Juridification and Social Citizenship

Far-reaching processes of juridification are perceived to be at work in Norwegian society and globally, with expanding and more detailed legal regulation, legal regulation of new areas, conflicts and problems increasingly being framed as legal claims, authority shifting from political bodies to courts and other judicial and quasi-judicial bodies,  and a development where a judicial way of thinking and acting penetrates new social fields. Legal rights discourses are playing a greater role in political mobilisation and decision-making.

The Norwegian White Paper on Power and Democracy (2003) raised concerns that these processes, which include increasing international regulation, change the conditions of social and political life in ways that erode democratic values and the terms of social citizenship. However, the nature and extent of the juridification processes and their consequences are contested, and theoretical arguments and ideological positions often dominate the debates. Empirical analyses of the nature, extent and consequences of juridification processes (which may also include de-juridification processes) have been scarce. This project analyses juridification processes as they play out in the Norwegian welfare state, and what this implies for inclusion of vulnerable groups (non-western immigrants; prisoners; unemployed; temporary agency workers)  and their social citizenship.

The project is coordinated by the Faculty of Law, UiB, and is a collaboration with researchers at the departments of Sociology, Comparative Politics, the Uni Rokkan Center and Bergen University College . The role of the CMI researchers in this project is to provide comparative and theoretical perspectives to place the Norwegian developments in relief.