Jonas Gahr Støre in the context of "Office of the Prime Minister (Norway)"

The prime minister of Norway (Norwegian: statsminister, which directly translates to "minister of state") is the head of government and chief executive of Norway. The prime minister and Cabinet (consisting of all the most senior government department heads) are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the monarch, to the Storting (Parliament of Norway), to their political party, and ultimately the electorate. In practice, since it is nearly impossible for a government to stay in office against the will of the Storting, the prime minister is primarily answerable to the Storting. The prime minister is almost always the leader of the majority party in the Storting, or the leader of the senior partner in the governing coalition.

Norway has a constitution, which was adopted on 17 May 1814. The position of prime minister is the result of legislation. Modern prime ministers have few statutory powers, but provided they can command the support of their parliamentary party. Prime ministers control both the legislature and the executive (the cabinet) and hence wield considerable de facto powers. As of 2021 the prime minister of Norway is Jonas Gahr Støre, of the Labour Party, replacing Erna Solberg of Conservative Party, who resigned in October 2021.

The Labour Party (Bokmål: Arbeiderpartiet; Nynorsk: Arbeidarpartiet, A or Ap; Northern Sami: Bargiidbellodat), formerly The Norwegian Labour Party (Norwegian: Det norske Arbeiderparti, DNA), is a social democratic political party in Norway. It is positioned on the centre-left of the political spectrum, and is led by Jonas Gahr Støre, the current Prime Minister of Norway.

The Labour Party is officially committed to social-democratic ideals. Its slogan since the 1930s has been "everyone shall be included" (alle skal med) and the party traditionally seeks a strong welfare state, funded through taxes and duties. Since the 1980s, the party has included more of the principles of a social market economy in its policy, allowing for privatisation of state-owned assets and services and reducing income tax progressivity, following the wave of economic liberalisation during the 1980s. During the first Stoltenberg government, the party's policies were inspired by Tony Blair's New Labour agenda in the United Kingdom and saw the most widespread privatisation by any government in Norway to that date. The party has frequently been described as increasingly neoliberal since the 1980s, both by political scientists and opponents on the political left. The Labour Party profiles itself as a progressive party that subscribes to co-operation on a national as well as international level.

Viken was a short-lived county in Norway that existed from 1 January 2020 to 1 January 2024. Its name was derived from the historical region in present-day Norway and Sweden. The county was located in Eastern Norway when it was established on 1 January 2020 by the merger of Akershus, Buskerud and Østfold with the addition of the municipalities of Jevnaker, Lunner and the former Svelvik Municipality. Both its creation and its name—described as unhistorical by historians—were controversial from the onset, the merger was resisted by all the three counties and the new county had an approval rating of about 20% in the region. Viken has been compared to gerrymandering. The newly constructed coat of arms of Viken lacked a historical basis and was described by experts as an amateurish logo that did not adhere to the rules of heraldry, and as "three flying saucers under a cap." The county executive of Viken determined in 2019, before the merger had taken effect, that the county's disestablishment was its main political goal, and the formal process to dissolve Viken was initiated by the county executive right after the 2021 Norwegian parliamentary election in which parties seeking to reverse the merger won a majority. The political platform of the government of Jonas Gahr Støre stated that the government would dissolve Viken and re-establish Akershus, Buskerud and Østfold based on a request from the county itself. On 22 February 2022, the regional assembly of Viken approved the formal request to disestablish the county, and the disestablishment took effect on 1 January 2024.

Viken was home to over 1.2 million people, or 23% of the national population. The county seat was the national capital, Oslo, which was an enclave of Viken and is not part of the county. Oslo had been the seat of Akershus county since the Middle Ages. All of Viken was located in the historical Akershus, which included much of Eastern Norway. The county took its name from the historical region of Viken, which has been defined as an area in Bohuslän, in what is now western Sweden, since the late Middle Ages, but which was formerly used loosely for the region around the Oslofjord in the earlier middle ages.