Nordic Democracy - Fact or Fancy

written by Tarja Halonen

As we all here well know the Greek word demokratikos means simply power of the people. To find out what the power of the people actually means has preoccupied statesmen and philosophers for centuries. From my point of view I'll try to make a practical approach to the matter on the basis of the United Nations Charter and some particular agreements, because these might in this multi-cultural seminar of ours be the common ground we all share.

Finland is a member state of the United Nations, and as such it has approved the international agreements on the rights of the citizens and political rights as well as basic economic, social and cultural rights. Finland also belongs to the Council of Europe and has accordingly approved the European Charter of Human Rights. We have therefore agreed that the international community has the right to be informed of the stage and direction of development of the Finnish democracy. Also the citizens of our country have the possibility to appeal to international courts of justice against their own government. I feel that this is one of the true characteristics of modern democracy. The political rights of the citizens are not only an internal affair of a state.

Finland as well as other Nordic countries has a fairly good record in the international community as a democratic state. Usually we have not been found guilty of human rights violations. The civil activity has, however, brought Finland in quite a few cases as the accused part to the international courts. Within the framework of European Council all the Northern countries are fairly well represented on the cause list. Nordic countries are also active critics of others within the international community. Are we in a position to do that?

The Power in the Nordic Countries Belongs to the People

On the basis of our constitution the power in Finland belongs to the people. The people are represented by a parliament elected in free elections. In all the Nordic countries and so also in our case, parliament and the cabinet responsible to parliament have a very central position.

How well does parliament represent the will of the people? Does it really represent the people? All Finnish citizens have the right to vote and they are eligible in parliamentary elections, if by the beginning of the electoral year they are 18 years of age or over. Foreigners do not have these rights in parliamentary elections. It must also be remarked that parliament does not exactly correspond to the socio-economic distribution of the people now living in Finland.

Let us at first make a comparison of male and female representation. In meeting the demands of the United Nations the sexual equality, the Nordic countries have succeeded better than others. But we still have a lot to do. In our March 1991 election for parliament, 77 women and 123 men were elected. With this result Finland is at the moment the top in the international statistics of equality between men and women. In other Nordic countries the situation is pretty much the same.

The outcome of the elections in Finland is very interesting due to the fact that the elections here are based on personal promotion and not on the lists made by the political parties as in other Nordic countries. Among the candidates of the parties women were represented in a good proportion, and the official attitudes of the parties regarded women and young people for parliamentary representatives as a good option. In practice, the parties did not, however, invest in the work among women or youngsters but this was done by the special organizations within the political parties. What matters is that in the end it was the voters who decided for the person they wanted to be their representative in parliament.

The Cabinet has now 40 percent women, which is our record so far. So the percentage of ladies in the Government is even higher than in parliament, and this is an exception to the former rule that people choose more ladies than the representatives they have chosen. Behind this result we do not have, as other Nordic countries do, a fixed quota of genders.

We don't know if this kind of positive development from the point of view of women shall continue in the future. All the signs, however, seem promising. And how can the internationally high percentage of women be seen in the contents of the politics? It has been said that the construction of the welfare society is the contribution by women. It has been built to compensate the unpaid work formerly done by women, and has thus increased the economic independence of women.

And what about the rights of the minorities in Finnish society? What has just been said might have convinced you that in Finland as in other Nordic countries men are a well-represented minority. What about the others? It is common to measure democracy by the rights granted to linguistic minority groups. In Finland we speak Finnish and Swedish. About 6 % of our citizens speak Swedish as their mother tongue. One of our political parties is rooted precisely to this minority language group and it has 11 representatives in parliament at the moment covering approximately the due statistical percentage of the population. We have Swedish speaking parliamentarians in other political parties as well. The autonomous province of Ahvenanmaa has its constitutional right to send one representative also to Finnish parliament. In Ahvenanmaa they speak Swedish. In the international research the position of our Swedish speaking minority has been considered exceptionally protected not only as far as their political but also their cultural rights are concerned.

To be objective, we have to admit that there are also other linguistic minorities in our country, e.g. the Sami people in Lapland. They are only about 7000. According to the new constitutional rules they have the right to be heard in parliament when laws concerning their lives are to be decided. Their rights to speak and study in their own language have in recent times been increased. Romans or gypsies we have only 300. Their right to and protection of the language is now under consideration. Other cultural minorities have been very small. The very homogeneous population structure is little by little becoming a more multi-cultural society when our policy concerning foreigners and refugees has been changed as in other Nordic countries. How we then relate with cultural minorities in the political decision making shall be very interesting to see. In Sweden they do not have representation of minorities in the political decision making by law, but foreigners can participate more freely in the political decisions before or on the local level.

To what extent is parliament in other senses the people of Finland in a condensed form. Also here people choose for their representatives those who, statistically seen, are older, better educated and wealthier than they themselves are. In so doing they probably do not believe that those people would be better than others to act as deputies, but the coincidence of a number of factors in all the Nordic countries helps the people that are pretty well-to-do to succeed in politics. Very rich politicians we, however, rarely have in the Nordic countries.

