Composition of Cabinets in Finland 1917-1968

University of Tampere

The first Finnish cabinet in the modern sense, composed entirely of ministers representing various political parties, was the government headed by the Social Democrat leader Oskari Tokoi, appointed shortly after the Russian Revolution in March 1917. Later the same year, the principle of parliamentarism was introduced in the Finnish Parliament Act. The new Republican Constitution, which is still in force, also incorporating the principle of parliamentary government, was enacted in 1919. During the half century which has passed since then, the following basic characteristics of the Finnish political system have also remained unchanged: 1) the electoral system (only minor amendments have been made in the system originally introduced in 1906), 2) the pattern of power relations in Parliament (with the single exception of the Social Democratic party in 1916-1917, no party has ever held an absolute majority in Parliament, and majority government has therefore meant coalition government), 3) the main features of the party system itself (four major non-Socialist and two basic Labor parties; there was only one of the latter before 1922 and in 1930-1944, while the Communist party was outlawed, and since 1958 there have been three, due to the split of the Social Democratic party), 4) the formal constitutional rules concerning the appointment and position of the Cabinet (the informal procedures applied in the process of forming new Cabinets have slowly evolved so that bargaining between negotiators representing the political parties has largely replaced consultations of a Prime Minister-designate with various party groups in Parliament).¹

For the purposes of the present paper, the appointment of the Tokoi Cabinet in March 1917 has been chosen as a convenient point of departure. The period examined ends with the demission of the Paasio Cabinet in March 1968. During these 51 years, Finland has had 51 Cabinets, so that the average time in office has been exactly one year (occasionally there have been considerable changes in the composition of Cabinets during their time in office, but such changes have not been regarded as creating "new" Cabinets as long as a new Prime Minister has not been appointed). For analytical and comparative purposes, the most convenient unit is the ministerial appointment, counting each individual once every time he has been appointed to membership in the government. When a person has held several posts at the same

time or successively in the same Cabinet, this has been counted as one appointment. Other problems of classification pertain to the political, semi-political, or "nonpolitical" roles of the various ministers. There have been five so-called caretaker Cabinets among the fifty-one, supposedly composed entirely of persons chosen as "non-political experts". Many Cabinets have had one or two individual members also chosen in such a capacity, and not only civil servants without party affiliation but also well-known politicians have at times appeared as ministers without the explicit parliamentary support of their respective parties. The same person may at different times have appeared in both a political and a "non-political" capacity, and there is no easily applicable criterion for distinguishing between several borderline cases.

The following Table (Table I) uses for political classification the same labels that
have been already assigned in previously published lists of Finnish Cabinet members
2

Table I clearly shows a number of facts that are well known from Finnish political history: the constantly high level of participation in the government of the Agrarian Union (now called Centre Party) particularly since the 19305, the rise of the National Progressive Party to an unbroken period in Cabinet position from 1928 to 1945 whiles its share in the national vote dwindled, the long opposition periods of the Social Democrats until the late 1930s and again in the 19605, of the National Coalition Party in the 19505, of the Swedish People's Party in the 19205. It is also easy to see that the three minor non-socialist parties have been considered as one group

in the 1960s - until the appointment of the Koivisto Cabinet in 1968 they had all
been either in the Cabinet together or in the opposition together. This practice was
broken by the Swedish People's Party by joining the Koivisto Cabinet.

The total length of the time period from the appointment of the Tokoi Cabinet in 1917 until the demission of the Paasio Cabinet (and the appointment of the Koivisto Cabinet) in 1968 is 18,623 days. Table II shows how many days in office the various political parties have had during this whole period. The result is given separately for the period ending with the demission of the Castrén Cabinet on 17 November 1944 and for the subsequent period, thus marking an important watershed in Finnish history, the beginning of what is now called the post-war period. (The figures in Tables 11, 111, and IV are based on a more detailed analysis and cannot be derived directly from the overall figures for whole Cabinets in the last column of Table I.)

