Datum: 10 september 2025
Tid: 10:00-11:45
Venue: Institute for Futures Studies, Holländargatan 13 in Stockholm or online
Research seminar with Marte Mangset, Director at Centre universitaire de Norvège à Paris and Associate professor, Department of sociology and human geography, University of Oslo.
Register here
Abstract
The paper examines the post-ministerial careers of Norwegian government ministers between 1965 and 2021, with a particular focus on career transitions across sectors of employment. In an original dataset we trace all career moves within five years after ministerial posts for all ministers over this period. Drawing on this we explore the extent to which political exit trajectories have shifted in response to structural changes in governance, party dynamics, and economic transformations. The findings reveal that, throughout the studied period, many transition to other sectors, highlighting the permeability of the political sphere.
We identify a decline in transitions to public sector positions and a small increase in transitions to the private sector. Partisan patterns in career mobility have weakened over time. In the 1960s and 1970s, transitioning to the public sector were most common among rightist ministers, while leftist ministers were more likely to take up positions in the public sector and vocational organizations. These patterns have since converged, particularly from the 1990s onward when Labour ministers somewhat increasingly went to the private sector.
There is also a decline in the proportion of Labour ministers transitioning to labour unions and an increase in such ministers’ transition to employer organisations. We finally find that ex-ministers to a large extent obtain C-suite positions when transitioning to other sectors, although somewhat more often when they transition to the public sector than when they transition to the private sector. Our findings contribute to scholarship on elite mobility, institutional change, and the evolving relationship between politics, business, and governance in a Nordic welfare state context with a unique long-term perspective.
If you wish to receive our newsletters, and invitations to our seminars, subscribe here.
