Nordic Democracies Research Articles

Unpolitical solutionism: Wealth elite sentiments against democracy and politics.

The last few decades have been marked by discourses that challenge many basic presumptions supporting liberal democracy. Populist parties in particular have raised criticism against democratic systems, and authoritarian programmes have made electoral gains. This article offers the elite's perspective on this phenomenon, which is often discussed in the context of lower income groups. Drawing from qualitative interviews with 90 Finnish top earners, the article shows how wealth elites sustain strong discontent towards liberal democracy and see it as an ineffective and sometimes fundamentally flawed system. They are concerned with its alleged (in)efficiency and disagreements typical of democratic processes and are correspondingly fascinated by solutions that are presented as self-evident but that no one has the courage to execute. In this article, we refer to this type of reasoning by introducing and developing the term unpolitical solutionism, which refers to a preoccupation with quick solutions to complex problems that are political in nature. The concept of unpolitical solutionism builds on discussions of unpolitical democracy (Urbinati) and technosolutionism (Morozov) and brings them to our dialog. By analysing wealth elites' views in a Nordic democracy and by developing the concept of unpolitical solutionism, this article contributes to recent discussions on different forms of unpolitical argumentation in the context of (liberal) economic thinking.

Decision‐makers, advisers or educable subjects? Policymakers' perceptions of citizen participation in a Nordic democracy

AbstractThe perceived disconnect between policymaking elites and citizens has intensified demands for citizen engagement in democracies, but we know little about policymakers' attitudes towards increased citizen involvement. This study presents an in‐depth, mixed‐methods analysis of participatory views of politicians, public officials, and interest group representatives in Finland. We first utilize a unique survey battery presented to representative samples of policymakers (n = 675) and ordinary citizens (n = 1701). We then perform a qualitative content analysis for 24 in‐depth interviews of high‐ranking policymakers to explore reasons for the observed attitudes. We find that while citizens strongly support participatory attitudes, policymakers are more skeptical, especially when participation threatens their control of the policy process. Elite skepticism stems mainly from low trust in citizens' capacity to deal with complexity, and to relieve the pressure to engage citizens more elites support learning‐based methods. The broad citizen‐elite attitude gap may require re‐negotiating representative mandates in the future.

Popular movements and the fragility of the Nordic democracies during the first half of the twentieth century

The Nordic countries Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden are among the few European countries where parliamentary democracy survived the challenges of the interwar period. The apparent resilience of Nordic democracy has sometimes been partly attributed to the strength of the popular movements, the internal democratic structures, and culture of these organizations and not least their role in educating their members in democratic practices. Drawing primarily on examples from the co-operative movements in several Nordic countries, the article asks how democracy was understood in co-operative societies and how it functioned in practice. Co-operative societies were committed to the principle of ‘one member one vote’, but faced constant dilemmas over how to combine the possibility for grassroots influence with the need for central control, especially as the organizations grew in size. In some cases, this led to irreconcilable conflicts and splits in central organizations. The article argues that although the co-operatives and other popular movements later came to be seen as crucial elements in the survival of Nordic democracy, their role in this survival should not be taken for granted.

The folk’ish heritage in Nordic democracy: Examples from Denmark and Norway

Drawing on examples from Danish and Norwegian history, this article traces the ideological origins of Nordic democracy. It takes as its starting point the observation that constitutional theories of democracy were rather weak in the Nordic countries until the mid-twentieth century; instead, a certain Nordic tradition of popular constitutionalism rooted in a romantic and organic idea of the people was central to the ideological foundations of Nordic democracy. This tradition developed alongside agrarian mobilization in the nineteenth century, and it remained a powerful ideological reference-point through most of the twentieth century, exercising, for instance, an influence on debates about European integration in the 1960s and 1970s. However, this tradition was gradually overlaid by more institutional understandings of democracy from the mid-twentieth century onwards, with the consequence that the direct importance of this folk’ish heritage declined towards the late twentieth century. Nevertheless, clear echoes of this heritage remain evident in some contemporary Nordic varieties of populism, as well as in references to the concept of folkestyre as the pan-Scandinavian synonym for democracy.

