In the Shadow of Global Polycrisis: Consensus and Polarization in the 2023 Estonian and Finnish Parliamentary Elections
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: The beginning of the 2020s has been marked by a near global polycrisis (Lawrence et al., 2024). In addition to the global climate crisis brewing in the background, in 2020, the first global pandemic erupted, which pressured governments to take unprecedented measures and divided societies over social distancing measures and vaccination and disrupted global production and logistics chains and caused turbulence in demand and supply. In 2022, Russia launched full-scale war in Ukraine, which sent millions seeking refuge elsewhere in Europe, prompted unprecedented international economic sanctions on Russia and enhanced the military preparedness in most European Union and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member states. This also resulted in the rapid rise of energy prices and the danger of energy deficit, rise of inflation and interest rates. Hence, the general elections in Estonia in March 2023 and Finland in April 2023 took place in a situation of heightened international, economic and societal tensions and the outgoing governments having mainly dealt with crisis governance rather than focusing on fulfilling their electoral promises. In addition, both election campaigns also bore marks of bloc politics, where an otherwise multi-party system becomes aligned in two major camps and the campaign becomes a referendum on the proposed policies of these two camps. Whilst polarization – both affective and political – is very well documented in the United States, it is also making headways into European politics. Political campaign cultures and government–opposition relations are changing even in countries like Finland and Estonia, which have usually been characterized by notably low levels of polarization (Bettarelli et al., 2023; Nord et al., 2024). Previous research has suggested that after a crisis, voters are particularly attracted to the political rhetoric of the (extreme) right. For instance, after a financial crisis, extreme right-wing parties increase their vote share by 30 percent (Funke et al., 2016). Moreover, as Lisinska (2022) has noted, in times of crisis, when taking substantial measures is of particular importance, continued polarization often leads to democracy fatigue. Whilst Estonia and Finland have not faced democracy fatigue, it seems clear that following the turbulent times of the last decade have led both countries to unforeseen levels of polarization and emergence of populist right wing. Especially Finland has a long tradition of multiparty collaboration, having a history of coalitions including from left to right, but the consensus-oriented society has lately reformed towards bloc politics with strong divisions between political camps. This shift towards bloc politics has resulted in more pronounced ideological divides and a rise in populist rhetoric. The political landscape in both Estonia and Finland now reflects a growing fragmentation, where the emergence of right-wing populism signals a significant departure from the historical consensus-driven political culture. Estonia and Finland are two neighbouring countries with traditionally different political standings and history. During the cold war, Estonia remained behind the Iron Curtain, whilst Finland was a neutral country. After Estonia regained its independence in 1991, it launched its (re)integration to the West, becoming a member of the EU in 2004 (which Finland had joined in 1995) and, in the same year, also joined NATO, whilst Finland remained neutral. Socio-economically, Finland is a Nordic welfare state, whereas Estonia has since its independence been a liberal welfare state. Despite their differences, Finland and Estonia share strong cultural roots (both speak a Finno-Ugric language, which differentiates them from both the Scandinavian and the Baltic countries) and have maintained a very amicable relationship. Both countries have a parliamentary political system, where the government is formed based on the results of the parliamentary election (although Finland used a semi-presidential system until the 1990s and, unlike Estonia, still elects its president directly). The Estonian parliament Riigikogu has 101 seats and the Finnish Eduskunta has 200 seats. Both countries use a proportional voting system, where the country is divided into electoral districts (12 districts in Estonia and 13 districts in Finland). In both Estonia and Finland, votes are cast directly for the candidate and indirectly for the party (or electoral list). Whilst Finland also allows electoral alliances to compete in the elections, which are an attractive solution for smaller parties, Estonia allows only parties and single candidates to compete. In Estonia, the electoral threshold is at 5%. In Finland, the mandates are distributed in each electoral district, using the d'Hondt method. In Estonia, the seats are distributed in three rounds: first, personal mandates are distributed to the candidates who pass the quota (all votes