Trym Nohr Fjørtoft

• Block, Elena Beatriz Escalante & Fjørtoft, Trym Nohr (2026). Softening the oligarchy: the normalization of Big Tech power. Science as Culture. ISSN 0950-5431. s. 16–16. doi: 10.1080/09505431.2026.2716724. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Fjørtoft, Trym Nohr (2026). Delegation without a coherent nation: non-majoritarianism in EU and US single market governance. Comparative European Politics. ISSN 1472-4790. 24. doi: 10.1057/s41295-026-00488-1. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Non-majoritarian institutions like independent agencies and central banks play a significant role in market governance in the EU, the U.S., and everywhere. For many scholars, however, delegation to non-majoritarian institutions requires the embedding in a single, coherent democratic people in order to be legitimate. This view underlies many of the strongest normative critiques of the EU, where the substantial powers of non-majoritarian institutions like the Commisison, the European Central Bank, and many decentralized agencies enjoy no such justification. I argue that this common normative account relies on an unsustainable notion of cultural and political coherence as a prerequisite for legitimacy. In its place, I defend a theory of legitimacy which builds on robust claims to the common good, expertise, and value inputs—all authorized and controlled by thinner democratic procedures. Using the example of single-market governance in the EU and the U.S., I show that legitimacy assessments which presuppose strong cultural and political coherence overstate the differences between the two polities.

• Fossum, John Erik & Fjørtoft, Trym Nohr (2026). Demokratiets stilling i Europa – hva gjør EU? Hva er Norges rolle? Internasjonal Politikk. ISSN 0020-577X. 84(1), s. 91–105. doi: 10.23865/intpol.v84.7632. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Denne artikkelen gir en kort oversikt over demokratiets stilling i Europa og hva dette sier om Norge og dets rolle, siden Norge er så sterkt påvirket av hva som skjer i Europa. Vi gir først en oversikt over demokratiets stilling i Europa, med fokus på EU, dets medlemsstater og affilierte ikke-medlemmer, som Norge. Vi identifiserer to til dels motstridende tendenser. EU og dets medlemsstater er en viktig demokratiserende kraft, både internt i Europa og i Europas relasjoner til andre deler av verden. Samtidig svekker noen av EUs medlemsstater demokratiet og rettsstaten. EU mangler gode nok virkemidler til å motvirke dette. I andre del av artikkelen undersøker vi Norges rolle og diskuterer om og eventuelt hva Norge kan gjøre for å fremme eller beskytte demokrati i Europa. Siden Norge skårer høyt på ulike demokrati-indekser, og har som uttalt mål å fremme demokrati internasjonalt, starter vi med å diskutere forestillingen om Norge som mulig modell og forbilde, og vurderer det i forhold til det svært begrensede handlingsrommet som Norges relasjon til EU gir. Til slutt ser vi på hva Norge kan gjøre mer direkte innad i EUs medlemsland for å styrke sivilsamfunn og demokratiserende krefter.

• Fjørtoft, Trym Nohr (2026). Technical Legitimacy. Political Studies. ISSN 0032-3217. doi: 10.1177/00323217251409057. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  In studies of non-majoritarian institutions, there is a widespread idea that political neutrality, epistemic authority, and technical expertise are sources of legitimacy. Empirical studies tend to find that such appeals are effective sources of legitimacy, but theorists are overwhelmingly skeptical of their normative appeal. This article’s conceptual ambition is to unify the disparate debates under the term technical legitimacy . The article’s theoretical ambition is to improve on the normative debate on technical legitimacy. Existing defenses fail to robustly satisfy the reasons that ground delegation to non-majoritarian institutions. I propose conditions for accepting technical legitimacy that are reasonably robust against counterfactuals. Technical legitimacy must meet three criteria. Institutions must promote a functionally specified common good; build on sound and undistorted expertise; and, perhaps counterintuitively, contain appropriate venues for value input.

