Suomalaisen parlamentarismin ohjaus- ja valvontajärjestelmä

Authors

• Jaakko Nousiainen

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to use material culled from Finnish politics to further the development of empirical parliamentary theory, which has so far remained excessively focused on the formal framework of government organization. Modern parliamentary regimes are three-layer structures, in which corrective steering and control mechanisms have been superimposed on outdated power relationships. The bottom layer consists of the 19th century legacy of strong bureaucracy and executive powers which have since been modernized into presidentialism; the institutional portrayal of parliamentarism emphasizes the various types of interdependence between parliament and government; but in its everyday form parliamentarism reveals itself as party government, in which a party or a coalition acts as a representational principal, and the cabinet and the parliamentary majority take care of public decision-making as agents of the principal. Latest Finnish developments have highlighted the features of party parliamentarism and left institutional relationships in the shadow. And in the stable majority coalitions of the 1980s, the role of the effective principal has been ever more visibly shifting to the cabinet, while the parties supporting the cabinet have been performing the agent’s duties, in parliament as well as in party politics.