Secular European states have adopted a range of regulation and accommodation policies concerning minority religious practices, often with much controversy. These policies are often heterogeneous, even within nation states. This paper compares the process that led the Norwegian armed forces to accommodate symbols of minority religions in their uniform regulations since the 80s, with the response to a 2008 proposal to accommodate the hijab with the Norwegian police uniform. Drawing on Kingdon's concept of windows of opportunity in policy-making, the comparison explores step-by-step how various actors responded to two controversial claims for accommodation, twenty years apart, with two different policy outcomes. The analysis is based on case documents, public statements recorded by the media, parliamentary transcripts, and qualitative interviews with key actors from the two processes. The comparison demonstrates how some actors within both the military and the police policy fields were willing to accommodate minority religion, but the 2008 claim for accommodation in the police met with broader and more intense contestation of both problem definition and issue authority. A close reading of the 2008 case highlights the institutional and political changes that occurred since the 80s, and their influence on narrowing the window of opportunity for accommodation.
Increasing political concern over segregation, extremism, and value conflicts subject Muslim civil society organisations to a great deal of critical attention across Europe, both as problematic and as potential partners for policy interventions. Both national and local authorities seek out organisations that can represent Muslims and other minority groups in policy development and delivery, yet politicians discredit multiculturalism as a political project. This paper uses the implementation of a Norwegian grant scheme as an opportunity to investigate how local implementation of national policy may explain why multiculturalism, while discredited, can continue at different policy levels or under other names, and how local adaptation shapes relations with Muslim civil society organisations. The analysis builds on a review of the grant scheme's historical transformation, a dataset of applications and grant distributions in each municipality, and interviews with all 20 local administrators who implement the scheme today. It shows how municipalities mainly use the grant to promote a convivial multiculturalism of cross-ethnic individual mixing, but also engage in cooperation with Muslim organisations through a pragmatic form of multicultural governance.
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