Political Parties

Historical Note

Women in Iceland obtained political rights earlier than in most other countries. They became elligible to vote and stand for office in 1915.

The early political parties in Iceland were caucus groups with very little formal party organization outside parliament. The first of the parties to introduce a general membership organization was the Social Democratic Party in 1916. This was an indirect membership structure, in that members of the trade unions were at the same time members of the affiliated party. Party activities were probably very limited. During the 1930s formal membership organizations became the norm in Icelandic political parties. Each of the parties became open to the participation of activists and formally adopted an internally democratic organization. In the following decades, the parties took various steps to strengthen their organizations, including social activities, fund-raising, political meetings and more systematic election campaigns. In the early postwar period the strength of party organizations in Iceland reached an all-time peak.

Growing membership in the parties was not matched by their institutionalization. Despite formally democratic party statutes, the parties remained to a very real extent caucus parties. Their statutes changed more than their practices. Icelandic parties have probably always been weaker structures than their counterparts in Northern Europe. Criteria for party membership have been unclear, and membership files in many cases grossly misleading or non-existent. Membership fees have rarely been collected on a regular basis, and other duties associated with membership are to all intents and purposes non-existent. Parties have mostly financed their activities through lotteries, support from interest groups and firms or voluntary individual donations. In recent decades, State support for political parties has increased radically, and has probably become the main source of income for at least some of them. As neither the status nor the duties of general party members were ever very well defined in the Icelandic political parties, their political rights also remained vague. The membership organizations as a rule lacked institutionalized access to influence within the parties.

The parliamentary parties are the main centres of power within Icelandic political parties. Most policy issues are resolved within the parliamentary parties, as are major decisions concerning the formation of coalition governments. When parties are in government, the parliamentary parties are restrained by the need to maintain cohesion within the government. Even so, parliamentarians retain substantial power vis-à-vis the team of Ministers in their own parties. Government bills are presented to the parliamentary parties in government before being presented to the assembly. The Alþingi itself is a considerable power base for the parliamentarians. Being a small parliament, it is able to allow individual parliamentarians considerable scope for manoeuvre, and it interferes more with the activities of the executive than most European legislative assemblies, irrespective of the government of the day.


Parliamentarians - from whom Ministers are usually selected - represent not only parties in parliament, but also individual constituencies. Usually they are very attentive to the needs of their constituents, particularly in the smaller constituencies outside the Reykjavík area. Given the strong position of the legislative assembly within the Icelandic political system, parliamentarians can in some cases improve the fortunes of firms, localities and individuals within their constituencies quite considerably. Parliamentarians often advocate the cause of various interest groups in parliament. The most important are the main employers' and labour organizations, but the list includes many more, among them various professional groups, charities, sports organizations and numerous other interest groups. Some, in the past, used to have close ties to the parties.

During the 1960s the central position of the political parties in many spheres of Icelandic society was beginning to cause concern among the public. Party power, it was widely felt, had exceeded its normal limits. The parties responded around 1970 by opening up the nomination process. Thereby, they wished to give the appearance of open and democratic organizations, where the public - rather than party caucuses - determined the composition of election candidate lists. Primaries in various forms have since then been introduced among Icelandic parties as the most common method of candidate selection. While they give non-party members varying degrees of influence over the composition of party lists, it seems clear that in most cases there has been a strong external element at work. The influence of the membership structures - never very prominent in the first place - deteriorated correspondingly. More serious for the parties, however, were the tendencies for the primaries to undermine party cohesiveness. Individual candidates climbing up lists were no longer dependent on the party leadership or institutions. In many cases they were not even dependent on the party membership. Some of them cultivated their own group of supporters locally, with prime loyalties to the individual candidate rather than the party. Candidates who had shown their ability to challenge the party leadership or institutions were often successful. In any case, the candidates on the party lists were not always likely to act as a closely-knit team after the fight in the primaries.

Adapted from "Iceland - The Republic", Handbook published by the Central Bank of Iceland, ed. by Mr. Jóhannes Nordal and Mr. Valdimar Kristinsson, Reykjavik 1996. The Ministry is responsible for the adapted texts.