SINCE THE ESTABLISHMENT of its present system of government in 1919,
Finland has been one of the more fortunate members of the Western
community of democratic nations. Compared with other European states,
the country was only moderately affected by the political turmoil of the
interwar period; it passed through World War II relatively unscathed;
and, although right on the line that divided Europe into two hostile
blocs after the second half of the 1940s, it survived as an independent
nation with its democratic institutions intact.
This enviable record was achieved against formidable odds. Although
the constitutional basis of their government grew out of
long-established institutions, Finns had never been fully free to govern
themselves until late 1917 when they achieved national independence.
Swedish and Russian rulers had always ultimately determined their
affairs. Finnish society was also marked by deep fissures that became
deeper after the brief civil war (1918), which left scars that needed
several generations to heal. In addition to class and political
divisions, the country also had to contend with regional and linguistic
differences. These problems were eventually surmounted, and by the 1980s
the watchword in Finnish politics was consensus.
A skillfully constructed system of government allowed Finns to manage
their affairs with the participation of all social groups (although
there were some serious lapses in the interwar period). Checks and
balances, built into a system of modified separation of powers, enabled
the government to function democratically and protected the basic rights
of all citizens. The 200-member parliament, the Eduskunta, elected by
popular vote, was sovereign by virtue of its representing the Finnish
people. An elected president wielded supreme executive power and
determined foreign policy. Although not responsible politically to the
Eduskunta, the president could carry out many of his functions only
through a cabinet government, the Council of State, which was dependent
upon the support of the Eduskunta. An independent judiciary, assisted by
two legal officials with broad independent powers--the chancellor of
justice and the parliamentary ombudsman--ensured that government
institutions adhered to the law.
Working within this system during the 1980s were a variety of
political parties, an average of about a dozen, ranging from sect-like
groups to large well-established parties, the counterparts of which were
to be found all over Western Europe. The socialist wing consisted of a
deeply split communist movement and a moderate Finnish Social Democratic
Party that by the late 1980s was a preeminent governing party. The
center was occupied by an agrarian party, the Center Party, which had
been in government almost continuously until 1987; the Swedish People's
Party; and a formerly right-wing protest party, the Finnish Rural Party.
The right was dominated by the National Coalition Party, which was
fairly moderate in its conservatism. In the 1970s and the 1980s, the
mainstream parties, and even a good part of the Communist Party of
Finland, had moved toward the center, and the political spectrum as a
whole was slightly more to the right than it had been in previous
decades.
A constitutional system that was conservative in nature had allowed
these parties to work together, yet within constraints that permitted no
single group to usurp the rights of another. Nevertheless, the variety
of parties had made it very difficult to put together coalitions that
could attain the strict qualified majorities needed to effect
fundamental changes. Only since the second half of the 1960s had it been
possible, though at times difficult, to find a broad enough multiparty
consensus.
Powerful interest groups were also involved in Finnish politics, most
noticeably in the negotiation and the realization of biannual income
policy settlements that, since the late 1960s, had affected most Finnish
wage-earners. Interest groups initially negotiated the terms of a new
wage agreement; then it was, in effect, ratified by coalitions of
parties in government; and finally the Eduskunta passed the social and
economic legislation that underlay it. Some observers complained that
government's role had become overly passive in this process and that the
preeminence of consensus actually meant that Finnish politics offered
the populace no real alternatives. Yet most Finns, remembering earlier
years of industrial strife and poverty, preferred the new means of
managing public affairs.
There was also broad agreement about Finnish foreign policy. The
country was threatened with extinction as an independent nation after
World War II, but presidents Juho Paasikivi and Urho Kekkonen, both
masters of realpolitik, led their countrymen to a new relationship with
the Soviet Union. The core of this relationship was Finland's guarantee
to the Soviet Union that its northeastern border region was militarily
secure. Controversial as the so-called Paasikivi-Kekkonen Line was
initially, by the 1980s the vast majority of Finns approved of the way
Finland dealt with its large neighbor and were well aware, too, of the
trade advantages the special relationship had brought to their country.
Working in tandem with good Finnish-Soviet relations was the policy
of active and peaceful neutrality, the backbone of Finnish foreign
policy. Advocating, as a neutral state, the settlement of disputes
through peaceful, legal means was a role Finns adopted willingly. A high
point of this policy was the part the country played in planning and in
hosting the 1975 Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Another facet of active neutrality was a committed membership in the
United Nations, most notably in the organization's peacekeeping forces.
<>CONSTITUTIONAL
FRAMEWORK
Constitutional Development
Finland's government structure has remained largely unchanged since
it was established in 1919 with the passage of the Constitution Act.
Building on a combination of old institutions from both the Swedish and
the Russian periods, this law, together with three others also of
constitutional status, has given Finland a system that has been
remarkably successful in allowing a once deeply divided nation to govern
itself.
Constitutional Development
Finland, although independent of foreign rule only since 1917, has
traditions of self-government extending back into the Middle Ages.
Because their country belonged to the dual kingdom of Sweden-Finland for
more than 600 years, Finns had long enjoyed the common Nordic right to
manage local affairs by themselves. Beginning in 1362, Finns took part
in the election of the Swedish king, and they thus became involved in
the government of the realm as a whole. This role was increased after
1435, when they began sending representatives to the kingdom's governing
body, the Diet of the Four Estates (Riksdag).
The Swedish Diet Act of 1617 and the Form of Government Act of 1634
formalized the Finnish tradition of estates, whereby leading members of
the country, representatives not only of regions but of social classes
as well, met to decide matters of common concern. Although the acts
restricted local government somewhat, they brought Finns more than ever
into the management of the kingdom's affairs. At regular intervals a
Finn presided over the nobility, the most important of the four estates
of the Diet; consisting also of the estates of the clergy, burghers, and
peasantry, the Diet continued to be Finland's representative governing
body until early in the twentieth century.
Royal power was strengthened by the constitution of 1772, forced on
the Diet by King Gustav III. This constitution, in effect in Finland
until 1919, long after it had been abrogated in Sweden, gave the king
final say about the decisions of the Diet. The king's power was further
augmented by the Act of Union and Security of 1789, which gave him
exclusive initiative in legislative matters.
Ceded by Sweden to Russia in 1809, Finland was not incorporated fully
into the empire by Tsar Alexander I, but retained its own legal system. A small body,
the Senate, was established to administer the country. Its two sections,
finance and justice, later became the basis of independent Finland's
cabinet and supreme courts. The Senate's head, the governor general, the
highest official in Finland, was a Russian appointed by the tsar. An
indication of the country's relative autonomy, however, was that all
other officials of the Grand Duchy of Finland were native Finns.
The tsar, who had the right to determine when the Diet met, dissolved
the assembly in 1809, and it did not meet again until 1863 when recalled
by Alexander II, the Tsar Liberator. Thereafter the Diet met regularly,
and in the late 1860s it ushered in the "Golden Age" of
Finnish legislation, a period of several decades during which the
country's laws were modernized and were brought into harmony with the
legal codes of Western Europe. It was during this period, too, that
political parties appeared, emerging first from the campaign to give the
Finnish language its rightful place in the country, then from the
growing resistance to Russian rule, and finally from the question of how
to contend with the coming of industrialization and labor strife.
The aggressive Russification campaign that began in the 1890s sought
to end the relative autonomy Finland had enjoyed under tsarist rule. A
military defeat in East Asia weakened the Russian empire and gave Finns
a chance for greater freedom. The Diet unanimously dissolved itself in
1906, and a parliament, the Eduskunta, a unicameral body elected by
universal suffrage, was created. Finland became in one step a modern
representative democracy and the first European nation to grant women
the right to vote.
The tsarist regime allowed the assembly few of its rights, however,
and only after the collapse of the Russian Empire and the Bolshevik
Revolution of 1917 were the Finns able to secure their independence. A
civil war and bitter political debates about whether the country should
be a monarchy or a republic preceded the passage of the Constitution Act
of 1919, which established the present system of government in Finland.
Finland - The Constitution
Finland's Constitution is not a single law, but rather a collection
of four laws that have constitutional status. The most important is the
Constitution Act of 1919, which lays out the functions and relationships
of the most important government entities, lists the basic rights of
Finnish citizens and the legal institutions charged with their
protection, and makes provisions for managing state finances and for
organizing the defense forces and public offices. The second of the
basic laws is the Parliament Act of 1928, a slightly modernized version
of the Parliament Act of 1906, which established the country's
democratically elected parliament, the Eduskunta, and spelled out its
procedures. Two other basic laws date from 1922 and involve supervision
of the cabinet or government: the Responsibility of Ministers Act, which
details the legal responsibilities of the members of the cabinet and the
chancellor of justice; and the High Court of Impeachment Act, which
explains how they are to be made accountable for infractions of the law.
Two acts dealing with the self-determination of the Aland Islands
also have constitutional status. The Autonomy Act of 1951 protects the Swedish character of the
archipelago, and a law of 1975 restricts the purchase and ownership of
land on the islands.
The Constitution Act of 1919, building on existing Finnish
institutions, established a parliamentary system of government based on
a division of powers among the legislative, the executive, and the
judicial branches of government. But the separation of powers is not
complete, and the branches' powers and functions are overlapping and
interlocking. Sovereign power rests with the Finnish people, who govern
themselves through the Eduskunta. Sharing legislative power with the
parliament, however, is a president, who also wields supreme executive
power. He exercises this power through the Council of State, a cabinet
of ministers. In accordance with parliamentary norms, this cabinet must
resign if it loses the support of the Eduskunta. The judiciary is
independent, yet it is bound by the laws passed by the Eduskunta, which,
in turn, follows constitutional norms in drafting them. Like other
Nordic countries, Finland has no constitutional court. The Eduskunta,
acting through its Constitutional Committee, serves as the ultimate
arbiter of the constitutionality of a law or legislative proposal.
Composed of seventeen members, chosen to represent the party composition
of the full chamber, the committee seeks expert opinion and lets itself
be bound by legal precedents.
The Constitution may be amended if proposals to this end meet
qualified or set majority requirements. The requirements are such that
as few as one sixth of the Eduskunta's members can prevent the passage
of amendments. The large number of Finnish political parties makes
attaining qualified majorities nearly impossible, unless an amendment
has widespread support. This protects the rights of minorities.
The individual rights of Finnish citizens are delineated in Section
II of the Constitution Act, Article 5 through Article 16, and, with a
single addition, there have remained unchanged since their adoption in
1919. The additional amendment, enacted in 1972, promises all Finns the
opportunity for gainful employment, to be provided by the state if
necessary. The list of rights is, of necessity, rather general. How they
are exercised, protected, and limited is set out in ordinary laws. The
state reserves for itself the right to limit them "in time of war
or rebellion."
First and foremost, all citizens are equal under the law, with a
constitutional guarantee of their rights to life, honor, personal
freedom, and property. The reference to honor provides for protection
against false and slanderous charges and reflects the importance of
reputation in Finnish tradition. The protection of property and the
requirement for full compensation if it is expropriated for public needs
indicate the conservative nature of the Finnish Constitution. The right
of freedom of movement encompasses residence, protection from
deportation, and guaranteed readmittance into Finland. Only in special
cases, such as convictions for criminal activity, are these freedoms
abridged. Complete freedom of religious worship and association is
guaranteed, as is freedom from religion.
Finnish citizens are guaranteed free speech and the right of
assembly, as well as the right to publish uncensored texts or pictures.
The inviolability of the home is promised, and a domicile can be
searched only according to conditions set by law. Privacy of
communications by mail, telegraph, or telephone is likewise provided
for. A Finn may be tried only in a court having prescribed jurisdiction
over him. The safeguarding of the cultural affinities of the country's
citizens is regarded as a fundamental right, and, as a consequence, the
two languages spoken by native-born Finns, Finnish and Swedish, both
enjoy the status of official language. The act stipulates that a Finn
may use either of these two languages in a court of law and may obtain
in that language all pertinent legal or official documents. Finally, in
accordance with its nature as a republic, Finland grants no noble or
hereditary titles.
Finland - GOVERNMENTAL INSTITUTIONS
The Eduskunta is the country's highest governing body by virtue of
its representing the people, who possess sovereign power. Its main power
is legislative, a power it shares with the country's president. It also
has extensive financial powers, and its approval is required for the
government's annual budget and for any loans the government wants to
contract. Although the president is dominant in the area of foreign
policy, treaties must be ratified by the Eduskunta, and only with its
consent can the country go to war or make peace. This chamber also has
supervisory powers, and it is charged with seeing that the country is
governed in accordance with the laws it has passed. To enforce its will,
the Eduskunta has the power to hold the government to account, and to
call for the impeachment of the president.
The Eduskunta is closely tied to the president and to the Council of
State. Neither the president nor the cabinet is able to carry out many
executive functions without the support of the Eduskunta, and the
cabinet must resign if it is shown that it has lost the chamber's
confidence. Strong links between the Eduskunta and the Council of State
result, too, from the circumstance that most cabinet ministers are
members of parliament. On the other hand, the Eduskunta is subordinate
to the president in that he may dissolve it and call for new elections.
Despite its legislative powers, it actually initiates little
legislation, limiting itself mainly to examining the government bills
submitted to it by the president and the council. In addition, all
legislation passed by the Eduskunta must bear the president's signature
and that of a responsible minister in order to go into effect. The
Eduskunta need not approve the legislative proposals submitted to it,
however, and can alter or reject them.
As stipulated by the Parliament Act of 1928, the Eduskunta's 200
members are elected by universal suffrage for four-year terms. All
citizens twenty years of age and older, who are able to vote, and who
are not professional military personnel or holders of certain high
offices, have the right to serve in the Eduskunta. A wide variety of the
country's population has served in this body, and its membership has
changed often. Sometimes as many as one-third of the representatives
have been first-term members, as occurred in the 1987 national
elections.
Finnish election laws emphasize individual candidates, which
sometimes has meant the election of celebrities to the body. Most
members, however, have begun their political careers at the local level.
In the late 1980s, about one-third of the representatives were career
politicians. The professions were overly represented at the expense of
blue-collar workers; about 40 percent of the members, compared with only
3 percent of the population as a whole, had university degrees. By the
1980s, farmers and businessmen were no longer so prevalent as they once
had been, while there were more journalists and managers. The number of
female representatives had also increased, and by the 1980s they made up
one-third of the chamber. In the 1987 election, women won 63 of the 200
seats.
Article 11 of the 1928 Parliament Act states that members are to vote
as their consciences dictate. A delegate is not legally bound to vote as
he or she promised, in a campaign for example. In the late 1980s,
however, party discipline was strict, and delegates usually voted as
directed by their party.
The four-year term, or legislative period, of the Eduskunta is
divided into annual sessions beginning in early February, with vacation
breaks in the summer and at Christmas. The first business of a yearly
session is the election of a speaker, two deputy speakers, and committee
chairmen. Those elected make up the speaker's council, which is
representative of the party composition of the Eduskunta and arranges
its work schedule. The speaker, by tradition of a different party from
the prime minister, presides over the chamber, but the speaker neither
debates nor votes.
Also chosen in the first days of a new session are those, from either
within or outside the parliament, who supervise the pension institute
and television and radio broadcasting; and five auditors who monitor
compliance with the government's budget and oversee the Bank of Finland
(BOF). Among the most important posts to be filled by the Eduskunta for
its four-year term are those of the parliamentary ombudsman and the six
members of the Eduskunta who make up half of the High Court of
Impeachment.
Parliament approves legislation in plenary sittings, but it is in the
committees that government bills are closely examined. In the late
1980s, there were thirteen committees in all: five permanent
committees--constitutional, legal affairs, foreign affairs, finance, and
bank--and eight regular ad hoc committees-- economy, law and economy,
cultural affairs, agriculture and forestry, social affairs,
transportation, defense, and second legal affairs. Committee membership
reflects the political composition of the Eduskunta. Members usually
serve for the whole legislative period, and they commonly have seats on
several committees, often of their own choosing. Members who have served
on a given committee for a number of terms often develop considerable
expertise in its area of responsibility.
