The article considers two aspects of the establishment in Norway of a mass participatory parliamentary democracy: the changing national and regional patterns of recruitment to parliamentary positions, and the long‐term processes of democratization and political mobilization. The influence of high social status upon parliamentary recruitment was replaced by that of high political status. This changeover, however, was modified by a distinct centre‐periphery dimension in both social substitution and the process of political professionalization, corresponding to regional variations in the timing and tempo of mass mobilizat