divided by number of mandates) in the electoral district. This is also the only chance for single candidates to enter the parliament. In the second round, district mandates are distributed between party lists, using the quota method whilst the party lists are reordered according to the share of votes each candidate earned. In the third round, compensation mandates are distributed, using closed national lists and the modified d'Hondt method. Both election systems slightly advantage the larger parties. In the following, we will give an overview of the electoral event in both countries, including the core campaign topics and the election results and the implications on both the domestic and international and EU level. We show that whilst the global polycrisis raises similar issues in Estonia and Finland, they play out rather differently, even within the common trend of emergent polarization and block politics. In addition, the article also demonstrates how the times of polycrisis entail taking important political decisions in between-elections periods rather than arguing them out during the election campaign. Finland's snap accession to the NATO after decades of the neutrality doctrine is a particular case in point. Both Estonia and Finland entered the electoral contestation under the leadership of a female prime minister. However, this is where the similarities end. In Finland, the coalition of the Social Democrats, the Greens and the Left Alliance was led by Social Democrat Sanna Marin and had been in office since the previous election. Meanwhile, Estonia had witnessed three ideologically incoherent government coalitions in 2019–2023: whilst Kaja Kallas from the Reform Party entered the election as prime minister leading a coalition of right-wing liberal Reform Party, right-wing conservative Fatherland and left-wing liberal Social Democrats, she had also led a coalition government between the Reform Party and the left-wing conservative Centre Party in 2021–2022, which was preceded by a coalition of the Centre Party, Fatherland and populist radical right Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE), in office in 2019–2021. This meant that all the parliamentary parties of 2019–2023 had been in government, mostly in electorally inconvenient coalitions and the tensions soared high, especially between the liberal bloc led by the Reform Party and conservative bloc, where EKRE was most vocal. However, despite of higher coalition stability, Finland also entered the election amidst a notably high level of polarization between the parties. Topic-wise, defence and public spending issues were high on the campaign agenda in both countries. In 2022, Finland applied for NATO membership as a reaction to Russia's attack on Ukraine with full parliamentary support. Until February 2022, a clear majority of the Finnish public as well as politicians were opposed to NATO membership. The shift in opinion was sudden and seismic (Arter, 2024). Initially, Finnish politicians were reluctant towards a quick application to NATO membership, but surveys indicated a swift mood change amongst the population, with a majority of voters, regardless of which party they supported, siding with membership (Palonen, 2023). In contrast to Sweden (see, e.g., Palonen, 2023), not a single Finnish party opposed NATO membership. NATO membership was previously thought to become one of the key points to debate in 2023 elections, but the cross-party, pro-NATO consensus meant that security policy was not a campaign issue at the 2023 general election (Arter, 2024). According to Arter (2024), the campaign in Finland was largely uneventful. Perhaps, this was due to a degree of electoral fatigue, since 2021 had seen municipal elections, and in 2022 there were elections to a new tier of regional government. Despite national security being a major media topic, politicians saw little popularity gain in opposing Finland's consensus on NATO membership. The decision, supported by most Finns, was made in spring 2022. During the election campaign, Finland awaited acceptance into NATO, which occurred shortly after Election Day (Weckman, 2023). However, one topic, namely, economy, managed to stir some passion. The opposition, fronted by National Coalition, presented public spending and debt as the key campaign issues. The conservative-right opposition presented the government as irresponsible towards the next generations, especially with public spending increasing significantly during the pandemic (Palonen, 2023). The key notion was that unlike the other Nordic states, Finland's economy was too small relative to the size of the welfare state. Whilst the parties both left and right agreed to the problem formulation, the suggested solutions divided the parties. All parties except the Finns Party considered that one of the answers would be substantial increase in work-based immigration, whereas the Finns Party wanted to avoid any kind of immigration and suggested the current workforce to be employed more efficiently (Arter, 2024). The main economic battle line involved how to balance the books and kick-start the