journal of european integration history revue d'histoire de l ...

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Hans-Otto Frøland
opened to non-governmental interest and campaign organisations. Thus resistance
to the 1962 and 1967 applications emerged outside parliament. For the third application
in 1970, a mass mobilisation organisation was created that at the time of the
referendum comprised every tenth anti-Community voter and which succeeded in
mobilising the resistance potential in the centre-periphery cleavage. The most detailed
study of this mobilisation thus states that “the EEC conflict was the time of
the unholy alliances”. 19 The most comprehensive analysis of the EC membership
issue as a whole concludes that the Labour government's strategy to overcome the
cleavage was doomed to fail:
“When we see the underpinning for the resistance against the EEC, it appears hopelessly
naive to believe that this resistance would vanish if only enough information
about the EEC was disseminated”. 20
As some Cold War historians started in the mid-1980s to look into the Norwegian
commercial foreign policy of the early post-war years studies of Norway's relations
with the rest of Western Europe were enriched with a new analytical tool: the analysis
of the constraints imposed by the need to foster economic modernisation. 21
This is what was previously referred to as the economic modernisation perspective.
This perspective must be understood as the adaptation of Norway's specialists in
the field to the new trends in the study of international post-war history, called
European revisionism and corporatism. 22 Despite of the fact that the semi-official
studies of Norway's foreign policy published in the second half of the 1990s took
account of this new perspective, the latter is still immaturely developed. 23 What
does this fresh perspective have to offer?
Norway's commercial dependence on other countries has determined foreign policy
to a greater extent than suggested by the geopolitical-challenges school. Even the first
Labour government in 1945 had export-led growth as its overarching strategy, and this
brought interest in export and capital markets abroad to the forefront. The strategy was
exploited within the context of the Marshall Plan. It nourished the failed talks on a Nordic
preference area through the 1950s and led to Norway joining EFTA in 1960. Representing
an economy that was highly dependent on foreign trade, all Norwegian governments
continued to seek international co-operation to retain stable currency exchange
19. T. BJØRKLUND, Mot strømmen. Kampen mot EF 1961-1972 [Against the Current. The Battle
against the EEC], Oslo, 1982, p.14.
20. N.P. GLEDITSCH and O. HELLEVIK, Kampen om EF [The Battle on the EC], Oslo, 1977, p.265.
21. Cf. H. PHARO, Domestic and International Implications of Norwegian Reconstruction, in: EUI
WP, No.81, Florence, 1984; K.R. PEDERSEN, The United States and Norwegian reconstruction,
New York, 1988; and I. SOGNER, The European idea: The Scandinavian answer. Norwegian attitudes
towards a closer Scandinavian economic cooperation 1947-1959, in: Scandinavian Journal
of History, Vol.18, 1993, pp.307-327.
22. Conspicuous representatives being, respectively, A.S. MILWARD, The Reconstruction of Western
Europe 1945-51, Berkeley, 1984, and M.J. HOGAN, The Marshall Plan. America, Britain, and
the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1947-1952, Cambridge, 1987.
23. K.E.ERIKSEN and H. PHARO, Kald krig og internasjonalisering 1949-1965 [Cold War and Internationalization
1949-1965], Oslo, 1997, and R. TAMNES, Oljealder 1965-1995 [The Age of
Oil 1965-1995], Oslo, 1997.