Kremlin jalanjäljet: Suomettuminen ja vuoden 2002 vakoilukohun tausta

<i>Kremlin jalanjäljet: Suomettuminen ja vuoden 2002 vakoilukohun tausta</i>

Encyclopedia of Martin Luther and the Reformation ed. by Mark A. Lamport

Reviewed by: Encyclopedia of Martin Luther and the Reformation ed. by Mark A. Lamport Martin Lohrmann Encyclopedia of Martin Luther and the Reformation. Two volumes. Edited by Mark A. Lamport. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. 939 pp. Is it too much to ask that a reference work built around Martin Luther's life, work, and legacy include a genuine image of the Reformer in the entry on "Luther, A Biography"? Instead of an authentic Cranach portrait, readers are shown a picture of Luther commonly found on internet searches, which a morning's worth of research reveals to be a wrongly labeled nineteenth-century depiction of an English Catholic bishop. English art historians of the 1800s discovered the error and corrected it; but now that a picture labeled "Martin Luther" is on the internet, a minor local mistake has taken on a global life of its own and impacts how we see Luther today. In a similar way, basic problems limit the overall usefulness of this otherwise often-illuminating reference work. On the one hand, very strong contributions appear in topics such as Luther's influence on modernity and postmodernity, the relationship between philosophy and theology, and women's contributions to the Lutheran tradition. Readers will enjoy succinct articles by scholars like Jennifer Hockenbery Dragseth, Dirk Lange, Andrew Pettegree, John Pless, Kirsi Stjerna, and many others. On the other hand, while most contributors make use of recent research, a surprising number of entries use outdated sources and methods. A new encyclopedia should not include so many mentions of Roland Bainton's Here I Stand (1950) or Frederick Bente's Historical Introduction to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (1921) as references and resources. Important as they were [End Page 486] among English-speaking Lutherans, those works have been surpassed in contemporary scholarship. This uneven engagement with current research gets in the way of this encyclopedia being an entirely reliable resource, which non-specialists will have a hard time navigating. For instance, the work contains internal inconsistencies. An entry on "Liberation Theology, Influence on" concludes by saying, "Luther's theology—and ethics—of the cross legitimize a preferential option for suffering, poor, and marginalized persons consistent with liberation theology" (434). The inclusion of an article on Luther and liberation theology suggests an editorial willingness to grant a positive correlation. However, the article on "Vocation, Doctrine of" undermines that idea: "To Lutheran academics . . . the doctrines of vocation and justification together amount to a liberation theology in the actual sense of the word. It is, however, the very opposite of its 20th-century homonym of South American provenance, which emphasizes social injustice and class struggle" (802). Which is it? Readers of this one encyclopedia could come to two very different ideas about the relationship between Luther and contemporary liberation theologies. A similar confusion arises in the depiction of Philip Melanchthon. A biographical article and an essay on Melanchthon's Loci Communes present the reformer as a valued coworker with Luther in Wittenberg. They say little about Melanchthon's career after Luther's death, other than to acknowledge that Melanchthon was engaged in "enormous controversies." Essays on the specific controversies themselves, however, present Melanchthon's role in a purely negative light, ignoring decades of major research by scholars like Nicole Kuropka, Heinz Scheible, Günther Wartenberg, and Timothy Wengert. Readers are given incomplete information, which muddies rather than clarifies the study of Lutheranism and the Reformation. Additionally, the entry headings are often disorienting. Are "Resurrectionism," "Self-love," and "Undecidability" essential categories in studying Luther and his theological legacy? Why is there no entry on prayer but one on "Meditation," which itself refers to Luther's idiosyncratic meditatio, oratio, tentatio pattern for engaging the Bible? Furthermore, essays on Pietism can be found under the disparate headings "German Pietism," "Lutheran Revivalism as the Root of Nordic Democracy," "Pietism in Northern Europe, the Descendants [End Page 487] of," "Scandinavian Pietism," "Transdenominational Branches of Lutheranism" and two entries on Laestadianism. In many cases, readers will be glad there is an index to help them explore central topics like Pietism that were not categorized in more user-friendly ways. Even worse, for a religious tradition with over thirty...

