Finnish Public Administration

This chapter discusses the avenues through which to study Finnish public administration in the context of the Nordic welfare state and provides an outline of the perspectives provided in the following chapters. The research on Finnish public administration has been fragmented, and there has been a gap between political science and the study of public administration. The aim of this chapter is to describe our holistic approach to public administration that takes into account political aspects, structures and processes, as well as public services. The chapter further highlights the importance of considering the different levels of administration, as well as the different sectors involved in public administration, thus emphasising the multi-level governance and cross-sectional study of public administration.

This chapter examines current administrative reforms in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. It addresses how Nordic central government executives perceive reform processes, trends, contents, and management instruments. The database is a survey of top civil servants in ministries and central agencies. The chapter reveals that the Nordic countries are eager and pragmatic reformers. There is a high level of reform activity and public involvement. The reforms aim to improve services more than cut costs. The Nordic model emerges as agile and adaptive. New reform elements have been added to the existing administrative models.

The chapter provides an introduction to Finnish public administration by examining the country’s politico-administrative system and the main institutions forming the division of power in Finland. The focus is primarily on the government’s role as both a political institution and an administrative apparatus. The chapter discusses the government’s definition, trends and traditions, as well as associated risks for government reforms and administrative traditions. The Government programme is also examined as the most important political document for mid-term development plans in Finnish public administration. Finally, the chapter looks at civil service ethics as an essential grassroots-level instrument for supporting the viability of the politico-administrative system.

This chapter provides an overview of the structure of public administration in Finland, with a focus on the state administration and a brief description of other administrative levels. The Finnish politico-administrative system has had traditionally a two-tier government structure with a strong central government and autonomous municipal level. However, recent reform has established 18 wellbeing services counties, transforming the structure into a three-tier system. The chapter discusses the essential agencies, such as ministries, and the role of state agencies, as well as self-governing local and regional administration.

City regions have emerged as a new significant spatial formation complementing and challenging the traditional state-based public space organised as a territorially layered system of municipalities, regions and the state itself. Expanding city-regionalisation has also been actively promoted as part of state–governmental strategies to foster economic development and municipal co-operation within urban agglomerations across Europe. As evolving new spaces for governing, policymaking and planning, city regions in Finland grow in between, within and beyond the territorial organisation of the state, through relational connections and disruptions, largely following economic logics but also involving sociocultural elements and political steering. While this makes them strategically ‘agile’ and capable of accommodating various informal, ad hoc and contract-based forms of governing and planning, important questions have arisen about democratic accountability. In many countries, including Finland, city regions are weakly institutionalised and therefore lack established democratic practices for citizen participation. This chapter discusses city-regionalisation as a challenge for local democracy and participation in Finland and beyond. Through an example from the Tampere city region, the regional tramway project, we discuss how citizen participation can be understood in a relational city-regional framework We conclude by probing into the challenge of redressing the democratic deficit of city-regionalisation.

This chapter outlines the local government in Finland. Municipalities form the basic units of the political-administrative system. They have a vital role in local infrastructure, education and economic development policy. In this chapter, we describe the development of this system with a focus on major changes in the post-war decades, and on that basis, we provide a brief introduction to the current structure, main functions and inter-governmental relations of local government. This chapter will also shed light on the contextual changes reshaping local governance, as well as their consequences, which highlight the increasing importance of digitalisation, the growing differentiation between municipalities and the emergence of novel approaches to local public governance. Lastly, we will explore the future development of Finnish local government by anchoring the discussion on the emerging platform model, which aims at the smart utilisation of local potential for the benefit of all members of the local community.

Budgeting, accountability and auditing of the usage of the trusted tax money are traditional core areas of public sector financial management. In this section, these core areas of public financial management are presented, covering both Finnish local and central governments. Finland has a long tradition of accrual accounting, as the transition from the cameral accounting system to accrual accounting took place in the local government in 1997 and in the central government in 1998. Public sector performance is only partly captured by financial figures and performance. Non-financial activity performance, accounting for outputs and outcomes, has become vital for public accountability. These matters are planned and reported using performance-based budgeting. The key elements of the reporting of these non-financial components are also highlighted in this chapter. Transparent and reliable audit practices complement the core areas of public financial management. Auditing is efficiently and independently organised in both the local and central governments in Finland. This chapter introduces public sector audit institutions, such as the National Audit Office and chartered public finance auditors and shows that they have a vital role in ensuring transparent and reliable financial reporting at all levels of Finnish public sector governance.

This chapter deals with performance management in public sector activities. Our aim is to discuss fundamental assumptions and limitations of performance management systems and practices when they are adopted, implemented and used in different policies and agencies of the government. First, we briefly introduce the institutional structures of performance measurement and management in the Finnish government, in both central and local governments. Second, we provide theoretical insights into some of the most relevant problems and limitations of public sector performance management from two perspectives: hybridity and sustainability. This is followed by a case that illustrates such cross-lateral and multi-sectoral problems in the context of the implementation of Agenda 2030 in Finland. We conclude the chapter with a synthesis of the discussion, which also develops important future directions.

This chapter examines the development of regional self-government in Finland from the perspective of the constitutional legal doctrine. The focus is on the recently implemented healthcare and social welfare reform, as it signified constructing a novel self-governing regional administrative level. The fundamental provision of regional self-governance is Section 121(4) of the Constitution of Finland, according to which provisions on self-government in administrative areas larger than a municipality are laid down by an act. This provision has provided an unclear basis for the development of regional self-government. Its application, especially in connection to healthcare and social welfare reform, has clarified the constitutional doctrine on regional self-governance. In particular, the Constitutional Law Committee of Parliament has drawn up guidelines on the principles of regional self-governance. On these bases, the scholarly doctrine views a self-governing regional unit as a democratic entity of its own kind under public law, with its own tasks, institutions and finances. This study calls for the constitutional provision on regional self-governance to be amended to correspond with the content and precision of the section on municipal self-governance. This would form a solid constitutional basis for the future development of Finnish regional self-governance.

