The international literature suggests that pal-ties in government become increasingly unpopular over time. Office-seeking parties are thus confronted with a dilemma: To gain political power parties need to be popular, but having such power makes them unpopular. With this as a point of departure, the article discusses how and why this cost of ruling phenomenon occurs, and whether it can be detected In the post-war Norwegian polity. The empirical analysis indicates only a modest decline in government support from one parliamentary election to another. There is, however, a strong midterm effect. With one exception only, all governments have been less popular at local elections than at previous parliamentary elections. Government support follows a cyclical pattern in that most of what is lost at the local election is regained at the subsequent parliamentary election.
