Vihreä liitto Suomen puoluekarttapallolla periaateohjelmien näkökulmasta tarkasteltuna

Authors

• Rauli Mickelsson

Abstract

The Finnish Green League has had five party manifestos since its foundation in 1988. When the Green League was founded, a short, one-page manifesto was adopted. The manifestos of 1990, 1994, 1998 and 2002 were more extensive with tens of pages and several goals. In this article, I analyse the development of the Green League party manifestos. In the first part of the article, the goals in different Green League manifestos are analysed. The Green League ideology is evaluated according to three dimensions: ecologism versus environmentalism, left versus right, conservatism versus liberalism. The Green League’s idea of democracy is also included in the conservatism-liberalism dimension. In the second part of the article, manifestos are analysed from the narrative point of view. The stories of the Green League manifestos are compared with the ones of the Social Democratic Party, and the concepts of modernism and postmodernism are applied. The conclusions of this study are as follows. As far as environmental questions are concerned, the Greens favour extensive intervention by nation states and global institutions. The Greens favour the Scandinavian welfare society and do not want to decrease the tax levels. In this respect, they represent traditional left wing, although they prefer decentralisation and accept other than government agencies as producers of public services. The Greens are in favour of civil rights. In this respect they are close to the liberals, but they emphasize new collectivism instead of individualism. The Greens are clearly a reformist party. The optimism concerning the future in their narratives reminds of the Social Democratic Party in the 1970’s.