Social Upheaval and Transformation of Elite Structures: The Case of Finland

The purpose of this study is to ascertain how certain important changes in Finnish society in the 1990s altered the national elite structures and affected democracy. We examine how the patterns of recruitment, interaction and cohesiveness among the elites changed in the period 1991–2001. The data for the study were drawn mainly from postal surveys conducted among the elites and a sample of the population in 1991 and 2001. The first research task was to establish how recruitment to various elites has altered in terms of social stratification and education. The second was to analyse changes in patterns of interaction between various elites as far as physical contacts and attitudes were concerned. The third was to study the relationship between the elites and the general population on the basis of attitudinal affinity. The conclusions were based on theoretical models characterising various elite structures and their interconnections with democracy. The concept of a responsive elite is developed on the grounds of the theory of democratic elitism. The changes in the Finnish elite structure have meant a passage towards an inclusive structure compatible with democracy rather than towards an exclusive elite configuration. Finnish elites have become more open and more diverse.     

Book Reviews

Classes and Cultures: England 1918–1951 (Ross McKibbin) Richard Hoggart
London Conference on Nazi Gold: Lancaster House, 2–4 December 1997 (Foreign and Commonwealth Office); Switzerland and Gold Transactions in the Second World War: Interim Report (Independent Commission of Experts on Switzerland in the Second World War); Nazi Gold: The British and Allied Attempts to Deal with Loot from the Second World War and the Implications for the Tripartite Gold Commission (Holocaust Education Trust); Ex-Enemy Jews: The Fate of the Assets in Britain of the Holocaust Victims and Survivors (Holocaust Education Trust); Nazi Gold: Information from the British Archives ; Nazi Gold: Information from the British Archives, Part II ; British Policy towards Enemy Property during and after the Second World War (Foreign and Commonwealth Office); Hitler's Secret Bankers: How Switzerland Profited from Nazi Genocide (Adam Lebor); Blood Money: The Swiss, the Nazis and the Looted Billions (Tom Bower); The Swiss, the Gold and the Dead: How Swiss Bankers Financed the Nazi War Machine (Jean Ziegler, trans. John Brownjohn); The Rape of Europa (Lynn Nicholas); The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy to Seize the World's Greatest Works of Art (Hector Feliciano); Treasure Hoard: A New York Times Reporter Tracks the Quedlinburg Hoard (William H. Honan) Donald Cameron Watt
The Politics of Risk Society (edited by Jane Franklin); Social Policy and Social Justice (edited by Jane Franklin) Leonard Tivey
The Day-Star of Liberty: William Hazlitt's Radical Style (Tom Paulin) Mark Garnett
The Open Cage: The Ordeal of the Irian Jaya Hostages (Daniel Start) Donald Cameron Watt
The Search for Normality: National Identity and Historical Consciousness in Germany since 1800 (Stefan Berger) Joyce Crick     

The Queensland Health Royal Commissions

Utilisation of public inquiries and royal commissions in Westminster systems of government is a source of continuing interest. That royal commissions continue to be appointed when there is an increasing array of other institutions governments can now employ and given that royal commission reports often have very adverse impacts on the appointing governments, remains a key issue. So the appointment by the Queensland government of not one, but two royal commissions in 2005 into the same topic – the recruitment and performance of doctors recruited abroad working in Queensland public hospitals – provides a special opportunity to analyse the circumstances in which a royal commission mechanism is activated. That one of these royal commissions had to be disbanded because of legal action taken by several of those being investigated is another reason to assess these royal commissions. This is almost without precedent in Australia and has implications for the future conduct of such bodies. Lastly, how the Queensland government was able to minimise the blame from the subsequent royal commission's highly critical report, is also instructive and worthy of assessment .     

Local Political Recruitment in Crisis? A Comparison of Finland and Norway

Beginning with the assumed problem of high turnover among local councilors in Norway, the article compares local political recruitment processes in Finland and Norway. Turnover in Norwegian local councils has proven surprisingly stable at 60–65 percent for a series of elections, whereas it has been significantly lower at 35–45 percent in the other Nordic countries, including Finland. Turnover among Norwegian councilors is mainly due to voluntary retirement. According to theories of political recruitment and representation, lack of motivation among candidates poses a threat to the democratic quality of political systems, because it undermines the voters' ability to exercise democratic control over politicians. The authors argue that rotation in office need not constitute a democratic problem. On the contrary, empirical evidence is presented to show that participation in political council work may in itself have a politically activating effect on the participants. Very few candidacies can be described in terms of political ambition. Instead, motivation is often created and cultivated through participation. Furthermore, rotation in office may lead to the diffusion of political competence and may therefore constitute an alternative source of democratic control.     