Legislative proposals also pass through the forty-five-member Grand
Committee. Only the budget, which is not a legislative proposal in
Finland, escapes its review. The committee, adopted as a compromise in
1906 between those who advocated a bicameral legislature and those who
preferred the unicameral body finally established, was conceived as a
safeguard against the measures of a perhaps too radical parliament. It
therefore examines proposals for their legal soundness and propriety.
Yet, according to the British scholar David Arter, the Grand Committee
has only occasionally altered the proposals sent to it, and, as a
consequence, it has lost prestige within the Eduskunta. Its members are
generally newly elected representatives.
The Eduskunta has an elaborate procedure for handling government
bills sent to it by the president, after discussion and approval in the
Council of State. This procedure was adopted with the idea of preventing
the enactment of radical measures, and it is an indication of the
Eduskunta's essentially conservative nature. Proposals are usually first
discussed in a plenary session, then directed by the speaker to an
appropriate committee, where they are carefully scrutinized in closed
hearings. After committee review and report, proposals are returned to
the plenary session for the first reading, where they are discussed but
no vote is taken. The next step is the Grand Committee review. Working
from the Grand Committee report, the second reading in plenary session
is a detailed examination of the proposal. If the Grand Committee report
is not accepted in its entirety, the proposal must be returned to the
Grand Committee for further discussion. Once the proposal is back again
at the plenary session, for the so-called continued second reading, the
Eduskunta votes on the changes recommended by the Grand Committee. There
is no discussion in the final and third reading; the proposal is simply
approved or rejected. Votes may be taken at least three days after the
second reading or the continued second reading. Once approved by the
Eduskunta, bills require the signature of the president within three
months to go into effect. This requirement gives the president the power
of suspensive veto. This veto, rarely used, can be overridden if the
Eduskunta approves the bill with a simple majority following new
national elections.
Only the government's budget proposal is exempted from the above
parliamentary procedure, because the budget is not considered a
legislative proposal in Finland. Instead, the budget proposal is handled
in a single reading, after a close review by the largest and busiest
parliamentary committee, the twenty-one member Finance Committee.
Government bills connected with the budget and involving taxation,
however, must pass through the three plenary session readings and the
Grand Committee review. This reinforces the Eduskunta's budgetary
control.
The Eduskunta's elaborate legislative procedure can be traversed in a
few days if there is broad agreement about the content of a bill.
Qualified majority requirements for much legislation, most commonly that
touching on financial matters and property rights, enable a small number
of representatives to stop ratification in a plenary session and to
oblige the government to ascertain a bill's probable parliamentary
support before submitting it to the Eduskunta. Qualified majority
requirements for legislation involving taxation for a period of more
than one year require the approval of two-thirds of the body.
Sixty-seven members can hold such legislation over until after a new
election and can thus effectively brake government programs. Because
there is no time limit on a member's right to speak, filibusters can
also slow the progress of a bill through the Eduskunta, although this
tactic has seldom been employed. Government care in the crafting of
bills is reflected in the unimpeded passage through parliament of most
of them.
Legislation altering the Constitution is subjected to more rigorous
requirements. Constitutional changes may be approved by a simple
majority, but before they go into effect, they must be approved again by
a two-thirds majority in a newly elected Eduskunta. If the changes are
to go into effect within the lifetime of a single Eduskunta, the
legislation implementing them must be declared "urgent" by
five-sixths of the body and, in a subsequent vote, approved by a
two-thirds majority. This requirement means that a vote of one-sixth
against a proposed economic measure regarded as being of a
constitutional nature, such as some incomes policy legislation, can
prevent its enactment during a single parliamentary term. These same
majorities are required for an unusual feature of Finnish parliamentary
procedure that permits the passage of laws that are temporary
suspensions of, or exceptions to, the Constitution, but that leave it
intact. Since 1919 about 800 of these exceptional laws have been passed,
most involving only trivial deviations from the Constitution.
Members of the Eduskunta may initiate legislation by submitting their
own private members' bills and financial motions relating to the budget.
Several thousand of these are submitted each year, but 95 percent are
not even considered, and only a handful are accepted. Members also may
submit proposals connected to government bills, or may petition for
certain actions to be taken. The main point of these procedures is often
a delegate's desire to win the approval of his constituents by bringing
up an issue in the Eduskunta.
The Eduskunta has other means of exerting pressure on the government,
in addition to refusing to approve its legislative proposals. Its
members may address questions to ministers either orally or in writing,
and in either case a quick response is required. Potentially much more
serious is an interpellation, possible if twenty members desire it, in
which case the government can fall if it fails to survive a vote of
confidence. Few governments fall in this way, however, as they are
allowed to remain in power as long as a lack of support is not shown.
Interpellations have been used principally as a means of drawing
attention to a particular question, and press coverage usually is
intense.
An important instrument of Finnish parliamentary control is the right
and duty of the Constitutional Committee to examine government bills
with regard to their constitutionality. Finland has no constitutional
court, and suggestions for its establishment have foundered because the
Eduskunta has refused to cede this important review power to a court
that would be outside parliamentary control. Although the committee's
seventeen members come from parties with seats in the Eduskunta, the
committee has strived for impartiality, has sought the opinions of legal
specialists, and has let itself be bound by precedents. As evidence that
it takes its responsibilities seriously, committee members representing
both the far left and the far right have agreed with 80 percent of its
judgements over a long period of time.
The Eduskunta also exercises control of the executive through the
Responsibility of Ministers Act, which can be used against the
government or an individual minister if a parliamentary committee, the
parliamentary ombudsman, or five members of the Eduskunta so decide. The
Eduskunta's ability to control the government is also apparent in its
duty to comment on the annual report of the government's actions
submitted in May, and the Foreign Affairs Committee's review of the
frequent Ministry of Foreign Affairs reports detailing the government's
conduct in the field of foreign relations.
Finland - President
Supreme executive power is held by the president, assisted by the
Council of State. The president also has legislative power exercised in
conjunction with the Eduskunta. As of 1988, the president is to be
elected for a six-year term either directly by the Finnish people, or if
an absolute majority is not reached, by a college of 301 electors
selected in the same election. Previously the president was elected
indirectly by the college of electors.
As of 1988, there was no limit on the number of terms a president
might serve, but in the late 1980s legislation was being discussed that
would permit no one to serve more than two consecutive terms. The
president's only formal qualification is that he or she be a native-born
citizen. Once elected, the president must renounce all other offices,
and, with the aim of being a nonpartisan head of state, must cease being
a member of any political party. His election, separate from that for
the Eduskunta, gives him a distinct mandate that theoretically elevates
him above routine politics. Another advantage of his long term in office
is that it brings to Finnish political life a continuity that it has
often lacked.
The president is not politically responsible to anyone. He can be
removed from office only if the Eduskunta decides by a three-quarters
majority that he is guilty of treason. He would then be tried by the
Supreme Court. The risks that such freedom from political
responsibility entails are lessened because most of his executive
decisions can be carried out only by means of the Council of State, and
his legislative powers are realized through the Eduskunta.
The president's power to dissolve parliament and to call for new
elections gives him, in theory, considerable influence over parliament,
but ultimately he must work with an Eduskunta elected by the people. If
he cannot convince a majority of the voters or the members of the
Eduskunta to support his policies, he cannot act. An indication of the
importance of this central element in Finnish parliamentary practice is
that the Eduskunta has been dissolved only once--in 1924--against its
will. The other half dozen dissolutions were caused by the inability of
the government to agree on a common course of action.
It is the president who decides what legislative proposals are sent
to the Eduskunta, although in practice government bills are drafted by
the Council of State and are sent to parliament after presidential
approval. Failure to sign them within three months of their passage
amounts to a suspensive veto on the part of the president, a veto which
can be overridden by a simple majority of the Eduskunta after new
parliamentary elections. Both the presidential veto and the Eduskunta
override have been rare occurrences.
Another important presidential power involves the formation of new
governments. The president has the formal power to nominate ministers,
but his choices are bound by what the parties seated in the Eduskunta
will accept. His choices must correspond to the chamber's political
composition. Within these limits, though, the president's force of
character and political will influence the formation of a government.
The president also has the right to dismiss ministers, either individual
ministers, or, if he wishes, the entire cabinet. The president may issue
decrees about details of public administration, as long as these
measures are not contrary to laws passed by the Eduskunta. The right to
change laws is a parliamentary prerogative, although an emergency law
may grant the president this power in times of crisis, as was done in
World War II.
The president nominates all senior civil servants, high judges,
provincial governors, diplomats, professors at the University of
Helsinki, high churchmen, and the chancellor of justice. In making these
appointments, however, the president rarely departs from the names
suggested to him by appropriate authorities. As commander in chief of
the armed forces, a position he may delegate during wartime, as was done
in World War II, the president also nominates military officers.
The president has the power to grant pardons and general amnesties,
but the latter require the approval of the Eduskunta. Individual
immunity may also be granted by the president, in accordance with
certain provisions of the law. Moreover, the granting and the revocation
of citizenship require the signature of the head of state.
The Constitution Act gives the president the responsibility for
directing foreign affairs, and his authority in this area has grown
markedly since World War II. The occasion for the decisive shift of
presidential activity from principally domestic concerns to foreign
relations was the threat a changing world order posed for Finland's
survival; the crucial roles, played by President Paasikivi in
formulating a new foreign policy and by President Kekkonen in
consolidating it, restructured the office they held. Their success
increased the prestige and the strength of the presidency beyond the
formal powers already prescribed by the Constitution and enhanced the
president's role as head of state.
By the late 1980s, however, a long period of stability both at home
and abroad made the security and the direction provided by a strong and
authoritative president seem less essential for the country's
well-being, and there was serious discussion about limiting his power of
intervention in the political process. Legislation was being prepared
that would circumscribe his right to dissolve the Eduskunta and his role
in the formation of governments; in the latter case, he would be
required to take greater cognizance of the wishes of leading
politicians. Other reforms likely to be realized in the next decade
included curtailing the president's right to dismiss ministers,
arranging for the direct election of the president, and limiting the
president to two consecutive terms in office. Mauno Koivisto, first
elected president in 1982 and reelected in 1988, supported reducing the
traditional powers of the presidency. Observers held that these reforms
would augment the governing roles of the prime minister, the cabinet,
and the legislature and that they would mean that Finnish political
practices came to resemble more closely those of other West European
parliamentary democracies.
Finland - Council of State
The Council of State shares executive power with the president, and
it is responsible for the management of the governmental machinery. The
Council of State prepares the government bills presented to the
Eduskunta and authors most legislation. In the late 1980s, it consisted
of the prime minister, the chancellor of justice, and up to seventeen
ministers who directed twelve ministries: foreign affairs, justice,
interior, defense, finance, education, agriculture and forestry,
communications, trade and industry, social affairs and health, labor,
and environment. Some of the ministries have second or deputy ministers,
and occasionally a minister holds two portfolios. There have been no
ministers without portfolio since the early 1950s. Ministers must be
"native-born Finnish citizens known for their honesty and
ability." The minister of justice and one other minister must be
lawyers, but otherwise there are no formal qualifications for a cabinet
post. Ministers generally enter the cabinet from the Eduskunta, but it
has not been uncommon for them to be drawn from the outside, especially
to serve in caretaker governments composed largely of leading private
citizens and civil servants. Even prime ministers have on occasion come
from outside parliament, as did Mauno Koivisto in 1979. Ministers from
the Eduskunta may continue to be members of that body, but they may not
serve on any committee.
The prime minister heads the Council of State, sets its agenda,
nominates some members of the council's committees, settles tie votes,
and, most important, dissolves it when he sees fit or if it can no
longer govern. The prime minister also represents the president when he
is out of the country. If the president can no longer carry out his
duties, the prime minister replaces him until a new presidential
election can be held. Other than these rights and duties, a prime
minister in the 1980s had few formal powers and had only a very small
staff to assist him in his work. His main responsibility was holding
together cabinets composed of a number of political parties that
frequently had opposing views on central issues. He could manage this
through personal prestige or by force of character, through backstairs
wrangling, or, ultimately, by threatening to dissolve the cabinet if it
did not adhere to the government's program.
A key member of the Council of State, although he is not a minister,
is the chancellor of justice. Appointed for life by the president, he is
obliged to attend all meetings of the council and to review its
proceedings for legality. He has no vote, but his decisions about the
legality of council proposals and decisions are regarded as binding. The
chancellor of justice also reviews the president's actions, and he
reports infractions to the Council of State, or, if necessary, to the
Eduskunta. He is also empowered to initiate proceedings according to the
Responsibility of Ministers Act. One of the formal qualifications for
his position is that he be well versed in the law; and within the
country's legal system he is the highest prosecutor.
The Council of State must enjoy the confidence of the Eduskunta in
order to govern. The party composition of a new cabinet has to be
acceptable to the Eduskunta, and it must correspond, to some degree, to
the relative political strength of the parties within the chamber.
Formation of a cabinet has often been difficult because, in addition to
the large number of parties that participate in them, Finnish elections
usually give no clear indication of how political realities should be
reflected by a governing coalition. Even the selection of individual
ministers can be troublesome, for the parties themselves have much to
say about who serves as minister, and even a prime minister may have to
accept members of his own party not of his choosing. If a suitable
constellation of parties cannot be formed to yield an effective majority
government, a minority government, or even a caretaker government, may
be put together if the Eduskunta agrees.
The Council of State is held legally responsible for the acts of its
ministers, in accordance with the Responsibility of Ministers Act of
1922. In addition to making ministers accountable for their official
actions, this law--which has constitutional status--is also a vital, if
indirect, means of controlling the president's actions. Because many of
his decisions can be carried out only through the Council of State,
ministers who approve an illegal presidential action are liable under
the terms of this law. Ministers wishing to avoid the law's sanctions
must refuse to be party to a presidential decision that they view as
illegal. If ministerial consent is lacking, the president cannot act. In
such a case, the president must either abide by the decision of the
council, or he may dismiss it and attempt to form a new one amenable to
his wishes. If this is not possible, he may dissolve the Eduskunta and
call for new elections with the hope of having the voters endorse his
decisions by returning an Eduskunta from which a compliant government
can be formed. If the council refuses to approve a lawful presidential
decision, it is obliged to resign. Ministers can always resign
individually, but the resignation of the prime minister means the end of
a government.
A principal task of the Council of State is the preparation of
legislative proposals, or government bills, that the president presents
to the Eduskunta for ratification. Most of this work is done in an
appropriate ministry, where, in addition to ministry personnel and civil
servants, permanent and ad hoc commissions of experts and spokesmen for
special interests can be consulted.
In the 1980s, the Council of State had three committees to handle
important questions: the ministerial committees for finance, economic
policy, and foreign affairs. The Finance Committee, meeting on
Wednesdays, consisted of the prime minister, finance minister, and
several other ministers. It prepared the government's budget and
responded to the financial motions presented by individual members of
the Eduskunta. The Economic Policy Committee met twice a week to discuss
issues touching the country's economic life as a whole, broader
questions about the government's budget, and other financial concerns
suggested by the prime minister. The Foreign Affairs Committee, least
important of the three, met when needed to discuss issues concerning
foreign policy.
Plenary meetings of the Council of State, for which a quorum of five
was required, had three forms. The so-called Evening School meeting, on
Wednesday evenings, was a closed, informal session where ministers, top
civil servants, politicians, and leading figures from outside government
freely discussed decisions to be taken. It was thus a forum where the
country's leaders met and exchanged opinions on important issues.
Instituted in the late 1930s as a means of speeding the council's work,
the Evening School had no formal decision-making power. Votes were taken
at the Thursday meeting. The Council of State worked as a collegial
body, and unanimous votes were not required. In case of a tie vote, the
vote of the prime minister was decisive. Approved measures were
presented to the president for signing at the Friday Presidential
Meeting.
