Norway: Domestically Driven Foreign Policy

Norway is a typical small industrial democracy, experiencing a continuous tension between external pressures and internally generated aspirations. In security policy a compromise—the reassurance policy—softens the collision between the two forces. When the Storting or the electorate decides policy directly, foreign policy may become the nonlogical outcome of complex, underlying lines of domestic conflict. A major instance, the 1972 referendum rejecting membership in the European Community (EC), has had a traumatic effect on the subsequent European policy of all parties for two decades. A corporatist participatory system, coupled with external economic dependence, often makes economic foreign policy salient. When ministries are the decisional locus, interest groups often have privileged access. The Labor Party will continue to play a key role in foreign policy making as long as it bridges the main foreign policy cleavages. The Conservatives and European-Atlanticists in the Labor Party have made up an implicit and durable foreign policy coalition fundamental to the nation. The EC-membership issue remains the largest challenge to their future policymaking role.