economy. Finland's National Coalition suggested income tax cuts to increase purchasing power as well as 9 billion euros in spending cuts to steady the ship. Social Democrats and the political left presented another way: to secure the economic growth with investments and selective tax incentives. Comprehensive income tax reductions were opposed because they benefited the better-off disproportionately. In this sense, the campaigning was a textbook example of political campaigning on a left–right spectrum. The heightened division between the (socio-)liberal-left and the (socio-)conservative-right marked also an increase of referendum-type campaigning, which brought very strong passion (and somewhat unheard in the traditionally 'grey' politics of Finland) to the debates: Sanna Marin warned voters from supporting the 'blue and black' alliance, referring to the National Coalition and True Finns, yet it was simultaneously widely understood as a reference to the neo-fascist movement.1 Similarly, the Finns Party chair claimed that 'culture – [the arts] is a luxury item on which Finland spends too much money'. The topics composition in Estonia was somewhat similar: the key foci of the campaign were related to fiscal policy, defence policy and economic security. As all parliamentary parties had been in government in the past 4 years, the campaign involved accusations and questioning of the electoral performance of virtually all parties. This was most prevalent surrounding fiscal policy, where the Reform Party (but also the Social Democrats and two new parties) campaigned for a balanced budget and not increasing state debt, whilst the conservative parties, especially EKRE, promised to kickstart the economy with government investments (and their electoral manifesto also included generous benefit schemes and tax cuts). The fact that all five parliamentary parties had served in government also gave a chance to two new parties, Estonia 200 and The Rightwingers, both liberal right-wing parties, which campaigned to a significant extent on the criticism of the other parties' record in government and promised a more rational and thinner state. However, the main axis of confrontation ran between the Reform Party and EKRE, which also utilised negative campaigning against one another, which may have benefited both parties. This was a major change, since in all the previous elections since 2007, the main standoff had been between the Reform Party and the Centre Party. The Reform Party used its credibility in international affairs and defence policy as its key campaign premise. Its campaign slogan was 'Estonia in safe hands' (Kindlates kätes Eesti) and they promised to raise Estonia's defence budget to 3% of GDP. The campaign focused strongly on the person of prime minister (PM) Kaja Kallas who was simultaneously taking a firm stand in the international arena as a supporter of Ukraine against Russia, earning her the nickname of 'warrior princess'. Although the parties' defence programmes did not differ notably, the Reform Party performed issue ownership credibly, and this topic was also widely regarded as most important by the electorate. The only party that aimed to challenge the Reform Party on the issue was EKRE, which occasionally aired controversial 'for peace' messages and attempted to frame the Estonian armed forces as incompetent (Jakobson and Kasekamp, 2023). However, in comparison with other far-right parties in Europe, EKRE still stands out for its lack of sympathy with Russia and its Euro-Atlanticist views on the offensive (Fagerholm, 2024). EKRE defines itself as national conservative but also ticks all the boxes characterizing populist radical right parties (Saarts et al., 2021). Whilst, in 2015, it ran primarily on a traditional family values platform and in 2019, on an anti-immigrant platform, its 2023 election campaign focused on a much wider range of socio-economic issues. Their campaign, accusing the Reform Party led government of incompetence and soaring energy prices, was expected to resonate well with voters, as Estonia experienced annual inflation rates of over 20% per year. But as the government subsidies capped energy prices in the winter of 2022–2023, the decrease in purchasing power slowed down and along with the party's spats with Estonia's military leadership, which is one of the most trusted institutions in Estonia (and particularly amongst the more conservative voters), also diminished the appeal of EKRE's protest politics. Whilst EKRE remains a nativist and socially conservative party, their anti-immigrant and anti-gender positions received less resonance, not least because the other parties did not seek confrontation over these topics. This has later been explained with the involvement of a liberal think tank SALK, which had advised the liberal parties to refrain from putting too much emphasis on these topics. A more cultural clash in the Estonian 2023 elections centred around EKRE blaming the 'deep state' for manoeuvring them out of power ahead of the marriage referendum.2 The Centre Party–EKRE–Fatherland coalition ended when prime minister Jüri Ratas