Scandinavian Political Studies, Bind 1 (1966)

FINLAND

Institute of Political Science University of Turku

Jaakko Nousiainen

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It is true that both research and teaching in the field of political science began in Finland at least in some form already in the middle of the 17th century when the first university was established. The real development of this discipline, however started a great deal later, possibly in the 1930'5, and really extensive work, like in most European countries, did not get under way until after the Second World War. Measured in terms of doctoral dissertations and chairs established, the advancement has been rapid. Progress has been made especially since the middle of the 1950'5, when a new post-war generation of researches began to make their contribution and when the value of social science research has won more general acceptance in society. This survey of the developments in the first half of the 1960's thus focues on the essential characteristics of this new era: the inclusion of political science in the curricula of an increasing number of universities and other institutions of higher learning and the consequent increase in both the number of instructors and students; the increased scope of the scholars; the improvement in research facilities; and, in summing up, a general and continuous increase in the body of knowledge of political phenomena.

The first part of this report is concerned with organizations and institutions either engaged in or facilitating the study of political science. The second part contains a survey of the organization of university teaching of political science, while the third part is devoted to a presentation of the accomplishments in different areas during the 1960—1965 period under investigation.

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A. Organizations and Institutions

The central organization in the field, the Political Science Association, was established in 1935. Its purpose, according to its statutes, is to promote in Finland the study of questions of political science, the general interest in these problems, and to participate in international co-operation in the field. Only a part of its 450 members are actively engaged either in research or in teaching. The Association as such does not initiate or direct any research projects; this has been occasionally attempted, but the lack of sufficient finances has proved an obstacle. Earlier activities have centered around the organization of a monthly lecture and debate, but in recent years the emphasis has been rather distinctly on publications and international scientific co-operation. Since 1959 the Association has published a quarterly, Politiikka, which replaced the yearbook that was first published in 1941. Politiikka contains an English summary of the articles written either in Finnish or Swedish. With the beginning of a series called Politiikan tutkimuksia ("Studies in Politics") the Association brought about a decided improvement of the possibilities for publishing more extensive studies. So far a total of seven volumes have been published in this series in co-operation with the largest publishing house in Finland. In another series in English two books have been published on the basic issues of Finnish politics: Democracy in Finland (94) and Finnish Foreign Policy (748). The Association has also taken an active part in the work of the IPS A; eg. one of its representatives has been a member of the Executive Council of IPSA. The development of Nordic co-operation in the study of politics has proved to be one of the most recent successful activities of the Association.

In the course of the last ten years sociology and political science have been significantly drawing closer; thus, the Finnish association of sosiologists, The Westermarck Society, has among its members a great number of political scientists and sosiologists interested in political phenomena. An international conference of political sociology was held at Tampere in 1963 and some of the papers read there were published in 1964 as the tenth volume of the society's English-language series, Transactions o/ the Westermarck Society (464). The Society also publishes a Finnish periodical, Sosiologia, as well as represents Finland in the Nordic publication, Acta Sociologica.

The Study of Foreign Politics Foundation, established in 1959, has assumed the task of promoting in Finland the study of international politics and knowledge about questions of foreign policy. Towards this end it publishes a series on contemporary international problems, engages in different types of educational projects and maintains the Institute for Foreign Policy in Helsinki. The Finnish Society for Military Science (Suomen sotatieteellinen seura) is an association of students of military science, primarily composed of officers of higher rank, which publishes its own annual Tiede ja ase ("Science and Arms").

The central public agency for the promotion and planning of social sciences, ie. also political science, is the governmental Social Science Research Council, which was established in 1961 simultaneously with five other research councils. The members of the council, who are "prominent active researches", are appointed by the Cabinet and the chairman by the President of the Republic for a three year term. The function of the research council consists of following the general development and trends in research and maintaining constant liaison with researchers and scientific institutions of drafting plans for the development of research for the governmental authorities; and of evaluating as well as providing support for particularly significant research projects, eg. by the initiation of such projects and by organizing the necessary co-operation for their realization. The

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budget of the council includes annual grants to individual researchers and research teams. Furthermore, the council employs research assistants, who primarily concentrate on working on their doctoral dissertations, as well as senior and junior researchers who already have their doctorates. At the end of 1965 the council employed two political scientists.