In accordance with its executive powers, the Council of State
implemented its decisions and directed the ministries and the lower
levels of the state administrative apparatus. This was done through
presidential decrees and its own ordinances, neither of which could
conflict with legislation passed by the Eduskunta. Ministers, aided by
political secretaries drawn from their own parties, headed the country's
twelve ministries. The ministries, which both formulated and
administered policy, oversaw about eighty central boards that were
wholly occupied with implementing policy. The central board system,
inherited from the time of Swedish rule, had grown considerably,
expanding by about onethird between 1966 and 1975 because of the
increase in state social services. The boards, such as the National
Board of General Education and the State Publishing Office, did much of
the state's work. By tradition somewhat autonomous, they decided how
legislation and ministerial decisions were to be carried out.
Finland - Legal System
The legal system originated during the period of Swedish rule, and
portions of the Swedish General Code of 1734 were extant in Finnish law
even in the late 1980s. The country's first court of appeals was
established at Turku in 1634. The modern division of the Finnish courts
into two main branches--general courts, dealing with civil suits and
criminal cases, and administrative courts, regulating the actions of the
country's bureaucracy--also dates from this time. This division was
formalized in 1918 when two sections of the Senate, the body that had
governed Finland during the period of Russian rule, became the newly
independent country's two highest courts. The Senate Department of
Justice became the Supreme Court, and part of the Senate Finance
Department was the basis of the Supreme Administrative Court. The two
court systems are entirely separate, and they have no jurisdiction over
one another. The establishment of the two courts was confirmed by the
Constitution Act of 1919. Overseeing the system of justice are the
chancellor of justice--the country's highest guardian of the law and its
chief prosecutor--and the parliamentary ombudsman. Although these two
officials have largely parallel functions and each is required to submit
an annual report of his activities to parliament, the former is
appointed for life by the president and is a member of the Council of
State, whereas the latter is chosen for a four-year term by the
Eduskunta. Both officials receive complaints from citizens about the
conduct of civil servants, and on their own may investigate all public
officials and may order prosecutors to proceed against them. The
chancellor of justice supervises public prosecutors, and he also has the
unrestricted right to investigate private persons. Both officials may
call on either of the high courts for assistance.
The High Court of Impeachment may be convened for cases dealing with
illegal official acts by cabinet ministers, judges of the two supreme
courts, or the chancellor of justice. Members of this court, used only
three times since its formation in 1922, are the chief judges of the two
supreme courts and the six courts of appeal, a professor of law from the
University of Helsinki, and six representatives from the Eduskunta.
As in the other countries of Nordic Europe, there is no
constitutional court. Issues dealt with by a court of this kind
elsewhere are handled by the Eduskunta's Constitutional Committee.
According to Article 5 of the Constitution Act, all Finns are equal
before the law, and Article 13 of the same act stipulates that they may
be tried only in a court of their own jurisdiction. No temporary courts
are permitted. Legislation passed in 1973 provides for free legal
assistance to those in need as well as for free court proceedings in a
number of courts. Trials in lower courts are usually open to the public.
Records of trials in higher courts are made public.
Judges are appointed for life, with retirement set at age seventy,
and they may be removed only for serious cause. With the exception of
some lay judges in circuit courts and in some town courts, all judges
hold legal degrees from one of the country's three law schools. The
judiciary in the late 1980s was a rather closed profession, and only
judges for administrative courts were occasionally selected from outside
its ranks.
Defendants have no obligation to employ an attorney for their defense
in a Finnish court, and may represent themselves or be represented by
another layman rather than by a lawyer. Nevertheless, in most cases
heard in general courts and in many argued in administrative courts,
trained legal specialists are employed.
The general court system handles criminal cases and civil suits and
has three levels: lower courts, courts of appeal, and the Supreme Court.
There are two kinds of lower courts: town courts, numbering 30 in the
entire country; and circuit courts, totaling 147 in 71 judicial
districts. Town courts consist of three judges, all trained
professionals except in some small towns. One of these judges is the
chief judge chosen by the Supreme Court; the others are selected by
local authorities. Decisions are made on a collegial basis. Circuit
courts consist of a judge, chosen by the Supreme Court, and five to
seven lay judges, i.e., persons without legal training, chosen by local
authorities for a term of four years. Decisions on cases in courts of
this type are made by the professional judge, unless he is overruled by
the unanimous vote of the lay members of the court. Larger cities also
have housing courts that deal with rent and accommodations.
Appeals from lower courts are addressed to the six courts of appeal
located at Helsinki, Turku, Vaasa, Kouvola, Kuopio, and Rovaniemi. Most
cases at these courts are heard by professional three-judge panels; more
important cases are tried before a plenary session of judges if the
chief judge so decides. In cases involving senior government officials,
a court of appeals may serve as the court of first instance. Judges of
the courts of appeal are appointed by the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court, located in Helsinki, consists of a chief justice,
or a president, and twenty-one judges usually working in five-judge
panels. It hears cases involving appeals of decisions of appellate
courts where serious errors are alleged to have occurred, or where
important precedents might be involved. A sentence from a court of
appeals may go into effect immediately, despite an appeal to the Supreme
Court, but it may be postponed while the case is pending if the Supreme
Court so decides. The chief justice of the Supreme Court is appointed by
the nation's president, and the other judges of that court are appointed
by the president on the recommendation of the Supreme Court.
The administrative courts system consists of twelve county courts,
one in each of the country's twelve provinces, and the Supreme
Administrative Court, located in Helsinki. All judges in administrative
courts are professionals, appointed in the same manner as judges who sit
in general courts. Judges work in threejudge panels at the provincial
level and in five-judge panels in the Supreme Administrative Court. When
appropriate, the latter meets in plenary sessions to hear especially
important cases.
Administrative courts deal with appeals against administrative
decisions by government agencies, although in some cases appeals are
directed to higher administrative levels within the government. About 80
percent of the cases of the county courts involve appeals of government
tax decisions; the remainder deal with questions relating to
construction, welfare, planning, and local government. The Supreme
Administrative Court handles appeals of county court and central
government board decisions that affect, or are affected by,
administrative law. About 50 percent of the cases heard in the Supreme
Administrative Court involve questions about taxes.
Finland also has special courts to handle civil cases; some of these
courts render judgments from which there is no appeal. The four land
courts settle disputes about the division of land, and their decisions
may be appealed to the Supreme Court. Appeals from the insurance court,
which handles social insurance cases, also may be appealed to the
Supreme Court. Cases that involve water use are dealt with in the three
water courts, and may be appealed first to the water court of appeals
and from there to the Supreme Court. If the case involves water permits,
appeals go to the Supreme Administrative Court. Decisions of the labor
court and the marketing court may not be appealed. The former treats
disputes about collective bargaining agreements in either the public or
the private sector. Its president and vice president are lawyers; its
remaining members come from groups representing labor and management.
The marketing court regulates disagreements about consumer protection
and unfair competition.
Finland - Civil Service
Article 84 of the Constitution Act stipulates that only Finnish
citizens may be appointed to the civil service, although exceptions may
be made for some technical and teaching positions. Article 85 states
that educational requirements for the civil service will be set by law
or statute, and that only on special grounds may the Council of State
make an exception to the set requirements. Exceptions of this type
seldom occur. No exceptions may be made for appointment to a judicial
post. According to Article 86, successful applicants for civil service
posts will be promoted on the basis of "skill, ability and proved
civic virtue." State employees also often must have an appropriate
mastery of the country's two official languages.
There is no general recruitment in Finland for civil service posts,
nor does the country have a preferred school for training civil
servants. The recruitment is done on an individual basis for a vacant or
a newly created post.
Civil servants enjoy a fairly secure tenure in their posts, but they
may be dismissed for poor performance or for disreputable behavior on or
off the job. About 90 percent of civil servants were unionized in the
late 1980s. Since the passage of the Act on Civil Service Collective
Agreements in 1970, civil servants have had the right to strike. If a
strike of a category of civil servants threatens society's welfare, the
dispute may be reviewed, but not settled in a binding way, by a special
board. If required, the Eduskunta may settle the disagreement through
legislation.
By the early 1980s, there were about 125,000 civil servants employed
in the national government, which made it the country's largest
employer. More than twice this number worked for local government and
for related institutions. Government employment grew rapidly during the
1960s and the 1970s, and was accompanied by a marked increase in the
politicization of the civil service, especially at higher levels. Even
at lower levels, posts were often filled on the basis of party
affiliation. Sometimes appointments were arranged by "package
deals," through which the parties secured for their members a
suitable portion of available posts. Care was taken, however, that
appointees met the stated requirements for state posts, and political
parties even arranged for training so that their candidates would be
qualified applicants for given posts.
Politicization of public jobs resulted partly from the desire that
the civil service, traditionally conservative, reflect the new political
dominance of the center-left governments formed after 1966. President
Kekkonen also used the spoils system to cement the broad coalition
governments he introduced in the second half of the 1960s. A study from
the early 1980s found that by 1980 the number of senior civil service
posts occupied by nominees of the Center Party (Keskustapuolue--Kesk)
and the Finnish Social Democratic Party (Suomen Sosialidemokraattinen
Puolue--SDP) had doubled for the former and tripled for the latter in
just fifteen years, mostly at the expense of officials linked to the
National Coalition Party (Kansallinen Kokoomuspuolue--KOK).
Widespread criticism of the politicization of the civil service and
complaints that the practice was harmful to efficiency and to democratic
values led to recommendations for stricter control of hiring and even
for the prohibition of all political appointments. By the late 1980s, no
such ban had been instituted, but in general a decline in partisan
nomination for civil service posts seemed to have occurred since the
election of President Koivisto in 1982. Appointments in provincial
governments, however, continued to be booty for politicians. Despite
these partisan practices, the civil service had a reputation for
competence, and it enjoyed the support of most Finns.
Finland - Provincial Administration
Finland's tradition of local self-government, which predates the
arrival of Christianity in the country, was placed on a more modern
footing in the nineteenth century when local functions were taken from
the church, and communities became responsible for education and health
matters. Universal suffrage was introduced in local government in 1917,
and the Constitution Act of 1919 states in Article 51 that "the
administration of the municipalities shall be based on the principle of
self-government by the citizens, as provided in specific laws." How
local selfgovernment is practiced in the country's urban and rural
municipalities (numbering 94 and 367, respectively, in 1988) is
specified by the Local Government Act of 1976.
The governing body in a municipality is the municipal council, the
members of which, ranging in number from seventeen to eighty-five, are
elected by universal suffrage for four-year terms. Elections are held in
October, and the proportional representation list system is used. Any
Finnish citizen legally resident in the municipality and at least
eighteen years old by the year in which the election is held can vote.
Since 1976, citizens of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland who have
been legal residents of Finland for at least two years may also vote.
Voter turnout has generally been somewhat lower than in national
elections. In the 1988 local elections, for example, only 70 percent of
those eligible--about five to ten percent less than in national
elections--voted.
Finnish citizens have an obligation to serve in elective local
government posts, which has meant that most elected officials are
laymen. The 1976 law provides for financial compensation and pension
rights for those citizens elected to local positions.
Candidates traditionally have campaigned for office through national
party organizations, and local election results are regarded as an
indication of the national parties' popularity. Local electoral results
mirror those of national elections with regard to party dominance in
particular regions. Members of the Eduskunta often have begun their
careers on the local level, and they have been allowed to hold both
local and national elective offices at the same time. Continued
participation in politics at the grass roots level has given Helsinki
politicians close contact with their constituents.
The responsibilities of municipal government include managing the
budget and financial affairs, approving plans submitted to it,
delegating authority to committees, and making decisions on important
issues. They also direct school, health, and social welfare systems; see
to the construction and maintenance of local roads; provide for the
management of waste and water; and supply energy. Many decisions
relating to financial or budgetary questions require two-thirds
majorities in council votes. This means that there is much discussion
behind the scenes before votes are taken and that there exists the same
consensus politics at this level as is practiced on the national level.
Because municipal governments have no legislative or judicial powers,
decisions are carried out by means of ordinances.
Much of the routine work of governing is managed by the municipal
board, which consists of at least seven people, one of whom is the
chairman. Board members, who serve for two-year terms, come from the
council, and they are chosen to reflect its party composition. The board
prepares matters to be discussed by the council, and, if measures are
approved, implements them. Aiding the board are a number of committees,
some obligatory.
A staff of trained municipal employees assists the council, the
board, and the committees. To meet their overall responsibilities,
municipal governments employed a large number of persons, about 17
percent of the country's total work force in the 1980s. For duties too
broad in scope for a single municipality, the managing of a large
hospital for example, communities join together to form confederations
of minicipalities or joint authorities. By the 1980s, there were about
400 of these bodies. Local authorities are also obliged by the Local
Government Act of 1976 to formulate, publish, and frequently revise a
five-year plan covering administration, financial affairs, economic
growth, and land use. Expert assistance from national government bodies,
such as the Ministry of Interior, helps local bodies to fulfill this
obligation.
The responsibilities of local government have grown in recent
decades, and in the 1980s about two-thirds of public sector spending was
in the hands of local authorities. Local involvement in planning also
meant that 10 percent of the investment in the nation's economy came
from municipal coffers. In order to meet their responsibilities, local
governments have the right to tax, including the right to establish
local tax rates, a power needed for their independence, but one that
supplies them with only 40 percent of the monies they expend. The
remainder is furnished by the national government (a little over 20
percent) or is derived from various fees and charges.
Finnish local self-government is subject to a variety of controls.
The national government decides the municipalities' duties and areas of
responsibility, and once they are established, only a law passed by the
Eduskunta may alter them. The municipalities are obliged to submit many
of their decisions to a regional body or to a national government agency
for approval. This control, however, is often rather loose, and only
when a local government has broken a law does the provincial or the
national government intervene. Except for minor changes, proposals to
higher levels of government are not amended by them, but rather are
returned to local authorities, who themselves modify measures or
decisions to meet prescribed standards.
Meetings of municipal councils are generally open to the public, and
though board and committee meetings are closed, records of their
proceedings are subsequently published. Local governments or communes
are also obliged to publicize their activities. Individuals who believe
they have been wronged by a municipal policy may appeal to the courts or
to officials at the provincial or national level.
Finland - Electoral System
Universal suffrage for national elections was introduced to Finland
in 1906, and it was extended to local elections in 1917. With the
exception of some minor reforms, the original proportional
representation system remains unchanged. This system enjoys full public
support, for although it favors larger parties slightly, proportional
representation allows political participation of small, and even
marginal, groups as well.
All Finns over the age of eighteen by the year of an election are
eligible to vote. Voting is not compulsory, and, in the 1980s,
participation averaged around 80 percent, slightly below the average
rate of the Nordic countries.
In the 1980s, the country was divided for national elections into
fifteen electoral constituencies, fourteen of which sent between seven
and twenty-seven representatives to the Eduskunta, according to their
population. The constituency for the Aland Islands sent one.
Constituencies corresponded to provinces except that Hame Province and
Turku ja Pori Province were each divided into two, and Helsinki formed
one electoral district itself. The five southernmost constituencies
supplied nearly half of the Eduskunta's delegates. In the early 1980s,
one delegate represented about 24,000 Finns.
Candidates for the Eduskunta are almost invariably nominated by a
political party, although a 1975 amendment to the election law allows
the candidacy of a person sponsored by a minimum of 100 Finns united in
an electoral association. Party lists for a constituency contain at
least fourteen names--and more for those constituencies with high
populations. Since 1978 a secret primary among party members has been
required if a party has more candidates than places on its party list.
Parties may form electoral alliances with other parties to present their
candidates, and they often do so because of lack of resources. This
practice partly explains the high number of small parties successfully
active in Finnish politics.
Since the introduction of proportional representation in 1906,
Finland has used the d'Hondt constituency list system with only slight
modifications. Under this system, elections are based on proportionality
rather than on plurality, and seats are allotted to parties
commensurately with the number of votes polled. Votes go to individual
candidates, however, and voters indicate their preferred politician by
circling the number assigned to him or to her on their ballots.
