Friends With Benefits: The Evolution of Business-Political Ties in Norway

The study of corporate interlocks and political power has a long tradition in elite sociology, dominated by a narrative of fracturing business networks and weakening corporate power vis-à-vis politics. This article asks how business-political ties evolve in a corporatist political economy whose corporate network was never densely connected to begin with. Drawing on Norwegian administrative registers, I construct interlocking directorate networks of the 500 largest firms by revenue, plus large financial institutions for every year between 2005 and 2020, linked to the occupational histories of their directors. Political integration is measured through two channels: corporatist ties, where a director also sits on a business association board, and revolving-door ties, where a former politician or senior public official sits on a corporate board. The network fragments over the period, as the share of connected firms decreases and the share of isolated firms increases, yet business does not withdraw from politics: corporatist ties are stable throughout the period, while revolving-door ties become more common over time. Furthermore, this article asks what types of firms tend to be politically connected, across size, state-ownership and sector of economic activity. Firms in the big-business segment stand out as highly politically connected, whereas sectoral and ownership divisions matter less, and only for corporatist ties. Overall, the most persistent factor in whether a firm is politically connected is whether it is tied to other firms in the inner circle. As such, the inner circle remains a politically mobilizing force in a sparse network.