About

Welcome to my website!

My name is Bjørn Mo Forum, I am a Doctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Political Science at the University of Oslo. My research focuses on cabinet decision-making, the politics of appointments and bureaucratic careers. This work draws on quantitative methods and the collection of large-scale longitudinal datasets from Norwegian government sources, both online and archival. My research has been published in journals such as Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory.

In my PhD project I study the political dynamics of bureaucratic appointments in Norway. The overarching research question asks:

To what extent are political considerations made, and what are the political dynamics of government appointments to non-political positions in merit bureaucracies?

Merit bureaucracies prescribe that personnel decisions be free from political consideration and based purely on professional competence, however in practice, the staffing of merit bureaucracies is not independent from political change. My research investigates how governments actually make appointment decisions behind closed doors, and how institutional variation shapes these decisions. On the one hand, this work challenges the pastoral image of Norway as a purely meritocratic system presented in previous expert survey-based research, revealing that while not extensively politicized, pockets of political influence persist in appointment practices. On the other hand, it shows how the extent of political influence on bureaucratic appointments depends less on formal rules than on the continued strength of meritocratic norms and a functioning political opposition that keeps executive politicians in check.