The Agrarian Union, the present Centre Party, occupies an unchallenged top position,
having been outside the Cabinet only 14 % of the time 1917-1968; for almost

equally short periods the Cabinets have dispensed with the use of "experts". The Swedish People's Party is third, having been continuously in existence throughout the period concerned, but it is surpassed by the combined periods in office of the Young Finnish Party, the National Progressive Party and the Finnish People's Party (11,412 days, 61.3 %}. Thus, the non-socialist centre has held government responsibility for the longest time in Finland, while the Conservatives and the Social Democrats have been in the government almost half of the time. The general shift towards the left during the post-war period (which in a sense began already in 1937) is clearly visible in the Table; after the second World War, at least one of the Parties National Coalition, National Progressive, or Finnish People's Party has been in government position only 31.8 % of the time, but during the previous period the respective Parties were in opposition only during the office periods of two caretaker Cabinets and the Tanner and Sunila Cabinets (Nos. 9, 11, 15, 16).

In addition to considering the bare time factor, it is useful also to give the appropriate
weight to the respective periods in cabinet position. This is done by multiplying
the days in office by the respective number of ministers representing the

parties concerned. The resulting unit of measurement can be called a minister-day (analogous with "man-hour") and refers to the membership of one minister in the Cabinet for one day. The total minister-days of the various parties during the same periods that have been considered above are given in Table 111.

In this Table too, the minister-days of the Finnish People's Party and the Young Finnish Party can be added to those of the National Progressive Party, giving a total of 32,184 (12.1%) for the main Liberal element in Finnish politics. As a whole, Table 111 gives a more balanced picture of the importance of the political parties than a mere examination of time in office, as in Table 11. It is noteworthy that the order of Parties in Table 111 differs from the order of strength on the basis of voters in national elections. Short of other suitable measurements, the last column in Table 111 could provide a basis for a rough index of ministerial power wielded by various political currents in Finland during the half century beginning in 1917: Centre (Agrarian) 34, Social Democrats 20, Liberals 12, Conservatives 10, Swedish non-Socialist 7, People's Democrats (Communists) 4. This leaves the "experts" and members of caretaker Cabinets unaccounted for, but since most of them have clearly not been associated with the left-wing Parties, a final overall relationship of 75:25 is established between all kinds of "bourgeois", establishment, and farmer elements on one side and all left-wing elements on the other side. Corresponding index figures and relationships could of course be computed for shorter periods, e.g. for different decades. The rather schematic distinction between "Socialist" or "left-wing" Parties and "non-Socialist" or "bourgeois" political Parties is not necessarily always the most important one, but in Finnish politics this distinction has indeed been traditionally emphasized (in part probably as an ominous carry-over from the confrontation between Whites and Reds in the Civil War of 1918).

It is difficult or impossible to determine whether an index figure calculated only on the basis of membership in the government in any sense really measures the actual use of power. The main usefulness of such figures may therefore be limited to making comparisons, either between different periods in the same country or between different countries. By calculations of minister-days for different Parties over long periods, a common measure could be found e.g. for systems with long-lived and short-lived Cabinets. Orthodox Westminster parliamentarism is based on a principle of alternation (or at least the possibility of alternation) between government and opposition, so that there are generally two clearly separated competing political elites. The principle is best applied in a two-Party system, usually connected with an electoral system based on majority vote in single-member constituencies. In this manner, the Cabinets also become rather long-lived (Britain has had 16 Cabinets since 1918). In Finland, Cabinets are short-lived, and it is not possible to talk about alternation. Between the 52 Cabinets appointed in the period 1917-1968, there are 51 changes; in only 13 of these changes (25%) has no Party represented in the previous Cabinet remained in the new Cabinet. Besides, many of these real interruptions are caused by the interposition of caretaker Cabinets between those that have been created in the normal manner. In only 12 Cabinet changes has no individual member from the previous Cabinet remained in the new Cabinet. With regard

