Party System and Foreign Policy in Denmark
| DOI | 10.1177/001083677901400301 |
| Date | 01 November 1979 |
| Author | IB Faurby |
| Published date | 01 November 1979 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Party
System
and
Foreign
Policy
in
Denmark
IB
FAURBY
Institute
of
Political
Science,
University
of
Aarhus
Faurby,
I.
Party
System
and
Foreign
Policy
in
Denmark.
Cooperation
and
Conflict,
XIV,
1979,
159-170.
Using
number
of
parties
and
their
mutual
ideological
distance
as
the
main
variables,
this
article
gives
a
preliminary
description
of
the
Danish
party
system
as
it
functions
within
the
issue-area
of
foreign
and
defence
policy.
Based
upon
an
analysis
of
the
parties’
voting
on
all
foreign
and
defence
policy
issues
before
the
Danish
parliament
from
1953
to
1977
the
pattern
of
party
distances
in
each
government
period
is
shown.
Among
the
conclusions
are
that
neither
the
number
of
parties
nor
the
parliamentary
basis
of
the
governments
is
the
main
variable
explaining
the
level
of
conflict
over
foreign
policy,
and
that
in
spite
of
the
dramatic
changes
in
the
Danish
party
system
in
the
1970s
there
has
been
no
directly
observable
consequences
on
foreign
policy.
In
spite
of
changes,
parties
representing
an
overwhelming
majority
in
parliament
support
not
only
NATO
and
EC
membership
but
all
the
main
elements
of
Danish
foreign
policy.
I.
INTRODUCTION
The
importance
of
domestic
political
struc-
tures
is
recognized
by
most
students
of
foreign
policy
no
matter
whether
they
study
decision-making
in
specific
cases
or
the
long
term
patterns
of
foreign
policy,
or
whether
they
are
interested
in
the
foreign
policy
of
a
particular
country
or
search
for
cross-national
patterns
through
comparative
analysis.
The
literature
is
rich
in
studies
of
public
opinion
and
foreign
policy,
interest
organizations
and
foreign
policy,
the
role
of
governmental
bureaucracies,
etc.
One
aspect
of
the
political
system,
which
has
always
attracted
the
attention
of
those
studying
domestic
politics
and
the
function-
ing
of
political
systems,
seems
however,
to
be
if
not
completely
absent
from
studies
of
foreign
policy,
then
at
least
remarkably
sel-
dom
treated
in
the
general
literature
on
foreign
policy-making.
That
is
the
role
of
political
parties
and,
in
particular,
the
role
of
party
systems.
Many
empirical
studies
of
the
foreign
policies
of
primarily
Western
European
countries
do
give
detailed
accounts
of
the
attitudes
and
roles
of
political
parties
in
the
making
of
foreign
policy.
But
in
the
general,
or
theoretical,
literature
on
foreign
policy,
parties
and
party
systems
are
conspicuously
absent.
To
quote
just
a
few
examples
from
the
mainstream
of
theoretical
foreign
policy
lit-
erature.
James
N.
Rosenau’s
early
book
on
Public
Opinion
and
Foreign
Policy1
which
primarily
set
out
to
categorize
all
the
possible
channels
of
information
between
the
public
and
the
policy-makers
only,
and
very
briefly,
mentioned
political
parties
as
one
category
among
-many
types
of
’voluntary
associa-
tions’
participating
in
opinion-making.
And
when
Rosenau
several
years
later
edited
a
book
entitled
Domestic
Sources
of
Foreign
Policy2
it
had
chapters
on
public
opinion,
interest
organizations,
etc.,
but
only
one
chapter
mentioned
political
parties
and
not
at
all
as
the
central
theme.
The
picture
is
much
the
same
in
the
more
recent
literature
on
comparative
foreign
policy.
The
major
theoretical
work
which
has
so
far
appeared
from
the
CREON
project,
Why
Nations
Act,
3 only
mentions
national
legislatures
briefly
and
none
of
the
book’s
many
propositions
refer
to
parties
and
party
systems,
in
spite
of
the
fact
that
it
has
chapters
on
decision
structures
and
processes
and
on
political
regimes.
Likewise
in
McGowan
and
Shapiro’s
listing
of
118
propositions
derived
from
a
review
of
a
large
numer
of
compara-
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