SALELITE The Salmon Elite: Its politics, self-understanding, networks, and wealth

This project aims to examine the politics, self-understanding, networks, and wealth of the Norwegian salmon elite; meaning the owners and top executives of the companies in the field of fish farming in Norway. The project builds on theoretical contributions from political economy, focusing on the role of business in policymaking, and on contributions from elite sociology, focusing on the wealth, networks, and political self-justifications of elites. The project is organized into three work packages. WP1 analyses the tax politics of the salmon elite based on publicly available qualitative data (such as documents published by salmon companies, media coverage, and party manifestos). WP2 focuses on the salmon elite’s self-understanding and self-justifications, based on 50 qualitative interviews with entrepreneurs, heirs, and top executives of the salmon industry. WP3 examines the economic power, kinship structures, and social networks within the salmon elite, based on data from the Brønnøysund Register Centre and on party financing. Data for WP1 and WP3 is publicly available. WP2 entails the greatest risks in terms of access to the field. Informants will be given full anonymity. We will emphasize that we are interested in their personal points of view, to make sure that we do not misinterpret the data collected in WP1. The project will contribute knowledge on how the owners and top executives of the industry think about their societal responsibility, and whether there are any differences between the political views of owners of larger and smaller firms with varying levels of foreign ownership, and between self-made entrepreneurs and heirs. It adds to the literatures on business power and elites and covers new ground in Norwegian social science research on aquaculture, which has hardly studied the societal role of the most powerful individuals and networks in the aquaculture sector. It will thus inform ongoing public debates on taxation and regulation of the industry.