to the lifetime of Cabinets, the Finnish parliamentary system can therefore rather be compared with the system in the French Third and Fourth Republics (93 Cabinets during 65 years and 22 Cabinets during 11 years; considerable continuity of individual members). It has been observed that individual ministerial continuity in the French government during these periods actually was quite comparable to the continuity in the British Cabinet, although the Cabinet as a whole has changed much more seldom in Britain.3 The rhythm of national development is obviously different if a government works on the basis of a homogeneous party platform rather than on the basis of continued and complicated negotiations between partners in government, leading often only to very minimal commonly agreeable programs. In the former case, however, a change of government causes greater disruption in the development. In the very long run, the differences between the two systems with regard to the total participation of various Parties in the Government and their political achievements are not necessarily very big.

Although this may have been at least intuitively understood, there has been a general desire for more long-lived Cabinets both in Finland and in France. Frequent Cabinet crises have been regarded as disturbing elements in the political life of the nation. The creation of (coalition) Cabinets with the participation of Parties representing a majority in Parliament has in Finland been considered the ideal solution, but in many situations such solutions have been held virtually impossible by the Parties mainly concerned. A basic difficulty has been that certain Parties have not always been considered even as legitimate actors in the political system or as fitting coalition partners. Thus, most of the other Parties would certainly not have accepted the Socialist Workers' Party, which was represented in Parliament in the years 1922-1930, as a Government Party. The same applied to the Social Democrat Party during the early years after the civil war in 1918. The Patriotic People's Movement was accepted as a Government Party only for a short period during the war. P. E. Svinhufvud refused to appoint Social Democrats to the Cabinet during his presidential term, 1931-1937. Having left the Cabinet at the end of the war in 1944, the conservative National Coalition Party was not considered fit for Cabinet duty again until the early 19505. The People's Democrats were held in isolation by the other Parties and regarded as a permanent opposition Party throughout most of the 1950s and the early 19605. The National Coalition Party refused to join a Government Coalition together with the Social Democrats until after the Winter War in 1940, and only at the Party Congress in April 1969 did the chairman of the Party declare that the National Coalition Party could consider joining a Cabinet together with the People's Democrats (this was only a statement of principle, and the occurrence of such a combination in reality is quite a different matter).

Considerations of foreign policy have also affected the views of other actors concerning the fitness of certain parties or individuals for service in the Cabinet. For instance the British and French Governments demanded considerable changes in the Finnish Government in 1918-1919 as a condition for establishing diplomatic relations with the newly independent Republic. The absence of the Social Democrats from the Cabinet in 1959-1966 can to a great extent be explained by the views of

other Parties, particularly the Agrarian Union (Centre Party), concerning the unfitness
of the Social Democrat leadership for government positions in view of the
desire to maintain the good relations with the Soviet Union.

Thus, not only the greater or smaller willingness of the Parties themselves to enter Cabinet coalitions on available terms, but also the perceptions of other Parties (and perhaps the President or other actors) concerning their fitness for government duty, tend to restrict considerably the range of actual choice in the forming of Cabinets. It is true that all parties represented in Parliament except the Socialist Workers' Party in the 1920s and some minuscule groups have at least some time been represented in the Cabinet. It is also true that most of the theoretically possible combinations have not in actual fact occurred (e.g. six Parties can theoretically produce 56 different combinations). A key position is held by the Centre Party (the former Agrarian Union) which apparently even before its name was changed in 1965 has been perceived as a "centre" Party, which has the choice of allying itself either with Parties to the left or with Parties to the right.4 If the Parties are arranged on a scale from left to right, it will also be found that coalitions are always formed by combining partners that are close to each other on the ideological continuum — in other words, a coalition will not grow by "jumping" over one Party on the scale. There has been only one exception to this rule, the second Kallio Cabinet in 1925-1926 (No. 14 in Table I), which combined the Agrarian Union with the National Coalition Party without bringing in either of the two Parties that have been perceived as intermediate Parties between the centre and the right - in 1925 the National Progressive Party and the Swedish People's Party. The lines drawn in Figure 1 connect the Parties in accordance with the combinations that actually have occurred, and

