Sinkut, Salo, Sosit or Suomi? Who do members of parliament represent? Last time we posed the Tiririca question What do members of parliament do?

Transcription

1 Lecture 3 Page 1 Sinkut, Salo, Sosit or Suomi? Who do members of parliament represent? Last time we posed the Tiririca question What do members of parliament do? We took a long way round but one answer lay in the word kansanedustajat representatives of the people Members of parliament represent the people So why ask the question: Who do members of parliament represent? Well, Australian MPs do it, Canadian MPs do it quite often and even Winston Churchill did it twice What is it? Answer cross the floor of the House that is, make a permanent change of party For example, in 2007 Quentin Davies (MP ) left the Conservatives to join Labour the night before Gordon Brown became prime minister arguing that the Conservatives appeared to have ceased collectively to believe in anything or to stand for anything Davies did not stand for re election in 2010 and was subsequently made a life peer! Consider the following three cases drawn from the Finnish experience of members crossing the floor of the House (changing party) a) Lyly Rajala Stood as an Independent on a nuorsuomalainen (Young Finn Party) list in the Oulu constituency in 1995 (without success) Was elected as an Independent on a Christian Democrat list in Oulu in 2003

2 Rajala approached the sitting KD MP Marja Leena Kemppainen and said he would run on a KD list if Patrick Dickson of the International Christian Fellowship of Oulu was also a candidate Page 2 The idea was to split the Kemppainen vote, opening the way for him Rajala was elected, Kemppainen missed out but some months later Rajala defected to Kokoomus (the Conservatives) He didn t think a single Christian Democrat voter had supported him b) Merikukka Forsius Green MP 1999 February when she defected to Kokoomus Her change of party meant that the Conservatives had the same number of seats as the prime minister s party, the Centre Forsius received 5,000 euros from Kehittyvien Maakuntien Suomi for the 2007 election campaign the only Green to receive financial support from that source Twice married and may or may not have had a close friendship with the [then] prime minister Matti Vanhanen Forsius is not standing for re election this year c) Markku Uusipaavalniemi Captain of Finland s curling team Elected for the Centre Party in Uusimaa in 2007, over 28% of his personal vote coming from the town of Hyvinkää Was opposed to further privatisation of state owned companies, which his party favoured Approached the Christian Democrats before in November 2010 defecting to the True Finns As a result, the Conservatives became the largest party in the Eduskunta Pertti Hannus from Kurikka was not amused and in a letter to Helsingin Sanomat raised the question Should defectors resign? Puolueloikkareiden pitäisi jättää eduskunta Helsingin Sanomat

3 His view was Yes they should! Page 3 a) MPs who defect from their party during the term of parliament should resign because they no longer promote the values for which they were elected to represent the people b) Changing parties is not a personal matter; rather, it affects all those persons for whom the MPs policy views have corresponded with their own c) By changing party MPs break the confidence expressed in them SO, SHOULD DEFECTORS RESIGN? DO REPRESENTATIVES OF THE PEOPLE WHO CHANGE PARTY NO LONGER REPRESENT THE PEOPLE? CAN THEY STILL BE SAID TO REPRESENT THE PEOPLE? Clearly, the answer depends on the view one takes of the representation process and representation is a continuous process 1. One view, associated with Hannah Pitkin The Concept of Representation (1972) is the trustee model of representation representation means acting in the interests of the represented the MP makes an individual judgement about what he/she believes is in the interests of the represented MPs as trustees claim to vote in accordance with their personal beliefs and principles 2. The alternative view of the representation process may be described as the party mandate model which is the one

4 underpinning Pertti Hannus view that defectors should leave parliament Page 4 i) Political parties develop public policies and select candidates ii) Voters choose between the parties iii) The winning party or parties carries out the mandate in parliament iv) Candidates stand for parliament as partisans, are elected on a set of party promises and carry out the party mandate in parliament In practice there are various problems with the party mandate model v) The compromises struck in the process of government formation may compromise the party mandate In 2010 Liberal Democrat MPs were elected for a party that promised to abolish university tuition fees in England but, in a coalition government with the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats have increased tuition fees vi) Circumstances may change significantly mid term in a way the mandate theory cannot accommodate There was no party mandate for an invasion of Iraq In the real world or at least based on the Finnish experience alternative modes of representation might be suggested in response to the question who do MPs [seek to] represent? Two groups of MPs/candidates will illustrate the point The first contains among others Raija Eeva, Arja Karhuvaara and Mats Nylund Raija Eeva a deacon working in the parish of Turku cathedral