• Andrejuk, Katarzyna; Fjørtoft, Trym Nohr; Parsons, Craig Alexander; Schmidt, Susanne; Smith, Andy & Trondal, Jarle (2025). American Services in European Perspective: Why Do Americans Not Care about Interstate Barriers in Construction? Publius: The Journal of Federalism. ISSN 0048-5950. 55(4), s. 732–758. doi: 10.1093/publius/pjaf027. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  The European Union identifies the sector of construction services as a priority for its agenda to remove barriers to cross-border activity. Taking the EU’s efforts as a starting point, this article explores the politics of interstate barriers in construction services in the United States. To what extent do US construction firms encounter internal-border barriers like those targeted by the EU? If they do, how much business mobilization and governmental response do they elicit, and what does that suggest about American federalism more generally? We find many similar barriers inside the United States but practically no mobilization or policy attention around them. Drawing on over fifty interviews with firms, associations, and public officials, we argue that this contrast to the EU highlights two features of American federalism. Institutionally, though promoting a national market motivated the federation’s creation, that goal is nobody’s active job today. Ideationally, the distinctively American skepticism of central government limits a market-building project.

• Andrejuk, Katarzyna; Fjørtoft, Trym Nohr; Parsons, Craig Alexander; Schmidt, Susanne; Smith, Andy & Trondal, Jarle (2025). Federal Spirits: Single Markets in Goods in the United States and the European Union and the Case of Spirits Drinks. Publius: The Journal of Federalism. ISSN 0048-5950. 55(4), s. 759–786. doi: 10.1093/publius/pjaf033. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  This article compares the politics of internal market governance in the European Union and the United States by focusing on a shippable but highly regulated “sin” good: distilled spirits. A few generations ago, both arenas governed spirits in highly decentralized and varied ways. Over time, Europe has centralized regulation to increase market openness while the United States has seen little change. Today regulatory differences between American states create higher barriers to trade than those which persist among their European counterparts. Drawing on 102 interviews with firms, associations, and public officials, we explain this divergence by two factors: institutions and ideas. The EU’s institutional agents have encouraged market openness, including mobilizing pro-liberalization European businesses, while American firms have no similar public allies. Ideationally, European businesspeople are broadly comfortable with centralized enforcement of single market rules, while Americans view federal enforcement as unrealistic or illegitimate.

• Fjørtoft, Trym Nohr (2024). Inductive Risk and the Legitimacy of Non-Majoritarian Institutions. British Journal of Political Science. ISSN 0007-1234. 54(2), s. 389–404. doi: 10.1017/S0007123423000200. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  In political discourse, it is common to claim that non-majoritarian institutions are legitimate because they are technical and value-free. Even though most analysts disagree, many arguments for non-majoritarian legitimacy rest on claims that work best if institutions are, in fact, value-free. This paper develops a novel standard for non-majoritarian legitimacy. It builds on the rich debate over the value-free ideal in philosophy of science, which has not, so far, been applied systematically to political theory literature on non-majoritarian institutions. This paper suggests that the argument from inductive risk, a strong argument against the value-free ideal, (1) shows why a naive claim to value freedom is a poor general foundation for non-majoritarian legitimacy; (2) provides a device to assess the degree of democratic value inputs required for an institution to be legitimate; which (3) shows the conditions under which a claim to technical legitimacy might still be normatively acceptable.

• Fjørtoft, Trym Nohr & Sandven, Hallvard Hodne (2023). Symmetry in the Delegation of Power as a Legitimacy Criterion. Journal of Common Market Studies. ISSN 0021-9886. 61(4), s. 900–916. doi: 10.1111/jcms.13429. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  The EU's power is expanding, calling for reassessments of its normative legitimacy. This article proposes a novel criterion for assessing the EU's legitimacy: symmetry in the delegation of power. We illustrate the usefulness of this criterion through an analysis of the European border regime. Existing analyses of the border regime have tended to dismiss it as weak and intergovernmental. We show, to the contrary, that it is both strong and weak. The EU wields significant power in border control but lacks power altogether in immigration policy. This asymmetry has rendered the EU incapable of discharging the moral responsibilities that arise in migration control, posing a novel legitimacy challenge. Finally, we argue that the symmetry criterion generalizes and can shed light on the EU's legitimacy beyond the area of migration.

