Urban land policy in Finland

Abstract

Finland is a parliamentary democracy with several political parties. In 1978, there was a small rightist majority in the Finnish Parliament, which is a typical situation in this country. There are four major parties: conservatives, agrarian or centre party, social democrats and people’s democrats (communists). The governments are usually coalitions of different parties; a typical situation is a coalition of social democrats and agrarians. As to history it should be mentioned that Finland was a part of Sweden until 1809 and from then until 1917 an autonomous grand duchy of Russia, with its own Finnish language, legislature, government, etc., but with a common foreign policy. Finland became an independent republic in 1917.