Nordic Openness in Practice: Loose Coupling of Government Communicationand Policy-making in Finland

Due to the tradition of ‘Nordic openness’, and intensified by international trends, the normof policy-making transparency is strong in Finland. Inspired by organizational institutionalism,the present article studies what this notion of transparency means in practice. A casestudy of a social security...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nordicom review 2015
Main Author: Vesa, Juho
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
corporatism
Finland
government communication
Media
Nordic openness
policy-making
Samhällsvetenskap
Social Sciences
transparency
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Summary:Due to the tradition of ‘Nordic openness’, and intensified by international trends, the normof policy-making transparency is strong in Finland. Inspired by organizational institutionalism,the present article studies what this notion of transparency means in practice. A casestudy of a social security reform committee is presented. The consensus-building practicestypical of Finnish corporatist policy-making significantly constrained the transparency ofgovernment communication during the lifetime of the committee. The government communicatedactively in public to meet the demand for transparency; but in order to secureeffective bargaining, the government communicated issues concerning the committee sovaguely that it did not inspire wide public discussion. Public discussion was instead mainlyfuelled by leaks. These findings suggest that a strong norm of transparency can lead toceremonial transparency, where government public communication is loosely coupled withpolicy-making practices. These ceremonies might strengthen the notion of Nordic openness
ISSN:1403-1108
2001-5119
DOI:10.1515/nor-2015-0021