There are no other public or private research institutes that specialize in the analysis of political phenomena. Universities, too, have very limited resources in this respect. Most extensive work in this particular area is done at the research institute of the University of Tampere, bxrt even there political questions have constituted only a part of the research projects. The activities of the Institute for Foreign Policy are only at the preliminary development stage; some study groups for discussing and delineating certain central phenomena in international politics have been recently established. The Research Institute for Military History is a public institute maintained by the state. It is divided into the bureau of military history, central library, museum and archives. Suomen sota 1941—1945 ("Finland's War, 1941—1945"), a ten volume book was recently completed by its research staff.

Among the activities in the field of political science one may justifiably include also the ad hoc governmental committees which prepare in Finland as well as in the other Nordic countries a considerable proportion of the data needed by the governmental authorities. Since their findings are compiled to meet specific practical requirements, as a rule they do not achieve any high scientific standards; nevertheless, they do provide badly needed facts about the phenomena concerned. For example, in the course of the last ten years the committee on the organization of governmental administration has conducted surveys on the structure and functions of the central administrative organs as a basis for measures aiming at a higher degree of efficiency. Another committee studied in the beginning of the 1960's different electoral systems with a view on the revision of electoral legislation (153).

B. Universities

A total of seven universities or special institutions of higher learning offer instruction in political science as part of their regular curricula; the University of Helsinki, the Finnish and Swedish Universities of Turku, the University of Jyväskylä, The University of Tampere and the Finnish and Swedish Schools of Economics in Helsinki. In the beginning of 1966 there are a total of 13 chairs for professors and associate professors of political science and its special aspects — international politics and public administration. This does not seem like a large figure, but the difference between the European and especially American academic systems should be kept in mind. Other faculty members consist of docents, lecturers and assistants. It is rather difficult to accurately estimate how many students specialize in political science, but at all events their number is rapidly increasing. From 1960 to 1964 the number of students enrolled in the faculties of social sciences has more than doubled: the enrolment in the last mentioned year was close to 4 000. Actually, those students who study social sciences in the humanistic faculties of the universities and in the business colleges should also be added to this total.

The development of the curriculum and degrees conferred in the course of the last live years has been accompanied by a general trend towards intensifying instructions for methodology on the basis of that of the general behavioral sciences. This also means stricter methodological requirements for the Master's theses. Between 1951—1965 a total of 11 doctoral dissertations in political science

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were accepted; of these five were presented between 1960—1965. Because of scarcity of personnel and funds, the institutes of political science form rather modest research units. As a rule they can only carry out the tasks necessary for teaching and training of researches and limited scientific publications. Consequently, the institutes are primarily composed of professors and teaching assistants.

C. Scientific Research During 1960-1965

In his survey of political science research in Finland Professor Jan-Magnus Jansson wrote seven years ago: "To-day the mapping out of Finnish political life has advanced approximately to the same level as the charting of Africa was in the days of Stanley and Livingstone. The coastal features as well as the major mountain renges are known, and certain regions have been subjected to somewhat closer study. But the whole continent still contains huge blank areas alongside with more or less fanciful interpretations created by the cartographers on the basis of hearsay for lack of anything more precise".

Half a decade is not a long time for completing this size of a mapping project, and one could say that the compass has improved to such an extent that today one can move in the jungle of Finnish politics with a great deal more safety than in 1959. However, the progress has not been even; for a number of reasons certain aspects have been strongly emphasized, while others have been hardly touched upon. The approach and techniques usually vary in political science a great deal but the systematic and scientific nature of research is being more and more frequently emphasized. This has resulted in a more precise delineation of the boundary between political science and the purely historical and juridical approach, while the line between political science and sociology has grown more ambiguous. The fact that the traditional ties with Scandinavia and other parts of Europe have been complemented by closer ties with the Anglo-Saxon world during the post-war era has been of great significance from the viewpoint of consolidating the be^ havioral approach.

The following survey may be considered a selective commentary on the bibliography at the end of this yearbook. However, it also contains some unpublished or mimeographed reports. In general, both historical and juridical studies have been omitted, though they might contain valuable findings from the standpoint of political science or provide source material for analysis.

1. Theories and Methods

The studies published during the period under survey are primarily empirical, dealing with the phenomena of Finnish society. Consideration of method as well as the theoretical problems connected with them are, of course, always of importance, but they are generally discussed simultaneously with the introduction of the empirical results.

