Ministry of Justice, Finland

In any country, the basis of the system of government lies on its social structure and on the political experiences of the nation. These factors define the relevant dimensions of social conflict, as well as the content and the intensity of the conflict and the competition; in addition, they determine what sort of governmental structure is feasible in the first place. The Constitution, as a legal and a political instrument, is affected by the values of its framers, by the intellectual and theoretical traditions of the cultural circle, as well as by the cold calculations of power politics. A Constitution will bear the marks of its time of adoption also into the future - when the world changes, there will necessarily be tension between the set normative framework and the political realities seeking to alter that framework.

The development of Finland as an egalitarian society and a democratic state has of course been aided by the fact that the structure of the nation has always been relatively uniform; there have been few ethnic, cultural, religious or linguistic controversies that would have split the society into factions or involve conflicts of interest that are felt to constitute difficult moral issues. The linguistic divide between Finnish-speakers and Swedish-speakers in Finland threatened to develop into such an issue, but this could be avoided by turning it into a simple question of minorities, successfully solved and sent to the political sidelines for over half a century.

In contrast, the class divide, based on socio-economic status, has in Finland been a sharp and politically significant line. At the critical stage of the political liberation of Finland, in 1918, the class divide escalated into civil war; after the conclusion of the war the classes remained separated in terms of work, economics and culture, as the working class established its own parallel associations and institutions. This conflict underlined also the class basis of the political parties, albeit that the significance of class in politics was a result also of the uniformity of the Nordic societies in other respects. Nevertheless, the differences between rural and urban areas and the importance of the agrarian party were conducive to easing the class tensions and preventing its becoming a decisive factor in the political life of the country. Moreover, since the 1960s, as the Finnish social structures have undergone changes, also the class-based models of political behaviour have become less and less pronounced. Now, in the beginning of the third millennium, Finland stands out among the states of Western Europe as a highly consensual political community.

The Nordic concept of self-government and rule of law as an ideal forms a historical basis that continues to have an influence even today. As a matter of fact, the roots of Finnish political organisation can be traced back to prehistory and to the spontaneously arising local communities, the self-governing villages. In the Middle Ages, the people began to be represented also at the regional and the national level, even though the right to participate in the election of the representatives was very limited - for external and internal reasons - until the beginning of the 20th century. The requirement that the law is binding not only on the people, but also on the authorities, from the lowest to the highest, was emphasised towards the end of Finland's autonomy period, when, during the "Russification" (1899-1905), Finns fought for their own Constitution and their own legal order against arbitrary external interference. Ever since those times, the strong tradition of legalism, or respect to proper legal forms, has been a characteristic both of the role of the authorities and the behaviour of the citizens. This is evident also in respect to the Constitution, which in Finland is a visible and well-defined instrument: people prefer to read into it only what is written, nothing else.

For over a century, between 1809 and 1917, Finland was an autonomous Grand Duchy in the Russian Empire. The developments of that period were not without their paradoxes. On one hand, the construction of a state and a nation proceeded in a significant manner. Finland had her own legislature and her own central administration, as well as her own legal system, inherited from the times of Swedish rule, which meant that at all levels Finns were essentially in charge of the administration of their own affairs. Thus, at the independence of the country in 1917, most, if not all, of the structures needed for a self-dependent political system were in place: local communities with self-government, state regional government, a national legislature, a state government, the agencies and organs of central administration, courts of law and political parties, as well as a society of citizens, with its ever expanding network of organisations and associations. In effect, the only thing that was missing was a head of state of our own. In addition, there was a sense of national identity, which, in the spirit of the remaining contacts with the West, had become more and more evident since the middle of the 19th century; this meant that the attitudes and cultural identity that are prerequisites for full national independence had been in existence for quite some time.

On the other hand, Finland's dependence on the autocratically ruled Russia was a huge barrier to her development as a democracy. While it delayed the necessary reforms of participatory rights and citizens' freedoms, it also contributed to the retention, in the political culture of the nation, of authority structures based mainly on the strong personal character of the ruler and on a collective and impersonal bureaucracy. In this framework, it is evident that Finland has made fundamental choices of democratisation at times of crisis, with large numbers of people moving abruptly away from the status quo. There was one such success already before independence, in 1906-07, when, in near-revolutionary conditions, Finland changed its legislature from a four-chamber assembly of the estates to a modern, unicameral parliament to be elected by universal suffrage. This was a decision with very few contemporary models.

Jaakko Nousiainen, Professor Emeritus in Political Science.