Eliittien pelikenttä? Teknologiapolitiikan malli ja periaatteet Suomessa

Kirjoittajat

• Soile Kuitunen

Abstrakti

Finnish technology decision-making is often seen as being a highly technocratic process dominated by experts and public authorities, and assessed in terms of clear efficiency standards within a consensual framework of evidence-based decision-making. Efficiency in policy delivery and implementation, which has resulted in Finland being consistently highly ranked in most international comparisons on innovation and technology is generally taken as an indication that ’the system works’. As such, questions concerning the need to restructure decision-making practices in this sphere, including, crucially, the make up of the parties involved are seldom raised. Politicians have remained notably absent from the core of decision-making in Finnish technology policy and in this article we investigate the reasons for this, as well as the implications of this lack of political oversight. Technology policy is in our view undergoing changes that are driven by broader societal trends with implications for the ways in which the traditional accountable and hierarchical mode of ‘government’ is successively transformed into a more multifaceted and fluid form of ‘governance’. This may also require new forms of public deliberation across policy sectors, technology branches, and academic disciplines requiring new arenas to be constructed. Such developments could have significant implications not only for the legitimacy of the policy, but also for its substance.