ABSTRACT
Norway has a long and strong egalitarian tradition affecting rewards for high public office (RHPOs). In this chapter the underlying question is why, in a country as rich as Norway, have RHPOs been so low compared to those in comparable countries? In the last two decades, attempts have been made to introduce greater differentiations in salaries. We discuss these efforts at reforming the salary systems for high public offices, focusing particularly on the attempts to introduce performance-based salaries for top civil servants. From the beginning of the 1990s onwards, New Public Management (NPM) had greater influence on decisions about rewards, both directly by reforming the salary systems and indirectly by structural devolution.
