Robert Geyer and Duane, Swank, "Rejecting the European Union: Norwegian Social Democratic Opposition to the EU in the 1990s," Party Politics, 3 (October 1997), 549-562.

First Paragraph:
On 28 November 1994, 88.9 percent of the Norwegian electorate turned out to vote on the most divisive issue in post-war Norwegian politics, membership of the European Union (EU). In 1972, Norway had become the only country to reject membership of the European Community through a national referendum: the vote was 46.5 to 53.5 percent against membership. For a country renowned for its consensual politics, the intensity of the 1972 debate was remarkable. In 1994, the debate was equally divisive.' The general divisions in the country were similar to those of 1972. Political parties of the right and business, especially in the southern urban areas, strongly supported membership, while parties of the far left and northern and rural interests were strongly opposed.

Figures and Tables:
Table 1: Composition of the SME
Table 2: Ideology and general policy orientations of SME members
Table 3: Principal reasons for opposing Norwegian membership in the European Union
Table 4: Perceived impacts of staying out of the European Union
Figure 1: Cleavages within the Norwegian Labour Party

Last Paragraph:
Overall, the issue of EU membership in recent Norwegian politics seems to have highlighted the basic unresolved cleavage between the 'modernizing' and left wings of the party. In Norway, those on the left successfully chal-lenged the dominance of the modernizers over the EU issue. However, the SME only provided an umbrella organization for both traditional materialists and postmaterialist concerned with Norwegian membership in the EU. The SME never had the organizational strength and coherent alliance structure to directly challenge the control of the modernizers over the DNA. However, we see little in our analysis of the EU issue to suggest that con-tinuing debates over Europeanization or globalization will cement strong coalitions among the factions highlighted here, either within the left wing itself or the DNA as a whole.