The Changing Balance of Political Power in Finland

The political landscape in Finland has changed dramatically during the past 35 years. Like everywhere in the democratic West these changes have pertained to the economic and social underpinnings of the political process as well as to the concrete substance of government policy. Unlike most comparable countries, however, the transformation of Finnish politics has also been a matter of major institutional change. In fact, as this book argues at length, the basic regime type of the Finnish political system has changed.
Despite the magnitude of change, there is still little in the way of a comprehensive analysis of power relations in modern Finnish politics. The present volume attempts to fill part of that void. The book is the result of the research project ‘Political Power in Finland: An Analysis of Central Government Institutions and Actors’ financed by the Academy of Finland in 2011–2014. Ten scholars representing the University of Tampere, Åbo Akademi and University of Turku collaborated in this undertaking.

Keywords: Finnland, constitutional reform, political system, parliamentary democracy, majority governments, presidential power