5 Page 5 stood as an Independent on a Christian Democrat list in the Varsinais Suomi constituency and got 677 votes, second only to Sari Essayah (now an MEP) Eeva was a classic case of a single issue candidate who focused on the economic hardship experienced by singletons (the sinkut in the lecture title) She argued that 70% of those on income support were single persons and that the figure was rising all the time Recent Eurostat figures indicate that in 2009 single childless women make up 23% of all Finnish households (EU average = 17%) and single men make up 16.5% of all households (EU average = 13%) Arja Karhuvaara A first time MP in 2007 who was last placed among the successful Kokoomus candidates in Helsinki A physiotherapist by training, Karhuvaara ran the most expensive campaign at the October 2008 local election nearly 50,000 euros but still came only 7 th in her party In practice Karhuvaara has concentrated on one group of citizens Seniors Typically, she has organised several Senioritreffit in the Parliament s Information Centre and used her contacts with the relevant interest groups kuuloliitto for example to put on seminars specifically directed at Seniors Mats Nylund is a first time Swedish People s Party MP and dairy farmer from Pedersöre in the Vaasa constituency His election slogan was simply landsbygden val During the election campaign he placed 120 trailers on the field near crossroads As he put it: he controlled the fields

6 Page 6 It has become almost a tradition for the chair of the Swedishspeaking farm producers organisation in Österbotten to be an MP and Nils Anders Granvik was standing down What Eeva, Karhuvaara and Nylund and many others that could have been cited have in common is that in practice they seek to represent a particular section of society sinkut, Seniors or farmers They are interest representatives and they suggest a third model of representation the functional model of representation Functional representation may be viewed as a distant relative of corporatism in which parliamentarians represent a vocational constituency A limited application of the corporatist principle can be found in the university constituencies university constituencies represent a university rather than a geographical area There have been university constituencies in the UK, Canada, India and Japan There are two university seats in the Irish Senate in which graduates of the university can vote, whether resident there or not. Dublin University National University of Ireland The second group of Finnish MPs comprises among others Katja Taimela and Pirkko Ruohonen Lerner Katja Taimela is a first time Social Democrat MP and the Salo element in the lecture title

7 Page 7 She is one of the few monoglot parliamentarians and speaks only in Finnish She is a Suurtalouskokki a school chef by training who later became personal assistant (avustaja) to the MP Jukka Roos who retired in % of Taimela s vote came from her home town of Salo and 91% from Salo and Somero (compared with 2.4% from Turku) Pirkko Ruohonen Lerner is a first time MP for the True Finn Party whom we met earlier in the course at the Porvoo bus station she gained only 1058 votes in 2007 and rode into the Eduskunta on the back of nearly 20,000 polled by the party leader Timo Soini Ruohonen Lerner gained only 3.4% of the Porvoo vote but 80.2% of her personal vote came from Porvoo She also markets herself as a Porvoo MP There are other cases. Tuomo Hänninen (Centre) gained 85.8% of his personal vote from Kuusamo What Taimela, Ruohonen Lerner and Hänninen have in common is a highlyconcentrated geographical support base They are area representatives and they suggest a fourth model of representation a territorial model of representation Conclusions So In the trustee model of representation MPs are driven by their individual judgement and seek to represent the interests of citizens as a whole

8 In the party mandate model of representation MPs are primarily partisan actors carrying out a party mandate on behalf of party voters Page 8 In the functional model of representation MPs prioritise particular interests and represent a vocational constituency In the territorial model of representation MPs represent a geographic area and the voters in the constituency or locality How do these models correspond to MPs views of representation? There is very little comparative research on the representational focus of parliamentarians We have Nordic data but what they tell us is less clear MPs is all five Nordic countries were asked to say how important they personally found the following tasks a) Working with problems brought forward by individuals/voters 25% b) Promoting views you personally consider important 47% c) Promoting the policies of your own party 52% d) Promoting the interests of your own region/district 25% Outside Finland the party mandate model seems to have greatest support among Nordic parliamentarians Party representation: Sweden 77%; Norway 68%; Denmark 56%; Iceland 52%; Finland 9% Peter Esaiasson (2000) The electoral system has a marked effect on MPs views on party representation: members in party list systems are substantially more disposed to acknowledge the dominant position of the party than are MPs in systems focused on individual candidates I am not convinced that would explain the 9% in Finland!!