• Fjørtoft, Trym Nohr (2022). More power, more control: The legitimizing role of expertise in Frontex after the refugee crisis. Regulation & Governance. ISSN 1748-5983. 16(2), s. 557–571. doi: 10.1111/rego.12373. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  This article explores how the appeal to depoliticized expertise worked to legitimize increased supervisory and executive power to the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, Frontex, after the 2015 refugee crisis. Frontex is an EU agency operating in a highly salient field, removed from hard‐science “gold standards” of evidence, where member states have been reluctant to delegate power and sovereignty. Through a process‐tracing case study, this article finds that appeals to technical neutrality, quantification, and objective indicators nevertheless were central when a new mandate for the agency was negotiated, giving Frontex unprecedented supervisory and executive power. They were also important resources for member states concerned about Frontex's increased powers. By focusing on an agency at a remove from the natural‐science archetype, this article contributes to the literature on knowledge use in independent agencies. It suggests that technical expertise can be a powerful source of legitimacy even in a field removed from “hard” science.

• Fjørtoft, Trym Nohr & Michailidou, Asimina (2021). Beyond expertise: the public construction of legitimacy for EU agencies. Political Research Exchange (PRX). 3(1), s. 1–27. doi: 10.1080/2474736X.2021.2018266. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  How is the power of independent agencies legitimized? This is a central question in modern democratic societies. Earlier research has privileged technical expertise as the predominant source of legitimacy for such agencies. While recent contributions have challenged this assumption, we have seen few attempts to systematically analyze the conditions under which different sources of legitimacy are established in public discourse. We address this gap by proposing a conceptual framework of four legitimation arguments and test their prevalence through an empirical analysis of the public legitimation of EU agencies. We hypothesize that the prevalence of each argument depends on characteristics of the agency, especially its scientific ‘hardness’ and its public salience. We test our hypotheses in three steps. We first combine automated text classification and qualitative content analysis to analyze Swedish news media coverage of three EU agencies, 2005–2019. In a third step, we quantitatively analyze aggregated data on the Swedish news coverage of all EU agencies 2005–2019. We find more technical-expertise discourse in coverage of hard-science agencies, and more political-control discourse where agencies are ‘softer’ or more salient. Our findings are therefore relevant for ongoing normative and empirical discussions on the legitimacy of independent agencies.

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• Veiby, Gry Elisabeth & Fjørtoft, Trym Nohr (2025). Spør Ekko: Studentopprør i Europa. doi: https:/radio.nrk.no/podkast/ekko_-_et_aktuelt_samfunnsprogram/sesong/202504/l_19f7e881-5446-443b-b7e8-815446943b7f. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Hundretusener protesterer mot makt og korrupsjon. Vil det få konsekvensar?

• Fjørtoft, Trym Nohr (2024). The Politics of European and American Single-Market Governance (Europe’s development and challenges: Snapshots from ARENA’s research). Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  ARENA Center for European Studies researcher presentations during ARENA's anniversary conference

