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AbstractThis article presents a methodological tool, Justifications Analysis, and uses it to analyze the debate on globalization in Finnish mass media between 1995 and 2014. Justifications Analysis focuses on the moral principles evoked to justify arguments, something that tends to be overlooked by most established approaches to media content analysis. Regarding the frequency of coverage, it is found that the debate in Finland deviates from the global issue attention cycle and lasts longer, driven by national key events. Concerning the groups of speakers, the Global Justice Movement is found to have initiated the debate; the elites are divided into two groups, one defending and the other opposing the movement. Moral justifications are used extensively. All parties to the debate justify their arguments by referring to the common good, but disagree over whether it should be defined in terms of market worth, equality and democracy, national values, or some combination of these.

Abstract
Building on the framework of electoral contention, we investigate the interaction dynamics between social movements and political parties during elections. We argue that social media today is an important venue for these interactions, and consequently, analysing social media data is useful for understanding the shifts in the conflict and alliance structures between movements and parties. We find that Twitter discussions on the climate change movement during the 2019 electoral period in Finland reveal a process of pre-election approaching and post-election distancing between the movement and parties. The Greens and the Left formed mutually beneficial coalitions with the movement preceding the elections and took distance from one another after these parties entered the government. These findings suggest that research on movement-party interaction should pay more attention to social media and undertake comparative studies to assess whether the approaching-distancing process and its constituent mechanisms characterise movements beyond the climate strikes in Finland.

Research has suggested that affective polarization (AP)—the extent to which partisans view each other as a disliked out-group—has increased, especially in two-party political systems such as in the US. The understanding of AP in multiparty systems remains limited. We study AP in Finland, characterized by a strong multiparty system and a low level of ideological polarization, between 2007 and 2019. We find that AP has increased, driven mainly by voters evaluating their least favorite party more negatively. We also propose an approach that goes beyond earlier literature, which has mostly used a single aggregate metric to measure AP. Using latent profile analysis, we find that voters are grouped into blocs that view some parties positively and others negatively. This suggests that the complex dynamics of AP in multiparty democracies involve relationships between not just individual parties but between what we call affective blocs that span across party lines. ; Peer reviewed

In this article, we argue that the science–policy interface can be understood as a discourse network constituted by discursive interaction between scientific organizations and other actors that both use scientific arguments in conjunction with other policy arguments. We use discourse network analysis to investigate the climate change policy process in Finland between 2002 and 2015, focusing on the role of and relationships between scientific actors and arguments in the discourse networks. Our data consist of policy actors' written testimonies on two law proposals, the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol (2002) and the enactment of the Finnish Climate Law (2015). Our results show that two competing discourse coalitions have influenced the development of climate change policy in the 2000s. In 2002, the dominant coalition was economic, prioritizing economic growth over climate change mitigation. In 2015, the climate coalition that argued for ambitious mitigation measures became dominant. The majority of scientific actors were part of the dominant economy coalition in 2002 and part of the dominant ecology coalition in 2015. The centrality of scientific arguments increased over time, and both discourse coalitions used them progressively more. These developments reflect the increasingly central position of science in Finnish climate policymaking. We contribute to the literature on the science–policy interface by operationalizing the interface as a set of connections in a discourse network and by showing how the analysis of discourse networks and their properties can help us understand the shifts in the role of science in policymaking over time.

In this article, we argue that the science–policy interface can be understood as a discourse network constituted by discursive interaction between scientific organizations and other actors that both use scientific arguments in conjunction with other policy arguments. We use discourse network analysis to investigate the climate change policy process in Finland between 2002 and 2015, focusing on the role of and relationships between scientific actors and arguments in the discourse networks. Our data consist of policy actors' written testimonies on two law proposals, the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol (2002) and the enactment of the Finnish Climate Law (2015). Our results show that two competing discourse coalitions have influenced the development of climate change policy in the 2000s. In 2002, the dominant coalition was economic, prioritizing economic growth over climate change mitigation. In 2015, the climate coalition that argued for ambitious mitigation measures became dominant. The majority of scientific actors were part of the dominant economy coalition in 2002 and part of the dominant ecology coalition in 2015. The centrality of scientific arguments increased over time, and both discourse coalitions used them progressively more. These developments reflect the increasingly central position of science in Finnish climate policymaking. We contribute to the literature on the science–policy interface by operationalizing the interface as a set of connections in a discourse network and by showing how the analysis of discourse networks and their properties can help us understand the shifts in the role of science in policymaking over time. ; Peer reviewed

