‘Oi niitä aikoja’: ‘Those were the Days My Friend’

• Published in: Scandinavian political studies 2020-03, Vol.43 (1), p.65-71
• Main Author: Cutler, Neal E.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Almanacs; Arms control & disarmament; Commuting; Elections; Law; Policy making; Political culture; Political parties; Political science; Politics; Populism; Rural areas; Rural communities; Strategic Arms Limitation Talks; Voting
• ISSN: 0080-6757; 1467-9477
• DOI: 10.1111/1467-9477.12160

As the redoubtable McFingal observed cryptically: ‘Optics sharp it needs I ween/to see what is not to be seen’ and he was incontrovertibly correct. Yet over the years visiting scholars have seen and explored aspects of Scandinavian politics and society unseen, or at least less seen by Nordic authors and, in so doing, added materially to our understanding of the modus operandi of politics. The late Tom Anton's brilliant insight into the dynamics of ‘Policy-making and Political Culture in Sweden’, which appeared in Scandinavian Political Studies (SPS) in 1969, is a case in point. Between 1966 and 1971, SPS appeared as a Yearbook rather than a quarterly journal and contained contribution from such Nordic ‘heavyweights’ as Stein Rokkan and Erik Allardt. Some time ago, the SPS editorial office was approached by Professor Neal Cutler with the offer of the full set of SPS Yearbooks and, in the course of correspondence, it transpired that Neal had been a Fulbright Research Fellow in the Political Science Department at Helsinki University between 1972 and 1973. We invited him to write a brief, reflective oi niitä aikoja piece, revisiting his ‘extraordinary political year’ (his term) in the Finnish capital.At the time of his visit, the US and USSR (having spent a year in Helsinki in 1969 negotiating whether to negotiate) were engaged in the peripatetic Strategic Arms Limitation talks ‘commuting between Helsinki and Vienna’. On the ‘domestic front’ controversy surrounded a proposed Exceptional Law, temporarily setting aside the 1919 Finnish constitution so as to by-pass popular elections and enable the Eduskunta to extend the term of President Urho Kekkonen for a further four years in what were described (but never publicly explained) as ‘pressing circumstances’. The populist Finnish Rural Party, led by Veikko Vennamo, which had rocked the political boat by electing 18 MPs with 10.5 per cent of the vote in the high-volatility 1970 election, split on the issue, enabling the passage of the Exceptional Law. In the...