• Fjørtoft, Trym Nohr (2023). Presentation to the Delegation of the European Union to Norway on history of EU-Norway relations, EU referendums and the EEA agreement, and the SINGLEMARKETS project. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Fjørtoft, Trym Nohr (2020). Teknisk ekspertise kan være en politisk ressurs. Stat & Styring. ISSN 0803-0103. 30(3), s. 12–15. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Fjørtoft, Trym Nohr (2019). Frontex, Expertise and the Refugee Crisis. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Fjørtoft, Trym Nohr (2018). The Role of Expertise in Frontex. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Fjørtoft, Trym Nohr (2022). Borders of Technocracy: Expertise, democracy, and the legitimacy of unelected bodies. Universitetet i Oslo. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  The delegation of power and tasks to unelected bodies, a pervasive trend in modern democracies, raises a democratic puzzle. These institutions are removed from majoritarian democratic procedures, breaking the “chain of command” from citizens to elected officials and administrations. Still, they make claims to political authority and legitimacy. This dissertation asks: Under which conditions is the delegation of power to unelected expert bodies democratically legitimate? The dissertation focuses on European Union agencies. It has been common to justify the power of EU agencies by appealing to what the dissertation calls technical legitimacy. The argument says that political neutrality and technical expertise are independent sources of legitimacy for unelected bodies. Certain institutions are legitimate despite, or even because of, their isolation from majoritarian democratic procedures. Through an introductory chapter and four articles, this dissertation aims to delineate the boundaries of technical legitimacy. It cautions against too much faith in technical legitimacy, for instance through the widespread claim that agencies’ value-freedom will ensure their legitimacy. But it also disagrees with the position that technical legitimacy is never appropriate. The challenge is to figure out when technical legitimacy may be the appropriate standard—and what should come in its place where it is not. The dissertation combines empirical and normative analysis. A mixedmethods media analysis finds that the legitimation arguments used about agencies in public debate depend on their scientific “hardness” and public salience. A case study of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, Frontex, uncovers how appeals to technical legitimacy were central when it received a new mandate in 2016. On the normative side, the dissertation argues that agencies face different legitimacy demands depending on their level of epistemic uncertainty and the consequences of potential errors. It also develops a symmetry criterion for legitimacy. The legitimacy of an agency might depend on the level of power delegated to other agencies in a policy area, so that the system as a whole leaves no gaps. Taken together, the dissertation argues against a one-size-fits-all approach to legitimacy: Every institution must not satisfy everything that democracy demands, but the system as a whole must.

• Fjørtoft, Trym Nohr (2016). Coping or Hoping Mechanisms: Evaluating The Effectiveness of National Human Rights Institutions. Universitetet i Oslo. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  National human rights institutions (NHRIs) have proliferated over the last few decades. Today, they are regarded as part of a domestic infrastructure to facilitate the realization of human rights. Yet we know relatively little about whether NHRIs actually lead to the improvement of human rights. This thesis critically examines the NHRI phenomenon, by asking two questions: Do NHRIs improve states' respect for international human rights? And if yes, through which mechanisms? Theoretically, I draw a distinction between optimist and skeptic views of human rights institutions. The skeptical expectation is that NHRIs are adopted as window-dressing. Here, NHRIs are institutions of cheap talk with no means of power to back their rhetoric, and are therefore unable to bring about change. Within the optimist view, I spell out two possible mechanisms. A monitoring NHRI may improve human rights conditions in a state by making it more costly for the state to violate human rights. An NHRI working through socialization is part of a global process of norm diffusion. Here, states change their behavior not because of cost-benefit analyses, but because they adopt new norms of appropriate behavior. The empirical approach of this thesis consists of two parts. A time-series--cross-section statistical analysis maps global patterns of NHRI adoption, institutional characteristics, and human rights practices. A case study of the Norwegian NHRI from 1999 to 2015 picks up some central puzzles of the statistical analysis. Together, the analysis gives rise to three main conclusions. First, no evidence suggests that NHRIs have a global average positive impact on human rights practices. Second, where there nevertheless is a positive association between NHRI adoption and human rights, the patterns tentatively match the mechanism of socialization. Third, this effect seems to be strongest where a state has an A-accredited institution. The case of Norway shows how window-dressing can be a dominant mechanism, but where the concern with the NHRI's accreditation entered into a social dynamic of naming, shaming, and reputation---which ultimately led to to the creation of a new and independent NHRI in 2015. In summary, there is no place for unrestrained optimism towards the effectiveness of NHRIs. Adoption or accreditation of an NHRI may not lead to much alone. But this is not a call for cynical skepticism. On the contrary, it is a call for a careful, focused attention to what it actually takes to make NHRIs succeed in diverse contexts around the world.

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