Coalition Type and Composition in Norwegian Municipalities, 2007–2019

Hand-coded dataset of governing-coalition type and party composition for Norwegian municipalities across three election periods (2007–2011, 2011–2015, 2015–2019). The dataset distinguishes three governing arrangements: one-party majorities, weak coalitions that share positions without a commitment to ongoing cooperation, and strong coalitions that commit to cooperate for the term and pass budgets jointly. The weak/strong distinction, which separates position-sharing from binding budget cooperation, does not appear in administrative registers and is recovered here from local newspaper coverage of post-election negotiations in the Atekst Retriever archive. Each municipality-period records the arrangement as constituted at the first council meeting after the election. The file has one row per municipality and election period, with the municipality number (2019 vintage), name, election period, party composition, coalition type, and a flag marking the estimation sample of the accompanying article. A README documents the coding procedure, decision rules, and variable definitions. This dataset accompanies the article "Coalition Type and the Fiscal Effects of Political Fragmentation in Norwegian Municipalities."