The focus of this research is on Finland's role in Soviet Union's calculation of its foreign policy between 1920 and 1930. This was the first decade of both Finnish independence and of Soviet power in Russia. This book answers questions about the objectives of Soviet foreign policy in Finland, on the contacts used by the Soviet legation to obtain information, and on how well the Soviets understood Finland's objectives. People interested in Finland and in Russian perspectives with regards to foreign policy and neighbouring countries will find much new in this book because it relies on formerly unpublished Russian archival material to form the basis for charting Soviet objectives in Finland. The book shows that the Soviets primarily observed Finland in a larger regional context along with other states on its borders in the Baltic Sea region. The global objectives of the revolution and the Soviet Union, but also the domestic political situation in both countries, are reflected on this framework. The period was characterized by forced collectivization in the Soviet Union and, in Finland, by the rise of the right-wing Lapua Movement that emerged at the onset of the Great Depression, laying the foundations for the most severe crisis in the relations during 1929–1930 when the issues surrounding these events destabilized simultaneously the society and political decision-making in both countries
The great change in European relations with Russia took place in 1478 when Muscovy replaced the trading Republic of Novgorod as a neighbor of Sweden, Livonia and Lithuania. Western Europe was since that year bordering to a bellicose great power with large resources causing dread. The feelings of dread caused by Russia with Czars like Ivan the Terrible became a standing theme in printed matter as well as politics and the image of Russia became very much similar to the image of Turkey, which threatened Europe from South-East. Various, usually rather negative, stereotype expressions characterized the vocabulary of the 16th century. The Peace of Stolbova in 1617 started a period of successive change. The era of Sweden as a Great Power led to growing knowledge about Russia in almost every respect, but it was still based on the already accepted stereotypes. They started, however, typically to seem more diluted and thin with time. The image of Russia as a threat was to a growing extent replaced by an image of a possibility. The perhaps most remarkable but rather unoriginal printed Swedish description of Russia of the era was Regni Muschovotici Sciographia, published by Petrus Petrejus. At the final stage of Sweden's era as a great power there was a substantial widening but also polarization of the information on Russia. The Russian reform process during Tsar Peter I also began to influence the minds after the turn of the century in 1700. One of the principal describers of this process was Lars Johan Malm (Ehrenmalm), whose large manuscript about the power of the Russian Empire of that time, Några Anmärkningar Angående det Ryska Rijkets Nuvarande Macht from 1714, never reached the printers due to intervention from censors.
Marxismin mukaan kapitalistisen yhteiskunnan jäsenet jakaantuvat kolmeen luokkaan: porvaristoon, keskiluokkaan ja työväenluokkaan. Jotkut marxismin tukijat jakavat keskiluokan talonpojistoon ja muuhun keskiluokkaan. Talonpojisto on vähenevä luokka. Koska marxismin luokkateorian mukaan poliittiset puolueet vaalivat yhteiskuntaluokien intressejä, tutkin pitääkö tämä väite paikkansa. Ensin selvitin marxilaisen teorian luokista ja niiden intresseistä eli eduista, joiden puolustamiseski luokat järjestäytyvät poliittisiksi puolueiksi. Ne laativat itselleen yhteiskuntapoliittiset ohjelmansa, joita ne pyrkivät politiikansa avulla toteuttamaan. Tutkimusaineistona käytän Suomen eduskunnassa tutkimusvuosina edustettina olelleiden puolueiden tavoite- ja yleisohjelmia, joista selvitän sisällön analyysiä käyttäen niiden sisällön ja julkilausutut tavoitteet. Erityisesti pyrin selvittämään orientoituvatko puolueet ohjelmissaan tiettyjen luokkien etujen puolustajiksi vai missä määrin ne esiintyvät yhteiskunnan yleisten etujen vaalijoina. Tutkimus tapahtuu toisaalta puolueiden eduskuntoimintaa selvittämällä. Tällöin pyrin saamaan selville sen toimivatko puolueet periaate- ja tavoiteohjelmiensa mukaisesti laatiessaan lakialoitteita eduskunnassa. Kolmantena tutkimuskohteena on hallituksen esitysten sisällön eritteleminen intressiorientaation pojalta. Kysymys kuuluu palvelevatko hallituksen esitykset yleistä vai luokkien erityisetuja. Tutkimuksessa selvisi, että puolueet niin ohjelmalausumissaan kuin eduskuntatoiminnassaan vaalivat sekä yleistä etu, josta käytän nimitystä luokkien yhteisetu, että luokkien erityisetuja. Eniten puolueet vaalivat yhteisetua. Erityiseduista puolueet vaalivat kukin tiettyä luokkaetua enemmän kuin toista. Tämän perusteella puolueet jakaantuvat ensijaisesti porvariston, keskiluokan ja työväenluokanetuja vaaliviksi. Hallituksen esityksissä luokkaorientaatio on heikompaa kuin kansanedustajien lakialoitteissa. Tutkimustuloksistani selviää myös se, että vaikka puolueet ovat viime vuosikymmeninä ottaneet vaaliakseen aikaisempaa enemmän kaikkien luokkien intressejä ja niiden yleispuolueominaisuudet ovat lisääntyneet, tietty luokkaorientaatio on säilynyt. ; Classes continually alter and influence party strategies and also the behaviour of voters. The members of classes form economic, professional and political organisations. Every class aims to exert the greatest influence upon the state with the help of its political party. This study researches the class basis of political competition, the effect of class interests on the policies of nine Finnish parties in their political programmes and initiative work in the Parliament. The