Nordic workshop on democracy University of Iceland 30-31 January 2014

1. Nordic workshop on democracy University of Iceland 30-31 January 2014 Conflict and consensus in Finnish democracy Pauli Kettunen Department of Political and Economic Studies University of Helsinki pauli.kettunen@helsinki.fi

2. Power and democracy as a research theme in Finland • research programme ”Democracy and Equality” in the 1970s (Academy of Finland) • research programme ”Power in Finland” 2007-2010 (Academy of Finland) • project on the history of the parliament of Finland (eduskunta/riksdagen), completed in 2006 • integrating researchers in governmental ”democracy policy” since 2003 • various problems of democracy and power in many different projects • historical and comparative interest in consensual corporatist traditions in small Western European countries (the EU funded Smallcons project 2003-2006) • democracy in ”the Nordic model” and the meanings of ”Nordic democracy”

5. Finland as one of the five exceptions of the Nordic model • image 1: a top example of consensual national competitiveness • image 2: a latecoming and incomplete representative of the Nordic society/the Nordic democracy/the Nordic model • the relationship between these two images? • ways of defining the national interest? • Pierre Rosanvallon and the tension between the unified political ”people” and the fragmented social ”people” • Frank Ankersmit and the distinction between consensus and compromise (cf. Arendt Lijphart’s distinction between consensus democracy and majoritarian democracy)

6. Nordic democracy: divergent interests and virtuous circles • the Nordic class compromises of the 1930s, reflecting class structures and the conclusions drawn from the Great Depression and the rise of Fascism in Europe • political coalitions of “workers and farmers” (Social Democrats and Agrarian Parties), and the consolidation of national systems of collective labour market agreement • positive-sum game between organised economic interests within a national society: workers and farmers, workers and employers • combining three ideological strands of Nordic modernization: the idealised heritage of the free Nordic peasant; the spirit of capitalism; the utopia of socialism • bridging “cleavages” à la Stein Rokkan • the post-World-War-II confidence in the virtuous circle of economic growth, increased social equality, and widening democracy, to be achieved by means of compromises and planning • a widely shared but all the time contested framework for political conflicts and compromises; the role of Social Democracy for the strength of this idea; in Finland much weaker than, especially, in Sweden

7. Nordic democracy: parity between labour market parties • the ideology of parity in European labour law since the 19th century • in the Nordic countries in the early 20th century modified by influential trade unions associated with reformist Socialist movements • Denmark the forerunner and Finland the latecomer in unionization and the development of the system of collective agreements • the consolidation of the systems of parity-based agreements between labour market parties as a part of the class compromises of the 1930s • an ingredient of ”Nordic democracy” • the recognition of conflicting interests, ”labour market parties” instead of ”social partners” • equality by reinforcing the weaker party in social relationships and by preventing the stronger party from presenting its interests as universal interests • the widening of the field of issues in which employers had to recognize the particular (instead of universal) character of their interests • the symmetry of labour market parties as a criteria of criticizing inequalities in working life • the Nordic understanding of ”industrial democracy”

8. Finland: a Nordic country with too much conflict and too much consensus • the image of a conflict-laden past: the Civil War of 1918; the strong support of Communism; the high level of strikes until the 1980s; unstable parliamentary system and short-lived governments until the 1980s • the image of a consensual past: the national unity during the Second World War, especially the Winter War; consensual coping with the tight limits of maneuvre during the Cold War; the power of wood processing export industries to present their interests as national interests • too much conflict and too much consensus – two sides of the sama coin

9. An ideal of consensus nourishing conflicts • state making and nation building in the Grand Duchy of Russian Emperor (1809-1917), former Eastern provinces of the Swedish Realm • Swedish law, Lutheran religion and the Hegelian idea of the state, nation-state within an imperial framework • conflicts on the right to define and represent the ”will of the people” • conflicts based on unfilled criteria of the nation as ”imagined community” (Benedict Anderson) • national integration creating preconditions for the politicizing of class conflicts

10. A strategy of social peace • strong labour movement in a very rural society at the beginning of the 20th century • universal suffrage 1906, independence 1917, the Civil War 1918, in the 1920s and 1930s democracy and the heritage of counter-revolutionary victory intertwined • the main strategy of ”social peace” after the Civil War of 1918: breaking the alliance of urban workers and rural landless population by land reforms, strengthening the class of freeholder peasants • the continuity of this strategy in dealing with the outcomes of the Second World War (in relocating the people of the Karelian territories ceded to the Soviet Union) • the strong role of the Agrarian Party (Centre Party) in Finnish politics • the number of small-size farms increased until the 1950s, livelihood based on linkage between agriculture and wood processing industries in Finnish modernization • the linkage was weakened through technological development, the change of socio-economic structures accelerated in the late 1950s and culminated in the 1960s