Corporatist Nordic welfare states are largely thought to have exemplary environmental policies. Finland, however, was labeled "a failing ecostate" by a recent study owing to its weak climate change policy. Why is Finland different? We use data from a survey of organizations belonging to the Finnish climate change policy network to investigate two alternative explanations related to policy networks. According to the Cooptation Thesis, inclusive corporatist polities, where environmental NGOs (ENGOs) have support from and access to the state, formulate less ambitious policies because environmentalists moderate their views to secure state funding and political access. Second, according to the Treadmill of Production Theory, the decisive feature of Nordic corporatism with regard to environmental policy is the tripartite system linking business interests, labor unions, and the state in a coalition that prioritizes economic over ecological values. The results indicate that the ENGO Coalition is the least influential, least resourceful, smallest, least linked to the others, and not particularly moderate. The Treadmill Coalition is the most influential, most resourceful, second largest, well linked to the state, and least ecological in its beliefs. Thus, of the two policy network explanations, the dominance of the Treadmill Coalition rather than cooptation of ENGOs gets support. ; Peer reviewed

Which organisations saw their positions on two contentious issues reflected in the Irish climate law of 2015, and what role did advocacy coalitions play in the policy process? These questions are answered drawing theoretically from the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) and by conducting a network analysis of survey data collected from the organisations involved in the national climate policy process. The study finds that several institutionally important or economically powerful organisations, particularly those involved in the agricultural sector, as well as the government parties saw their preferences reflected in the law. This resulted in legislation that excluded binding emission reductions targets, differentiating it from similar laws introduced in other European countries. Organisations in favour of stronger regulation formed a coalition to advocate for their positions, but they largely failed to get their way. ; Peer reviewed

This article introduces Justifications Analysis, a methodological approach for studying moral evaluations made in public debates. Established approaches to content analysis, most often building on the concept of framing, tend to overlook the moral dimension of public deliberation. We draw on Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot's justification theory to present a typology of moral justifications, that is, ways of justifying arguments referring to varying understandings of the common good. We illustrate the use of the method through two case studies, one on the media debate on globalization and another on local political conflicts. We argue that this approach is particularly useful for understanding the differing degrees of institutionalization of moral categories and power relations within and across cultural contexts.

Corporatist Nordic welfare states are largely thought to have exemplary environmental policies. Finland, however, was labeled "a failing ecostate" by a recent study owing to its weak climate change policy. Why is Finland different? We use data from a survey of organizations belonging to the Finnish climate change policy network to investigate two alternative explanations related to policy networks. According to the Cooptation Thesis, inclusive corporatist polities, where environmental NGOs (ENGOs) have support from and access to the state, formulate less ambitious policies because environmentalists moderate their views to secure state funding and political access. Second, according to the Treadmill of Production Theory, the decisive feature of Nordic corporatism with regard to environmental policy is the tripartite system linking business interests, labor unions, and the state in a coalition that prioritizes economic over ecological values. The results indicate that the ENGO Coalition is the least influential, least resourceful, smallest, least linked to the others, and not particularly moderate. The Treadmill Coalition is the most influential, most resourceful, second largest, well linked to the state, and least ecological in its beliefs. Thus, of the two policy network explanations, the dominance of the Treadmill Coalition rather than cooptation of ENGOs gets support.

The literature on new social risk (NSR) groups, such as single parents and temporary workers, has argued that they are less likely to join trade unions than other employees. It has been suggested that this is due to the unions' incapacity or unwillingness to promote policies that mediate NSRs. We argue that there are differences in unionization between different NSR groups, and that country-level institutional structures, operationalized here as industrial relations (IR) regimes, have effects on how likely NSR groups are to unionize. Our multilevel logistic models using European Social Survey (ESS) data produce three main results: (1) family policy-related NSR groups (single parents, female employees with children and female caregivers) are more – not less – unionized than the average worker; (2) precarious workers (low-skilled service employees, temporary employees and part-timers) are, indeed, less unionized than average but (3) this result concerns mostly the liberal and transitional IR regimes.