FOREWORD

The political science associations of Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden are now issuing the second volume of their joint yearbook. This year's Scandinavian Political Studies is largely devoted to research on political parties. Our articles deal with various aspects of the party structure of each country, without pretending to extend systematically over the wide range of party research. Although no article represents parallel analyses of comparative data from a multiplicity of countries, we do hope to offer some modest contributions to comparative research. The work refers to current scholarly discussion and will, almost certainly, provide generalizations and hypotheses which are applicable to a variety of settings.

Scandinavia's political parties offer a fruitful subject for both inter-Nordic and more comprehensive international comparisons. Parties have long constftuted the most significant manifestations of the democratic princples of the Nordic countries. The modern party systems of these countries originated in the late 19th century. By the 1920's proportional representation was in general use, and what became the main characteristics of the party systems then, still flourish to a considerable extent today. The different party systems also tended to develop similar patterns. Socialist parties have obtained majorities in Norway and Sweden and become the largest single party for long periods in Denmark and Finland as well. A multiplicity of non-socialist parties: Agrarians, Liberals, and Conservatives have appeared everywhere. Of the differences many are accounted for either by the varying degrees of Communist support or by party splits.

In Norway political parties emerged at the beginning of the 1880's. In less than four years a country virtually without party life changed profoundly and a dynamic two-party system sprang up. Ulf Torgersen's new analysis of this process proves that the existing typologies of party organization and of the sequence of organizational development need to be reconsidered. Torstein Hjellum has investigated how Norway's local government came to be politicized, as political parties attempted to exploit their chances to the full and the voters urged communal activity. Authors from two other countries offer the first results of their current ecological studies of party support. Jan Stehouwer's study illustrates changes in the relationships between social factors and party strength in Denmark's seven elections from 1947 to 1964,

and Onni Rantala's article on Finland emphasizes the regional aspects of
political ecology with data trom fourteen elections, 1919 to 1958.

Some studies view political parties as behavioral entities. In Mogens N. Pedersen's quantitative study on Denmark's oppositions and governing coalitions, the use of entire parliamentary groups in reminiscent of the use of single representatives in typical roll call analyses of legislative behavior. The behavior of Sweden's parties from 1956 to 1960, which provided the empirical evidence for Björn Molin's general form of explanation published in the previous volume of this yearbook, is further elaborated by two other Swedish authors. Bo Särlvik highlight« such structural features of Sweden's party system as bear on the interplay between the parties' policy decisions and the formation of political opinions among their constituents. Gunnar Sjöblom continues Molin's theoretical discussion on the functions and general aims of political parties, setting out a new scheme of analysis of party behavior in a multiparty system. In the final article, Kaarle Nordenstreng and Osmo A. Wiio question the methodological grounds on which prevailing agreement on the ineffectiveness of the mass media in exerting political influence during election campaigns is based They comment on the use of semantic differential during Finland's election campaign of 1966.

This volume's opening section is reserved for general conceptual analysis. Jaakko Hintikka emphasizes philosophy's new interest in conceptual systems and advances a general thesis of conceptual teleology implicit in the work of Plato and Aristotle. Reijo Wilenius, in turn, points out that recent discussions of methodology in the social sciences offer both teleological and causal explanations thus indicating two different conceptions of epistemology.

The concluding section of political and research reviews follows up the corresponding items published last year. In the reviews of research activity in the Scandinavian countries, our emphasis is being gradually shifted from broad annual reports to surveys devoted to particular areas of political inquiry. Thus the Finnish and Norwegian authors concentrate now on electoral research and the Swedish report describes a program of local government research.

Again the four political science associations wish to express their gratitude for the financial support from Statens råd för samhällsforskning (Social Science Research Council) in Sweden, Undervisningsministeriet (Ministry of Education) and the Rask-Ørsted Foundation in Denmark, the Opetusministeriö (Ministry of Education) in Finland, and Norges almenvitenskapelige forskningsråd (Norwegian Research Council) h Norway. And because the editorship of Scandinavian Political Studies is now due to rotate, in 1968 to Norway and thereafter to Sweden, I feel a strong personal desire to record my most sincere thanks for the constructive and devoted cooperation of the Editorial Board, of Mauri K. Elovainio, and of the very large number of others who have added their help and enthusiasm to the common cause of establishing this publication.

Tampere, Finland
May, 1967