Jussi Kurunmäki and Johan Strang, editors. Rhetorics of Nordic Democracy.

Jussi Kurunmäki and Johan Strang, editors. Rhetorics of Nordic Democracy.

Nordic democracy of taste? Cultural omnivorousness in musical and literary taste preferences in Finland

This article explores cultural omnivorousness in music and literature in Finland, one of the so-called Nordic welfare states. Based on nationally representative survey data, literature and music are examined for respondents’ likings of different genres. Cultural omnivorousness is first examined by measuring omnivorousness as the sum of the likings of musical and literature genres (“omnivorousness by volume”), and second, by counting only those combinations of likings that cross cultural boundaries (“omnivorousness by composition”). Different taste combinations are constructed and explained by socio-demographic variables motivated by earlier research on omnivorousness and cultural tastes (most notably by Pierre Bourdieu). The results suggest that no matter how omnivorousness is operationalised, socio-demographic factors offer better explanations for literary preferences than for musical ones. In both literature and music, being female and highly educated were the main determinants of omnivorousness. If musical and literary genres are divided into “highbrow”, “middlebrow” and “lowbrow”, then the omnivore type combining likings from all three categories was the most typical of all combinations in both cultural fields, whereas the hypothetical “univore snob” (with likings exclusively limited to the highbrow genres) was practically non-existent. The results also show that those being omnivorous in music are largely omnivorous in literature also.

Creating Political Legitimacy

It is often held that the establishment of electoral democracy is key to the creation of political legitimacy. This article challenges this idea and presents an alternative. Many empirical studies reveal that electoral democracy has no necessary implications for the establishment of legitimacy. Even in the successful and stable Nordic democracies, there is scant evidence that legitimacy is created on the input side of the political system. For example political legitimacy in the former Yugoslavia broke down not because ethnic groups realized they would become permanent minorities but because the new Croatian state violated citizens’ rights in the exercise of power. Legitimacy turns out to be created, maintained, and destroyed not at the input but at the output side of the political system. Hence, political legitimacy depends at least as much on the quality of government than on the capacity of electoral systems to create effective representation.

The Scottish committees and the goal of a ‘New Politics’: a verdict on the first four years of the devolved Scottish parliament

The launch in 1999 of a devolved Scottish Parliament with primary legislative powers was accompanied by extensive talk of the creation of a ‘new politics’ North of the Border. Eschewing the ‘yah‐boo’ adversarialism of the British House of Commons, ‘new politics’ in Scotland was to be open, consensual and participative in the style of the small Nordic democracies. It was to be predicated on a distinctive three‐way sharing of power between the government (Scottish Executive), parliament and people (civil society), which represented an attempt to devise a synthesis of traditional representative democracy and elements of a participatory form of democracy. The first part of this article explores the concept of a ‘power‐sharing democracy’ as it evolved through the Constitutional Convention debates of the early 1990s. The second focuses on the Scottish Parliament's committees which, combining the standing and select committee functions of their Westminster counterparts, were viewed as a motor of the ‘new politics’. The final part analyses the extent to which Scotland is a power‐sharing democracy. It is argued that, in linking parliament and civil society, various aspects of committee practice have lent a new dimension to Scottish politics. However, an innovative power‐sharing relationship between the Scottish Executive and Scottish Parliament, diverging in its essentials from the Westminster model, was neither envisaged by the architects of the new parliament, nor has it emerged. Beyond some tinkering with higher education and free face‐washing for granny, little has changed. Kirsty Scott, A new hymn sheet, The Guardian, 10.5.2003

