Finland: The 1991 Campaign

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to discuss and evaluate how the five most important parties in Finland planned and organised their campaigns in the 1991 election and with what result. The discussion stems from an institutional framework in which laws and regulations are seen to have an essential impact on how parties run their campaigns. Of course, campaigning in Finland follows the general trend of change caused by the increasing role of modern mass media in elections. But electoral laws and the public regulations of parties, especially reforms starting in 1954, have had such a comprehensive impact on election campaigns that they must briefly be discussed. Since the introduction of universal suffrage in 1906 Finland has had a constituency based, proportional voting system. In only one of the current fifteen constituencies (Åland Islands) does a system of plural voting prevail. The combination of proportional voting and a complex cleavage structure has encouraged candidates to stress consistent party appeals. In the original list system which was used in parliamentary elections the voters had to choose between candidate lists (one list included a maximum of two candidates and one deputy). Since 1954 important changes to the system have made it possible to vote only for one individual candidate. This change has converted the Finnish electoral system into a unique list system with voting for individual candidates. The order of the candidates on the lists is not predetermined but depends entirely on the outcome of the voting. Already in the late 1960s Klaus Tömudd (1968, p. 58) noted that the electoral campaign was highly individualistic: ‘The party organizations of course do their share of electioneering, put out pamphlets and publish advertisements featuring all their candidates, but this activity is supplemented and often almost drowned by agitation on behalf of individual candidates, sometimes more or less openly competing within the same electoral alliance’.