The Finnish system is distributive in several ways. There is no
electoral threshold, such as the Swedish requirement that a party
receive at least 4 percent of the votes in order to sit in parliament.
In Finland it was feared that a threshold requirement might deprive the
Swedish-speaking minority of seats in the Eduskunta. The Finnish system
also favors parties with a pronounced support in certain areas, rather
than those with a thin nationwide presence. Parties are not obliged to
contest Eduskunta elections in every constituency. The practice of
voting for an individual candidate rather than for a party means that
voters can register their dissatisfaction with a party's policy or
leadership by voting for one of its junior candidates. This
characteristic of the Finnish system means that no candidate, no matter
how senior or renowned, is assured election.
Elections for the 200-seat Eduskunta are held every four years in
March, except when the president has dissolved the body and has called
for an early election. Municipal elections take place every four years
in October.
The presidential election occurs every six years in the month of
January. Beginning with the 1988 election, it is to be carried out on
the basis of direct universal suffrage. If none of the candidates
receives more than half of the votes, 301 electors, chosen in the same
election, choose the next head of state. Although pledged in the
campaign to particular presidential candidates, members of the electoral
college have the right to vote in the body's secret ballots for any
candidate who has won at least one elector. If no candidate secures a
majority of the college in the first two ballots, one of the two
candidates who has received the most support on the second ballot will
be elected president in the third and final vote. By the late 1980s,
there was serious discussion of doing away with the electoral college
completely and making the president's election dependent on a direct
vote with no majority required.
Finland - Aland Islands
The province of the Aland Islands enjoys considerable autonomy by
virtue of the Autonomy Act of 1951 that guarantees the way of life and
the preservation of Swedish traditions on the islands. The 1951 law was
supplemented by a 1975 law that restricts the acquisition of real estate
on the islands. Both laws have constitutional status, and they may be
altered only in accordance with the strict parliamentary provisions that
protect the Constitution.
In addition to this protection against legislation prejudicial to its
interests, the archipelago's provincial assembly, the Landsting, has the
right to ratify laws affecting it. The Landsting consists of thirty
members elected on the basis of proportional representation for
four-year terms. Voters must be eighteen years of age by the year of the
election and must have the right of domicile on the islands, a right
acquired by living for at least five years in the province. Those with
this right may also exercise certain professions and may acquire real
estate, and they may not be conscripted if they have been residents of
the islands since before their twelfth year. This last provision
resulted from the demilitarized and neutral status of the islands
established by a decision of the League of Nations in 1921.
The Landsting has the right to pass laws that touch on
administration, provincial taxation, police matters, transportation,
health care, and cultural matters. Issues relating to the Constitution,
national defense, foreign affairs, the judiciary, family law, and civil
law are outside its competence. All laws passed by the Landsting must be
approved by the president of the republic, who may veto those laws
judged to exceed the Landsting's competence or to damage the country's
internal or external security.
The highest executive authority in the province is the Provincial
Executive Council, consisting of seven members elected by, and from
within, the Landsting. The council must enjoy the confidence of the
Landsting to carry out its duties, and the president of the council can
be forced to resign if this is not the case.
The governor of the province represents the national government. He
is appointed by the president of the republic, but only after the
approval of the Landsting, and is responsible for those administrative
functions beyond the competence of provincial authorities. Another link
between the islands and the national government is the Aland Delegation,
usually headed by the provincial governor; its other four members are
chosen by the Council of State and the Landsting. The delegation's chief
duties are supervising transfers of funds from the national government
to the provincial government, to pay for the costs of selfgovernment ,
and examining laws passed by the Landsting, before sending them to the
president. In addition to these ties between the archipelago and the
mainland, the province has one representative in the Eduskunta who
usually has a seat on the Constitutional Committee in order to protect
the islands' rights. Since 1970 the province has had one delegate at the
annual meeting of the Nordic Council.
During the late 1980s, changes of a constitutional nature in the
relations between the Aland Islands and the national government were
under review in the Eduskunta. The projected legislation touched on
increased provincial control of the taxes the archipelago pays or
generates and on greater control over radio and television reception,
with the aim of increasing access to programming from Sweden and to the
Swedish-language programs of the Finnish broadcasting system. Having
secured the right to issue their own stamps in 1984, the archipelago's
inhabitants also wanted to have their own postal system, a right still
reserved to the national government. Under discussion, too, were
international guarantees for the islands' security.
Finland - POLITICAL DYNAMICS
Consensus has been the dominant mode of Finnish politics since the
formation of a broadly based coalition government in 1966 and the
establishment of the comprehensive incomes policy system in the late
1960s. The government, made up of parties fundamentally opposed to each
other, was formed at the insistence of President Kekkonen. He had long
wished to heal the deep and bitter rifts that had marred Finnish public
life since the country had gained independence in 1917.
The dozen or so political parties that made up the country's party
system in 1966 reflected the divisions that ran through Finnish society.
The socialist end of the spectrum was broken into two mutually hostile,
roughly equal segments, communist and social democratic, often
accompanied by leftist splinter groups. The political middle was filled,
first, by the agrarian Center Party, the country's most important party,
with a rural base in a society that was rapidly becoming urbanized;
second, by the Swedish People's Party (Svenska Folkpartiet--SFP),
representing a minority worried about its future and divided along class
lines; and third, by a classic liberal party that was in decline. The
right consisted of a highly conservative party tied to big business and
to high officials, the KOK; and the radical Finnish Rural Party (Suomen
Maaseudun Puolue--SMP), the populist impulses of which linked it to the
"forgotten" little man often also resident in urban areas.
Kekkonen's presidential power and personal prestige enabled him to form
in 1966 the popular front government that pulled together sizable social
groups to realize important welfare legislation in the late 1960s.
The mending of rifts in the labor movement and a fortuitous agreement
in 1968 by leading actors in the market sector led to the first of a
number of comprehensive incomes agreements. These agreements, reached by
organizations representing most economically active Finns, usually ran
for several years and often required enabling legislation.
Critics of the agreements, which have brought much prosperity to
Finland and therefore enjoy widespread support, charge that their
monolithic quality has meant not consensus but a "time of no
alternatives." According to this view, the agreements have reduced
state institutions to mere ratifying agents rather than governing
bodies. It is claimed that labor and business negotiate while government
approves after the fact.
Most of the country's political parties, so fractious and distinct
until the 1960s, then drifted toward the political center; remaining
disagreements among the principal parties focused less on what policies
were to be than on how they were to be implemented. Because most
economic legislation required the set majorities stipulated by laws of
constitutional status, parties were obliged to work closely together.
Even parties not in government have had their say about the content of
economic legislation, for without their approval many government bills
would have failed.
Another characteristic of Finnish politics and public life was the
common practice of reaching agreements on key questions through informal
backstairs elite consultation. Often disputes were settled through
private discussions by the concerned parties before they were handled in
the formal bargaining sites established for their public resolution.
This was true for wage package settlements, as well as for legislative
proposals scheduled for debate in the Eduskunta, and for other issues
that required negotiation and compromise. An institutionalized version
of behind-the-scenes negotiations was the Evening School of the Council
of State, where leading figures of various groups could freely discuss
issues on the government's agenda. The Finnish tradition of informal
sauna discussions was an extreme example of informal inter-elite
consultations. Some observers claimed that important national decisions
were made there in an atmosphere where frank bargaining could be most
easily practiced. Advocates of these informal means of uniting elite
representatives of diverse interests held that they were quick and to
the point. Opponents countered that they encouraged secrecy, bypassed
government institutions, and ultimately subverted democracy.
Since the second half of the 1960s, there has been an increasing
formalization of the role played by political parties in the country's
public life. In 1967 the government began paying subsidies to political
parties, and the passage of the Act of Political Parties in 1969 gave
the practice a legal basis. According to the law, parties were to
receive subsidies according to the number of delegates they had in the
Eduskunta. Several other eligibility requirements for state funds that
also had to be met were nationwide--rather than local--activity for
political purposes, determination of internal party affairs by
democratic means, voting membership of at least 5,000, and a published
general political program.
The Act of Political Parties provided the first mention of parties in
Finnish legislation, despite their central position in the country's
political life. State subsidies were a recognition of the role parties
played, and the subsidies have further increased that role.
Consequently, the number of party officials has increased, as has the
number of parties, an effect opposite to that intended by the large
parties that pressed for subsidies. The large parties funneled a good
part of their funds to their local and their ancillary organizations,
while the small parties, with their existence at stake, used their
resources on the national level.
Finland - The Social Democratic Party
Founded in 1899 as the Finnish Labor Party, the Finnish Social
Democratic Party (Suomen Sosialide Mokrorrinwn Puolue-- SDP) took its
present name in 1903 and adopted a program that envisioned the gradual
realization of a socialist society, not by revolution but through
parliamentary democracy. In the 1907 parliamentary election, the SDP won
eighty seats, easily surpassing the results of its closest rival, the
Old Finn Party. Then, in 1916, the last time any Finnish party has done
so, the SDP won slightly more than an absolute majority.
Seduced by the example of the Bolshevik Revolution in nearby
Petrograd, many Social Democrats sought in early 1918 to realize
long-term party goals quickly and by force. After the defeat of the left
in the civil war and the departure of radical elements from its ranks,
however, the SDP was reconstituted in the same year under the leadership
of the moderate Vain� Tanner, an opponent of the use of violence for
political ends. Although still the country's largest political party,
the SDP was in only one government--a short-lived minority government
formed by Tanner in 1926--until 1937. At that time, it joined the
Agrarian Party (Maalaisliitto--ML in forming the first of the so-called
Red-Earth governments, the most common and important coalition pattern
for the next fifty years. A tempering of SDP policy on the place of the
small farmer in Finnish society permitted political cooperation with the
Agrarians, although the party retained its program of a planned economy
and the socialization of the means of production.
It was in 1937 that the SDP first began to demand the right to
collective bargaining, and the party remained closely connected to
organized labor. In 1930, for example, it had formed the Confederation
of Finnish Trade Unions (Suomen Ammattiyhdistysten Keskusliitto--SAK) in
an attempt to counter communist influence in the labor movement. During
World War II, the SDP contributed significantly to national unity, and
it resisted both rightist dreams of a Greater Finland and the desires of
others for an early truce with the Soviet Union.
After the war, long-standing tensions within the party caused
factional disputes, between those advocating closer relations with both
the Soviets and the newly legalized Communist Party of Finland (Suomen
Kommunistinen Puolue--SKP) and those critical of the Soviet Union and
its undemocratic methods. Some SDP members left it for the newly formed
popular front organization, the Finnish People's Democratic League
(Suomen Kansan Demokraattinen Liitto--SKDL), which participated in the
broad popular front government formed after the 1945 elections. After
the defeat of the communists in the 1948 elections, the SDP held all
cabinet posts in the minority government of 1948-1950; however,
thereafter the party participated in cabinets on an irregular basis, and
it was riven by internal struggles until the 1960s.
During the 1950s and early 1960s, the SDP as a whole became
increasingly moderate. An early indication of this move toward
moderation was the party program adopted in 1952 that played down the
role of class conflict and was critical of communism. Still, bitter
internal wrangles continued to plague the party into the 1960s. The
conflicts had both political and personal origins, but their core was
disagreement about the SDP's policy toward the Soviet Union. Tanner's
implacable hostility to the undemocratic nature of Soviet society had
led Moscow to insist on his imprisonment as a "war criminal"
after the war. His reinstatement as party leader in 1957 has generally
been regarded as a factor in the Night Frost Crisis of 1958 and in the
SDP's subsequent exclusion from power until 1966.
Conflicts relating to domestic politics resulted in the departure in
1959 of members close to farming interests. They formed the Social
Democratic Union of Workers and Small Farmers (Ty�vaen ja
Pienviljelijain Sosialidemokraattinen Liitto--TPSL), a splinter group
that contested elections and was included in several governments until
the 1970s, when it expired and most of its remaining members returned to
the SDP.
The election of Rafael Paasio to the party chairmanship in 1963 ended
the reign of the old leadership and brought a gradual improvement in SDP
relations with the Soviet Union; another result was a gradual healing of
rifts within the labor movement. These changes, coupled with the
election returns of 1966 that led to the first socialist majority in the
Eduskunta since 1945, allowed the party to leave the political
wilderness to which it had been consigned after the Note Crisis of 1961.
It participated in a strong majority government together with the newly
renamed Center Party (formerly the Agrarian Party), the SKDL, and the
TPSL. The popular front government passed a good part of the legislation
that transformed Finland into a modern welfare state of the Scandinavian
type and helped to establish the system of collective wage agreements
that still prevailed in the late 1980s.
During the 1970s, the SDP moved closer to the center in Finnish
politics as a result of the departure of some of the party's members for
groups farther to the left and the cautious pragmatic leadership of
Kalevi Sorsa, who became party chairman in 1975. Sorsa, who held this
position until 1987, served from the mid-1970s until the late 1980s as
either prime minister or foreign minister in all governments, which
helped to remove any doubts about the party's suitability for governing.
The SDP's success in the elections for the Eduskunta in 1983, coming
after the triumph of SDP politician Mauno Koivisto in the presidential
election a year earlier, may have marked a high point in the party's
history, for in the second half of the 1980s the SDP had trouble
attracting new voters from postindustrial Finland's growing service
sector. The SDP's years as a governing party, which had tied it to many
pragmatic compromises, lessened its appeal for some. At the same time,
the number of blue-collar workers, its most important source of support,
declined. The party could be seen as a victim of its own success in that
it had participated in implementing policies that brought unprecedented
prosperity to Finland, which served to transform Finnish society and
dissolve old voting blocs.
The party lost 100,000 votes and the office of prime minister in the
1987 parliamentary elections. The SDP remained in the government formed
by the conservative National Coalition Party, however. Observers
believed that the new party chairman, Pertti Paasio, son of Rafael
Paasio, and other younger members of the party would have to adapt to
longterm trends in Finnish society that promised to make the party's
future difficult. Although the SDP registered slight gains in the 1988
local elections, it still had to contend with the same economic and
social problems that made the other social democratic parties of Western
Europe seem to many to be parties of the past.
Finland - The Center Party
The Center Party (Keskustapuolue--Kesk), which took this name in 1965
with the aim of widening its appeal and adapting to changing social
conditions, was founded in 1906 as the Agrarian Party. It has been, as
its present name indicates, the key party in Finnish politics since
independence; until the formation of a conservative-socialist government
in 1987, it had participated in virtually every majority government.
Founded to represent the interests of small farmers in eastern and in
northern Finland, Kesk also gradually came to claim central Finland as
an area of support during the 1920s. As a consequence, it was the
largest nonsocialist party until the national elections of 1979, when
the National Coalition Party pulled ahead. As the party of small
farmers, the Kesk was, from its birth, suspicious of the concentrated
economic power of the south--labor, large farmers, and business. To
counter these interests, the party advocated a firmly democratic and
populist program that emphasized the primacy of the family farm,
small-scale firms managed by their owners, decentralization of social
organizations, and the traditional virtues and values of small towns and
the countryside. The party's commitment to democracy was tested and
proven in the 1930s when it rejected the aims of the radical right and
perhaps saved Finland from fascism. In the second half of the decade, it
began to govern with the assistance of the SDP, forming with that party
the first of the so-called Red-Earth governments that became the
country's dominant coalition pattern for the next half-century. Kesk's
claim to represent the "real" Finland, however, caused it, at
times, to seek to curtail the rights of the Swedish-speaking minority,
and some Kesk leaders, Urho Kekkonen for example, were active in the
Finnicization program.