Erik Allardt's book on social structure and social pressure1, which entails a general theory on the structure of society and mass behaviour, is not concerned with political science in the strict sense of the word, but the political aspects of social phenomena receive central attention. In some other short articles Alladt examines, ia. the structure of political attitudes (549) and stresses the significance of the use of contextual variables in sociological research2. Antti Eskola, too, has studied the problems of opinion measurement on the basis of political data (529). He has also written on the new trends in content analysis (16). Tor Hartman has written a penetrating and original article on the concepts of power and influence, which are of basic importance in political science (393).

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Olavi Borg, who has specialized in the study of ideologies, has written several conceptual analyses of great merit in his field. Thus, eg. he has made a very lucid survey of the boundary between political theory and political philosophy (1) and in the light of empirical data examined the concepts used in describing the basic ideological distinctions in the Finnish multiparty system (466). In his report on the end of ideologies (444) an attempt is made to clarify certain conceptual distinctions, and the possibilities of research in this field are surveyed. Jan Jansson's article on the methodological problems in the study of comparative politics (19) is another elaboration of the debate carried on in the 1961 meetings of the Political Science Association on the different approaches to the study of political life. Pertti Pesonen's work on electoral behaviour resulted in a more precise formulation of the so called two-step flow of influence by defining the process as containing two and one-half phases (571). In the field of international politics Risto Hyvärinen has shown capacity analysis to be a fruitful method (17). Both theoretical and methodological research is being carried out also in the field of public administration; most noteworthy of the works so far completed is Ilkka Heiskanen's unpublished licentiate thesis, Scientific Strategies and Model Selection in Organizational and Administrative Research.

A two-volume Handbook of Social Sciences was published in 1963—1964; it is a encyclopaedia that on the one hand aims at clarifying the central concepts and methods and, on the other, at introducing the results of Finnish research in particular. Onni Rantala has prepared a useful guide to the sources of election statistics and studies on voting (31).

2. Political Ideologies

Several interesting works have been written on ideological research (the study of political ideas) in the course of recent years. Onni Rantala (77) published the results of his study on opinion formation, way of thinking and party convictions of Finnish Conservatives. In his work he combined two, until then widely separated approaches: he analyzed interview data on peoples' opinions and behaviour against the background of both international and Finnish conservative ideologies proclaimed in party programmes. The sample representented the members of one district organization of the National Coalition Party, whose opinions and behaviour were being explained in terms of several background variables.

Olavi Borg's study (483) is more extensive in scope; it compares the ideological platforms or principles of all the Finnish political parties. One of the basic aims of the study was a more precise formulation of the so-called basic ideological order or the traditional right-left dimension on the level of the parties' ideological position. The theoretical basis of the study rests on concepts derived from Parsons' general theory of action and some more strict party theories and certain linguistic approaches. The technique used in the study is related to a more recent development in content analysis, the so-called contingency analysis, and as the most appropriate method of measurement rank order correlations and cluster analysis based on the former are used. The same data were used in a concise factoranalytical study3 which was as such one of the first attempts to map the basic structural dimensions of ideologies. Borg has also edited a handbook that contains the basic ideological platforms of Finnish political parties since the 19th century4. Tuomo Martikainen's study of the use of patriotic language in the press is also based on systematic quantitative content analysis (447).

The more traditional approach is also used in the study of the historical backiground,
ideological foundations and activities of the Finnish extreme rightist movements

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during the inter-war period, in a research carried out by the American
scholar, Marvin Rintala (492), as well as in Reijo Wilenius' study in the history
of philosophy of the political and social ideas of Francisco Suaréz (39).