Migrant Workers or Working Women? Comparing Labour Supply Policies in Post-War Europe

ABSTRACT

Why did some European countries choose migrant labour to expand their labour force in the decades that followed World War II, while others opted for measures to expand female employment via welfare expansion? The paper argues that gender norms and the political strength of the left were important structuring factors in these choices. Female employment required a substantial expansion of state intervention (e.g. childcare; paid maternity leave). Meanwhile, migrant recruitment required minimal public investments, at least in the short term, and preserved traditional gender roles. Using the contrasting cases of Sweden and Switzerland, the article argues that the combination of a weak left (labour unions and social democratic parties) and conservative gender norms fostered the massive expansion of foreign labour and a late development of female labour force participation in Switzerland. In contrast, more progressive gender norms and a strong labour movement put an early end to guest worker programmes in Sweden, and paved the way for policies to promote female labour force participation.     

Re-evaluation of the Importance of the Public Service: Tasmania's Collaborative Program

In considering what should be the role of government in a community like Tasmania we need to understand the context within which we are working. We are a small population that is almost without exception a branch economy. No major corporations are based here – we have branch offices or divisions of major companies. We lack a managerial class – headquarters and management staff are based elsewhere – decisions made by the level of management based in our state do not take the welfare of the state into account. Our private sector does not have the capital and quite clearly the capacity to take up the challenge posed by a reduction of government services or a contraction of services. When public sector jobs are cut in Tasmania they stay cut. The private sector does not step into the breach and create jobs. Tasmania has always relied, to a large extent, on the public sector for its economic viability – with the contraction of public sector funding, the viability of the state's economy has been seriously eroded.     

Election Campaigns in Postwar Norway (1945–1989): From Party-Controlled to Media-Driven Campaigns

From 1945 to the end of the 1980 s, Norway's election campaigns have changed substantially. The mass media – particularly television – have grown in importance, partly structuring the election campaign. In this study the period in question is divided into three phases: (1) 1945–57, a phase characterized by a loyal party press and the breakthrough of radio; (2) 1961–69, a phase characterized by a loyal party press under pressure and the advent of television; (3) 1973–89, a phase characterized by the dissolution of the party press and the beginning of the television era. In the course of these decades, the media's coverage of election campaigns has been 'liberated' from the political parties. This move from party-controlled to media-driven election campaigns coincides with a more turbulent period among the voters, a period with a higher level of voter volatility. The changing role of the mass media has not led to dramatic shifts in activity, at least not as reflected by two indicators – voter turnout and level of informal discussion. Recent changes in the pattern of voting participation, however, may be associated with the role of the media. The gap between centre and periphery in voter turnout has gradually been bridged , and television is probably one of the bridge-builders. With television as the major arena for the election campaign, the stream of political impulses which serve as mobilizing forces has become more or less the same in both centre and periphery.     

Elections as poorer reflections of preferences under compulsory voting

Compulsory voting is known to increase electoral participation, but its second-order effects are not well established. In this paper, I argue that vote choices are a relatively poor reflection of individuals' preferences under compulsory voting, as it boosts participation among those who are unlikely to cast well-reasoned ballots—the politically disinterested and unknowledgeable and those who see elections as flawed or pointless. I test this expectation with cross-national survey data, and I conduct supplementary tests with regional survey data from Switzerland, which employs compulsory voting in select cantons. Results from both sets of analyses support my expectations, suggesting that elections conducted under compulsory rules are relatively unlikely to signal the preferences of the voting population.     

Democratization as an emancipative process: The neglected role of mass motivations

Abstract.  Despite major differences, prevailing approaches in democratization research have one thing in common: they downplay the role of mass attitudes. This article criticizes the neglect of mass attitudes, arguing that it ignores the very essence of democratization. In light of human development theory, democratization is essentially an emancipative process, for it manifests human freedom by empowering people with civil and political rights. From this premise, the author concludes that democratization should be driven by emancipative forces in the population and that these forces are reflected in particular mass attitudes: liberty aspirations. Based on evidence from the Values Surveys, the analyses show that more widespread liberty aspirations facilitate progress and impede regress in the process of democratization. No other indicator – including GDP/capita and social capital – outperforms the effect of liberty aspirations on democratization. The article concludes that human development theory is useful because its emphasis on people empowerment highlights something that has been ignored in the democratization literature: emancipative motivational forces in the population.     