Although opposed to fascist doctrines, Kesk had favored fighting on
the side of Nazi Germany--as a cobelligerent--during the Continuation
War of 1941-44, in the hope of regaining lost national territory. During
the course of the war, however, some of the party's leaders came to the
conclusion that good relations with the Soviet Union were essential if
Finland were to survive as an independent nation. Kekkonen, in
particular, was a driving force in effecting this change of party policy
in the postwar period. This policy
change was achieved, though, only after a bitter struggle during which
segments of the party's leadership hoped for Kekkonen's political
destruction; however, generational change and his domestic and foreign
successes allowed Kekkonen gradually to gain nearly absolute control of
the party, which he retained even after election in 1956 to the
presidency, a post ideally above party politics.
Soviet desires for a dependable contact in Finland, and the
unsuitability of other parties, soon made Kesk Moscow's preferred
negotiating partner, despite the party's anticommunist program. The
Soviets' natural ally, the SKP, was seen as being too much a political
outsider to be an effective channel of communication. Kesk's position in
the center of the political spectrum made it the natural "hinge
party" for coalition governments. After the Note Crisis, Kekkonen's
mastery of foreign policy also served, and at times was cynically used,
to preserve this role.
Postwar social changes, such as internal migration to the south and a
growing service sector, have reduced support for Kesk and have brought
about a steady decline in its share of seats in the Eduskunta. Attempts
to bring the party's program into line with a changing society did not
win Kesk new support. In prosperous southern Finland, for example, Kesk
failed to make significant inroads, electing only once a member of the
Eduskunta from Helsinki. Young voters in the south, or the coastal
region as it is sometimes called, favored the National Coalition Party
or the environmentalist Greens (Vihreat). Also damaging to Kesk was the
loss of a segment of its membership to the SMP, after its formation in
1959. Kesk was not able to retain the presidency after Kekkonen's
retirement in 1981; its candidate for the 1982 presidential election,
Johannes Virolainen, was easily defeated, as was the 1988 Kesk candidate
for this post, Paavo Vayrynen.
Kesk's failure, despite only slight losses, to participate in the
government formed after the 1987 national elections was perhaps a
watershed in Finnish domestic politics. Until that time, Kesk had been
an almost permanent governing party. Demographic and occupational trends
continued to challenge Kesk in the late 1980s, but the party's large and
convinced membership, far greater than that of any other party, probably
meant that any decline in its role in Finnish politics would be a slow
one.
Finland - The National Coalition Party
The National Coalition Party (Kansallinen Kokoomuspuolue-- KOK) was
founded in November 1918 by members of the Old Finn Party and, to a
lesser extent, by followers of the Young Finn Party. It represented
interests desiring a strong state government that would guarantee law
and order and the furtherance of commerce. Defeated in its attempt to
establish a monarchal government, the party formulated a program in 1922
that clearly set out its conservative aim of emphasizing stability over
reform. The large farms and businesses in southern Finland were the
basis of the party's support.
Throughout the interwar period, the party was hostile to the rights
of the Swedish-speaking minority and sought to deprive the Swedish
language of its status as one of the country's two official languages.
During the 1930s, it had close contacts with the radical right-wing
movements that mirrored trends elsewhere and for a time posed a threat
to Finnish democracy. One of the party's leaders, Juho Paasikivi,
elected party chairman in 1934, attempted with some success to move it
away from these extreme positions. The KOK was opposed to the Red-Earth
government formed in 1937, but was not strong enough to prevent it.
During the war, the party was part of the national unity governments.
After the war, the KOK became the most right-wing party in Finland,
as groups farther right were banned by the armistice agreement of 1944
and the SKP was legalized. Despite Paasikivi's terms
as prime minister in the first postwar years, his election to the
presidency in 1946, and the role he played in the drafting of the Treaty
of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance (FCMA-- see Appendix
B) as well as in the reorienting of Finnish foreign policy, his party
was not regarded as an acceptable coalition partner for much of the
postwar period. Soviet doubts about the sincerity of KOK's support for
the new direction of Finnish foreign policy, the so-called Paasikivi
Line, was sufficient to keep the KOK, for decades the country's second
largest nonsocialist party, out of government for most of the postwar
period.
The party also was excluded from governments because it was seen by
many to be rigidly right-wing, despite party program changes in the
1950s that moved it closer to the conservatism practiced by its sister
parties in larger West European countries. The party program of 1957
formalized its support for a "social market economy" and for
the concept of employer responsibility to wage earners.
In the postwar years, the KOK often allied with the SDP to reduce
agricultural subsidies, a joint effort that continued in the late 1980s.
The division between city and country interests continued to be a key
element in Finnish politics in the second half of the 1980s, and it was
one reason why the two principal nonsocialist parties, the KOK and Kesk,
were political rivals.
An action that increased the enmity between the KOK and the Kesk
leader, Kekkonen, and contributed to the Note Crisis was the formation
of the so-called Honka League by the KOK and the SDP. The Honka League
aimed to stop Kekkonen's reelection in 1962, but the attempt never had a
chance, and it was soon abandoned. The KOK continued to be opposed to
Kekkonen and to his foreign policy, however, and it was the only major
party to oppose his reelection in 1968. Nevertheless, moderate elements
in the party gradually gained control and softened its policies, both
domestic and foreign. In the 1970 national elections, the KOK increased
the number of its seats in the Eduskunta by one-third, and since 1979 it
has been the largest nonsocialist party in the country.
Some right-wing members of the KOK, dissatisfied with the party's
steady drift toward the political center, have left it. In 1973 some
formed the Constitutional Party of the Right (Perustuslaillinen
Oikeistopuolue--POP) to protest Kekkonen's special election to the
presidency in 1974, but this only accelerated the KOK's move toward
moderation. Under the leadership of Harri Holkeri--the party's candidate
for the presidency in 1982 and in 1988, and Ilkka Suominen--longtime
party chairman, the KOK has been able to attract many of those employed
in Finland's rapidly growing service sector, and in the 1987 elections
it nearly overtook the SDP. Kept out of power because of unexpected
losses in the 1983 Eduskunta elections, Holkeri was able to form a
government after the 1987 elections and to take the prime ministership
for himself. He pledged his government to a program of preserving
Finland's welfare state while maintaining a free market economy strong
enough to be competitive abroad and to safeguard the country's
prosperity.
Finland - The Communist Party
The Communist Party of Finland (Suomen Kommunistinen Puolue-- SKP)
was founded in August 1918 in Moscow by exiled leftists after their
defeat in the civil war. Its Marxist-Leninist program advocated the
establishment of a socialist society by revolutionary means. Declared
illegal the following year, the SKP was active in Finland during the
1920s through front groups, the most notable of which was the Finnish
Socialist Workers' Party (Suomen Sosialistinen Ty�vaenpuolue--SSTP),
which received more than 100,000 votes in the 1922 national election and
won 27 seats in the Eduskunta. The rise of the radical right-wing Lapua
movement was a factor in the banning of all communist organizations in
1930, and the SKP was forced underground.
The Stalinist purges of the 1930s thinned the ranks of the SKP
leadership resident in the Soviet Union. A survivor of the purges and
one of the founders of the party, Otto Kuusinen, was named to head a
Finnish puppet government set up by the Soviets after their attack on
Finland in 1939. It did not ever attract the support from the Finnish
workers that the Soviets expected, nor did the SKP succeed, during the
Continuation War, in mounting a resistance movement against Finnish
forces fighting the Soviet Union. At the war's end, the SKP was able to
resume open political activity within Finland; in the 1945 election it
won forty-nine seats and was rewarded with several posts in the
resulting cabinet.
In this election, as in all elections since then, the SKP worked
through an umbrella organization, the Finnish People's Democratic League
(Suomen Kansan Demokraattinen Liitto--SKDL), established with the aim of
uniting all left-wing elements into a common front. Although mainly
composed of noncommunists, and usually led by a noncommunist socialist,
the SKDL has generally been dominated by the SKP. Despite its initial
electoral success, however, the SKDL has not been successful in
attracting all Finnish leftists, and the bulk of the SDP has refused to
work with it.
The SKDL was not able to retain its hold on the voters in the 1948
Eduskunta election, and it lost eleven seats. Rumors of a planned
communist coup contributed to this defeat. During the 1950s and the
early 1960s, the SKP/SKDL continued to participate in the electoral
process, but with mixed results. The SKP/SKDL did not enter government
again until 1966, when Kekkonen insisted that the group be given
ministerial posts so that a broadly based coalition government could be
formed. After this date, the party was in most governments until
December 1982, when Prime Minister Sorsa forced it to resign for
refusing to support a part of the government's program.
Tensions long present in the SKP became more pronounced in the second
half of the 1960s, when social changes began putting pressure on the
party to adapt itself to new conditions. Internal migration within
Finland, from the northern and eastern areas where "backwoods
communism" had always been a mainstay of party support, deprived
the SKP of votes. The gradually increasing service sector of the economy
reduced the size of the blue-collar vote in the south that the SKP had
traditionally split with the SDP. A more prosperous economy also
softened social divisions and made the classic Marxist remedies
expounded by the party seem less relevant. Failure to attract younger
voters worsened election results in addition to leaving the party with
an older and less educated membership. These threating trends, combined
with the SKP's participation in governing coalitions since 1966, brought
to a head political disagreements between those in the party who
supported the system of parliamentary democracy and those who were
attached to a totalitarian Stalinist ideology. After 1969 the party was
virtually split, although the formal break came only in 1986 following
years of bitter dissension.
Through the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s, two factions, a
majority reformist or revisionist wing, led first by Aarne Saarinen
(1966-82) and then by Arvo Aalto (1982-88), and a minority Stalinist
wing, under Taisto Sinisalo, fought for party dominance. Each group had
its own local and regional organization and its own newspaper--the
moderates, Kansan Uutiset and the doctrinaire faction, Tiedonantaja.
Both groups remained in the SKP largely at the insistence of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). The revisionists, sometimes
characterized as Eurocommunists, took posts in cabinets, but the
Stalinists, or "Taistos" as they are often called after the
first name of their leader, refused to do so, preferring to remain
ordinary members of the Eduskunta instead. To heal the rift, a third
faction appeared in the early 1980s, and for a time one of its leaders,
Jouko Kajanoja, was party chairman.
The 1984 election of Aalto to the party chairmanship marked the end
of the attempted reconciliation, and in 1985 the revisionists began to
purge the Stalinists, who late in the year named their faction the
Committee of SKP Organizations. The revisionists resisted pressure for
unity from the CPSU, and for this they were punished in late 1985 when
the Soviets cancelled the highly profitable contract with the SKP to
print Sputnik, an international magazine. The CPSU gave the
contract to a printing firm controlled by the minority. The resulting
financial losses meant that Kansan Uutiset could appear only
five days a week.
In 1986 the split was formalized. Early in the year, the reformist
group published a new program that stressed the importance of an
independent, yet friendly, relationship with the communist parties of
other nations. In April the Stalinists set up an electoral organization
distinct from the SKDL, the Democratic Alternative (Demokraattinen
Vaihtoehto--DEVA). In June the SKDL party group in the Eduskunta
expelled the DEVA representatives from its ranks, and the latter then
formed their own parliamentary group. Later in the year, the two
factions set different party congress dates, further formalizing the
split. In the 1987 election, the two groups competed with one another,
and they had separate lists of candidates--the DEVA members led by the
actress Kristiina Halkola and the SKP/SKDL led by Arvo Aalto. The
Stalinists lost six of their ten seats in the Eduskunta, while the
reformists lost one.
In the late 1980s, the two factions appeared more and more irrelevant
as actors in Finnish politics. The reformists supported the democratic
system, yet they attracted few new recruits. The Stalinists, opposed to
the central values held by most Finns, split even further. In 1988 some
of them formed a new party, the Finnish Communist Party--Unity (Suomen
Kommunistinen Puolue-Yhdenaisyys--SKP-Y), and campaigned with DEVA in
the local elections of the fall of that year. An even smaller number,
claiming to represent the truest principles of communism, refused to
join this new party and formed their own.
Finland - The Swedish People's Party
In addition to the four large parties discussed above, which among
them enjoyed the support of about 80 percent of Finland's voters, and
the SFP, which despite its small size had an almost permanent place in
coalition governments, there were several other political parties that
had a role in governing the country. One, the LKP, was a vestige of its
former self; others, such as the Greens or the SMP were responses to
trends seen elsewhere in recent decades in Western Europe.
The LKP is directly descended from the Young Finn Party, which after
independence took the name National Progressive Party (Kansallinen
Edistyspuolue--ED) and played a major role in Finland during the
interwar period. After World War II, this party
declined in strength and was dissolved in 1951. Liberals subsequently
formed two other parties that joined together in 1965 under the present
name. Liberals in one party organization or another continued to
participate in most governments until 1979. These liberals were
proponents of business interests and the protection of private property,
but they spoke also of the need for government planning and for social
welfare programs. The LKP has steadily lost support to the other
nonsocialist parties, however. In the 1983 and the 1987 national
elections, it failed to win any seats in the Eduskunta, and in the local
elections of 1988 it lost more than a quarter of its representatives on
municipal councils. In the late 1980s, the future of this once-important
party was uncertain at best.
The SMP was founded in 1959 by the prominent and charismatic Kesk
politician, Veikko Vennamo, who broke with Kekkonen for both political
and personal reasons. The party, viewed for most of its life as
rightist, has always campaigned as a protest party fighting for the
interests of the "forgotten man," neglected or ignored by
larger parties. This populist party first found support among small
farmers, but it later received votes also from city dwellers who were
keenly dissatisfied with mainstream politics. The SMP's support
fluctuated wildly from election to election, and no safe estimate about
its future was possible in the late 1980s. This was especially the case
after its inclusion in governing coalitions. After considerable success
in the 1983 election, it got two ministerial posts. It therefore
competed in the 1987 election as a governing party, and it lost nearly
half its seats in parliament. Equally bad results were obtained in the
1988 local elections. In addition, although led in recent years by the
founder's son, Pekka Vennamo, the party was torn by dissension. With a
single post in the government, even after the disastrous 1987 results,
the SMP was in danger of losing its character as a protest party, the
role which had brought it voter support.
The Finnish Christian League (Suomen Kristillinen Liitto-- SKL) was
founded in 1958 to bring Christian ideals into politics and to curb
secularist trends. Its members generally belonged to the state church,
yet they did not claim to act in its behalf but for Christian values in
general. The party's support has fluctuated since it won its first seat
in the Eduskunta in 1970. The SKL has never had a ministerial post, even
in 1979 when it won ten parliamentary seats. Its share of votes declined
sharply in the next national election, but rose again in 1987, and
observers believed that a reliable base of support remained that was
likely to ensure its continued existence.
An environmentalist group, the Greens was not an officially
registered party during the first years of its existence, and it
therefore received no government support for the 1983 and the 1987
national elections. It was organized in the early 1980s as an electoral
association to work on a variety of quality-of-life issues and to
contest elections on both the local and the national level. In 1983 the
group won two seats in the Eduskunta, the first time an electoral
association had managed such a feat. In the 1984 local elections, they
doubled their support, and in the 1987 election they won four
parliamentary seats.
The group's membership was heterogeneous with regard to both origins
and aims. Activists were drawn from academia, the middle class, and the
disabled, as well as from feminist and bohemian circles. This diversity
was reflected in the multitude of members' goals, ranging from modest
reforms to a utopian shutdown of industry and a return to subsistence
farming. In mid-1988 part of the movement split off and formed a
registered political party, the Green League (Vihrea Liitto). The Greens
as a whole suffered a slight setback in the 1988 local elections. Given
its internal dissension, the role the environmentalist movement was to
play in governing Finland was likely to remain small.
