From state-owned smokestacks to post-industrial dreams: The Finnish government in business, 1970–2010

Figures & data

Table 1. Periodisation.

	Economic globalisation	The Finnish state administration	State-owned enterprises
State-led growth (1956–1981): inwardly closed, highly coordinated market economy	The Cold War – an era of SOEs and national monopolies	A bureaucratic administrator-state became a Nordic welfare state	100% state ownership, mainly domestic operations, participation in international trade
Liberalisation (1982–1993): the speculative bubble and the delayed structural crisis; the third interlude	Liberalisation – the initial stages of European economic integration	New public management–style reform, political transition towards a more market-friendly orientation, beginning of corporate-governance development	Development of business organisations, rapid growth of foreign subsidiaries, first partial privatisations, exposition of former monopolies and national champions to competition
Towards an inwardly and outwardly open coordinated market economy (1993–2008)	European Economic Area – industrial jobs are increasingly moved to low-cost countries	New public management–thinking is an established norm, further and wider reforms	State as a minority owner, some state-owned multinationals, privatisations, some agencies incorporated, public–private partnership

Figure 1. The impact of international influences on the domestic context.

Figure 2. Investments in research and development in Finland, 1971–2008. Source: Statistics Finland: Research and development and Government R&D funding in the state budget. Retrieved from https://www.stat.fi/til/ttt_en.html [23.9.2020].