The Role of Professors in the Formation of Finnish Parliamentary Life: The Struggle between Two Conceptions of Parliament

Onni Pekonen

doi:10.7227/r.20.1.7

Abstract

The Frankfurt Parliament (1848–49) was subsequently dismissively referred to as the “Professors’ Parliament” due to its heavy representation of scholars and the academic style of its lengthy discussions. Professors have played a prominent role in the deliberations and development of other European assemblies, too. This article examines the role of professors in the formation of Finnish parliamentary life. It moreover underlines the close relationship between the academia and national politics in late nineteenth-century Finland, starting from the European revolutions of 1848. The article highlights how politically active professors, together with the newspaper press, were crucial in transferring European ideas to Finnish debates. Professors promoted ideological conceptions of parliamentary politics, which were inspired by their scholarly interests and formulated by applying European discussions and concepts selectively to the Finnish context. The article focuses on a debate between Finnish professors and their competing conceptions of parliament. The struggle between the Hegelian philosopher J. V. Snellman and the liberal Professor of Law Leo Mechelin reflects a wider European debate on the role and purposes of parliaments as national representative and deliberative institutions. The article evaluates the role of Snellman’s and Mechelin’s conceptions of parliament in Finnish parliamentary culture in the longer term.

Highlights

The Frankfurt Parliament (1848–49) was subsequently dismissively referred to as the “Professors’ Parliament” due to its heavy representation of scholars and the academic style of its lengthy discussions (Burkhardt, 2016: 177)
Mechelin and the Dagblad liberals aimed to develop the Diet procedures based on a conception of dissensual debate, which they claimed was characteristic of modern parliaments in contrast to the estate assemblies of the past
The primary work of the Parliament is seen as taking place in committees behind closed doors, where deliberative talk is practised freely and seen to have the real influence that plenary speech lacks. (Pekonen, 2011; Nousiainen, 2006: 332) The conception of the Finnish Parliament as a representative assembly has dominated both the political debates and scholarly discussions about the Eduskunta

Summary

Introduction

The Frankfurt Parliament (1848–49) was subsequently dismissively referred to as the “Professors’ Parliament” due to its heavy representation of scholars and the academic style of its lengthy discussions (Burkhardt, 2016: 177). The Finnish press followed European and American parliamentary politics throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, but the reporting on representative assemblies was most intense during revolutions of 1830 and 1848 and their ensuing constitutional struggles On these occasions, the press focused on discussing the organisation and procedures of assemblies as well as their role in national and regional debates. Finnish political actors viewed and reviewed Finnish discussions through the prism of foreign models In this sense, the nineteenth-century parliamentary publications of newspapers were “deliberations with one’s self” – means to work one’s way through into a new paradigm. Political groups had different ideas about the role, purposes and character of the Finnish national assembly and about the rules and practices on which the assembly’s work should be based These competing conceptions of parliament were largely formulated by academic politicians. In light of these conceptions, Finnish political groups looked to different foreign assemblies and discussions in search of applicable models (Pekonen, 2014: 55–6, 61– 2, 65–84, 92–102; Pekonen, 2017a)

The Role of Professor Politicians

Leo Mechelin and the Dagblad Liberals

Concluding Remarks