I would guess very few if any. There are subtle differences between the various European monarchies in terms of how much power and/or influence the monarchs have, but I don't remember Norway being among the ones where they have more power.

I'm not sure if I told you this story before, but in Belgium, in the early nineties, parliament passed a law legalizing abortion in the first three months of pregnancy, and under some circumstances thereafter. Our king at the time was strongly Catholic and deeply opposed to abortion (it didn't help that he and the queen were unable to have children, and heartbroken over it), so he adamantly refused to sign the law, despite not exactly having any right to refuse. Parliament solved the problem in the end by essentially deposing him for a day, passing the law and then reinstating him. That's hardly something you can do for appointing a PM, though...


Like I said, nearly all Western democracies have constituencies like that, which almost inevitably favours regions with low population even if you don't have a system like Norway's (e.g. Canada, which has several provinces/territories with barely 30-40k of inhabitants, but obviously they can hardly avoid giving them a single seat at least, whereas Ontario and Quebec have far more inhabitants per seat than that).

It also favours political stability in the sense that it makes it less likely to have huge numbers of different political parties, and less likely to have huge differences in seat results between an election and the next, even if the popular vote difference is huge. There's a direct and obvious correlation between the average amount of seats per constituency and the amount of (viable) parties a country has. I'm really not a big fan of single seat constituencies, but the Dutch/Israeli other extreme hasn't exactly been proving its worth of late either, so something inbetween is probably best, alright.

I know very little about Norwegian politics so I could well be off on a few points, but based on my knowledge of European politics in general, I think you're wrong. What you have to keep in mind is the particularities of the extreme right, and the distinction between the extreme right and the traditional right. The European far right parties, by and large, have mostly claimed the votes of the left, not of the right: the working poor, the lower-educated city folk. As it happens I read about the Flemish extreme right party's new economic policies just yesterday: they are attacking the more mainstream right for being too business-friendly and not defending the interest of the average Joe enough. The European far right is moderately right at best on economic issues, and in some cases perhaps even left-wing (always populist, but I don't think that surprises anyone...). The one far-right aspect they all have in common is their anti-immigrant nationalism, and then most of them (but not all, just look at the Netherlands) are rather conservative on social issues as well. But not economic ones.

Switzerland is an interesting example. Switzerland has an unique and fascinating political structure to begin with, with a seven-man government with a yearly rotating presidency among them, which is traditionally made up of all the major parties - two each of the three biggest ones, one for the fourth. That fourth party (the Swiss People's Party) was traditionally the kind of conservative rural party that you describe above; however, as Switzerland saw increasing numbers of immigrants and similar issues to the rest of Europe, primarily in the cities, the party shifted to become an anti-immigrant far-right party, gaining votes in the process until a second ministry seat could no longer be denied them (considering how they had become the largest party by far). However, the conservative rural branch of the party felt completely overlooked and increasingly unsatisfied with the borderline racism of their party leader. Then the other parties, in a brilliant if rather dirty surprise move, managed to get a member of the rural branch elected to the vacant ministry, instead of the party leader who was the designated candidate. The result was that the SPP broke in two, the rural branch electing to create a new party but maintaining its newly appointed ministry seat (and for a while even both of the old party's two seats). The SPP is still the largest party of the country, though - and even more predominantly urban in its voters now, obviously. The new rural party is, despite holding one of the seven government seats (and indeed the rotating presidency, this year), a small party with just over 5% of the vote.

Wow, I think I might actually be writing a longer reply here than your original post... shocking. To move back in the direction of relevance and summarize: the European far-right is indeed predominantly an urban phenomenon, though over time they have certainly grown to the point where they have a presence in rural areas as well. The conservative rural votes that you talk about do exist, but are generally solidly in the hands of the mainstream right and/or Christian-Democratic parties, or else small separate parties, like in the Swiss case I mentioned. In Norway's case they seem to be mostly in the hands of the Centre Party, based on a cursory look.

That's not even that much - the Netherlands have ten, Belgium had eleven until the last elections (now nine) though we're a special case and don't really count, Israel has thirteen.