Finland - Interest Groups
Interest group politics in Finland was managed primarily by the large
market-sector organizations that represented labor and management. By
the mid-1980s, about 85 percent of the work force, both blue-collar and
white-collar, belonged to four labor federations encompassing about 100
labor unions. The largest and oldest was SAK, which united the
approximately 1 million members, mainly blue-collar, of twenty-eight
unions. SAK dated from 1907 and was close to the SDP, but it had within
it several unions dominated by communists. The Confederation of Salaried
Employees and Civil Servants (Toimihenkil�- ja Virkamiesjarjest�jen
Keskusliitto--TVK) consisted of 14 unions with about 370,000 members who
voted for a variety of left-wing and right-wing parties. The Central
Organization of Professional Associations in Finland (Akava) was made up
of 45 unions, in which 210,000 members--white-collar
professionals--voted mainly for conservative parties. The Confederation
of Technical Employees' Organizations in Finland (Suomen Teknisten
Toimihenkil�jarjest�jen Keskusliitto--STTK) united 15 unions, in which
130,00 members--lower-level white-collar employees--split their votes
among all parties. Representing the interests of farmers and close to
the Kesk was the Confederation of Agricultural Producers
(Maataloustuottajain Keskusliitto--MTK), with about 300,000 members.
Representing industry and management were the Confederation of Finnish
Employers (Suomen Ty�nantajain Keskusliitto--STK), made up of
twenty-eight member organizations representing 6,000 firms, and the
Confederation of Commerce Employers (Liikety�nantajain
Keskusliitto--LTK) including nearly 7,000 firms; firms belonging to the
STK and the LTK had some 800,000 employees in 1985.
These organizations could speak for the bulk of Finland's work force
and business firms, and, since the first of a series of comprehensive
incomes policy agreements was concluded in 1968, they had come to rival
the government in determining how the country's affairs were to be
managed. The settlements, arranged generally at two-year intervals,
frequently involved not only wages and working conditions but also
social welfare programs that required legislation for their realization.
This obliged the governing coalition and the other parties represented
in the Eduskunta to be fully apprised of the terms of the settlement.
The government itself provided officials to assist in the
negotiations between labor and management. In 1971 it made permanent the
post of special negotiator for incomes policy, and a year later it
created a board within the prime minister's office to assist this
official. On occasion, when negotiations have gone poorly, the prime
minister or the president has intervened. The government also has
facilitated the incomes agreements by providing expert advice on
probable future economic conditions and on what the contending parties
could reasonably demand. At appropriate times, leading officials and
politicians have issued statements so that by the winter, when formal
negotiations began, there was a broadly accepted economic framework
within which these negotiations could take place.
Outside the wage agreement system, social groups, or interests,
generally worked through the established parties to further their
objectives through meetings, lobbying, and other means of voicing their
concerns. To secure the support of some segments of the population, most
political parties organized student, youth, and sports groups. Parties
often devoted as much as one-third of their financial resources to their
auxiliary and local branches.
Finnish women, like other groups, sought to further their interests
mainly through the country's political and economic organizations. The
parties took care that a good number of their leaders were women, and by
the 1980s women made up about onethird of the Eduskunta. Women were
represented in market-sector organizations according to their
occupations. The women's movement was small; it did not play a
significant role in Finnish political life, even though it had existed
since the 1880s, when the first organization involved in women's rights
was founded. The two main women's organizations active in Finland in the
1980s were the Feminist Union (Naisasialiitto Unioni), dating from 1892,
and the informal collective, Feminists (Feministit), founded in 1976.
They were both apolitical, and their membership, though mainly from the
educated middle class, contained some working-class women.
The Nordic committee system was a key forum in which Finnish interest
groups, or concerned parties, made their views known to the government.
The system had long been used in the region to gather a range of
opinions on public matters. It consisted of committees, both temporary
ad hoc organs formed to deal with a single question and permanent
statutory bodies created to handle broad issues, that were composed of
experts and representatives of affected interests. Thus, advocates of
labor and business, experts from local and national government, and,
when appropriate, single-issue groups, could argue their cases. A
committee report, if there was one, could be sent for review to
concerned parties, and thereafter to a ministry, where its findings
might figure in a government ordinance or in a legislative proposal.
Finland - The Presidential Election of 1982 and Koivisto's Presidency
A major change occurred in Finnish domestic politics in January 1982,
when the social democratic politician, Mauno Koivisto, was elected
president. He was the first member of the SDP to be elevated to the
country's highest post, and his election meant the full integration of
social democrats into Finnish public life and an end to the postwar
dominance of Kesk.
Koivisto had been a leading public figure since the late 1960s, when
he had served as prime minister for two years. During the 1970s, as
governor of the Bank of Finland and, for a short time, as minister of
finance, he had won the public's respect for the accuracy of his
economic forecasts. His personality and considerable media astuteness
also won him a very considerable personal popularity across party lines.
Born in 1923 in Turku, the son of a carpenter, he fought bravely during
World War II. After the war he returned to his native city, and through
years of part-time study, earned a doctorate in sociology in 1956. He
was active within the moderate wing of the SDP, yet did not seek an
elective office. He began his banking career by directing a large
employees' savings bank in Helsinki.
Summoned again in 1979 to serve as prime minister, Koivisto retained
the public's esteem and became a strong potential candidate for the
presidential election scheduled for 1984. Seen by Kesk politicians as a
threat to their party's hold on the presidency after Kekkonen's
inevitable retirement, Koivisto was pressured to resign in the spring of
1981. He refused, telling Kekkonen that he would continue as prime
minister until a lack of parliamentary support for his government was
shown. Koivisto's survival despite Kekkonen's challenge was seen by some
observers as the end of an era in which the president had dominated
Finnish public life.
In the fall of 1981, failing health forced Kekkohen to resign the
presidency, and Koivisto assumed the duties of the office until the
presidential election set for January 1982, two years ahead of schedule.
He won handily, taking 43 percent of the votes--from the high turnout of
87 percent--and 145 of the electors. With the support of some electors
pledged to the SKDL candidate, he won, with 167 ballots, in the first
vote of the electoral college. His popularity remained high during his
first term, and he easily won reelection in 1988.
In his years in office, Koivisto has adhered to the
Paasikivi-Kekkonen Line, renewing in 1983 the FCMA treaty, for example.
In addition, he has supported the traditional policy of neutrality, has
spoken often of the danger of the arms race, and has encouraged
international trade. One innovation he introduced was allowing greater
policy roles to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Eduskunta's Foreign
Affairs Committee, and other institutions concerned with foreign policy.
On the domestic front, he has been more restrained than his
predecessor. He has preferred to let day-to-day politics run its course,
and he has tended to see the presidency as an office from which he could
direct the nation's attention to long-term goals. At times, however,
delphic presidential statements have confused the public about his
intentions. On occasion, too, he has been harsh, berating the press for
its irresponsible coverage of foreign policy issues, or striking down
politicians he thought too meddlesome in international affairs. Overall,
Koivisto's presidency has marked a coming of age for the Finnish polity,
an emergence from the harsh tutelage of the Kekkonen years, and the
increasing resemblance of Finnish political life to that of other
successful Western democracies.
Finland - The Parliamentary Election of 1983
As is customary in Finland after a presidential election, the
government resigned after Koivisto's victory in January 1982. It was
re-formed the next month with the same four-party coalition (the SDP,
Kesk, the SKDL,and the SFP) and many of the same ministers, with veteran
SDP politician Kalevi Sorsa as prime minister. Two devaluations in
October 1982, amounting to a 10 percent fall in the value of the Finnish
mark, caused complaints by the SKDL that low-income groups were the main
victims of this measure designed to enhance Finnish competitiveness
abroad. The cabinet fell at the end of the year, when Sorsa dissolved it
after the SKDL ministers refused to support a government defense
proposal. Asked immediately asked by the president to form a new
government, Sorsa did so, but with LKP participation and without the
SKDL. The government's slender majority of 103 votes in the Eduskunta
was not an important handicap, for new elections were scheduled for
March 1983.
The election was widely regarded as a "protest election"
because, contrary to expectations, the major parties, with the exception
of the SDP, did not do well. The LKP lost all its seats in the
Eduskunta, while the SMP more than doubled its seats, and for the first
time the Greens had representatives in the chamber as well. The SMP's
success was credited, at least in part, to voter distaste for some
mainstream parties because of political scandals; no significant policy
differences emerged in the election campaign. Another reason for the SMP
gains was the increasing role of "floating votes" not bound to
any one party. The SDP won fifty-seven parliamentary seats, the greatest
number since before the war and a result of Koivisto's election to the
presidency.
Seven weeks of negotiations led to the formation of a fourparty
coalition composed of the old standbys, the SDP, Kesk, and the SFP, and,
for the first time, because of its great success, the SMP. The protest
party of the "forgotten man," the SMP was given the portfolios
for taxation (second minister of finance) and for labor, with the aim of
taming it through ministerial responsibility. Because the government,
led by the SDP's Sorsa, had the support of only 122 votes out of 200,
rather than the 134 needed to ensure the passage of much economic
legislation, it might not have been expected to last long. It
distinguished itself, however, by being the first cabinet since the war
to serve out a full term. Its survival until the elections of March 1987
was an indication of a newly won stability in Finnish politics.
The Sorsa cabinet stressed the continuation of traditional Finnish
foreign policy, the expansion of trade with the West to counter what
some saw as too great dependence on Soviet trade, and the adoption of
measures to reduce inflation. The economic measures of the Sorsa
government were stringent and fiscally conservative. Public awareness of
the necessity of a small exporting nation's remaining competitive
allowed the adoption of frugal policies. The 1984 biannual incomes
policy arrangement was also modest in its scope. The rival demands for
the one for 1986 were less so, however, and President Koivisto had to
intervene to ease hard negotiations. One segment of the work force,
civil servants, won a large pay increase for itself after a seven-week
strike in the spring of 1986. The government also brought inflation down
from the doubledigit levels of the early 1980s, but it was less
successful in lowering unemployment, which remained steady at about 7
percent.
Although the government was to be long-lived, it was not free of
tensions. In January 1984, trouble erupted when its three nonsocialist
parties made public a list of nine points on which they disagreed with
the SDP. The issues were domestic in character, and they centered on
such questions as the methods of calculation and payment for child-care
allowances, the advisability of nuclear power plant construction, wage
package negotiation methods, and financial measures to aid farmers and
small businessmen. The storm caused by the document was calmed by the
political skills of the prime minister and through a lessened adamancy
on the part of Kesk.
Despite overall agreement on many major issues and the dominance of
consensus politics in the governing of the country, the parties'
struggle for power was nevertheless fierce. Attacks on the SDP by its
coalition partner, Kesk, during 1986 were seen by some to stem from
Kesk's desire for an opening to the right and for the eventual formation
of a center-right government after the 1987 elections. The attacks,
especially those of Foreign Minister Paavo Vayrynen, intensified in the
late summer. The young Kesk leader particularly denounced Sorsa's
handling of trade with the Soviet Union. Sorsa sucessfully
counterattacked in the fall, which forced Vayrynen to stop his campaign.
Finland - The Parliamentary Election of 1987
The March 1987 elections moved the country somewhat to the right. It
was uncertain how far, because the voter participation rate--at a
comparatively low 75 percent, 5 percent lower than usual--hurt the left
more than the right and had a varying impact. The KOK, for example,
increased its percentage of the votes by only 1 percent and saw a tiny
increase in absolute terms, yet it gained nine seats in the Eduskunta
and almost caught up with the chamber's largest party, the SDP. The
socialists' take dropped by 2.6 percent, with 100,000 fewer votes, yet
they lost only one seat in the Eduskunta because of the way their votes
were distributed across the country. Kesk garnered the same portion of
the vote that it had in 1983, but it achieved a small increase in the
actual number of votes and gained two new seats. The Greens, who had
registered a significant gain in the communal elections of October 1984,
got only two new representatives, far fewer than expected, for a total
of four. The SKDL, electoral vehicle of the reformist SKP, lost a seat,
while DEVA, controlled by the Stalinist Committee of SKP Organizations,
lost six of the ten seats it had controlled since its representatives
were expelled from the SKDL in June 1986. Weakened perhaps from its
membership in the long-lived government, the SMP lost more than
one-third of its support and almost half of its seats. Two of the small
centrist parties did well: the SFP gained another seat, just as it had
in 1983, and the SKL secured two more for a total of five.
Faced with these inconclusive results, negotiations about the shape
of the new government got underway. After six weeks of talks and
attempts to put together a completely nonsocialist government, a
pathbreaking combination was formed that included conservatives and
socialists in the Council of State, joined by the dependable and
successful SFP and the battered and desperate SMP.
The new government, consisting of nine centrist and conservative and
eight socialist ministers and headed by the KOK's Harri Holkeri,
surprised some observers because a nonsocialist government was possible
and seemed appropriate given the election results. The outcome angered
others, who contended that Koivisto had misused presidential powers when
he brokered a government that had his former party as a member despite
its considerable electoral losses. Koivisto countered that he had
behaved properly and had let the parties themselves argue out a workable
combination.
One explanation for the unusual government was that animosity against
the Kesk leader, Vayrynen, was so common in both the SDP and the KOK
that neither party was willing to form a government with him. Thus, Kesk
was deprived of its traditional "hinge" role. Another
consideration was that the SDP and the KOK were not so much at odds with
each another as socialist and conservative parties elsewhere might have
been. Both parties had moved toward the center, and they were in
agreement about most issues, especially about the need to reduce the
agricultural subsidies that had always been defended by Kesk. The
resulting "red-blue" government had as program objective the
preservation of the social welfare system, the improvement of Finland's
competitive position in international trade, a fundamental reform of the
tax system, and adherence to the Paasikivi-Kekkonen Line in foreign
affairs. The SFP fit in easily with this program. The formerly rightist,
but now moderate, SMP was included because it strengthened the
government slightly and because it was likely to be dependable, because
it had no other place to go. Koivisto informed the new government that
it would not have to resign after the presidential election of 1988, and
observers expected the cabinet to serve its full term until the 1991
parliamentary elections.
Finland - The Presidential Election of 1988
The latter half of the nineteenth century saw the appearance of many
newspapers. All the political parties formed in these years and in the
early twentieth century had their own newspapers, and, as a result, most
Finnish papers were partisan until after War World II. After
independence in 1917, there was another upsurge in the number of
newspapers published; a high point, never since surpassed, was reached
in 1930 when Finns could choose from 123 newspapers, each published at
least three times a week. By 1985 there were ninety-eight such papers, a
figure that has remained fairly constant since the early 1960s. Total
circulation of papers of this type, twelve of which were in Swedish,
amounted to about three million by the mid-1980s. In addition, there
were about 160 papers that appeared once or twice a week. One United
Nations (UN) study ranked Finland fourth in the world for per capita
circulation, and surveys have found that over 90 percent of Finns read
papers regularly, 60 percent of Finns viewing them as the most useful
source of information.
Finns preferred to have their papers delivered to their homes in the
early morning, and for this reason there were only two evening papers in
the country, Ilta-Sanomat and Iltalehti, both printed
in Helsinki. Another reason for low newsstand sales in Finland was that
no taxes were levied on newspapers and magazines received via
subscription.
Most localities were served by only one newspaper, but by the
mid-1980s Helsinki had about a dozen, and its newspapers, which
constituted only one-eighth of the country's total, accounted for
one-third of national circulation. Seven of the Helsinki papers were
among the twelve largest Finnish papers. Although many of Finland's
papers were published in Helsinki, there was little concentration of
press ownership, and there were no dominant newspaper chains, with the
possible exception of the firm Sanoma that owned the two papers with the
largest circulation, Helsingin Sanomat and Ilta-Sanomat.
In contrast to the other Nordic countries, the number of newspapers
in Finland has remained fairly constant, and there was even a slight
upturn in the 1980s. This steadiness was caused, at least partly, by the
government program of general and selective support. General support was
intended for the press as a whole, magazines included; it involved not
taxing subscriptions and essential materials, such as newsprint, and
arranging for low postal rates. Selective support, designed to guarantee
the survival of the party press, consisted of partial subsidies for
distribution and telecommunications costs and direct lump-sum payments
to papers in accordance with the number of representatives their parties
had in the Eduskunta.