investigation is based on historical materialism and its class structure theory developed by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and other Marxists. The aim of study is to estimate how appropriate the class schema of historical materialism is for analysing the political partisanships and ideological conflicts in advanced industrial society. The statements and aims of political party programmes are put into practice in Parliament. This research analyses how parties represent their aims in their political programmes and what their parliamentarians do in Parliament. Is a party the representative of one class or does it equally promote the interests of many classes? Is it a class party or a generally oriented party? As in historical materialism, the programmes and legislative initiatives have been classified into five groups. The first group contains general class interest, oriented towards the common good. The next four groups comprise bills with a specific class interest orientation: bourgeoisie, the middle class, farmers and workers. The parties investigated are The National Coalition Party /The Conservative Party, The Swedish People`s Party, The Finnish Centre Party, The Finnish Social Democratic Party, The Left Alliance, The Liberals, The True Finns, The Christian Democratic Party and The Greens. The changes in politics and in party relationships over thirty years are investigated by comparing the parliamentary actions of parties from the 1960´s to the 1990´s. The study concerns the legislative initiatives of the years 1965, 1972, 1988 and 1999. The data on the programmes were collected from the two political programmes of nine parties from the years 1950 2003. The programmes of political parties are the public flag of the party as Engels expressed it, although their programmes have lost some of their class orientation. In the programmes of all nine political parties the contents aiming at the common good are the first, most important aim, the percentages being 76 98 %. Differences in the programmes of the political parties can still be found. The political parties emphasise their interests and aims in their own ways. The Conservative Party, The Swedish People´s Party and The Liberals have the next important interest in the bourgeoisie. The Swedish People´s Party, The Finnish Centre Party and The True Finns emphasise the middle class and the farmers. The Finnish Social Democratic Party, The Left Alliance and The Greens take care of working class. The main task of Parliament is to enact legislation. Bills can be submitted to Parliament by the Government or as private members bills. In this process the class interests notably emerge in private members bills of plenary sessions. The main Finnish political parties took into consideration the interests of all classes. All nine parties have made in the largest extent common good legislative initiatives. For all nine parties, the most prevalent type of legislative initiatives was those for the common good (84 -67 %). At the same time they tended to favour special class interests. The least specific class parties were The Christian Democratic Party, The Green Party and The Swedish People´s Party. Among special class interests all the parties oriented more to middle class interests in Parliament than in their declared objectives (18.8 7.0 %). The Liberals, The Conservative Party, The Social Democratic Party, The Left Alliance and The True Finns had the strongest middle class orientation. The Conservative Party were the most bourgeois party (10.2%). The strongest working class interest was found in The Left Alliance, The Social Democratic Party and The Green Party (18.8 13.1 %). The Finnish Centre Party and The Social Democratic party, The Left Alliance and The True Finns were closest to working class interests. Are there class oriented differences in the contents of the legislative initiatives and political programmes of the nine political parties? The contents were classified into eleven groups: administration, civil rights, nature conservation, economics, occupation structure, social policy, public health, education, culture, labour market and international affairs. All nine parties have the same three most important contents of legislative initiatives. These were finance/economics, social policy and administration systems. And all nine parties were more interested in financial and economic aims than their political manifestos suggest. The fourth important content for The Conservative Party, The Swedish People`s Party, The Liberals and The Christian Democratic Party was education. Employment was the fourth aim of The Finnish Centre Party and The True Finns. The Labour Market was also important to The Finnish Social Democratic Party, The Left Alliance and The Greens. Nature conservation was important to The Greens, too. The contents of government bills are more oriented towards the common good than are the private members bills. The conclusion is that the main Finnish political parties took the interests of all classes into consideration. At the same time they reveal preferences for special class interests. This emerges in political manifestos and legislative initiatives and government proposals. The Finnish political parties are not purely general parties devoid of class background. Finance and economics was the basis upon which the people arranged their lives and formed political opinions. The class structure of historical materialism is suitable to demonstrate political partisanship in Finland during the second half of the twentieth century. Social changes affect both the class structures and the political aims of parties and give rise to social and ideological conflicts in advanced industrial societies. The consensus policy is one appearance of civilized class struggle.