resigned over corruption allegations against the Centre Party. In Finland, the three biggest parties – Social Democrats (SDP), National Coalition and Finns Party – all performed better than in the 2019 elections. In accordance with the spirit of the constitution, the leader of the largest party initiates government negotiations. Therefore, the order of the parties at the finish line has great significance. This was especially the case in 2023, where some government coalition options were excluded already before the elections, with the Social Democrats, Green League and Left Alliance refusing government co-operation with the Finns Party. Because the competitive situation amongst the three largest parties was extremely close until the very end, tactical voting rose as a central topic of discussion in the final stages of the campaign. For instance, SDP received votes especially from supporters of Green League and Left Alliance, who tried to maximise the chances of SDP again forming the government (Kestilä-Kekkonen and Sipinen, 2023). Sanna Marin's SDP increased the party vote – Marin was only the third sitting prime minister to have managed to increase the party vote since 1960s – but the election was won by the two main opposition parties, the National Coalition and Finns Party. The National Coalition became the largest parliamentary party for only the second time in its history. National Coalition benefited most from both the economical debate and the decision to apply for NATO membership in 2022. The Finns Party gained over one-fifth of the national poll for the first time in its history. The other parties from Marin's cabinet fared worse: Centre Party's support plummeted to an all-time low, whilst the Green League registered its worst performance since 1995, losing seven seats and seeing a nationwide decrease of 4.5 percentage points. In Helsinki, Green League's loss was even more pronounced at 8.2 percentage points, causing it to relinquish its position as the capital's leading party (Arter, 2024). Left Alliance and Swedish People's Party both lost some of their support, but not as drastically as the Centre Party and the Green League (Table 1). In Estonia, the Reform Party's emphasis on defence issues won them the fifth consecutive election with an all-time record share of the vote. Another clear winner was the also right-wing liberal party Estonia 200 (founded in 2018), which campaigned on a promise of 'a long plan' and 'smarter governance' for Estonia, which entered the parliament for the first time with 13.3% of the vote. Meanwhile, the parties of the conservative coalition of 2019–2021 all lost seats. The left-wing Centre Party lost 10 seats, as its support had been waning since 2019, especially amongst the Russian-speaking voters. The Russian-speaking voters, constituting around a quarter of Estonia's population, have formed the core of Centre Party supporters since early 2000s, as there is no ethnic party (Saarts, 2017). The losses of the Centre Party were likely related to them entering a right-wing coalition, but their appeal with the Russian-speaking voters had been waning since 2016, when Jüri Ratas replaced the charismatic Edgar Savisaar who had been campaigning for friendlier relations with Russia, as leader of the party. Whilst party ratings predicted that EKRE would gain seats until the last stretch of the election campaign, its loss of two seats can imply the backfiring of its defence policy the armed the party may have some conservative and voters. the of energy prices their chances of crisis on the economic Fatherland had been in due to the party's taking a notably more socially conservative stand to which resulted in the of the from the party, who a competitive party The and in the of the but no seats. The Social Democrats lost one to 2019, but this was as a because the party ratings had been near the electoral threshold of for most of the between-elections A was the of the United Left Party with of the which candidates of a new who campaigned on a and As the United Left has in the elections for decades the electoral threshold in the it ran under the of national level However, it of the vote in the Russian-speaking it not been for a single candidate (and member of the Centre who ran on a similar platform and of the vote in the the United Left candidate have a personal the party have the electoral threshold (Table that the referendum-type of campaigning is the increased in the Estonian elections. In Finland, remained at the same level as in the previous parliamentary elections in 2019 In the 2023 general election in Estonia, of all Whilst election a decrease of electoral due to the changing voters more than in 2019 in the election. Estonia's party system is usually characterized as especially in the and European and, for the past two strongly by the Reform Party. As in countries, the level of political polarization has been somewhat higher for in the Nordic countries, and polarization has mainly along the ethnic with the main standoff between the more Centre Party and the other parties (Saarts, 2017). However, the past decade has witnessed of