The 1987 Eduskunta Election in Finland*

The election to the Finnish Eduskunta which was held on 15–16 March 1987 may go down as something of a turning-point in Finnish postwar politics. It marked an end to the long-standing practice of excluding the Conservative Party from the list of potential government parties. Social Democratic Party leader Kalevi Sorsa elaborated on this topic in several campaign speeches and in such terms that there was little doubt he was more favorably disposed towards the Conservative Party than towards the Center Party In a speech which he delivered when visiting one of the local party organizations in Helsinki in late 1986. the Social Democratic Prime Minister even suggested that the Center and Conservative parties had changed places on the Finnish left/right continuum. As a consequence there did not seem to be much hope left for the kind of red/green government coalitions to which the Social Democrats had been committed ever since the mid sixties.     

Half a Century of Cross-pressures: a Thesis Reconsidered

Cross-pressure was introduced as a concept in political analysis half a century ago. While different forms of political cross-pressure have been noted, they are generally considered to have the effect of making citizens withdraw from politics. However, this conclusion is not always supported by data. A modified proposition is suggested in order to account for other reactions to cross- pressure that have been registered from time to time.     

Numerical Democracy and Corporate Pluralism Revisited

This article is meant as a contribution to the ongoing debate about the relative importance of numerical democracy and corporate pluralism, which was initiated by the late Stein Rokkan and has been recently taken up in the United States by Robert Dahl, and also by Don Schwerin.
The existence of Norwegian data that can throw some light on the subject is indicated.     

Assessing and managing risk for intimate partner violence: Police employees’ use of the Police Screening Tool for Violent Crimes in Scania

Relapse into intimate partner violence (IPV) can potentially be predicted and counter-measures applied. This study examines the predictive validity of a violence risk assessment tool: the Police Screening Tool for Violent Crimes (PST-VC) among a sample of 65 offenders. All PST-VC assessments regarding IPV that were conducted at the Scania police department in 2010 were included in the sample. Follow-up time was 16–28 months, and all reported incidents with the same victim and suspected offender were recorded. The PST-VC demonstrated limited effect in the ability to identify high-risk offenders and predict repeat victimization. Interventions against the offender and victim protective actions were more often recommended in high-risk cases but did not lower the number of IPV relapses. The study suggests that the PST-VC is not a promising instrument.     

French defence reforms after Kosovo: On track or derailed?

How well prepared has France been politically for the operational implications of its efforts to build a military instrument designed for extra‐territorial interventions such as that conducted by NATO in Yugoslavia in 1999? Did the prolonged bombing campaign and the question of deploying ground troops provoke severe criticism and controversies? This article assesses the French Kosovo debate both in the political centre and the broader elite public. The analysis finds that the new French military instrument receives solid backing from key policymakers who now race to claim parenthood of the military reform programme. The utility of a new military instrument was at one stage developing into a major concern to the elite public. However, an engineered anti‐American agenda hijacked the debate, failed to address military issues, and ultimately could not mobilize the elite public. The conclusion outlines that an energized political centre has an opportunity to press ahead with military reforms but also points out that the relationship between France, Europe, and NATO requires careful political management.     

Beyond regional radars: Security from below and the rule of law in the Sahel

ABSTRACT

Political crises, terrorism, porous international boundaries, coups d’état, and socio-political upheavals all underline the need to rethink what security means in the Sahel region. While international and regional approaches to security still take predominantly military and macro-political perspectives, there is a need to ethnographically describe and analyse security from below. To this end, citizens’ own initiatives should be central to contemporary analyses of African peacemaking interventions. This article takes the growing and diverse movements of self-defence groups in Burkina Faso and Mali as a starting point for analysing how security can be ‘seen from below’, often in interaction with and sometimes even in outright contradiction with the rule of law. While local self-defence groups constitute a challenge to the rule of law, ethnographic fieldwork in Mali and Burkina Faso reveals a high degree of adaptability and flexibility of these movements. This article furthermore discusses methodological challenges when doing ethnographic research in dangerous terrains, drawing on fieldwork in the Sahel, and considers implications of the study of ‘security from below’ for the wider study of international affairs.