Finnish local government has been subjected to many reforms in the last few decades. The reforms will continue in the near future as health, social services and regional government are being reformed. Structural reforms and numerous projects have not altered the fact that concrete procedures still change slowly in local governments. This article deals with reforms in local government. It focuses on determining the kind of information and expertise used in the reforms and the expertise required. The research is empirical and focuses on one particular case: preparation of the multi-municipal merger of Oulu region. Research on reforms of local governments, studied from the viewpoints of information and expertise, reveals that traditional public administration structures still have an impact on reform work. Even though steps towards New Public Governance procedures have been taken, reform processes remain strongly based on the information and expertise of the local government organization. Cooperation with different sector actors (the private and third sectors, universities, citizens) takes place from the viewpoint of the local government. The expertise of stakeholders is not at the core of reform processes. Reform processes are based mainly on the existing information and practices. There is much less innovation and less creation and application of new information. The expertise needed in local government reform is diverse. The reform processes have great need for the skills that are typical of network and generative leadership. A successful reform results from the work of a couple of key actors who have the skills to create frameworks for the existence and exploitation of collective expertise.
Väitöstutkimus analysoi julkisia poliittisia performansseja poliittisena viestintänä. Poliittiset performanssit voidaan ymmärtää julkisissa tiloissa toimeen pantuina 'näytöksinä', joiden tavoitteena on luoda arkisiin rutiineihin yllättäviä katkoksia ja synnyttää uutta toimintatilaa jonkin yhteiskunnallisen ongelman esiin nostamiseksi. Performanssit synnyttävät katkoksia monin tavoin, mutta erityisen leimallista niille on näkyvän, vallalla olevan visuaalisen järjestyksen murtaminen tuomalla siihen erilaisia 'häiritseviä' (disruptive) elementtejä: resistoivia kehoja, valtaa parodioivia kuvia, karnevalistista protestointia, katuteatteria jne. Poliittisten performanssien viestintä perustuu puheen sijaan tai ohella toimijoiden oman kehon ja sen kantamien erilaisten visuaalisten merkkien julkiseen esittämiseen, joskus hyvin äärimmäisellä tavalla, kuten esimerkiksi nälkälakoissa ja polttoitsemurhissa. Väitöskirjassa tällaista viestintätyyliä kutsutaan visuaaliseksi ja esteettiseksi politikoinniksi. Tutkimuksessa analysoidaan useita esimerkkejä performatiivisesta poliittisesta viestinnästä ja kehitetään teoreettisia ideoita sen ominaispiirteiden tulkitsemiseksi. ; In this doctoral thesis I study a phenomenon which I have titled as public political performance. By public political performance I refer to a public event (a 'show', display, demonstration) the purpose of which is to expose in public and challenge those social-political norms, practices, and relations of power which usually remain invisible in the sway of routine political life. I am interested especially in how performance works as a form of non-linguistic, or wider than linguistic, political communication. I theorize and analyze, through several illustrative examples, performances from three perspectives: as corporeal (bodily), visual, and aesthetic communication. In construction of theory I use and partly rework ideas from thinkers such as Jürgen Habermas, Michel Foucault, Hannah Arendt, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Jacques Ranciere. The study shows that public political performance is a sensitive, even volatile phenomenon because it often manifestly exposes the fundamentally violent power structure of society – as when, for example, street demonstrations induce strong counter reactions from the police and political authorities – and puts this order under critical public scrutiny. Political authorities do not take such challenges lightly, which is why public performances sometimes instigate serious political controversies. The key theoretical ideas of the study relate to performance as something done and en/acted. On the one hand, performance discloses the nature of politics as a 'doing.' This means in simple terms that, in order to subsist, the political world needs to be done, performed, and 'iterated,' every time anew. The term performative describes this social-constructivist side of politics. That the constitution of the social and political power is based not on any 'natural' ground but on continuous re/iteration of certain ways and routines is often revealed only when it is visibly and noticeably disrupted. This is what political performance typically does. On the other hand, performance signifies a particular kind of public show which resembles but does not equal theatrical shows. Performance is theatrical in being an 'art-like' communicative act, yet it is more surprising and unpredictable compared to regular theatre and, because of this, usually more difficult to approach and interpret. Political performance as a contingent and sometimes oddly appearing public event with a surprise effect brings forth the importance of disruption for politics. It alerts us to situations where the normalized political performatives are being visibly questioned by bringing into public space – 'in your face' – diverse disrupting elements like resisting bodies, parodying images, and carnevalism. The relationship between these two, performatives and performances, creates an edgy and 'chiasmatic' political space from which much of political life gains its driving force. This basic idea and relationship constitute the key starting point for this study's theoretical reflections. Political performance is an important subject for political studies for several reasons. The purely knowledge-based reason is that that in directing attention to the corporeal and visual aspects of politics and political communication, performance brings into view phenomena and conceptual possibilities which are too often ignored by political researchers and theorists. The relevance of performance for the field can also be justified from another perspective, through reference to its political and democratic significance. The discussions and analyses carried out in the study show that there are political circumstances where citizens see public performance as the only available means of participation in political communication, with other channels of communication forbidden or marginalized. There are also situations where citizens create, through setting up a performance, space for public communication and action where it has not existed before. Political performance as a way of contesting existing political realities can therefore have special value for political freedom. Political and democratic theory needs to understand, I shall argue, also that category of political action which performs political freedom rather than asks for it.