Pressures for Change in the Finnish Political Democracy

In three of the Nordic countries, viz. Sweden, Norway and Denmark, they still have monarchy. In Finland and in Iceland we have Presidential regimes. In Finland the position of President, due to historical reasons has been a very strong one. During the last legislative term the position of the President was changed. Not only shall he be elected in direct universal suffrage instead of by a body of electors as it was before, but his terms are limited to two, six years each. On the other hand his power in the internal politics in relation to parliament has been weakened; and now we are discussing the really extensive Presidential powers in foreign policy.

The power in all the Nordic countries seems to be more and more concentrating in parliaments. In Finland this development has been favored by the fact that our president Dr. Mauno Koivisto himself is strong supporter of parliamentary democracy. An interesting point of view is given to the matter by the question of European integration, which together with the national development very radically dimishes the scope of the national parliamentary decision making.

Direct Action as Means of Democracy

The traditional Nordic democracy has been that of the freedom of speech, association and meeting. One of the well-known phenomena in the Nordic countries is the cartellization of the press when small newspapers have disappeared in the economic struggle. In Finland we have fought against this development by financial state support to the press and a special financial support for the transportation of the newspapers, but the development as such has, however, continued.

Electronic mass media is a good and a bad thing at the same time. It has increased enormously the efficiency of transmission of information, but it demands more capital than before. With various local radio arrangements and systems we have in Finland tried to increase the possibilities of the non-governmental organizations to participate in the information society but the laws of the market economy are not very favourable to the development of democracy, neither are the the systems in the Socialist countries. I believe that the Finns present here are better experienced in the true situation of the possibilities of the trade union or the peace movements to use the Finnish mass media as a means to influence society.

The Nordic countries have been considered to be an example from the point of view of the labour union organisation. General percentage of affiliation has long been well over 80%. Both women and men belong equally to labour unions. Many sectors that internationally speaking are not well organised, e.g. trade, hotel, restaurant workers are in Finland also well organised in trade unions. The trade union movement includes not only workers but also civil servants and white collar workers. Academically trained people also have a trade union of their own.

In Finland the trade union movement is not member of any party through of collective membership, but leftist parties, and above all Social Democrats, have a strong influence in society through the trade union movement. In the Nordic countries the strong non-parliamentary influence of the trade union movement has not been considered a negative thing. On the contrary, with a system of collective negotiations of the salaries society has tried to resolve not only questions related to the salary, other conditions of employment and other social benefits. It has been a common practice that the trade unions have had an agreement with the state about income agreement, a deal where salaries and other conditions of labour and legislation concerning social policies has been integrated. At times the state has tried to lure the labour unions to lower their salary demands offering for example economic advantages and lower taxes. The state has in this way tried to prevent inflation and maintain the international competitiveness of the country.

In the Nordic countries even farmers are organized, and as producers they make similar agreements with the state. In these agreements they seem to have succeeded quite well because comparing our situation internationally the agricultural population has a good income rate and a high-class social welfare guarantee that has been paid practically completely by society.

We have had long economic boom in Finland and this has increased the possibilities of a single worker to make direct deals with the employers. Particularly in the centers of the southern Finland during the last few years there has been a lack of labour force. In other Nordic countries the labour situation has been better than in Finland, but also the share of foreign labour force and share of the sector outside of the legal labour market has been greater than in Finland.

The right of workers to participate in the decision making in enterprises has been considered one of the Nordic as well as German specialities. This has been done partly through our labour union movement, e.g. through the shop stewards as their right to negotiate and attend to the workers' interests or through representatives named by labour unions to participate in the administration of the enterprises.

An important part of workplace democracy is also the possibility of a single worker to exercise influence in his workplace. Examples of the cases in point is the possibility to reject dangerous work or the right to choose the time for his vacation.

Political Channels of Influence Democratic

Political parties have a legislation of their own. The rules and laws are not very detailed and in our discussions it has been stated that the position of a single member of a party should be more protected. On the other hand some people think that this would be an interference with the freedom of action of the citizen. In Finland and in other Nordic countries we would not favour a practice used in many countries of a compulsory vote or public pre-elections.

The labour unions face also a lot of criticism. Though closed shop system is forbidden in Finland it has in some fields been practically impossible not to be organised. The labour unions are ruled mainly by the normal legislation concerning associations but there has been demands for proportional representation or other similar rules for minority protection. Perhaps we also ought to say to our foreign visitors that on the other hand we have not even hints of any connections of our labour unions and organized crime.

During this long economic boom both labour unions and their members have become prosperous. For many people it seems to be difficult to understand that the system of collective labour agreement is dependent on our will to reach a mutual solution, that things do not happen automatically. We have had constant discussion in the papers about the right of a worker to take a risk in his job dealing with working hours or other rules made for his protection. It is interesting to see how this situation is going to change now that we are entering an extremely rapid economic recession and extensive unemployment. Very many of the younger wage earners have never experienced this kind of economic situation before. Time and again we also hear that labour unions with their excessive efficiency have decreased the economic competitiveness of the country, especially now during the recession.