Parliamentary Election Turnout in Europe since 1990

This article examines the cross-national variations in turnout for parliamentary elections in Europe since 1990 – a continent with a vast range in turnout levels and some clear subregional patterns, especially that of low turnout in East-Central Europe. A full range of socio-economic, mobilizational, party system, institutional, and contextual factors are examined for bivariate relationships with turnout. A multivariate model then indicates that cross-national turnout is higher where there is strictly enforced compulsory voting, in polarized two-party systems and countries with a high level of party membership, and where there are no relevant elected presidents or strong regional governments. Variances on these and other key factors are what accounts for the subregional pattern of East-Central Europe and the highest turnout case of Malta; however, Switzerland is confirmed to be a significant national dummy variable.     

Policy or person? What voters want from their representatives on Twitter

Social media have the potential to transform democracies as they allow for direct contact between representatives and represented. Politicians can use social media to show their policy positions but they can also give insight into their private lives. Based on survey experiments in Germany and Switzerland we show that social media messages about politicians’ private lives rather deter voters. Instead, we find that voters prefer candidates that communicate policy positions. The effect of a policy-oriented communication style on Twitter can even lead to appreciating a politician from a different party in Switzerland, which has an electoral system that gives a strong incentive to cultivate a personal vote.     

For the People, Of the People and By the Military: The Regime Structure of Modern Turkey

The arrival, and subsequent longevity, of the military in politics in much of the Middle East over the last 50 years or so has elicited considerable attention. This is, perhaps, particularly so in Turkey, where, since 1909, there has been only 10 years in which a fully civilian administration has governed. Recently, the collapse of the Kurdish Workers Party and the beginning of a process of constitutional amendment aimed at meeting EU accession criteria has sharpened the controversy over the role of the military in the Turkish polity. The aim of this paper is to contribute to this debate by analysing the methods through which military rule has been perpetuated since the Second World War. Using the work of the sociologists Eric Nordlinger and Michael Mann, I argue that two succinct regime strategies are discernible. The first – semi-authoritarian incorporation – was deployed throughout Turkey during the 1960s and 1970s. Following the 1980 coup, however, it existed alongside a second method – autocratic militarism – which emerged in south-east Anatolia. Thus, the primary purpose of this paper is to offer an explanation for the structure of these strategies.     

Föderalismus und wohlfahrtsstaatliche Entwicklung. Österreich und die Schweiz im Vergleich

Starting from the stylised fact that federal institutions are held to be inimical to welfare state expansion, this paper examines the ways in which federalism has shaped the dynamics of welfare state development in Switzerland and Austria. A comparison of these different federal polities reveals that the welfare breaking effect attached to federalism crucially depends on the extent of vertical power separation. In both countries economic competition among constituent units did not fuel a race to the bottom in social standards. In Switzerland, the most important reason connected to federalism for why federal social policy was delayed and downsized was policy-preemption by the cantons and their considerable influence on the federal policymaking process. In contrast, the Austrian Länder neither had major social policy competencies nor an effective veto power which allowed them to block the centralisation of public policy. Instead, federalism is subordinate to the partisan arena at the central state level which itself is dominated by political parties quite favourable to welfare state expansion.     

Sorting Out Sortition: A Perspective on the Random Selection of Political Officers

The central argument of this article is that it is possible to identify one major or primary potential that sortition brings to the political community when it is used to select office holders. This is to be found when sortition is used in such a way as to maximise its most essential feature – its arationality – and where such an application has the most significant and positive impact on the political process and the political community. In such applications the advantages of using an arational process can be seen as outweighing its disadvantages. In political practice – especially in a republican context – this primary political potential is the ability of sortition to protect the public process of selection from subversion by those who might wish to use it for their own private or partisan ends. This helps to defend the polity from those seeking to exercise unconstitutional or arbitrary power – either in the form of a single tyrant or of factions vying for partisan control. In addition, sortition can produce a series of secondary benefits to the republican polity: the polity can be understood as impartial, the threshold to citizen participation can be lowered and the model of the independent citizen encouraged. These benefits, however, can be seen as deriving from initial protection of the process of selection from manipulation – a quality of lot which is present whatever the motivation of those instigating a particular lottery scheme. Although the political use of lot cannot be confined to the protection of open government, its potential to limit the power of individuals or covert groupings makes it naturally commensurate with this role.     

How do fiscally decentralized federations fare in times of crisis? Insights from Switzerland

This article examines federal dynamics during times of crisis in fiscally decentralized federations using Switzerland as an example. Based on qualitative research, we analyse how the relationship between the federal government and the cantons evolved during the recent ‘Great Recession’ and ensuing financial crisis. We contend that fiscally decentralized structures, as well as the consensus-oriented institutions of the political system, protect the federal balance of power. Our results show that Switzerland indeed adapted well to the crisis of the 2009 economic recession. However, the deficit crisis has revealed challenging coordination problems, notably in the areas of fiscal equalization and corporate taxation, which have the potential to put federal stability under stress. So far, the system has adapted well and safeguarded the federal order. Due to its combination of fiscally decentralized institutions and a strong consensus culture, Switzerland has proven to be a particularly robust federation.     

