Assessing Mass Beliefs and Level of Democracy in Norway

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Region: Western Europe, grade: 1,33, Jacobs University Bremen gGmbH, language: English, abstract: In this essay the mass beliefs and attitudes of the Norwegian society will be portrayed and compared to the 'democratic character' of people defined by political scientists. Beforehand, a short description of the degree of democracy measured by the Freedom House serves as an objective insight into the conditions of the country. Lasswell (1951) developed several indicators which signalize a 'democratic character', such as an open ego, a multi-valued character, confidence in human potentialities and, above all, freedom from anxiety. According to Almond and Verba (1963), psychological orientations towards the political system have a crucial impact in terms of stability of the state and its political objects. Postmaterialist and self-expression values represent additional criteria for a democratically mature society. All those will be taken briefly into consideration in order to examine the main question that is tackled here: How 'democratically compatible' is the population of Norway?