There has been a political discussion on whether the strong non-parliamentary pressure position of the trade unions has weakened the position of parliament. In the collective incomes policy negotiations the government has been the representative of the state and i some cases the role of parliament has been to note the outcome and to guarantee it by legislation. The situation varies a bit in different Nordic countries. In Finland and in Denmark the coalition governments are frequent whereas in Sweden and in Norway they seem to be more inclined to one-party governments. In Finland in very many cases a simple majority in parliament is not enough and this gives the opposition a fine opportunity to slow down the process. I believe that a simple majority could be enough to make decisions in our parliament.

Meaning of the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of the Citizens

The United Nations International Charter on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is based on the organic connections of political rights and civil rights to economic, social and cultural rights. I quote: "The ideal of free human being enjoying freedom and want can only be achieved if conditions are created whereby everyone may enjoy his economic, social and cultural rights as well as his civil and political rights".

Finnish constitution has fairly well guaranteed the political and civil rights of her citizens whereas economic, cultural and social rights only a few have mentioned. During the former government a wide preparatory work in legislation was initiated. The task was to integrate to the constitution the two groups of the basic rights.

I do not know all the details of the constitutions of all the Nordic countries but I shall try to use our own legislation as an example. For us a free primary education is guaranteed to everybody by constitution. It means today our comprehensive school, whereas schoolbooks and the meals for the children have not been guaranteed in the same way. In fact, we do have, unlike many other countries, free meals in school, and also all the schoolbooks and other materials are free to the student. In our sparsely populated country it has also been important to guarantee free transportation to the school for the students from longer distances.

Also in the secondary school and the vocational training the education is free. In college the student must pay for his books. At the university and in higher education the fees are generally nominal, but the books and living costs of an adult student represent a considerable expense to many a family.

Finnish society up till now has taken these extensive free cultural services for granted. Public libraries are free. In Adult Education Centers you can study practically free. Even tickets to the theater and the opera are considerably subsidized with tax payers' money. Tens of thousands of young and adult people like sports and they can practise it in their organisations practically free thanks to the subsidies from the state and the municipalities. The same is true for students of various forms of arts. We also have corresponding private services but counting the number of participants the free services dominate. Horseback-riding, golf and slalom are perhaps good examples of sports dependent on private services, but you can hardly find a commercial basketball club or children's football team in Finland.

Yet these extensive cultural rights, except for the comprehensive school, are dependent on the political will of a simple majority. They are based on legislation or decision making in the municipalities. A change in the economic or political situation can wipe them out in a whish.

The Kindergarten Revolution

In all the Nordic countries we have widespread social rights. The citizens are insured for the loss of income due to old age, unemployment as well as sickness or accident. The point of departure in our social policy is that though an adult person should work for the livelihood of himself and his family, he cannot be forced to do it. If he then because of his lack of initiative or simply because of his laziness happens to have no money, society has to take care of him at least on the minimum level. During the economic boom this has not caused too many problems and not even direct opposition in the public opinion. The situation may change in the future.

The political discussion in the Nordic countries has cherished the idea of a citizen salary. Such a salary could replace the financial aid to students or the pension to the old people. The simple system would replace the present complicated system created by historical and different social points of view. On the other hand the advocates of the system of the citizen salary say that it might, together with the normal pay, bring workers to the low-paid jobs in society and it might also be a solution to the necessary but unpaid tasks in society.

In Finland you can receive economic compensation if you take care of your sick child, a chronically sick person or an elderly person. Families with children have a right to get municipal child care for their child - for which they pay a fee according to their income - or if they do not want it they get economic compensation. But it is the family not the municipality that makes the choice. All the families with children under 17 years of age receive a child benefit independent of the income of the family intended to cover the expenses caused to the family by the child. It is now FIM 366,-, 5% of the average monthly pay for women. The comparison has only been made to illustrate the size of the benefit. A mother with several children living in the countryside can well calculate to get with the child benefit and the child care allowance the amount of money an average female worker in service sector get as a wage.

The systen of public health care has been the third characteristic of a welfare society. It has made possible not only an efficient care of sick people but also the important sector of preventive health care. In spite of the fact that among others the United Nations and World Health Organisation have praised this kind of a system from the point of view of both relieving human suffering and as an economically viable system, it has in fact been open to constant criticism by economists. There is, however, no numeric evidence of the effectiveness of alternative systems.

Time and my skills do not allow me to simplify and describe the various dimensions of our welfare society. I might crystallize it by saying that during the last ten years we have worked hard to guarantee in practice the economic, social and cultural rights to the people as we have guaranteed their political and civil rights. The economic recession we are facing now does not necessarily change the fact that we, as other Nordic countries belong to the rich countries in the world, but it will reveal how lasting this social sense of responsibility of ours is.

This coming autumn we shall have to decide which of the per se necessary points of expenditure are the most important. Is it more important to reduce the tax on cars than guarantee the present services to the school children. Or should the Finnish Army get its new fighters, after all. It is part of our democracy that the order of preference of these questions and others will be decided upon by the government and the parliament of our country.

In international law the political rights and people's economic, social and cultural rights are considered as one entity. Parting from that the political decision making should not be completely free, either. I am not quite convinced that on national level we would in practice be prepared to approve of that principle. The future will, however, show if I am too pessimistic.