Poliittinen tilanne ja hegemonia Suomessa

Authors

• Sakari Hänninen

Abstract

Many ambiguities characterize the present political discourse in Finland. One obvious reason for this is that the discussants hardly ever explicate what they mean by politics or »political». In this paper »politics» is most generally interpreted as »... collective ... struggle ... to change ... a situation». From this perspective an effort is made to find out whether there exists in Finland such a tendency as »the disappearance of politics» due to »the double-edged public problem» (Sen- nett). Some reasons are given for the privatization of the public sphere. The tentative results of this analysis are then used as abductive clues in interpreting the characteristics of the 1987 parliamentary elections in Finland. The elections are also studied as part of the national integration strategy, i.e. in the context of hegemony. The main effort of this paper is aimed at studying how the hegemonic structure in the present political situation is constituted. The argument here is that the hegemonic structure stands on these three poles: presidentially guaranteed national interest, partypolitically mediated national consensus, and entrepreneurially defined national competence.