Juhani Mylly & R. Michael Berry, eds.: Political Parties in Finland. Essays in History and Politics. Turku 1987: University of Turku, Political History C: 21, 191 pp.

There are too few books in English on Finnish politics. Although Finland may be a small country and geographically peripheral, its foreign relations as well as its internal affairs are still interesting enough to merit overall coverage in the form of textbooks and standard works available to a wide international audience. Too much sound and systematic work by political scientists and historians remains for ever veiled behind the language barrier.

This volume certainly does not presume to be the book to end all books on the Finnish party system. Like most edited works it suffers from a certain unevenness of style and composition as well as from some reiteration. Moreover, several basic aspects of the system, notably the electorate, are more or less absent in the book. Nevertheless, in a market characterized by chronic shortage this work is a definite asset.

The six contributors to the book are, with one exception, historians. Juhani Mylly depicts the emergence of the Finnish multi-party system in Scandinavian comparison. He also contributes an extensive overview of the Agrarian/Center Party all the way to 1987. Timo Soikkanen attempts the demanding task of providing a general overview of the development of the party system since 1880, including the numerous minor parties which have appeared during this long period. 'Changing Bourgeois Parties in Changing Finnish Society' is the theme of his second contribution. Onni Rantala, the political scientist of the group, concentrates on the major features of the party system since 1960. Social democracy is the subject of the essays of Hannu Soikkanen and Tapani Paavonen. Soikkanen presents the ideological development of the Social Democratic Party prior to World War I, while Paavonen offers an overview of Finnish Social Democracy since 1918. Finally, Jaakko Måkelå analyzes the radical left and the Communist in Finnish politics 1918-1984.

Three methods of presentation are represented in the book. Mylly largely follows the macro-oriented comparative approach usually associated with Stein Rokkan. Rantala offers a systematic account of basic aspects of the party system frequently found in political science literature; comparative data are presented to some extent. The other authors by and large keep to the chronological model, allowing for greater detail and a clearer focus on the particular case of Finland. It may reflect a professional bias on my part, but I do think that Mylly's and Rantala's contributions work better from a textbook point of view. Foreign history presented in a chronological manner easily becomes 'one damned thing after another', its merits as a source of facts notwithstanding. In the present volume this problem is particularly acute in Jaakko Måkelå's essay on Finnish communism. The various internal intricacies and dead-end debates make for tedious reading. Whatever happened to the concept of political culture put forward as a general frame of reference at the beginning (p. 153) of the essay?

The development of the Finnish party system over the past century might be called 'the rough road towards the Scandinavian model'. At various stages it has appeared as if Finland were on her way towards a radically different mode of politics. Yet, in critical instances the Finns have opted for Nordic democracy. The threat of fascism ended in the red-green compromise 1937; the turbulent years after World War 11, including a threat of a communist takeover, gave way to a political consensus of Scandinavian description.

This pattern may seem somewhat difficult to understand if one accepts Mylly's assertion (p. 99) that Finland was, as an agrarian society, 'more eastern than western European' at the time of the birth of mass politics. Per se, the points of the compass are politically uninteresting. However, it seems as if Mylly equates Finland with Russia, Rumania, Hungary etc., on the basis of the relative share of agriculture only. If we look at the ownership structure of Finnish agriculture at this time, the contrast to the manorial organization of East European farming is striking. The broad class of independent smallholders reflected the heritage of the Swedish period; these farmers had a natural interest in a tenable mass democracy. Coupled with the social democratic reconciliation with parliamentary democracy after the Civil War of 1918 the agrarian movement in Finland, unlike in most of eastern Europe, became a successful guarantor of pluralism.

All in all, this volume fills several gaps in the English-language literature on Finnish politics. The fact that this is basically a contribution on the part of historians should serve as a memento to the political science community. It is time we got busy in the market.