Workplace Democratization in Norway: Current Status and Future Prospects with Special Emphasis on the Role of the Public Sector

The article begins with an analytic description of Norway as a 'social democratic state', and then goes on to a general overview of the nature and scope of democratization schemes for working life. The current situation is related to Bernstein's (1980) inductive model of workplace democratization, where it is pointed out that Norway lacks several features of the Bernstein model. Suggestions for improvement are then made in relation to Greenberg's (1983) warning as to the relevance of contextual factors. Perceiving the current political-economic situation in Norway as being under conservative constraint, the article presents a pragmatic rather than an ideological solution. Arguing that there already exists an emerging public-sector 'class' which is ideologically favorable to further democratization, and that the public sector is, in general, less easily 'defended' against democratization by liberalist values, the article suggests a program for simultaneous coordinated democratization of various public-sector work units.