3. Political Processes

In Finland, as elsewhere, the analysis of opinion formation and party organizations has been an integral part of the most recent stage in the development of research. During the last few years several extensive projects have been under way to determine the extent of the parties' popular support and individual political behaviour; these investigations utilized different types of data and methods of measurement. Erik Allardt has concentrated on the problem of communist support, on the basis of regional official statistics on the one hand, and interview data on the other. Finland makes an interesting subject in this respect: on the whole, mass support of communism is rather strong, and at the same time strongholds of radicalism can be found in socially and economically quite different regions. Allardt has, e.g. compared by means of factor analysis the radicalism of relatively recent origin found in the eastern and northern parts of Finland, where now rapid progress is taking place after earlier backwardness, with the radicalism of the industrial regions in the southern and westerns parts of the country, where communist support is already traditional. To date the findings have been published as a series of interim reports (546—553). Ever since 1960 Rantala has been engaged in an extensive project to form a detailed, basic political map of Finland. On the one hand its purpose is to provide descriptive data on the political sub-divisions and the support of different parties, and, on the other hand, explicate these political phenomena in terms of social variables. For this study, too, the primary source was official statistics. The first mimeoed report of this project appeared in 19655 and it contains a description of the distribution of the political ideologies in Finland between 1907—1958. The focus of this report is the areas of the map that are characterized by concentration and stability in support of certain parties. This report, is, however, only the starting point and foundation for the more important stages of the project which are presently being carried out. Also Hannu Soikkanen's historical study about the origins of socialism in Finland (56) has to some extent utilized ecological analysis of the earliest support of socialism.

Two separate interview studies have been conducted to collect data on individual voting behaviour. Pertti Pesonen has conducted an interview study with a total of 500 residents of Tampere in connection with the 1958 parliamentary elections in order to determine the factors influencing the voters' voting decisions in general and the significance of election campaigns in particular. The study also included a smaller sample of residents of a rural community located in the same electoral district. The results of this panel study were published in Finnish in 19656. This book is no doubt the most thorough and extensive of all voting behaviour analyses done in Finland. Its focus is the decision making of the voters, but the copious and detailed data describes also the campaign in urban and rural communes. In a study organized by the Institute of Political Science of the University of Helsinki data was collected by means of interviews on the opinions and behaviour of Helsinki inhabitants in the elections for the electoral college and the parliamentary elections held in the beginning of 1962. Data from this study has been already utilized eg. in a number of studies prepared in fulfillment of the requirements for lower academic degrees.

A study which is emphatically on the individual level is Antti Eskola's work
on the value placed on the preservation and defence of society (554a). The research
is based on secondary analysis of previously collected interview data, on

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the question of national defence. Yrjö Littunen, too, has made use of already available data in his study on how factors of social activity lead to rigidity of attitudes and to the rise of radicalism as expressed in communism (562). The author comes to the conclusion that an emotional, expressive type of radicalism is prevalent in Finland.

Not much work has been done on pressure groups. Väinö Luoma's dissertation, written in 1962, is a thorough study based on documentary sources on unionism among civil servants, wherein the internal developments of unionism are also analyzed from a historical point of view (435a). Actually, the only empirical studies of pressure politics are Väinö Huuska's articles on the developments in the trade union movement since the Second World War and on the political activity of the agricultural producer organizations and labour market organizations in the 1950's (411).

Finnish scholars have an excellent opportunity to study the problem of national minorities not only in Finland but also in Sweden, where considerable Finnish settlements have come into being since the Second World War. Although a great deal has been written on the Aland Islands question from the perspective of history, military politics and international law, there is not much to show in the way of empirical political science studies. Klaus Tornudd's book, (463a) is a concise and thorough study on the general problems of the Swedish-speaking population. Vilho Koiranen, in turn, has studied the attitudes and behaviour of Finnish migrants in Sweden (461a).

Torsten Steinby's book, about the Finnish press (595), which has been published both in Finland and Sweden, is a general survey of the channels of political communication. The lack of a reliable statistics on newspapers is to some extent compensated by Onni Rantala's studies that deal specifically with the structure of party press (590, 591). Raino Vehmas has analysed the professional structure of Finnish journalists7, and the coverage given to foreign news by the press8. Data on political propaganda and its influence is found mainly in the election studies.

4. Public Decision-Making

Finland's Parliament (Eduskunta) has been by far the most common subject of studies on decision-making and official institutions. Emphasis on its structure and activities has characterized the research on this aspect of political science in the recent years. However, it cannot be said that this institution was "discovered" only in the 1960'5, since research in this field does have certain traditions. The published studies have one common factor in that they all use documentary material available about the representatives and their activities which then has been quantified to permit statistical analysis.

