Norway: The quiet country that chose tomorrow

Norway: The quiet country that chose tomorrow Featured

Lito Monico C. Lorenzana
LML Polettiques
13 November 2026
Comments:DISQUS_COMMENTS


First in a five-part series

OUR geopolitical series ended last week with a question: How does the Philippines protect itself in a world without a reliable referee? Alliances matter. So do ships, trade routes, and diplomacy. But none can substitute for a functioning state.

We now turn from the dangers outside our shores to the institutions we must build within them with another five-part series, called “Lessons from nations that chose competence.” These are countries that cultivated it, and what we can learn from them.

We begin with Norway, a quiet country that chose tomorrow. Every few years, the world becomes fascinated by the latest economic miracle — Japan. South Korea. Singapore. China. Today, artificial intelligence (AI) dominates discussions about the future.

Yet one small nation on Europe’s northern edge offers a less fashionable lesson: prosperity depends upon how a country governs opportunity. Norway’s importance lies beyond its wealth. It lies in the institutions that helped turn extraordinarily good fortune into lasting public benefit.

For the Philippines, where debate revolves around personalities, scandals, and dynastic quarrels, this raises an unfashionable question: What kind of nation are we trying to build 50 years from now?

Wealth before oil

Norway’s geography offered no easy living for people. Mountains restricted agriculture. Winters demanded preparation. Scattered coastal communities depended upon fishing, shipping, and trade.

Long before petroleum, dried cod connected Norway to European markets. Bergen became an important trading center within the Hanseatic commercial network. The sea provided livelihoods, but also demanded skills, cooperation, and the ability to plan beyond tomorrow’s weather.

Hardship alone, however, does not explain good government. Many countries have endured poverty without producing accountable institutions. Cold winters do not automatically manufacture honest politicians. Otherwise, we could reform Congress by adjusting the air conditioning.

Norway’s achievement was political and institutional. Over time, it developed a representative government, public administration, education, and habits of accountability that gave citizens a stake in how their country was governed.

We should also discard the comforting fairy tale that oil rescued an impoverished fishing village. Before the petroleum boom, Norway already possessed shipping, hydropower, industry, and a developed economy. Oil arrived in a country with institutions capable of managing it. That sequence matters. Petroleum enlarged Norway’s opportunities; it did not invent Norwegian competence.

This distinction also prevents a lazy Philippine excuse. We need not wait for an oil discovery before repairing government. The preparation comes first: capable agencies, enforceable rules, educated citizens, and public accounts that can withstand scrutiny. A windfall tests these foundations. It cannot pour them after the building has already begun to collapse.

The moment history smiled

In 1969, the discovery of Ekofisk beneath the North Sea opened a new chapter. Production began in 1971. Enormous petroleum revenues would follow, bringing both opportunity and danger.

Other resource-rich countries have discovered that abundance can finance extravagance more readily than development. Easy revenues allow governments to postpone reforms, reward supporters, and mistake a commodity boom for permanent prosperity.

Economists call the familiar danger the “resource curse.” Wealth can concentrate power, weaken accountability, and leave economies vulnerable when prices fall.

The curse is no geological inevitability. Oil does not fill out fraudulent procurement documents. Minerals do not appoint incompetent relatives. People do these things, assisted by institutions too weak or too accommodating to stop them.

Norway’s task was, therefore, larger than extracting petroleum. It had to prevent a temporary resource from dictating the country’s permanent habits.

The question was not simply how much money could be earned. It was who owned the benefit, who controlled its use and what would remain after the wells dry up.

The Philippine mirror

The Philippines should recognize the problem. We possess resources, strategic geography and people whose abilities have been demonstrated across the world.

Our nurses staff hospitals. Our seafarers keep commerce moving. Our engineers, teachers and other professionals contribute to economies whose institutions make better use of their skills.

Our tragedy is the repeated failure to convert that potential into durable national strength.

We announce opportunities with remarkable enthusiasm. Delivering them requires less photogenic work: reliable electricity, competent agencies, enforceable contracts, functioning schools, and officials who understand that public money belongs to the public.

A groundbreaking ceremony takes an afternoon. Building a capable state takes longer than a campaign jingle.

Norway offers a useful reversal of our political habits. Resource wealth became a question of public stewardship across generations, rather than merely a larger budget for the government of the day. That did not happen overnight. The Norwegian parliament established the petroleum fund in 1990; its first transfer arrived in 1996. The interval between discovery and saving reminds us that institution-building involved decisions, debate, and learning.

There was no single miraculous afternoon when every Norwegian politician acquired wisdom.

The eventual achievement rested on rules and arrangements that could outlast particular leaders. The ambition was to turn finite petroleum wealth into financial assets capable of benefiting future generations.

We will examine those arrangements more closely next week. For now, the essential point is that saving required a political commitment to people who could neither vote nor applaud: citizens not yet born.

The temptation to spend is understandable. Citizens have immediate needs, and governments must address them. Stewardship does not mean leaving schools unrepaired while congratulating ourselves on a healthy balance sheet. It means weighing present needs against future obligations, explaining those choices publicly and preventing today’s necessities from becoming an excuse for permanent political indulgence. A government can invest in its people while saving for their children. What it cannot honestly do is promise everything, spend everything, and send the bill to the unborn.

The choice of tomorrow

We should resist romanticizing Norway. Its experience cannot be detached from its history, population, economy, or political development. Petroleum prosperity also raises difficult environmental questions.

Nor does its success prove that national character is fixed, with some peoples born disciplined and others condemned to dysfunction. That explanation would excuse every failed government by blaming its citizens.

Competence must be cultivated, rewarded, and protected. Accountability must have consequences. Rules must restrain the powerful when restraint becomes inconvenient.

The Philippine lesson is practical. Recruit public servants for ability. Promote them for performance. Protect professional work from partisan interference while enforcing responsibility for failure.

Make public spending traceable. Build institutions that preserve useful policies across administrations. Give political parties programs that survive their founders and purposes beyond securing the next appointment.

Above all, stop treating every election as permission to restart the Republic.

Opportunities will continue arriving through technology, trade, resources, and our people’s abilities. Their value will depend upon whether institutions can protect them from politicians who think in election cycles and dynasties that in family successions.

The unanswered question has never been whether Filipinos are capable. It is whether our institutions can convert their capabilities into national success.

That is why Norway matters. Confronted with extraordinary good fortune, it built ways to preserve benefits beyond the present generation.

It chose tomorrow.

National greatness is not always announced by speeches, slogans, or ceremonies. Sometimes, it is built by the discipline to say no, the wisdom to save, and the humility to govern as trustees rather than owners.

To be continued on Nov. 18, 2026000
Read 17 times
Rate this item
(0 votes)
More in this category: « The Philippines in a world without a referee
back to top

Main Menu