Municipal democracy as a lever against inequality
The challenge of the equality in the municipal council of Helsinki 1919–1921
Abstract
The main hypothesis of the article is that the quest for equality was at the heart of municipal democracy. It legitimized aspiring groups’ demands, and former elites had to respond and adjust to this challenge. Equality was a matter of material survival as well as an experience of having influence on municipal decision making, i.e. one’s own living conditions and environment. The article explores the questions of equality empirically. The main sources of the article are minutes and documents of the city council of Helsinki 1917–1921. The minutes of the council after the Finnish Civil War of 1918 and implementation of democratic municipal reform elucidate the manifestations and dynamics of the inequality of the capital city of Finland. Equality is not understood as a predeterminate category, instead equality is understood as a contested and a continually transforming negotiation process. The article shows that questions of equality were both material and immaterial, and entangled in various ways in the structures and administrative path-dependencies of the city. However, communal democracy and the new rules it entailed compelled both parties across Civil War divides to cooperate and to find compromises for the benefit the whole society.
Keywords: Communal democracy, Inequality, Equality, Inclusion, Municipal Politics
