The political transfer of parliamentary concepts and practices in the European periphery: the case of obstruction in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Finland

Abstract

SUMMARYThis article examines parliaments as transnational institutions. It uses Finland as an example to analyze how nineteenth- and early twentieth-century European representative assemblies were part of a joint publicity. This publicity, facilitated by the press, was actively used in developing and shaping national practices, especially in countries without an established parliamentary tradition. The transnational parliamentary publicity changed how parliaments functioned and deliberated. It was utilized in assemblies’ procedural formation and revision, democratization, and parliamentarization. The mediated models and examples were used selectively and innovatively to interpret, contextualize, and frame domestic political questions. The article examines the transfer of parliamentary obstruction from European parliaments to the four-estate Diet and the unicameral parliament of the Finnish Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire. Obstruction became part of the Finnish political repertoire soon after the Irish obstruction appeared in the British House of Commons in the late 1870s. Although no systematic obstruction campaigns were organized in early Finnish parliamentary life, the concept of obstruction was a rhetorical and ideological tool of the Finnish nationalists and socialists. The article positions Finnish discussions within wider European debates on parliaments, democratization, the rise of mass parties, and the problematic relationship between representative and deliberative aspects of parliamentary politics.