Logo: to the web site of the Swedish Defence University

En afhandling om parti-rationalitet belyst gennem en undersøgelse af dansk deltagelse i fredsstøttende operationer og EU-forbeholdet på forsvarsområdet med henblik på at vurdere hvorvidt der eksisterer en diskrepans mellem disse to forhold.

The aim of this paper is to examine and explain the rationale of political parties behind, on the one hand, their desire to have Denmark participate in peace support operations and, on the one hand, the parties 1992 decision not to take any part in the elaboration and the implementation of decisions and actions of The European Union which have defence implications. It can thereby be determined whether or not there is an inconsistency between the two subjects. The parties who are subject to this examination are Socialdemokratiet(Social Democrats), Det Radikale Venstre(Social Liberals) and Socialistisk Folkeparti(Socialist People’s Party).

The theory used is focusing on the fact that political parties have to make trade-offs in order to achieve their political goal or at least as many of these as possible. The theory puts foreward that parties have a small and well-defined set of objectives which in the simplest term can be seen as ”policy-seeking”, ”office-seeking” and ”vote-seeking”.

The method used  is a descriptive analysis of the two areas where the decision to participate in peace support operations in The Persian Golf 1990, Bosnia 1995 and Kosovo 1998 is based on the parties arguments in Folketinget (The Danish Parliament). Due to the fact that there is no official documentation of the negotiations prior to the decision on The European Union question (the reservation) this area is mainly based on interviews with persons who took part in the negotiations and books on the subject. The aim of the descriptive analysis is to determine the rationale of the parties in both areas and thereby why the parties decides to participate in peace support operations and not to participate in The European Unions decisions and actions which have defence implications. This is followed by a comparative analysis of the conclusions from the descriptive analysis in order to determine any inconsistency in the parties rationale and the aims of the decisions. This leads to the conclusion of the thesis; Is there or is there not an inconsistency between Denmark’s wish to participate in peace support operations and the decision not to take any part in the elaboration and the implementation of decisions and actions of The European Union which have defence implications.

The conclusion is; that there is an inconsistency. The inconsistency is due to the consequence of the implementation of the reservation, and not due to the aim of the reservation . As to the rationale of the parties the paper concludes that the parties seek different objectives. One party generally seeks policy and less office and/or votes, one party generally seeks office and less policy – votes and one party generally falls close to the center of the line policy and/or votes and only marginally in the direction of office. On the way to the conclusion the paper points to possible reasons to why it will not be possible to correct the inconsistency for a (long) time to come.