This chapter starts by introducing the key principles and the international network forming the basis of the Finnish human rights system. The first part considers the cross-cutting theme of shared responsibilities and shifting the burden of responsibilities towards the national level. The second part concentrates on the system and its key institutions and their mandates. The third part concentrates on the government’s human rights policy instruments and their key elements. The cross-cutting theme is the emphasis on dialogue between international supervisory bodies, Finnish courts and other authorities. This chapter recommends that national human rights structures should be developed in such a way as to enable them to share information and adopt national legislation and policy actions so that they comply with evolutive interpretation from treaty bodies.

This chapter provides a snapshot of how meaningful public sector services are constructed by presenting the perspectives of Finnish public sector service professionals on the topic of customer value creation in meaningful work. The key focus is on how to create a service system that reliably creates value for service users with an understanding of things that are meaningful for them and that simultaneously enhances public sector employees’ perceived meaningfulness of work and, by doing so, addresses the need for public service system change as citizens’ needs change. In the context of meaningful public service systems and based on the empirical data analysis, we argue that public sector professionals’ perceived meaningfulness of work enhances the meaningfulness of public services. On the other hand, the role of management and leadership is to ensure the responsible, sustainable, public customer-oriented service development of meaningful public services by enabling employees’ perceived meaningfulness of work.

Innovation policy is a key public policy in many parts of the world and is seen as crucial for securing a better future. It reflects the explicit understanding of knowledge and innovation being fundamental for the economic performance not only of nations but also of regions and cities. In this chapter, we focus on the various rationales informing Finland’s evolving innovation policy, shedding light on the changes in this regard from the modern outset of innovation policy from the early 1990s to the early 2020s.

Over the past decades, universities as public organisations and societal actors have been impacted by policies emphasising accountability measures and incentive systems in the context of New Public Management (NPM) inspired governance reforms. At the same time, financing higher education has been a key issue in higher education policy. Nordic higher education policies have followed similar paths with NPM-oriented reforms. As a policy instrument, performance-based funding (PBF) has gained popularity among policymakers, reflecting their wish to encourage the achievement of the policy goals set for higher education. The PBF model has also increased universities’ awareness of the aspects measured and their performance has increased steadily on those outputs measured and rewarded. This chapter discusses Finnish higher education policy in the context of NPM-oriented reforms focusing on the PBF model and the role it plays in steering Finnish universities. We introduce the steering instruments and the PBF model utilised in the Finnish higher education system and discuss the equilibrium of autonomy and accountability in higher education governance and how PBF has affected these. Finnish higher education is set in Nordic context reflecting the findings as part of public administration reforms and discussing the future scenarios for the Finnish higher education sector.

In the Nordic welfare state model that aims for societal well-being for the population as whole, education has traditionally been seen as a key instrument for increasing social justice. In line with this tradition, an emphasis on addressing injustices has been one of the key principles of education policy in Finland. In this chapter, we focus on the tension between the different policy approaches for addressing injustices. This chapter focuses on education policy from early childhood education (0–6-year-olds) to primary and lower secondary education (7–15-year-olds). First, we introduce the three-tiered administration of education in Finland. Second, we bring the Finnish education system into the discussion with Nancy Fraser’s account of injustice and possible remedies for it. We will take a closer look at three examples: the extension of compulsory education, changes in the entitlement to early childhood education and care and changes in the core curriculum in primary education. We show how recent education policies continue the long trajectory that has been built on the idea of addressing injustices with redistributive remedies. Finally, we will discuss how strong municipal autonomy and competing approaches to addressing inequalities enable locally varying landscapes of education policy.

Well-being matters to everyone. However, social and healthcare policies and organisations, as they used to exist, do not suffice anymore. Reforming and resigning policies and organisations are necessary to meet systemic governance challenges and the complex societal paradoxes that are the outcomes of unreconciled dilemmas. To maintain the welfare state in a changing world, the Finnish social and healthcare service has been actively trying to reform over the last 20 years. While retaining responsibility for well-being, the state now works across sectors and with hybrid governances to provide social and healthcare services. There is, for instance, a need to improve service quality and a drive for efficiency and a need to reconcile the dilemmas that create organisational paradoxes.

This chapter deals with the current drivers of change in Nordic environmental policy. The model of the environmental state serves here as the conceptual reference, which we examine at the local level, since cities increasingly appear as key policy players in the governance of global environmental challenges. We utilise a practice-oriented approach to understand how environmental concerns work at the city level and evoke opportunities for sustainable urban development. It was found that while city-level policies attempt to answer global environmental challenges, they simultaneously produce new types of inclusivity problems. Our illustrative examples of Finnish climate and biodiversity policies also highlight the difference in the dynamics of climate change implementation versus the realisation of biodiversity policy issues. Environmental policies have grown to be part of the multi-level governance system, starting from international-level agreements and being implemented on the national, regional and city levels. Yet, the discussion on the environmental state should identify the ways in which material growth can be transformed into qualitative changes that make ecological transformation possible.

This chapter summarises and concludes with the main changes to and challenges faced by Finnish public administration in the context of Nordic welfare state reforms. The chapter builds on a simple analytical approach by analysing the politico-administrative system from the perspectives of input, throughput and output. The chapter provides a concise description of the main aspects of government, the economy and civil society. Furthermore, the chapter discusses the changes to and future prospects of the citizenry and democratic processes related to public administration, the trends and reforms of public administration and management, and public service delivery.