the core from the ethnic issue to the and 2018), which the liberal voters with views and from with more and This is primarily in the emergence of EKRE, which entered the parliament in on the platform and the third in the 2019 elections mainly on the of and from cultures being to Estonia et al., However, the conservative Centre Party–EKRE–Fatherland government coalition the level of polarization to new and the more liberal voters. Although EKRE was a in the coalition, it the public debate by an of which resulted from their public public politicians in other countries, which to the party's ideological In the 2023 the socially liberal parties had their positions and managed to the conservative parties, which has increased the tensions even The polarization is out in the where of has become Whilst of and taking has been an in Estonian parliamentary politics also in the it has not been used on the seen in the The first major was by the liberal parties, when the Reform Party and Social Democrats around to the of the marriage referendum proposed by the government. However, after the 2023 EKRE and the Centre Party on virtually all government which the of the parliament for the the government used the which to related to the state budget with the vote of and pass the with virtually no and the of the parliament used controversial to the number of and the to pass them in which were later in an opinion by the The tensions were also heightened by EKRE's that the election was from them the system (which has been used since and was used by more than of the voters in 2023). the party has been of for years, is less amongst their and more are cast in of the liberal parties. EKRE a against the of the for the but this was by the However, the surrounding public debate has the of the electoral system, and the in the parliament in parliament 2024). EKRE has become an of snap elections (which have occurred in Estonia and has proposed snap elections on including during parliamentary Whilst the trend towards polarization has been similar in Finland, the positions differ Finland has been as a country of consensus politics and since the by which is by European and 2024). As a all Finnish parties have been in government in the past 30 years, and at governments have brought political forces as the Left Alliance and National This with other Nordic countries, as they have often been led by there are of change as around issues and the traditional three parties – the Social Democrats, the Centre Party and the National Coalition Party – have become by the of the populist Finns Party. political and societal polarization have et al., 2024). As Finland has not traditionally had a bloc party voters have no the composition of the coalition, which is after of following the parliamentary election (Arter, 2024). this was not as because there was a very of the three parties National Coalition and the each having a support of This meant that a coalition of two of these three parties and one two smaller parties was for a majority However, the shift took place in when the Finns Party increased their support from in to in parties having support meant that a majority government became more As a the parties to be more of their and to with even parties. The main in Finnish politics have traditionally been the left–right the People's Party the of the Swedish and the After the EU in 1995, the EU independence has been within the A new the has and during the past A polarization has place during the past the voters into the liberal left and conservative right. However, the emergence of bloc politics already to the 2019 elections, when government was too right-wing and conservative by Finnish and the to the left in the 2019 elections. The polycrisis experienced during the governments of and Sanna Marin only these the 2023 elections, the coalition was formed between the National Coalition, the Finns Party, the Swedish People's Party and the Democrats by Whilst a coalition government by Finnish it faced and due to the global due to the political that already a electoral and due to the of including a populist radical right party in the government. In Finland, as in all Nordic countries, the level of in is very high, which has a also on political The Nordic countries have a strong society based on a range of interest and and very low level of Finnish political system is based on a low level of and between the government, parliamentary and take place behind closed Nordic political is often as having an emphasis on and from the the coalitions were formed in all Nordic countries between social and parties extreme In Finland, income policy between Finnish and the Finnish government were mostly since a range of economic and political as and In 2007, the of Finnish and to any more income policy This not only the tradition but also a power the little was to the fact that the did not and In for over years, of Finnish social has place and been
DOI: 10.1111/jcms.13668
Authors: Mari‐Liis Jakobson, Johanna Peltoniemi
Institutions: Tallinn University, Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,970
OpenAlex ID: W4401928879