Ideologiska positionsförändringar inom finländska partier 1945-2011

Kirjoittajat

• Andreas Fagerholm

Abstrakti

The purpose of this article is to present a general overview of positional shifts among Finnish party ideologies between 1945 and 2011. By utilizing the widely used Manifesto Data Set, the paper thus focuses on presenting evidence of how, when and, tentatively, why Finnish parties change their ideological positions. Three central contributions emerge. Firstly, and in contrast to some previous studies, the essay finds no evidence of a general centripetal shift towards the centre of the socioeconomic left–right dimension. Positional changes are generally unsystematic and short-lived in nature, and a change in one direction is usually followed by a more or less immediate shift in the other. Secondly, the study confirms that post-materialist issues regarding cultural diversity and, above all, environmental sustainability has become more and more important also for the parties. Finally, the study presents some elementary observations about why Finnish parties change their ideological positions along the socioeconomic dimension. Although more comprehensive analyses are greatly needed, the results indicate that a previous shift in the position of the median voter may be of crucial importance.