11. National agency: internal will and external necessities • the rise of consensual corporatism in Finland as an institution of war-time national efforts • continuities through the post-war political change and associated struggles on the definition of true national interest • compromises for rescuing the national interest rather than for defining it; the continuity of constitutional constraints against single majority decisions; the crucial role of civil servants in turning the compromises into functional necessities • the post-war national strategy of prosperity based on a high rate of investment and the sacrifices in the form of more moderate growth of consumption • social policies assessed from the point of view of the limits of economic resources • the emphasis on external national necessities also in virtuous-circle arguments for social policy as instrumental for economic growth, emerging in the 1960s • Pekka Kuusi 1961: In order to survive between the highly growth-opriented Sweden and the Soviet Union, ”we are doomed to grow”. --- “Democracy, social equalization and economic growth seem to be fortunately interrelated in modern society.”

12. Cleavages and national integration • four ”basic cleavages” distinguished by Erik Allardt in the early 1960s: • 1) Finnish and Swedish-speaking Finns • 2) rural and urban Finns • 3) working class and bourgeoisie • 4) the Communists and the rest of the people • the Durkheimian receipt for national integration: in a society of deepening division of labour the pressure of conformity must be weakened • incomes policies and the integration of communists/the split of the Communist Party

13. Work-related institutional characteristics of the “Nordic model” • dominance of wage-work/salaried work as a social form of work • high degree of female employment outside home • two-hold dependence of women on the welfare state: social preconditions for employment outside home (e.g. child care); jobs in the labour market with strong gender-segregation • the (far from unambiguous) principle of universalism (rights based on citizenship) in the organizing of welfare and education • high degree of unionisation among the employees (men as well as women, blue-collar as well as white-collar workers, public as well as private sector employees ) • high degree of organisation among employers (and other interest groups), as well • hierarchical national system of collective labour market negotiations and agreements • tripartite cooperation between employees’ and employers’ organizations and the government on issues of economic and social policies (“neo-corporatism”) • thus a close connection between the formation of the welfare state and industrial relations

14. New ambiguities of the Nordic model • globalisation and increasing asymmetries • exit, voice, loyalty (Albert O. Hirschman 1970) • virtuous circles within a national society? • symmetries of labour market parties? • the recognised particularism of employers’ interests? • 1) the notion of ”Nordic model” as a target of external challenges • 2) the notion of ”Nordic model” as a response to external challenges • nation-state as competition state: the nation state providing a competitive environment for globally mobile economic actors • welfare state and competition state: two aspects of “the Nordic model”

15. Trade union density in OECD countries 2010

16. Institutional continuities and competitiveness-orientated consensus • no drastic change of institutional appearance • the generalised interest of economy eroding the idea of employer interests as limited particular interests • a shift from the principle of compromise towards the principle of consensus • compromise: common interest defined through the interplay between divergent interests • consensus: divergent interests adjusted to a pre-defined common interest • Finnish political traditions provided good prerequisites for this kind of incremental change

17. New problems of political legitimacy • until the 1980s, national political intergation as a major political problem, associated with the rivalry between different existing or imagined societal systems in the Cold War world • since the 1980, the emphasis of national competitiveness in the defining of national political agenda • new problems of political legitimacy, declined electoral participation, especially among the young; immigrants and integration • governmental democracy policies in the Nordic countries • the Finnish variant of democracy policy: Government Policy Programme Citizen Participation 2003-2007 • citizenship associated with ”civil society”, seen as the major precondition of the legitimacy of representative democracy • ”social cohesion”, ”social exclusion”, ”activation” • the promotion of citizen participation thematized as a way of reinforcing the national ”us”

18. The limits of national gaze • a new self-reinforcing circle: dealing with globalisation as just a national or a European challenge is bound to reinforce the imperatives of competitiveness in political agenda setting • alternatives to competitiveness nationalism: nostalgic welfare nationalism; xenophobic and racist right-wing nationalism; combinations of these two in Nordic populist parties • conclusions from current economic crisis: the logic of competition state (perhaps with protectionist ingredients)? opening space for inter- and transnational economic and social regulation – but what kind of regulation? • EU as a mediator of the imperatives of financial capitalism into national politics? • the multi-level problem of democratic legitimacy