In the end Finns decided on a republican constitution that nevertheless gave the President broad powers, including the right to dissolve Parliament. The basic premise of the Constitution of has remained unchanged in the current Constitution: Political power in Finland is vested in the people, who are represented by Parliament. The Government must enjoy Parliament's support and MPs can measure confidence in the Government by submitting an interpellation.
Finland's parliamentary system was sorely tested in the s and '30s. The foundations of Finnish legislation were created at that time despite sharp political divisions as a result of which governments were often short-lived. The democratic system faced perhaps its biggest crisis in , when the far-right Lapua Movement took direct action against the left and threatened to overturn the government.
Violence and illegal activities quickly eroded popular support, however. Conservative respect for the law stifled hopes of a coup, and extremists found themselves isolated. Almost everywhere else in eastern Europe anti-communist pressures led to authoritarian right-wing regimes.
Nineteen women were elected to the Finnish Parliament in and were the first women MPs in the world. The low point came after the elections, when the figure dropped to In the elections 94 women were elected to Parliament - more than ever before. Since the late s the number of women MPs has grown fairly steadily. The voting age was lowered to 21 at the end of the Second World War so that young veterans could vote in the post-war elections in The voting age was subsequently lowered to 20 in the s and 18 in the s.
For a long time after the war the domestic political scene remained unstable, and Finland had 16 different governments in This period nevertheless saw major social reforms and the building of the welfare state. Agrarian Finland rapidly industrialised and urbanised. With rising economic prosperity, social security and welfare were improved by supplementing existing legislation and enacting new laws.
Parliament approved a system of child allowances in , the National Pension Act in , the Health Insurance Act in , provisions concerning unemployment benefits in , the Comprehensive School Act in and the Primary Health Care Act in Since the mids Finland's political scene has been marked by strong majority governments, except for a short period in the early s.
Governments have generally remained in office for the entire electoral term. The practice of changing governments after the election of a new President was also given up. The Parliament that was elected in continued to serve until During the Winter War, from December to February , Parliament was evacuated and met in the town of Kauhajoki.
Among all the European countries that fought in the Second World War, Britain and Finland were the only European countries where Parliament continued to meet without interruption during the war.
A period of intense development began in the early s. The committee system, which dated back to the old Diet, was reformed in to correspond to the division into ministerial sectors, and committees were allowed to serve for the entire electoral term.
As MPs' work has evolved into a year-round job, it has been necessary to develop Parliament's forms of work and to increase the Parliamentary Office's resources. One goal of development work has been to make the plenary session a national forum for political debate and give MPs better opportunities to discuss timely issues.
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Article PDF first page preview. Issue Section:. You do not currently have access to this article. Like much of the SKP leadership, he remained in exile in the Soviet Union, from where he directed the party's clandestine activities in Finland. The SKP attracted mainly left-wing militants and embittered survivors of the civil war. The following year the SSTP was declared treasonous and was outlawed. As a result, the communists formed another front organization, and in they won Deprived of political access, the communists tried to use strikes to disrupt the country's economic life.
They had so far infiltrated the SAJ by that politically moderate trade unionists formed an entirely new organization, the Confederation of Finnish Trade Unions Suomen Ammattiyhdistysten Keskusliitto-- SAK , which established itself solidly in the coming years.
The competition between Finnish speakers and Swedish speakers was defused by the Language Act of , which declared both Finnish and Swedish to be official national languages.
This law enabled the Swedish speaking minority to survive in Finland, although in the course of the twentieth century the Swedish- speakers have been gradually Finnicized, declining from 11 percent of the population in the s to about 6 percent in the s. The unanimity with which both language groups fought together in World War II attested to the success of the national integration. The enduring domestic political turmoil generated by the civil war led to the rise not only of a large communist party, but also to that of a large radical right-wing movement.
The right wing consisted mainly of Finnish nationalists who were unhappy with the Treaty of Dorpat Tartu that had formally ended the conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland and recognized Soviet sovereignty over Eastern Karelia. Eastern Karelia was the area, located roughly between Finland and the White Sea, that was inhabited by Finnic-speaking people who, centuries before, had been brought under Russian rule and had been converted to Eastern Orthodoxy. Since the nineteenth century, romantic Finnish nationalists had sought to reunite the Karelians with Finland.
The most prominent organization advancing the Greater Finland idea was the Academic Karelia Society Akateeminen Karjala-Seura- -AKS , which was founded in by Finnish students who had fought in Eastern Karelia against Soviet rule during the winter of to In the s, the AKS became the dominant group among Finnish university students. Its members often retained their membership after their student days, and the AKS was strongly represented among civil servants, teachers, lawyers, physicians, and clergymen.
Most Lutheran clergymen had been strongly pro-White during the civil war, and many of them were also active in the AKS and in the even more radical anti- communist Lapua movement.
Thus the AKS created a worldview among an entire generation of educated Finns that was relentlessly anti-Soviet and expansionistic. The Eastern Karelians were eventually assimilated into Russian culture through a deliberate Soviet policy of denationalization, aimed at removing any possibility of their being attracted to Finland. The military muscle for the right wing was provided by the Civil Guard.
In the s, the Civil Guard had a strength of about ,, and it received arms by parliamentary appropriation; however, Social Democrats, branded as leftists, were not welcome as members.
The Civil Guard included a women's auxiliary called Lotta Svard after a female hero of the war of to This organization performed important support work, behind the lines during the civil war and later during World War II, thereby releasing many men for service on the front. The apogee of right-wing nationalism was reached in the Lapua movement, from to The emergence of the SKP in the s had contributed to a rightward trend in politics that became evident as early as when Lauri Kristian Relander, a right-wing Agrarian, was elected president.
In November , a rightist mob broke up a communist rally at Lapua, a conservative town in northern Finland.
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