the dotted line refers to the single exception from 1925-1926. If the norms concerning the forming of Cabinet coalitions continue to apply, as they have been pictured in Figure 1, the Social Democratic party will not, for instance, seek to ally itself in the Government with the Parties to the right of the Centre Party without bringing in the Centre Party as well. An alliance of that type was, however, formed for the presidential election of 1962, when the Social Democratic Party joined with

the National Coalition Party and some sections of the People's Parties in supporting the presidential candidature of Olavi Honka against the candidature of the incumbent President, Urho Kekkonen. The presidential campaign coincided with the "note crisis" in Finland's relations with the Soviet Union, leading to the breakdown of the Honka alliance before the election and the nomination of a new Social Democratic presidential candidate, Rafael Paasio.⁵ Only the very recent "opening to the left" in Finnish politics, beginning in 1966, has given the Social Democratic Party the same option that the Centre Party (Agrarian Union) has had at least since 1937 of allying itself with partners both on the left and on the right. On the other hand, the Social Democratic Party has always had one important quality of value for a government Party - its bigness. The Agrarian Union and the Social Democratic Party are the only ones that have ever formed minority Cabinets on their own, without any coalition partners at all. After the demission of the Kivimäki Cabinet in 1936, none of the smaller parties have had more than four posts in the same Cabinet.

The various types of Cabinet coalitions and the combined length of the time
periods that they have been in office are shown in Table IV.

The most widely based Cabinets in Table IV are those that have included the Social Democratic Party, the Centre Party (Agrarian Union) and 3-4 other non-Socialist Parties as well as those that have included the whole left and a number of other Parties in a "popular front" (the term "popular front" has been used only for those situations where more than one left-wing Party has been in existence). According to this calculation, majority Cabinets have been in office about 60 per cent of the time, after the second World War even 63 per cent of the time. Of the 29 Cabinets covered by the first column, for the period ending on 17 November 1944, 15 have been majority Cabinets at least during most of their periods in office, and of the 23 post-war Cabinets (including the Koivisto Cabinet) 12 can be regarded as majority Cabinets.

Nousiainen points out that Finland has had approximately the same number of majority and minority Cabinets and that in practice they have turned out to be about equally stable -or unstable.6 For his estimate, Nousiainen has counted the Kivimäki Cabinet among the minority Cabinets, but in Table IV above it has been for the most part (1,170 days) included in the group of "all non-Socialist Parties". Whether the overall proportion between majority and minority Cabinets should be regarded as 50:50 or 60:40 or something between these figures is to some extent a matter of definition and interpretation. However, it is important also to consider the time periods when different types of Cabinets have been in office, and this can be done with the aid of Table V, which shows the parliamentary support for all the Cabinets already enumerated in Table I. Changes in the parliamentary basis of Cabinets have occurred either through cha.nges in the composition of the Cabinets themselves or through changes in the composition of Parliament after elections. In Table V, the days of convening the new sessions of Parliament after the elections have where necessary been used to mark the dates for changes in the parliamentary bases of Cabinets.

During the time covered by Table V there have been several serious crisis periods in the history of Finland: the years of turmoil and civil war in 1917-1919, economic crisis and Lapua movement in 1930-1932, and the years of the second World War, from 1939 until at least 1945 or even 1947 - the year of the Paris Peace Treaty. During all these crisis periods, the Governments have been majority coalitions. Thus, the Finnish system apparently needs and is able to produce majority Cabinet coalitions in national emergency situations, but in "normal times" the country has had a majority Cabinet only about half of the time. If Riker's theory about minimum winning coalitions is to be applied to Finnish conditions, it would seem that mere counting of Cabinet partners or parliamentary seats does not suffice to determine the necessary characteristics of a "winning coalition" in Finland. Closer study of the circumstances connected with the forming of Cabinets and their conditions of operation would be needed in order to test the applicability of Riker's model.7

