When a pariah party exploits its demonised status: the 2019 Finnish general election

Abstract

The governing Centre and Conservative parties played the ‘economy’ card – we’ve got Finland ‘back into shape’; the green parties, the Greens and Left Alliance, played the ‘climate change’ card, demanding action to go with the talk; the Social Democrats played the ‘caring’ card and the need for a Finland that cares for the elderly, the low-paid and young persons; the Finns Party in contrast played the ‘no one likes us, we don’t care’ card, seeking to exploit its pariah status for electoral gain. The adoption of a siege mentality strategy, designed to capitalise on its ostracised position, served to mobilise protest support and the Finns Party came within a whisker of beating the Social Democrats into second place. The Social Democrats then turned the clock back and put together the type of left‒centre (‘red mud’) coalition that had characterised Finnish governments for half a century from the mid-1930s onwards.

Keywords:

• Social democracy
• pariah party
• immigration
• climate action
• populism

Note

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Other recent reports in the Elections in Context series include Faas and Klingelhöfer (2019); Garzia (2019); van Holstyen (2018); Prosser (2018); and Aardal and Bergh (2018).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David Arter

David Arter is an emeritus professor and currently director of research in the School of Management at Tampere University. He has written widely on Nordic politics over the years and the 3rd edition of his Scandinavian Politics Today was published in 2016.