Emotion, Rationality, And the European Union: A Case Study of the Discursive Framework of the 1994 Norwegian Referendum on EU Membership.

The European Union (EU) of today could not have been imagined back in 1956 when the first seeds of a united Europe were planted by Jean Monnet. The great leap towards integration of the Maastricht Treaty (1992), the massive territorial expansion of the Nice Treaty (2001), the adoption of a common currency, the opening of borders resulting from the Schengen Agreement (1985), and the tentative rise of a European identity have been powerful and, in many ways, unlikely changes to the recent social geography of Europe. Yet despite the many successes of the Europe project, the EU remains a controversial symbol of discontent for many Europeans. As the recent Irish referendum against the Lisbon Treaty suggests, when Europeans have the opportunity to formally voice a protest, the EU has received more than its share of rejection. Of course, the Irish are not alone. Amongst the many rebuffs: the French and the Dutch sank the EU Constitution by rejecting it in respective referenda, the Swiss repudiated EU membership, the Danes spurned the use of the euro, and the Norwegians renounced EU membership twice. What are the issues that make the EU so controversial? This study uses a single case, the 1994 Norwegian rejection of EU membership, to help flesh out some of the discursive elements behind the anti-Europe movement. The discursive approach employed in this study allows for a closer look at the way the idea of Europe is structured as a symbol, and allows for an analysis of the ways in which nationalism and identities mesh or clash with popular understandings of the EU. This approach also allows for a qualitative richness of data that can not be seen with larger statistical analyses. By examining the larger discourse structure that framed the Norwegian EU membership debate, this study shows how symbolic ideas were encoded in everyday emotions, as well as in figurative notions of time, space, and place. In so doing, one can see how the actual discursive ideas of rationality and emotion became campaign issues. As this study will show, these symbols played an important role in the politicization process as Norwegians went to the polls.