Are Norwegian Voluntary Organizations Homogeneous Moralnets? Reflections on Naroll's Selection of Norway as a Model Society

Abstract

In The Moral Order, Raoul Naroll outlines five steps in the development of socionomics, a discipline for guiding human affairs. After establishing a set of core values, Naroll shows that Norway does better than other countries in achieving goals based on those values. He also details the theory and evidence for the importance of moralnets in preventing or ameliorating social problems. One inference untested by Naroll is that Norway, a model society with the highest score for social well-being, has strong moralnets (moral networks). This article argues that Norway's numerous voluntary organizations and clusters of ideologically homogeneous organizations are often linked in networks that have all of the characteristics that Naroll attributed to moralnets. Data from community case studies in Norway fit Naroll's moralnet theory better than they fit the competing theory of structural limitation of conflicts through crosscutting ties.