Encouraging a longer time horizon: the Committee for the Future in the Finnish Eduskunta

ABSTRACT

As recent debates about climate change indicate, public policy-making is often criticised as being predominantly reactive, with politicians responding in piece-meal fashion to current problems. How well legislatures can predict the future or prepare for it is thus a question really worth asking. Focusing on the Finnish Eduskunta, this paper critically examines the role of the Committee for the Future, a unique parliamentary institution that was established in 1993 ‘to generate dialogue with the government on major future problems and opportunities’. Drawing on parliamentary documents and elite interviews, the paper explores the Committee’s role through its unique tasks and working practices, and assesses whether its position has institutionalised within the Eduskunta and Finnish state administration more generally. The paper also evaluates the Committee’s impact on Finnish long-term politics, identifies its strengths and weaknesses, and puts forward practical recommendations for turning legislatures into more forward-thinking institutions.

KEYWORDS:

• Parliament
• future
• committee
• Finland
• decision-making

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Vesa Koskimaa is a postdoctoral researcher at the Social Science Research Institute (Samforsk), Åbo Akademi University, Finland.

Tapio Raunio is a professor of political science at the Faculty of Management and Business, Tampere University.

Notes

1 The closest is the Scotland Futures Forum, the futures think-tank of the Scottish Parliament. Established in 2005 and bringing together both MPs and external experts, it works on a non-party basis, with the aim of looking ‘beyond the electoral cycle to stimulate debate on the long-term challenges and opportunities that Scotland faces’. The Scotland Futures Forum was very much inspired by the Committee for the Future of the Eduskunta (Groombridge, 2006; Boston et al., 2019, pp. 121–125). For more information, see http://scotlandfutureforum.org/. The German Bundestag has since 2004 appointed a Parliamentary Advisory Council on Sustainable Development, which has 17 members from the parliamentary groups (Boston et al., 2019, pp. 216–219).

2 We are grateful to Johannes Ahvo from Tampere University for his excellent research assistance. Full list of analysed documents are available from the authors. Due to mutual agreement, the interviewees’ names are not disclosed in this paper.

3 As institutional theory has become the main approach to study organisations, there is a vast literature studying in some way the ‘institutionalisation’ of various political institutions and movements. Hence the literature we cite are only examples of a much wider range of research.

4 For a critique of how institutionalisation has been applied in research on legislatures, see Judge (2003, 2008).

5 The Constitution of Finland, 11 June 1999, 731/1999, available at https://www.finlex.fi/fi/laki/kaannokset/1999/en19990731.pdf.

6 In fact, in December 1999 the Constitutional Law Committee voted 13–14 against giving the CF permanent status. In the final plenary vote the permanent status of the CF was approved with 96 votes to 73 (Arter, 2000, p. 153).

7 Paloheimo was the first chair of the temporary committee upon its establishment in 1993 while Tiuri chaired the CF from 1996 to 2003. According to Tiuri, particularly MPs with background in law were initially against the CF, as they saw that the Eduskunta should deal only with law-making. Paloheimo and Tiuri disagreed about the direction of the CF’s work: the former emphasized environmental issues while Tiuri prioritized technological development (Kunttu, 2007, pp. 352–355).

8 https://www.eduskunta.fi/EN/lakiensaataminen/valiokunnat/tulevaisuusvaliokunta/Pages/default.aspx.

9 CF’s publications can be found from: https://www.eduskunta.fi/FI/naineduskuntatoimii/julkaisut/Sivut/Tulevaisuusvaliokunnan-julkaisuja.aspx.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Academy of Finland, project number: 312676.