It has sometimes been suggested that the principle of parliamentarism, which usually includes the idea of interaction and probable alternation between government and opposition, is not easily adaptable to a multi-Party system. The Swiss model with permanent all-Party government has been proposed as an alternative. In Finland, the President of the Republic, Urho Kekkonen, has several times suggested that permanent all-Party government might be a useful solution - even for "normal times".B In political circles, this idea has hardly been seriously debated at all. As a theoretical possibility it has been gaining ground recently, with the growing

acceptability of the extreme Left as a Government coalition partner - in principle
acceptable even to the conservative National Coalition Party.

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NOTES

1 For more information about relevant aspects of the Finnish political system, see Democracy in Finland, Studies in Politics and Government (Helsinki: The Finnish Political Science Association, 1960), Jan-Magnus Jansson, "A Century of Finnish Government", Introduction to Finland 1963 (Porvoo: Werner Söderström Oy, 1963), Allan A. Kuusisto, "Parliamentary Crises and Presidial Governments in Finland", Parliamentary Affairs, Vol. XI, No. 3, Summer 1958, Jaakko Nousiainen, "Parliamentarism in Finland", Introduction to Finland 1960 (Porvoo: Werner Söderström Oy, 1960), Tuttu Tarkiainen, "The President", ibid, and Klaus Törnudd. The Electoral System of Finland (London: Hugh Evelyn, 1968). The present paper is based on a longer study of the political and social composition of Finnish Cabinets, to be published as a chapter in the forthcoming history of the Finnish State Council (Valtioneuvoston historia).

2 The Table is arranged according to the model provided by Jaakko Nousiainen, Suomen poliittinen järjestelmä (Porvoo: Werner Söderström Oy, third edition, 1967), pp. 304-305, (Swedish edition: Finlands politiska system, Stockholm: Scandinavian University Books, 1966, pp. 257-258), but the figures are different in some details. It is not difficult to classify ministers by their party affiliation, but sometimes it is not clear whether certain members of some Cabinets should be regarded as Party representative or as "experts". With two exceptions (Idman in Cabinet No. 13 and Tuomioja in Cabinet No. 36 have been labeled "experts"), this table follows the classification provided as an appendix to Krister Wahlbäck, Från Mannerheim till Kekkonen, Huvudlinjer i finländsk politik 1917-1967 (Stockholm: Bokförlaget Aldus/Bonniers, 1967). Nousiainen's Table has fewer "experts" on the whole. It should be noted that the different Party names appearing in the column headings may denote either that a particular Party has changed its name (Agrarian Union — Centre Party) or that different Parties occupying roughly the same position in the political spectrum have succeeded each other (Young Finnish Party - National Progressive Party - Finnish People's Party).

3 Frangois Goguel, Le regime politique frangais - Les mécanismes de la démocratie parlementaire (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1955), pp. 127-129.

4 Similar observations concerning available choices for Parties in the centre can be made in many other countries. See e.g. Maurice Duverger, Les partis politiques (Paris: Armand Colin, 1951), pp. 368-371.

5 Concerning the "note crisis", see e.g. Max Jakobson, Finnish Neutrality - A Study of Finnish Foreign Policy Since the Second World War (London: Hugh Evelyn, 1968), pp. 69-82.

6 Nousiainen, op. cit., p. 301 (Swedish edition, p. 256).

7 William H. Riker, The Theory of Political Coalitions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962). For a serious effort to apply his model to a Scandinavian country, see Erik Damgaard's article on Danish Cabinets in this volume of Scandinavian Political Studies. Damgaard's article has inspired certain observations in the present paper and notably the construction of Figure 1.

8 See e.g. his speech of 18 September 1963, reprinted in Urho Kekkonen, Puheita ja kirjoituksia, Volume 11, (Tapiola: Weilin & Göös, 1967), p. 302.