean age at marriage of these generations is likely to fall below that of their predecessors. The raw material for the computations to be presented consists of the proportions single at two recent dates for each of thirteen countries used in the study. The countries included in the study are Czechoslovakia, Denmark, England and Wales, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, and the U.S. The study from the proportion single shows that both reduction in the age at marriage and an increase in the proportion marrying at least once in the course of their lives is occurring in several countries.

This study examined Anderson and Anderson's cross-national data, which are in the form of conclusions written by seventh grade children to the Anderson Incomplete Stories, a projective device. Rating scales were employed to assess story content on interpersonal conflict and the degree of emphasis on material versus interpersonal aspects. Stories from the United States, Norway, and Germany were examined first for gross sample differences, and then by a non-orthogonal multifactorial analysis of variance to determine differences ascribable to nationality, sex, religion, and socio-economic status. The multifactorial analysis revealed that the three demographic variables all had associated differences on one or other of the scales, but these did not seem to affect the overall variations among the samples. Finally, the value of the non-orthogonal multivariate method for providing further information about the effects of nationality and demographic variables on personality was discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Norway's unique rural history and postwar experience with national planning have combined to produce a set of environmental policy innovations of interest to planners elsewhere. Norway emphasizes a shoreline and mountain planning process with explicit consideration of the distribution of development benefits to landowners and regional planning that integrates pollution control and land-use planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various problems involved in gaining access to national elites, conducting structured interviews with them, and gathering interview data on elite ideology and social structure are discussed in light of the growing use of survey techniques in research on national elites. The discussion is based on the authors' experiente conducting survey interviews with 124 members of Norwegian business, labor union, political, and civil servant elites during 1969. This experiente is quantified and otherwise reported to show ways by which various methodological obstacles in national elite surveys can be reduced. While such surveys are seen to be quite feasible and useful, several problems are of sufficient magnitude to warrant considerable caution and modesty in the claims made for data collected thereby. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents determines the extent in which a deviant contextual position becomes a condition for the development of disattachment in residential areas in Oslo, Norway in 1960. While it seemed hard to point to specific conditions under which contextual position might be taken to predict intention to move and degree of attachment to the area of residence, it is possible that inadequate measures of contextual position may have obscured differences and relationships existing in the data. It has been hypothesized that the degree to which an individual deviates, in terms of contextual position, is associated with a push-pull factor of migration. A revised measure of contextual position reveals a somewhat stronger tendency for residents who were strongly upward deviants to express a desire to move away from their area. It has been shown that those who said they wished to move, turned out to have a higher probability of actually moving. The overall relationship between contextual position and actual mobility shows that the more downward the deviance, the lower probability of becoming an actual mover and the more upward the deviance, the higher the probability of becoming a mover. These findings would seem to suggest that downward deviance leads to attachment while upward deviance leads to disattachment.

The article presents an initial analysis of data collected from the Norwegian election studies 1957 regarding electoral activity, party membership and organizational influence. The statistical analyses and the campaign descriptions cut across several elections and aim at the exploration of trends. The community studies and the nationwide survey, however, were directly focused on one point in time. Two major data-gathering operations were carried out during the campaign and immediately after the election: a set of parallel interviews with party leaders and rank-and-file voters in four communes in Rogaland in the South-west of Norway, and a set of before-and-after interviews with a cross-sectional sample of the national electorate. The data collected in these operations are currently under analysis, and what can be reported at this juncture are some initial findings only. Election studies in a number of countries have shown that the citizens most likely to expose themselves to the campaign and to take an active interest in the election, are those already definitely committed to a party. Those who are not so clearly in any particular camp are generally less likely to he reached by the campaign efforts of the parties.

The article presents information on the population statistics in Norway. The first real population census in Norway was taken in the year 1769. Previous censuses, covering only males, were taken in the years 1664 and in 1701. From these earlier enumerations it is possible to estimate the total population for the years mentioned. It may therefore be of interest to consider more fully these early inquiries before discussing the real censuses. In the rural districts a question was asked regarding the number of rooms each household had at its disposal and whether the dwelling was supplied with water and electricity. In the cities, too, because of difficult housing conditions, the number of rooms, etc., was to be stated for each household, whereas in 1930 this information referred only to each flat. Furthermore, information regarding house rent was again collected, but only for the flat as a unit. The schedules were to provide for every house in the cities, and for each dwelling in the country, information on the number of households and the number of persons residing therein, classified by age, sex, marital status and occupation housewives and children living at home being excepted from the latter classification.

The article discusses the process of keeping official registers of marriages, births and deaths, with the parish church official that has produced the records which form the basis of Norwegian vital statistics. Marriages, births and deaths among members of organized dissenting congregations are in the first place registered by the priest or the head of the congregation. Births, deaths and marriages among persons not belonging to organized congregations or of no confession are notified to the magistrates and again to the vicar for registration in the parish book. During the last 30-40 years the question of transferring the registration of marriages, births and deaths to civil registrars has repeatedly been discussed in Norway-particularly in connexion with the establishment of compulsory civil registration in all the communities of the country. In principle the registration of marriages, births and deaths by local civil registrars is undoubtedly the most rational system. In the course of the first part of the nineteenth century the annual returns sent in by the clergy concerning marriages, births and deaths gradually became more comprehensive, and attempts were made from time to time, by means of new instructions to the clergy, to improve the returns and make them more reliable.

Recent government decisions to improve the economic health of North Norway have had significant spatial impact. This region is a continuing problem are because of the dearth of physical and human resources. Postwar capital investment loans, and other schemes to encourage industry have emphasized urban growth and depopulated many rural farming and fishing areas. Variations in regional growth are largely a result of investment decisions favoring industrial development, and the resultant migration of labor to manufacturing areas. The trend toward urbanization and the concentration of economic activity has been slowed by a recent shift in national planning to favor more marginal communities and activities such as farming and fishing, [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies the geography of residence in fiord areas in Norway in 1932. Towns that dominate commerce, industry and education; Impact of geographic adjustments on human settlements; Implications on geography.

The article presents information on Scandinavian Summer University and information on articles published including the contributors to the journal "Acta Sociologica." The Scandinavian Summer University was established in 1950. Its goal is the pursuit of interdisciplinary discussions and studies, Sociology of Law was obviously a suitable subject and in 1964 it was included in the programme. During the last three years students and scholars from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden have participated in the Summer Universities Sessions which each year take place in one of the Scandinavian countries. The participants have also prepared each summer's work by taking part in study circles, which have been arranged in some of the Scandinavian university towns. The present collection of articles is the first, more substantial result of this Scandinavian cooperation. The interdisciplinary research work is being continued in working groups directed by Kerstin Bimborn, K.J. Lang and others. The work in the Scandinavian study circles and the summer sessions has during the first two years been coordinated and directed by Hans Klette during the last year by the editor.