The social background of the Members of Parliament between 1907—1939 was the subject of Martti Noponen's study (176). In addition to the usual demographic data he also analysed the level of education, occupational distribution, social stratification and geographic distribution of Members of Parliament. From the point of view of the study of elites, the findings on the participation of Members of Parliament in local administration, and in party and other organizational activities, as well as changes in membership are of special interest. The results give an indication of a strong cumulative nature of participation. The study also showed an increasing shift in the legislator's work from an honorary appointment to a profession.

Pekka Nyholm (179) analysed the MP's general behaviour in carrying out their
legislative tasks in a study published in 1961. His source material consisted of data

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on roll calls in Parliament, and the subject of the study, strictly speaking, was the measurement of cohesion within the party groups. The study operated both on the level of individual Members of Parliament and party groups, as well as the factual, recurring combinations of party groupings; it also endeavoured to map out the combinations for crossing over party lines and to ascertain the permanence of the stands taken by individual representatives. Thus the aim was to map out the political field of forces within the Parliament in its entirety. In a later study9 Nyholm analysed by the same techniques roll call data in order to explicate a new problem, the extent and support of group interests of agriculture in the Parliament in 1930—1939 and 1945—1951.

In addition to the above, a number of studies deal with special aspects of parliamentary processes. One of these is Jaakko Nousiainen's survey of the utilization and significance of the representatives' right of initiative (178). Both in practice and constitutionally, in legislative and budgetary matters the parliamentary right of initiative is secondary to that of the cabinet — as is considered appropriate for countries with parliamentary systems. However, in the Finnish political system, the initiative power of parliament varies to a significant extent, depending on the parliamentary situation. The central problem of Jaakko Tervasmaki's study (185) is the reconsideration of the change that took place during the inter-war period among the Social Democrats, and to a certain extent also within the Agrarian parliamentary group, which meant a change from opponent to proponent of armed national defence. Eino Purhonen's study on the budgetary powers of Parliament (181) is juridical in its approach.

An extensive research project on the system of popular representation was initiated by the Cabinet already in 1951. Eight of the planned twelve volumes will contain a historical survey, while the remaining four will be concerned with a systematic interpretation. To date only some of the historical volumes have been published (183).

The number of studies on actual administrative structure and decision-making procedure is limited. For instance, all the studies on the relationship between the President of the Republic and the Cabinet have been primarily concerned with the legal aspects. The situation will be somewhat improved with the completion of the official history of the Council of State which was begun in 1959. Both this project and the one on the history of Parliament is supervised by an independent committee mainly composed of professors of history. A popularized presentation of the position of the Finnish President that has been published in several languages (146, 147), and a comparative study of the positions of the presidents of Finland and the United States (142) deserve a mention here.

Pertti Pesonen completed in 1961 a study in public administration (327), which focuses on the position of the governmental committee on humanities and natural sciences as an expert body of the Ministry of Education in decisions concerning the advancement of science. Another, more brief work by Jaakko Nousiainen examines the structure, general procedure and significance of the Economic Council, which is composed of representatives of interest groups, politicians and administrative experts (300). Jaakko Uotila's doctoral dissertation in jurisprudence on the delegation of decision-making powers within the Finnish governmental administration (330) contains empirical data of interest also to the social scientist.

The most extensive of the publications on various aspects of local administration have been intended as practical handbooks; they are primarily interpretations and elaborations of the existing laws. Actually, the first more extensive study that concerned local self-government was published in 1965. This study by Erkki Pystynen focused on the impact of the size of Finnish rural communes on their administrative organization10. In a shorter analysis Voitto Helander has explicated

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the communal decision-makers' self preception of their role11, The data was collected by interwing the communal councillors of three communes. A short reader (371) contains papers on several special problems in the field of Finnish local government.

5. International Relations

Since a more extensive report has been published elsewhere (cf. Cooperation and Conflict 2, 1965), research on international relations carried out during the first half of the 1960's will be touched upon here only in passing. The number of mature students in this field is rather small but quite active, and it seems that interest in the phenomena of international politics is on the increase among university students.