The limits of deregulation: Transnational interpenetration and policy change

Abstract. Deregulation became a major cross-national trend in the 1980s. Proponents of deregulation have included neoclassicists, pragmatists and certain analysts on the Left and Center-Left. Deregulation has a number of unintended or unforeseen consequences. A major issue is the development of new, market-oriented regulations and regulatory structures – the first category of 'reregulation'. Another is the cross-national knock-on effect of regulatory changes. And a third is the emergence of new forms of market stabilization and control, whether by the state or at the transnational level. A crucial feature of deregulation is the change in the wider pattern of state intervention from the 'welfare state' model to that of the 'competition state'. A number of competing explanations for deregulation can be identified – market explanations, institutional/technological explanations and political explanations – each of which has significant variants. These explanations can be seen to apply in the real world at four different levels: the 'global' level; that of various intermediary transnational political structures; the state level; and the level of 'self-regulation' of a neo-corporatist kind.     

Distribution of income in advanced capitalist states: political parties, labour unions, and the international economy

Abstract. Hypotheses about determinants of income inequality in advanced capitalist societies are tested with data from the World Bank for 1975–80 across virtually the complete population. The results support most of the propositions of a model that takes into account differences in partisan control of government, the organization strength of labour, and the openness of the economy to international market forces. Hypotheses derived from global models of income distribution are not supported. The major findings are (1) that labour organization has no direct effect on income inequality; (2) that strong socialist parties have a negative effect on the size of the gap between the rich and the poor but no effect on the gap between the rich and the middle class; (3) that the governmental strength of conservative parties is unrelated to the size of the gap between the rich and the poor but has a very strong positive effect on the gap between the rich and the middle class; and (4) that, regardless of partisan control of government, relatively small trade dependent economies are more egalitarian than relatively large economies which are less dependent on international trade.     

Public perceptions and bond markets during the Great War: the case of a neutral country

Neutrality during World War I was not assured but depended on the ability of a neutral state to adjust to the major belligerent powers’ interests. How did Switzerland manage to adhere to its neutrality policy under those circumstances? This paper analyzes contemporary perceptions of neutrality by means of a structural break analysis. According to historiography Switzerland was endangered from within rather than by foreign actions. The analysis based on a newly assembled database supports this assessment in parts. In the bondholders’ view, Switzerland’s neutrality was most threatened by the events leading up to the general strike in November 1918.

     

How unstable? Volatility and the genuinely new parties in Eastern Europe

Abstract.  Measuring of party system stability in Eastern Europe during the first decade of democratic elections presents problems. The traditional quantitative measure – volatility – does not distinguish between the dynamics among incumbent parties and the rise of genuinely new ones. I propose a new additional measure – success of genuinely new parties – and compare it to volatility. The subsequent performance of initially successful genuinely new parties is analysed. While volatility has been remarkably high in East European countries, the genuinely new parties have, in general, not been very successful. Instability of party systems in the region stems rather from the inner dynamics of incumbent actors than from the rise of new contenders.     

Representation and Democracy: Uneasy Alliance

The concept of 'representation' is puzzling not because it lacks a central definition, but because that definition implies a paradox (being present and yet not present) and is too general to help reconcile the word's many senses with their sometimes conflicting implications.
Representation has a problematic relationship with democracy, with which it is often thoughtlessly equated. The two ideas have different, even conflicting, origins. Democracy came from ancient Greece and was won through struggle, from below. Greek democracy was participatory and bore no relationship to representation. Representation dates – at least as a political concept and practice – from the late medieval period, when it was imposed as a duty by the monarch. Only in the English Civil War and then in the eighteenth-century democratic revolutions did the two concepts become linked.
Democrats saw representation – with an extended suffrage – as making possible large-scale democracy. Conservatives instead saw it as a tool for staving off democracy. Rousseau also contrasted the two concepts, but favoured democratic self-government.
He was prescient in seeing representation as a threat to democracy. Representative government has become a new form of oligarchy, with ordinary people excluded from public life. This is not inevitable. Representation does make large-scale democracy possible, where it is based in participatory democratic politics at the local level.
Three obstacles block access to this possibility today: the scope of public problems and private power; money, or rather wealth; and ideas and their shaping, in an age of electronic media.