"Totalrevideringen av strafflagen slutförs"

"Totalrevideringen av strafflagen slutförs"

Restraining the Governors: The Nordic Experience with Limiting the Strong State

The combination of a tradition of arbitrary royal government and popular intolerance, with the existence of extensive, unitary and highly centralized institutions of government, and with the dominance of government by a single, reformist party for more than a half century would seem a potent recipe for governmental abuse of individual and minority group rights. That is especially true in the absence of the formal constitutional safeguards used to preserve rights elsewhere Yet the Nordic democracies have in fact proved exemplary in protecting civil liberties Why? This article challenges the view that Nordic political societies are consensual historically or by nature, and it describes the limited traditional institutional checks on abuse of individual and minority rights by government Instead it finds the basis for the Nordic democracies' excellent record in civil liberties in the combination of (1) the development of new, non‐traditional institutional checks on government. (2) the use of direct democracy as a check on parliamentary majorities. (3) the pervasive use of corporatist channels encompassing the major oppositional interest groups to draft and implement legislation, and (4) the effective constraints placed on decisions by parliamentary majorities by the pattern of fierce partisanship in the finely balanced parliamentary party constellation These protections for individual and minority liberties arise primarily from the assumption that basic conflicts of interest are a fact of political life and that they should be institutionalized.

The consensual democracies?: the government and politics of the Scandinavian states and Nordic democracy: ideas, issues, and institutions in politics, economy, education, social and cultural affairs of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden

The consensual democracies?: the government and politics of the Scandinavian states and Nordic democracy: ideas, issues, and institutions in politics, economy, education, social and cultural affairs of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden

Nordic Democracy: Ideas, Issues, and Institutions in Politics, Economy, Education, Social and Cultural Affairs of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. Edited By Erik J. Friis, Folmer Wisti, et al. (Copenhagen: Det Danske Selskab, 1981. Pp. iv + 780. D.kr. 200.) - Participation and Democracy in Norway: The Distant Democracy Revisited. By William M. Lafferty. (Oslo: Universitetsförlaget, and New York:

Nordic Democracy: Ideas, Issues, and Institutions in Politics, Economy, Education, Social and Cultural Affairs of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. Edited By Erik J. Friis, Folmer Wisti, et al. (Copenhagen: Det Danske Selskab, 1981. Pp. iv + 780. D.kr. 200.) - Participation and Democracy in Norway: The Distant Democracy Revisited. By William M. Lafferty. (Oslo: Universitetsförlaget, and New York: Columbia University Press, 1981. Pp. 193. $16.00, paper.) - Volume 76 Issue 4

Nordic Democracy: Ideas, Issues, and Institutions in Politics, Economy, Education, Social and Cultural Affairs of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. Edited By Erik J. Friis, Folmer Wisti, et al. (Copenhagen: Det Danske Selskab, 1981. Pp. iv + 780. D.kr. 200.) - Participation and Democracy in Norway: The Distant Democracy Revisited. By William M. Lafferty. (Oslo: Universitetsförlaget, and New York:

Nordic Democracy: Ideas, Issues, and Institutions in Politics, Economy, Education, Social and Cultural Affairs of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. Edited By Erik J. Friis, Folmer Wisti, et al. (Copenhagen: Det Danske Selskab, 1981. Pp. iv + 780. D.kr. 200.) - Participation and Democracy in Norway: The Distant Democracy Revisited. By William M. Lafferty. (Oslo: Universitetsförlaget, and New York: Columbia University Press, 1981. Pp. 193. $16.00, paper.) - Volume 76 Issue 4

Editorial Note:Corporate Pluralism in Nordic Democracies

Editorial Note:Corporate Pluralism in Nordic Democracies