Despite these efforts to encourage a varied party press, the number
of independent papers rose sharply after World War II, increasing from
38 percent in 1962 to 64 percent in 1985. The number of nonsocialist
party papers decreased most, but papers of this type still had more than
twice the circulation of socialist papers.
Most Finnish newspapers were served by the country's principal news
agency, the Finnish News Agency (Suomen Tietotoimisto--STT), which was
owned by the leading newspapers and the state-run Finnish Broadcasting
Company (Yleisradio--YLE). STT was connected to many of the world's news
agencies, and it had an extensive network of domestic correspondents.
Some newspapers, however, had direct contacts with foreign news
agencies. There were also agencies, run by political parties, that
supplied subscribers with political news and articles. Agencies of this
type were the Kesk's Uutiskeskus (UK), the KOK's Lehdist�n
Sanomapalvelu (LSP), the SDP's Ty�vaen Sanomalehtien Tietotoimisto
(TST), the SKDL's Demokraattinen Lehtipalvelu (DLP), and the SFP's
Svensk Presstjanst (SPT).
By the mid-1980s, there were about 1,200 magazines being published
regularly, printing a total of about 20 million copies a year. The most
popular subscription magazine in the mid-1980s was Me,
published biweekly in Helsinki for Finnish consumer societies, followed
by the Finnish version of Reader's Digest and by numerous
family and general interest magazines. The magazines with the largest
printings were those distributed free at banks, retail stores, and other
businesses.
Subscription magazines, like newspapers, enjoyed general support from
the government in the form of lower taxes and postal rates. In the late
1970s, selective government support was introduced to assist those
magazines which, without the aim of financial gain, sought to inform the
public about cultural, scientific, religious, and social concerns. By
the mid-1980s, several dozen of these so-called "magazines of
opinion" were receiving state aid.
Finland's state radio and television company, the YLE, was founded in
1926, and it began television broadcasting in 1958. It was a stock
company, with 99.2 percent of its stock owned by the government and the
remainder owned by fifty-seven stockholders. As a stock company, it was
independent of the state budget. It did not monopolize the airwaves, but
sold a portion of its broadcasting time, a maximum of 18 percent, to a
private television company, Mainos-TV-Reklam (MTV). This arrangement had
been in effect since 1958, when the YLE first began television
transmissions. Beginning in 1973, Finland also had cable television,
centered in the major urban areas, which by the mid- 1980s reached about
100,000 homes. It was expected that Finns and the residents of the other
Nordic countries would be able to see each other's television broadcasts
via satellite sometime in the early 1990s.
In the mid-1980s, the YLE employed nearly 5,000 persons; each year it
broadcast about 5,000 hours of television programming-- 1,000 hours of
which was rented by MTV. Since late 1986, the YLE's television division
has consisted of three channels (TV 1, TV 2, and TV 3). The YLE produced
about 1,400 hours of television itself; the remaining time was filled by
programs purchased abroad. Swedish-language programming amounted to a
little more than 500 hours, about 60 percent of which appeared on TV 1.
In the mid-1980s, about 20 percent of television broadcast time was
devoted to news and current events, another 20 percent to documentaries,
the same amount again to sports and light entertainment, 16 percent to
television serials, and 12 percent to films. Imported programs were
shown in their original languages with subtitles. The YLE had
coproduction arrangements with many foreign companies, mainly those of
Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and the United States. Finns, 81 percent
of them on a daily basis, watched an average of two hours of television
a day; 28 percent held it to be their most important source of
information.
The YLE's radio division broadcast about 21,000 hours annually and
consisted of three sections--Network 1, Network 2, and the Swedish
Program. Network 2 broadcast around the clock. The other two stations
broadcast from early in the morning until around midnight. Somewhat
under half of these radio programs were broadcast on a regional or local
level from the company's nine local stations, eight of which sent
Finnish-language programming. About 20 percent of radio programming was
devoted to news and current events, another 20 percent to general
cultural and public service programs, and 40 percent to all varieties of
music. In addition to its national broadcasts, each year the company
transmitted about 13,500 hours--in Finnish and in other languages--to
listeners, abroad. Private radio stations first appeared in 1985, and
they existed in a score of municipalities by the late 1980s. Finns
listened to the radio an average of two hours daily, and 70 percent of
them listened every day. Twenty- three percent of the population held
the medium to be their most important source of information.
The YLE, having been granted its broadcasting concession by the
government, was obliged to present programming that was "factual
and fair," provided wholesome entertainment, strengthened popular
education, and infringed on no one's rights. A committee, appointed in
1979 to study new legislation for radio and television broadcasting,
concluded in 1984 that the YLE's programs should be marked by
truthfulness, pluralism, and relevance to the lives of the viewers, and
that it should further the basic rights and values of the country's
citizens. The Administrative Council, the members of which were
appointed by the Eduskunta in accordance with each party's parliamentary
strength, was responsible for realizing these objectives. Three program
councils, the members of which were appointed by the Administrative
Council and according to the political composition of the Eduskunta,
were involved in deciding what was to be broadcast. The upper management
of the YLE was also somewhat politicized in the belief that this would
help to guarantee that all viewpoints were adequately aired during
broadcasting time. MTV's programming, including the news broadcasts that
it began in 1981, was also supervised by the councils. This system of
control, while occasionally subject to heavy-handed lapses of judgement,
was generally conceded to have brought about programming that broadly
mirrored the country's political culture as a whole.
Article 10 of the Constitution Act of 1919 guarantees freedom of
speech and "the right of printing and publishing writing and
pictorial presentations without prior interference by anyone."
International surveys of Finnish journalism have found it to be of a
high standard and wholly comparable with that of other Western nations.
The desire for a press reflecting all currents of Finnish political life
has been given concrete expression in government financial support for
political newspapers and journals of opinion. Legislation from 1966
protected the confidentiality of sources, in that it allowed journalists
to refuse to reveal the identity of sources unless such disclosure would
solve a serious crime, i.e., one calling for a sentence of six or more
years. In 1971 this protection was extended to television journalists as
well.
Information was readily available in Finland. Ten major publishing
firms, two of them specializing in Swedish-language books, and numerous
smaller houses published some 8,000 new titles each year. This was an
extraordinary figure for a small country, especially one the languages
of which were not widely known abroad. Finns were able to buy books
published anywhere in the world, and local firms that published the samizdat,
or underground, literature from the Soviet Union allowed Finns to be
well acquainted with the opposition groups of their eastern neighbor.
According to the distinguished Finnish journalist and former
diplomat, Max Jakobson, Finnish journalism did not possess an
adversarial spirit and a tradition of aggressive reporting to the same
degree as the American press. Also on occasion it was noted that the
politicization of YLE broadcasting meant that television journalists
sometimes remembered the political party from which they came better
than they did their duty to inform the public objectively. In consonance
with the tone of Finnish foreign policy, press and television criticism
of the superpowers' foreign policies was muted to some degree. Finnish
press discussions of the failures of the Soviet Union could be frank,
but they were couched in gentler tones than was true in some other
countries.
A reminder of the sensitive years just after World War II, when
Finland's survival as an independent nation was not assured, was a 1948
addition to the Penal Code that threatened a prison term of up to two
years for anyone who damaged Finnish relations with a foreign power by
means of defamatory journalism. Serious as this penalty appeared, only
the president could decide if a journalist seen guilty of such
defamation should be prosecuted. Although not applied for decades, the
clause continued to be an embarrassment for Finns. Government officials,
when called upon to comment on the clause, stressed the value of a free
press and the lack of censorship, noted Finland's good relations with
all countries, acknowledged that there had been in the past some
"self-censorship" of the press with regard to the Soviet
Union, but pointed out that the clause had not been applied for decades.
Since World War II, leading Finnish politicians have also occasionally
exhorted the press to be more responsible in its reporting on foreign
policy issues; there were several such calls by Koivisto in his first
years in office. Such political tutelage was by the mid-1980s, however,
no longer viewed as appropriate for a modern democratic state.
Finnish media were also subject to some popular controls. The Press
Law of 1919 gave the right of correction to anyone who held that
material printed about him in a periodical was incorrect or offensive.
The publication was obliged to grant the injured party an equal amount
of space within two days after receipt of the statement. Failure to do
so could result in a fine. Finns could also turn to the Council for Mass
Media (Julkisen Sanan Neuvosto- -JSN), which was founded in 1968 to
promote journalistic ethics. This body examined each complaint submitted
to it and decided on its merits. Between 1969 and 1978, the council
received several hundred queries; it found about a quarter of them
justified and recommended to the criticized journal or station that it
issue an unedited rejoinder from the injured party.
Films were subject to censorship in Finland according to a law from
1965 that had been enacted by the elaborate procedure required for
legislation seen as being an exception to the Constitution. In this
case, there was an exceptional curtailment of the constitutional right
of freedom of information. The law dealt only with films shown for
commercial purposes, and it forbade those that offended good morals,
were brutalizing or injurious to mental health, endangered public order
and the nation's defense, or harmed Finland's relations with other
countries. The Film Censorship Board was set up to administer the law,
and its decisions could be appealed up to the Supreme Administrative
Court. Of 2,688 films reviewed between 1972 and 1983, some 227 were
forbidden in their entirety. Of these, nearly all were rejected for
reasons of morality or potential danger to mental health, and 2 percent
because they could hurt Finland's external relations. The most noted of
these films was the British-Norwegian coproduction, "One Day in the
Life of Ivan Denisovich," based on the eponymous novel by Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn. Several films from the German Democratic Republic (East
Germany) were banned after having been judged potentially offensive to
the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany).
Finland, independent only since 1917, does not have a long tradition
of neutrality. In the interwar period, it declared itself neutral, but
its foreign policy was not neutral enough to satisfy the security
concerns of the Soviet Union, and Finland was drawn into World War II.
The years immediately after the war were taken up by the country's
struggle to survive as an independent nation. The treaties of 1947 and
1948, which confirmed the existence of a Soviet military base on Finnish
territory and created a defensive alliance with the Soviet Union, seemed
to preclude Finnish neutrality.
The Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance (FCMA)
of 1948 mentioned in its preamble, however, Finland's desire to remain
outside the conflicts of the great powers and to maintain peace in
accordance with the principles of the UN. A first example of the Finnish
policy of avoiding entanglements in superpower disputes was the decision
in early 1948 not to participate in the European Recovery Program, also
known as the Marshall Plan. Finnish rejection of the much-needed aid was
caused by Soviet contentions that the program was an effort on the part
of the United States to divide Europe into two camps.
In the late 1940s, Finland joined the General Agreement on Tariffs
and Trade (GATT) and the World
Bank, participating in their economic programs, but
avoiding any political implications of membership that could be seen by
the Soviets to link the country to the West. Finland also stayed out of
the discussions of the period about the formation of a Nordic defense
union.
During these early years after World War II, there were few official
Finnish statements about neutrality, but in a speech in 1952 Prime
Minister Kekkonen held that the FCMA treaty presupposed a kind of
neutrality for his country. In 1955 a major impediment to Finnish
neutrality was removed by the closing of the Soviet military base
located near Helsinki, and in the following years leading Soviet
officials praised the neutrality of their neighbor. In 1955, too,
Finland was able to join the UN and the Nordic Council, acts that
reduced its isolation and brought it more fully into the community of
nations.
By the early 1960s, Finnish neutrality was recognized by both the
West and the East, and the country entered a more confident period of
international relations when it began practicing what came to be
officially termed an active and peaceful policy of neutrality. Finland
participated in local and in global initiatives aimed at creating
conditions that allowed nations to avoid violence in their relations
with one another. As President Kekkonen noted in 1965 in an often-quoted
speech, Finland could "only maintain its neutrality on the
condition that peace is preserved in Europe."
An essential element of Finland's active neutrality policy was the
concept of a Nordic Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone (Nordic NWFZ), first
introduced by Kekkonen in May 1963 against the background of a Europe
increasingly armed with nuclear weapons. The Finnish president proposed
the creation of a zone consisting of Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark,
and Iceland. Their de facto nuclear-weapon-free status was to be
formalized by the creation of a Nordic NWFZ that would remove them
somewhat from the strategic plans of the superpowers. The zone idea was
based on the supposition that, as these countries had no nuclear weapons
in their territories, they might avoid nuclear attacks from either of
the two alliances, whereas, the presence of nuclear weapons would
certainly invite such attacks.
The Nordic NWFZ idea was not realized at the time it was initially
proposed. A major impediment was the membership of Denmark and Norway in
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and hence their pledge to
consider the deployment of nuclear weapons on their territories in a
time of crisis. Despite its lack of success, the zone proposal remained
part of Finnish foreign policy, and in 1978 it was reintroduced in an
altered form in the light of new developments in weapons technology. In
Kekkonen's opinion, the cruise missile made the use of nuclear weapons
in war more likely. His new Nordic NWFZ proposal contained the concept
of a negative security guarantee, according to which the superpowers
would bind themselves to refrain from attacking with nuclear weapons
those countries belonging to the zone.
The zone proposal has since become a permanent part of security
discussions in Nordic Europe, with support from a variety of quarters.
President Koivisto declared his firm support for the zone proposal in a
speech at the UN in 1983, and in 1985 a Nordic parliamentary group
convened in Copenhagen to discuss the idea and to set up a commission to
study it.
In addition to the problem of Danish and Norwegian membership in the
Atlantic Alliance, other problems continued to prevent the zone's
realization. A central question was how, and to what extent, the Baltic
and Barents seas and the adjacent areas of the Soviet Union would be
included. The Soviet Union, the only power of northern Europe that had
nuclear weapons in its arsenal, always welcomed the zone proposal but
left its participation in the zone uncertain. Finnish officials seemed
content to hold continued talks about the zone. Foreign affairs
specialists occasionally commented that Helsinki was more interested in
using discussion of a Nordic NWFZ as a means of emphasizing the existing
stability of northern Europe than in the realization of such a zone.
Another core element of Finland's active policy of neutrality was the
country's participation in arms control and disarmament initiatives. In
1963 Finland signed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, prohibiting nuclear
testing underwater, above ground, and in outer space; and in 1968 it
approved the Treaty on the NonProliferation of Nuclear Weapons. It was
the first country to form an agreement with the International Atomic
Energy Agency concerning the peaceful use of nuclear power. In 1971
Finland signed the treaty banning the placement of nuclear weapons on
the world's seabed, and in 1975 it joined in the prohibition of the
development, production, and stockpiling of biological weapons. Since
the early 1970s, Finnish scientists have been developing technology for
the detection of chemical weapons, and since the mid-1970s, they have
been engaged in perfecting a global seismic verification station system.
Helsinki was the site for some of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks
(SALT), and in 1973 and 1975 Finland was the driving force behind the
Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) and the host of
its first and third meetings. The signing of the Final Act of the CSCE
in Helsinki in 1975 was the high point of the country's policy of active
neutrality. The signed document recognized the legitimacy of neutrality
as a foreign policy, a point demonstrated by Finland's hosting the
conference. The country has continued to work as a member of the neutral
and nonaligned group at later CSCE meetings, where the emphasis has been
on the formation of confidence-building and security-building measures
(CSBM). The fourth CSCE meeting was scheduled to take place in Helsinki
in the spring of 1992.
Finland - Soviet Union
Two hard-fought wars, ending in defeat and in the loss of about
one-tenth of Finland's land area, convinced some leading Finnish
politicians by the end of World War II that the interwar policy of
neutral distance from the Soviet Union had been mistaken and must be
abandoned if the country were to survive as an independent nation. Juho Paasikivi, Finland's
most prominent conservative politician and its president from 1946 to
1956, came to believe that Finnish foreign policy must center on
convincing Soviet leaders that his country accepted, as legitimate,
Soviet desires for a secure northwestern border and that there was no
reason to fear an attack from, or through, Finland.
The preliminary peace treaty of 1944, which ended the Continuation
War, and the Treaty of Paris of 1947, which regulated the size and the
quality of Finland's armed forces, served to provide the Soviets with a
strategically secure area for the protection of Leningrad and Murmansk.
