Soft Power, Rhetorical Action and Hard Cash - An analysis of the EFTA-EU negotiations on the extended EEA-agreement

Sammanfattning: I believe that it is uncomplicated to present a plausible rational account of the final result of the negotiations. There are also reasons to believe that normative considerations played a role in Norway´s decision to unilaterally increase its contribution to the Central and Eastern European countries. The purpose of this paper however is to show that in order to achieve a deeper understanding of the outcome one should take into account the concepts of soft power and rhetorical action. What I will demonstrate is that Norwegian actors´ identity and the country´s reliance on soft power can in material terms be a disadvantage in international negotiations. Furthermore, I will show that EU actors possibly can be said to have strategically used normative arguments towards a country that because of its identity and its reliance on soft power cannot easily ignore arguments of this character.