‘Footnote Policy’ and the Social Democratic Party’s Role in Shaping Danish EEC Positions, 1982–1986

Abstract

The so-called footnote period in the 1980s is a controversial era in the history of Danish foreign policy. This article shows how footnote policy was not restricted to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) area; rather, it reflected a wider parliamentary practice whereby footnotes and parliamentary resolutions were also used as strategies to impose Social Democratic preferences on the official European Economic Community (EEC) positions of the otherwise right-of-centre government. The article provides a nuanced analysis of the policy making in that period, arguing that the relative importance of different explanatory factors in the literature changed in the period 1982–1986. For instance, support is found for the transnational thesis that the Scandilux security-policy forum had some importance in determining the Social Democratic position, especially during negotiations on the Single European Act (SEA) in 1985. In other periods, short-term electoral concerns played a role, for instance in December 1985 and January 1986. However, the Social Democratic positions on the institutional questions in the 1982–1985 period were remarkably stable and could be interpreted as an attempt to maintain internal party cohesion.