Power and Society in Finland: Change and Continuity

Abstract

Unlike its sister investigations in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, VALTA, the Finnish research programme on power, conducted from 2007 to 2010, was not directly commissioned by the state, but by the Academy of Finland. It claimed a more independent approach, both theoretically and methodically, than TANDEM, a thematically similar research programme in the 1970s. This article analyses the narratives constructed to advertise the VALTA programme and present its results to the public. It also examines how the key concepts of the programme, power and citizenship, were influenced by the views on historical change expressed by the investigators. In the framing narratives of the investigation and several of its individual projects, such change was defined as a displacement of the welfare state by a new model, one in which the state served as a coach for its citizens in a climate of heightening economic competition. Passive images of the citizen and the sometimes contradictory historical narratives contained in the framing articles obscured the results of the individual projects, which often uncovered civic agency in the uses of power in society.

Keywords::

• power
• citizenship
• public investigation
• civil society
• welfare state
• historical change
• Scandinavia
• public discourse
• media
• policy-making

Notes

¹ See Suomen Akatemia (2005; available online in Finnish, Swedish, and English, at: http://www.aka.fi/Tiedostot/Tiedostot/VALTA/Ohjelmamuistio%20(pdf).pdf), Pietikäinen (2010c; available online, in Finnish, at: http://www.aka.fi/Tiedostot/Tiedostot/VALTA/VALTA%20Hankkeiden%20tulokset.pdf), Pietikäinen (2010d; available in Finnish at: http://www.aka.fi/Tiedostot/Tiedostot/VALTA/VALTA%20E-lehteen.pdf), and Evaluation panel (2012; available in English online at: http://www.aka.fi/Tiedostot/Tiedostot/Julkaisut/2_12_VALTA.pdf).

² VALTA seminar 23 April 2012, speeches by Professor Marja Järvelä (Chair of the evaluation panel), Professor Raimo Väyrynen, Director General Juhana Vartiainen (Government Institute for Economic Research), Professor Teivo Teivainen, Professor Marja Keränen et al.

³ What Pietikäinen meant with the latter term remained unexplained, but it may be assumed that he referred to theories of rational choice.