Political Behaviour in Contemporary Finland

This book presents a comprehensive overview of Finnish electoral democracy, expertly detailing both its typical representation of a stable European party democracy and its particularities such as a personalized electoral system, a fragmented party system with tradition of grand government coalitions and its sensitive geopolitical location. Using the Finnish National Election Study as a basis, it analyses how voters act and react in an electoral democracy characterized by a high degree of competition between and within parties, yet a democracy in which the possibility for voters to hold governments accountable for their actions is weak, leading to interesting tensions within the system and influences on how voters relate to and engage in politics. This book not only describes these patterns but also provides the reader with thorough explanations and interpretations from a team of expert contributors. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of Finnish politics, Nordic/Scandinavian politics and studies, political behaviour, electoral studies, public opinion and more broadly to comparative politics and democracy. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Åsa von Schoultz is Professor of Political Science at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and the Director of the Finnish National Election Study. Kim Strandberg is Professor of Political Science and Political Communication at Åbo Akademi University, Finland.

1. An introduction to the Finnish electoral context Part 1: The state of democracy 2. What kind of democracy do the people want? 3. Finland: A Country of High Political Trust and Weak Political Self-efficacy 4. In safe elections, democracy wins: perceptions of electoral harassment among candidates and voters 5. Foiled at every turn? Understanding turnout in Finland 6. Act Your Age! Generational Differences in Political Participation in Finland 2007-2019 Part 2: Elections, parties and candidates 7. The Social Basis of the Vote: Class Voting in Finland 8. Value dimensions and party choice in Finland 9. Party identification 10. Friends and foes: Affective polarization among Finnish voters 11. Party and candidate as objects of electoral choice 12. How to find a needle in a haystack: Which candidate characteristics matter for voters' choice of candidate? 13. What makes a successful candidate in the Finnish open-list proportional electoral system? Part 3: Campaigning 14. Generational Patterns in Voters' Use of the Internet and Social Media in Finnish Parliamentary Elections 2003-2019 15. Candidates and campaigning 16. Individualised Campaigning in the Finnish Open-List System 17. Conclusions