Digging in the ‘Secret Garden of Politics’: The Institutionalisation and De‐institutionalisation of Membership Ballots in the Selection of Finnish Parliamentary Candidates

Abstract

This article is the first expressly to focus on membership ballots as an instrument in the selection of parliamentary candidates in Finland, a polity in which the nomination process is inclusive and decentralised. A Finnish case study is of comparative interest for three main reasons: (i) Finland is one of the few European countries in which candidate selection is regulated by the state; (ii) challenging much of the literature, the combination of democratised selection procedures and an intraparty preference voting system has not incentivised individualistic parliamentary behaviour and reduced legislative party unity; (iii) contrary to the trend towards the democratisation of nominations elsewhere, membership ballots, from being routinised and internalised in the four larger historic parties, have become the exception rather than the rule in Finland today. Accordingly, this paper assesses the changing trajectory of membership ballots and asks what does their de‐institutionalisation indicate about the [changing] dynamics of intraparty participatory democracy?

Less is more or the more the merrier? Analysing attitudes towards multiple‐mandate holding among local officeholders

“…Hence, according to our interpretation, holding dual-mandates might be acceptable, while holding triple mandates should not be. So, even though this practice has previously been regarded as an integral part of the Finnish political system (Arter, 2021;Arter & Söderlund, 2023;Sandberg, 2014), our results suggest that the political actors themselves agree that this needs to change due to the new possibilities/risks created by the reform. Whether the best way to restrict this practice is to implement new electoral laws (see France) or whether the political parties themselves could perhaps work out some kind of 'silent agreement' to limit it is open for debate.…”

“…First, there is the open and inclusive rules on candidate eligibility in Finnish elections as no legal restrictions or internal party rules prohibit the simultaneous holding of electoral mandates on more than one political tier (Arter & Söderlund, 2023). Second, the Finnish variant of the preferential voting system (OLPR) is argued to be particularly incentivizing towards personal vote‐seeking since citizens are required to vote for a single candidate on one of the party lists and because the candidate nomination process is described as inclusive and decentralised (Arter, 2021; Arter & Söderlund, 2023). The competition for votes is fierce both between rival parties and between candidates of the same party (copartisans), which is reflected in the frequent occurrence of intraparty incumbency defeats (see Arter & Söderlund, 2023, p. 82).…”

“…In Finland, mandate accumulation across institutional levels has been noted to be ‘routine’ among politicians (Arter, 2021, p. 350; see also Sandberg, 2014) and the institution of the cumul has even been described as ‘deeply embedded in the Finnish political culture’ (Arter & Söderlund, 2023, p. 82). This is arguably at least partly due to the candidate‐centeredness of the compulsory preferential voting system used in Finland (Arter & Söderlund, 2023; Karlsson, 2018; Sandberg, 2014), as preferential voting has been shown to favour notable candidates, such as incumbents, since they are more appealing than unknown candidates (Dewoghélaëre et al, 2006; Navarro, 2009).…”