The deterioration of superpower relations, however, led the Soviets to
desire a firmer border with the gradually emerging Western bloc. In
February 1948, Finnish authorities were notified by Soviet officials
that Finland should sign a mutual assistance treaty with the Soviet
Union.
The treaty that Finnish and Soviet negotiators worked out and signed
in April 1948 differed from those the Soviets had concluded with Hungary
and Romania. Unlike those countries, Finland was not made part of the
Soviet military alliance, but was obliged only to defend its own
territory if attacked by Germany or by countries allied with that
country, or if the Soviet Union were attacked by these powers through
Finnish territory. In addition, consultations between Finland and the
Soviet Union were required if the threat of such an attack were
established. According to the FCMA treaty, Finland was not bound to aid
the Soviet Union if that country were attacked elsewhere, and the
consultations were to be between sovereign states, not between military
allies. Just what constituted a military threat was not specified, but
the right of the Finns to discuss the posited threat and how it should
be met, that is, to what extent military assistance would be required,
allowed Finnish officials room for maneuver and deprived the treaty of
an automatic character.
Since its signing, the treaty has continued to be the cornerstone of
Finnish relations with the Soviet Union; that both found it satisfactory
was seen in its renewal and extension in 1955, 1970, and 1983. For the
Soviet Union, the FCMA treaty meant greater security for the
strategically vital areas of Leningrad and the Kola Peninsula. Any
attack on these areas through Finland would meet first with Finnish
resistance, which many observers believed would slow an offensive
appreciably. The prohibition of Finnish membership in an alliance
directed against the Soviet Union meant hostile forces could not be
stationed within Finland, close to vital Soviet installations.
Finland's neutral status had an effect on the Nordic area as a whole.
Its special relationship with the Soviet Union reduced pressure on
Sweden and eased that country's burden of maintaining its traditional
neutrality. The consequent lowering of tensions in the region allowed
Norway and Denmark NATO membership, although each of these countries
established certain restrictions on the stationing of foreign troops and
the deployment of nuclear weapons on their soil. The interdependence of
security postures in northern Europe, sometimes referred to as the
Nordic Balance, has removed the region somewhat from the vagaries of the
Cold War over the last few decades. The Soviets have closely monitored
developments in the area, but their basic satisfaction with the security
situation that has prevailed there has allowed Finland to survive as an
independent country, bound to some degree to the Soviet Union in defense
matters, but able to maintain its democratic institutions and its
membership in the Western community of nations.
During the years immediately following the signing of the FCMA
treaty, the Finns complied with their obligation to pay reparations to
the Soviet Union; the last payment was made in 1952. The preceding year
the two countries had signed a treaty setting up trade between them on
the basis of a barter arrangement, which has been renewed every five
years since then. In 1954 Finland became the first capitalist country to
sign a scientific and technical agreement with the Soviet Union.
Despite the provisions of Article 6 of the FCMA treaty, which
enjoined each contracting party from interfering in the domestic affairs
of the other, Soviet comments on Finnish domestic politics were often
quite harsh. Soviet attitudes toward Finland softened, however, with the
death of Joseph Stalin and the advent of beter relations with the
western powers in the mid-1950s; consequently, no objections were raised
to the 1955 decisions to admit Finland to the Nordic Council and to the
UN. Late in the same year, the Soviets gave up their
base at Porkkala in exchange for an extension of the FCMA treaty, due to
expire several years after Paasikivi's scheduled retirement in 1956.
Soviet uncertainty about the conduct of his successor made Moscow
anxious for the treaty's renewal.
The departure of Soviet troops from Finnish territory removed an
obstacle to Finland's full sovereignty and to its achievement of
neutrality. In 1956 Nikita Khrushchev, first secretary of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), spoke for the first time of Finnish
neutrality. Soviet tributes to Finland's neutrality and nonaligned
status grew common in the next few years.
Finnish-Soviet relations were shaken by two crises--the Night Frost
Crisis of 1958-59 and the more serious Note Crisis of 1961. The Note Crisis
was a watershed in Finnish-Soviet relations in that Kekkonen, whose
successful resolution of the crisis made him the virtual master of
Finnish foreign policy, and others realized that in the future Finnish
foreign policy ought to be formulated only after its effects on Soviet
interests had been carefully weighed. Another effect of the crisis was
that it led to the inauguration of a policy of active and peaceful
neutrality.
Finnish-Soviet relations since the Note Crisis have been stable and
unmarked by any serious disagreements. Trade between the two countries
has remained steady since the 1951 barter agreement. In 1967 Finland
became the first Western country to set up a permanent intergovernmental
commission with the Soviet Union for economic cooperation. A treaty on
economic, technical, and industrial cooperation followed in 1971, as did
a long-term agreement on trade and cooperation in 1977 that, in 1987,
was extended to be in effect until the turn of the century. The first
joint venture agreements between Finnish and Soviet firms were also
arranged in 1987. In 1973 Finland was the first capitalist country to
cooperate closely with the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance.
The Soviet Union has carefully monitored Finland's adherence to the
FCMA treaty, and Finland's awareness of this scrutiny has influenced its
Finnish policy. For example, Finland refrained from full membership in
the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) and instead joined the body
through an associate membership in 1961. The entry into a free-trade
relationship with the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973 occurred only through a carefully orchestrated
preliminary plan that included formal links with Comecon and a special
re-election of Kekkonen in 1974 to assure the Soviets of continuity in
Finnish foreign policy.
Since the Note Crisis, Soviet interference in Finnish domestic
concerns has been limited to occasional critical comments in the Soviet
press and from official spokesmen. Clarification about Soviet policy
toward Finland could be obtained from Soviet officials themselves, or
from articles published in authoritative newspapers or journals. Since
the 1970s, a frequent source of enlightenment about the Kremlin's
attitudes toward Finland, and about Nordic Europe in general, were
articles written under the name of Komissarov, many of which were
commonly believed to have been written by Iurii Deriabin, a well-placed
and knowledgeable Soviet specialist on Finnish affairs. As valued
indicators of Soviet attitudes, the articles were examined line by line
in Finland. Komissarov articles, for example, disabused Finnish foreign
affairs specialists of the notion, which they had entertained for a
time, that Finland had the right to determine on its own whether
consultations according to Article 2 of the FCMA treaty were necessary.
A Komissarov article that appeared in January 1984 in a Helsinki
newspaper expressed the disquieting Soviet view that the passage of
cruise missiles through Finnish airspace might conceivably mean the need
for consultations.
Two examples may indicate the restraint exercised by the Soviets in
their dealings with Finnish affairs since the early 1960s. In 1971 the
Soviet ambassador was recalled from Helsinki after he had become
involved in the internal feuds of the Communist Party of Finland (Suomen
Kommunistinen Puolue--SKP). A suggestion in 1978 by a Finnish communist
newspaper, which was repeated by the Soviet chief of staff General
Dmitri Ustinov, that Finnish military forces should hold joint maneuvers
with Soviet forces was quickly dismissed by Finnish officials as
incompatible with their country's neutrality; there was no Soviet
rejoinder.
Finnish foreign policy vis-a-vis the Soviet Union enjoyed widespread
support from the Finnish people. Polls in the 1980s consistently
measured an approval rate of over 90 percent. Another proof of the
acceptance of the Paasikivi-Kekkonen Line was that foreign policy played
virtually no part in the parliamentary elections of 1983 and 1987. From
the Soviet side, comments on these elections were neutral, with no hints
of preferred victors.
Finland - Nordic Europe
Finland is an integral part of Nordic Europe. With the exception of a
small Swedish-speaking minority, the country is ethnically distinct from
the Scandinavian countries, but the 700 years that Finland was part of
Sweden gave it a Nordic inheritance that survived the century during
which Finland was an autonomous state within the Russian Empire. During
the interwar period, it entered into numerous agreements with the other
states of Nordic Europe. After World War II, relations resumed, but with
caution owing to the tensions of the Cold War. Finland could undertake
no initiatives in international relations that might cause the Soviet
Union to suspect that Finland was being drawn into the Western camp.
The gradual relaxation of superpower tensions meant that in 1955
Finland could join the Nordic Council, three years after its foundation.
The Nordic Council was an organization conceived to further cooperation
among Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland. Meeting once a year for a
week in one of the capitals of the member countries, the council was an
advisory body, the decisions of which were not binding; it did carry
considerable weight, however, as the delegates at the annual meetings
were frequently leading politicians of the countries they represented.
At the insistence of Finland, security matters were not to be discussed,
and attention was directed rather to economic, social, and cultural
issues. Unlike the European Community (EC), the Nordic Council was not a supranational organization, and
membership in the council did not affect Finland's status as a neutral
nation.
The Treaty of Helsinki of 1962 gave birth to the Nordic Convention on
Cooperation, which defined the achievements and goals of the regional
policy of increased interaction. This agreement was followed by the
formation in 1971 of the Nordic Council of Ministers, which instituted a
formal structure for frequent meetings of the region's cabinet
ministers. The issue at hand determined which ministers would attend. In
addition to these larger bodies, numerous smaller entities existed to
further Nordic cooperation. A study of the second half of the 1970s
found more than 100 such organizations. The efforts of these bodies and
the many formal and informal meetings of Nordic politicians and civil
servants stopped short of full integration, but they yielded numerous
agreements that brought Finland and the other Nordic countries closer
together. This so-called "cobweb integration" has given the
citizens of Nordic Europe many reciprocal rights in one another's
countries. Finns were able to travel freely without passports throughout
Nordic Europe, live and work there without restrictions, enjoy the full
social and health benefits of each country, and since 1976, vote in
local elections after a legal residence of two years. Citizenship in
another of the Nordic countries could be acquired more easily by a Finn
than by someone from outside the region.
Economic cooperation did not proceed so smoothly. Nordic hopes, in
the mid-1950s, of establishing a common market were disappointed, and
EFTA was accepted as a substitute. An attempt in 1969 to form a Nordic
customs union, the Nordic Economic Union (NORDEK), foundered when
Finland withdrew from the plan. The withdrawal may have been caused by
Soviet concerns that Finland could be brought into too close a
relationship with the EEC via Denmark's expected membership in the
Community. This setback was mitigated, however, when the Nordic
Investment Bank began operations in 1976 in Helsinki. The bank's purpose
was to invest in financial ventures in the Nordic region.
In the second half of the 1980s, Finland continued working with its
Scandinavian neighbors, being a part, for example, of the Nordic bloc in
the UN and participating in Nordic Third World development projects.
Finland's Nordic NWFZ proposal was being studied and furthered by an
inter-Nordic parliamentary committee, and Finland was always present at
the semiannual meeting of Nordic foreign ministers.
Finland - Western Europe
Finland had to adjust its foreign policy after World War II to the
changed international environment; however, it continued to enjoy good
relations with West European countries, particularly in the field of
economic cooperation. The country joined economic projects such as GATT
and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), but, wary of arousing Soviet
apprehensions about potential political ties to the West, did not seek
membership in the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation
(OEEC). Through a clever device, however, Finland did manage to
participate in the trade benefits provided by the OEEC's European
Payments Union: in 1957 Finland formed its own body, the Helsinki Club,
which was subsequently joined by all OEEC countries. In 1961, for
imperative economic reasons, Finland worked out a special relationship
with EFTA after complex negotiations. Finland's relationship, an
associate membership in the body, became feasible after the Soviet Union
agreed that it was compatible with the Finnish policy of neutrality and
after tariff arrangements ensured the continuity of Finnish-Soviet
economic cooperation. A more stable world meant that in 1969 Finland was
able to join the OEEC's successor, the Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD). In 1973 Helsinki, in a balancing
effort, signed agreements with both the EEC and Comecon and was given a
special status with both organizations.
Another subtle act of diplomatic balancing was Finnish treatment of
the thorny question of what kind of relations it should have with the
two German states. To recognize either would antagonize one of the
superpowers. The Finnish solution was to establish two separate trade
missions, one in each of the Germanies. This arrangement allowed
diplomatic relations and alienated no one. Once the two German states
recognized each other in 1972, Finland was able to establish normal
diplomatic relations with each of them.
The years since the early 1970s have seen a steady normalization of
Finland's relations with Western Europe. In the 1980s, Finnish trade
with the region accounted for about 60 percent of its exports; the
country participated in European economic and research endeavors like
Eureka and the European Space Agency (ESA); and 1986 saw full Finnish
membership in EFTA. In addition, by the end of 1988 all obstacles
appeared cleared for Finland's membership in the Council of Europe the
following year.
The increasing integration of the EC, however, presented problems for
Finland and for EFTA's other neutral states. The supranational character
of the EC, which was always incompatible with Finnish neutrality, became
even more so with the signing in 1985 of the EC's Single European Act.
The act aimed at foreign policy cooperation among members, and it
therefore made Finnish membership in the EC inconceivable. Exclusion
from the EC, however, could threaten Finland's export-based economy if
the "internal market" that the EC hoped to have in place by
1992 led to trade barriers directed against nations outside the
Community. The late 1980s and the early 1990s were certain to be a time
of intensive Finnish dicussion on how this challenge was to be met.
Finland - United States
Because Finland had fought with the Axis powers during World War II,
it was ineligible for charter membership in the UN in 1945. Finland
applied for membership in 1947, but Cold War disagreements among the
great powers on UN admissions policies delayed Finland's entry until
1955.
Finland had not been very enthusiastic about membership in the UN in
the 1945 to 1955 period. The country tried to pursue the Paasikivi
policy of passive and cautious neutrality and feared that joining the UN
would be incompatible with its nonaligned status. A strict
interpretation of the UN charter made membership in it incompatible with
neutrality. According to Article 25 of the charter, members of the UN
are obliged to follow the decision of the Security Council in applying
economic or military sanctions against other member states.
Since becoming a member, however, Finland has been a committed and
active participant in accordance with its official foreign policy of a
peaceful and active neutrality. In the late 1960s, it was a member of
the Security Council, and one of its UN officials, the diplomat and
historian Max Jakobson, was a strong contender for the post of secretary
general. His candidacy is said to have failed because of reservations on
the part of the Soviet Union. In the fall of 1988, Finland was reelected
to the Security Council for a two-year term, and it was expected to
assume the council's chairmanship in 1990.
There have been two main lines of Finnish policy in the UN. The first
is that Finland avoids any political or economic confrontation in which
the interests of the superpowers are directly involved. This policy
explains why Finland has refrained over the years from condemning Soviet
actions, most recently the Soviet military presence in Afghanistan.
Finnish officials hold that their country can be more effective on the
international level if it has good relations with all countries. (They
commonly explain that Finland wishes to work as a doctor rather than as
a judge.) The second current of Finland's UN policy is that country's
role as part of the Nordic bloc within the organization. Finland
consults and collaborates closely with other Nordic members, generally
voting with them, participating with them in aid projects to the Third
World through the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), or being
part of the UN forces sent to troubled areas. Finnish forces have taken
part in every UN peacekeeping mission since the early 1960s. In
addition, the country maintains a permanent military force available to
the organization. Finnish aid to the Third World has not been so
extensive as that of the other Nordic countries. Finland, for example,
has never met the goal of contributing 0.7 percent of its gross national
product (GNP) to Third World development, and critics have charged that
Finland gets a "free ride" from the achievements and good
reputations of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. Efforts were underway in the
1980s, however, to come closer to this figure. The foreign aid programs
in which Finland was involved were not only multilateral, but, with
regard to a few selected countries, were carried out on a one-to-one
basis. Finland's record as a provider of asylum for refugees did not
always match the records of the other Nordic countries. A quota system
instituted in 1985 provided for the acceptance of 100 refugees a year.
Criticism of this figure led to the quota's increase to 200 a year in
1987, and in mid-1988 Finnish officials decided to admit 300 refugees
that year. As of late 1988, there were about 1,200 refugees in Finland,
nearly all of them from the Third World.