Reference has already been made to Risto Hyvarinen's contributions both in respects of theory and method. His recent empirical studies include one on Swiss neutrality (780) and another on the problem of disarmament and nuclear arms (661). Klaus Törnudd has examined the theory underlying Soviet foreign policy and its application in one specific area in his doctoral dissertation, Soviet Attitudes Towards Non-Military Regional Co-operation (784). The research is primarily based on official Russian documents and other written material, mainly from Soviet press. Göran von Bonsdorff's study on world politics (698) is concerned with the problem of achieving permanent peace. The book deals with the present stage of development of mankind, and it endeavours to forecast the course of development duraing the next few decades on the basis of the idea that the material foundations of civilization, international relations and world politics are all governed by one prevalent tendency towards unification, total intergration and conformity. K. Killinen (764) has examined Finland's military political position and the conditions for neutrality in the prevailing international situation.

Finland's foreign relations since independence have also attracted the interest of historians. Among the most significant works may be mentioned Juhani Paasivirta's study of Finland's relations with England, France and the United States after the First World War (732); Mauno Jaaskelainen's study of the origins and attempts to carry out the Eastern Karelia expansion scheme in Finnish foreign policy between 1918—1920 (725); Arvi Korhonen's work on the developments leading to the war between Finland and the Soviet Union in 1941—1944 (727); and Tuomo Polvinen's study of Finland's political role during the Second World War (733).



NOTES

1 Erik Allardt. Yhteiskunnan rakenne ja sosiaalinen paine (Social Structure and Social Pressure). Porvoo—Helsinki, Werner Söderström Osakeyhtiö, 1964, 266 pp. Also published in Swedish: Samhällsstruktur och sociala spänningar. Helsingfors, Söderström & C:o Förlags Ab, 1965, 245 pp.

2 Erik Allardt. "Yksilö- ja yhteisömuuttujat sosiaalitutkimuksessa" (Individual and Contextual Variables in Social Research), Politiikka 5(2), 1963: 51—61.

3 Olavi Borg. Ideologian sisältö ja rakenne (Content and Structure of Ideology). Helsinki, Institute of Political Science, University of Helsinki, 1965, 61 pp., mimeo. (Helsingin yliopiston yleisen valtio-opin laitoksen tutkimuksia, 6.) A version of the report is published in the present volume, pp. 94—117.

4 Olavi Borg. Suomen puolueet ja puolueohjelmat 1880—1964 (Finnish Political Parties and Party Programs, 1880—1964). Porvoo—Helsinki, Werner Söderström Osakeyhtiö, 1965, 424 pp. (Politilkan tutkimuksia, 7.)

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5 Onni Rantala. Suomen poliittiset alueet I (Political Regions in Finland, vol. I). Turku, Institute of Political Science, University of Turku, 1965, 212 pp., mimeo. (Turun yliopiston valtio-opin laitos. Tutkimuksia sarja C, 3.)

6 Pertti Pesonen. Valtuutus kansalta (A Mandate from the People). Porvoo—Helsinki,Hel- Werner Söderström Osakeyhtiö, 1965, 456 pp.

7 Raino Vehmas. Lehtimieskunnan ammattirakenne ja sen muuttuminen 1900luvulla (The Professional Structure of the Finnish Press and Its Transformation During the Twentieth Century). Turku, Turun yliopisto, 1963, 184 pp. With English summary. (Turun yliopiston julkaisuja, B 87.)

8 Raino Vehmas. Sanomalehtiemme ulkomaanaineisto. Turku, Turun yliopiston sosiologian laitos, 1964, 131 pp. (Turun yliopiston sosiologian laitoksen julkaisuja, B 10.) Reprinted summary: Foreign News in the Finnish Morning Papers. A Quantitative Analysis. Turku, Institute of Sociology, University of Turku, 1964, 24 pp. (Publications of the Institute of Sociology, University of Turku, 13.)

9 Pekka Nyholm. Maatalouden ryhmäetu eduskunnassa vuosien 1930—39 ja 1945— 51 vaalikausina (Group Interests of Agriculture in the Finnish Diet in the Electoral Periods of 1930—39 and 1945—51). Jyväskylä, Jyväskylän kasvatusopillinen korkeakoulu, Jyväskylän yliopistoyhdistys, 1965, 122 pp. (Studia historica Jyväskyläensia, 4.)

10 Erkki Pystynen. Kunnan suuruus kunnallishallinnossa (Influence of the Size on Communal Administration). Diss. Tampere 1965, 332 pp.

11 Voitto Helander. "Kunnallisvaltuutetun rooli" (The Role of a Communal Council Member), Politiikka 7(2), 1965: 19-43.