University of Helsinki
Last week the University of Helsinki sent out a press release regarding new CEACG-research on how the welfare state ethos has developed in Finnish Government Programmes from the 1950s up until present days. The study made great headlines throughout the week and the university’s press release was shared 1500 times within a day.
The study’s objective was to examine how conceptions of the welfare state have changed over a 65 years’ period. The Programmes were examined for aims, character and concepts focusing on the social and health care sectors as indicators of the content and nature of the ambitions set for the welfare system by the highest political lead. The study did not set out to prove a paradigm shift that was hypothesized in advance, but it approached the programs inductively.
The governments’ changing position towards its welfare political mandate emerged in three distinct periods of governmentality: 1) 1950 through the 1970s, when the welfare state was being constructed; 2) the 1980s and 1990s, as the concept was further developed and internally synchronized; 3) 2000 to 2015, a time of increasing estrangement from universal notions.
The study shows that since 2014 the welfare state’s aims of inclusion and universalism have been toned down to an absolute minimum in the Government Programmes. A great contribution is that the study was able to point out some ways in which the coalition government system may at times have strengthen the welfare state ethos.
Media reporting
The press release received a great amount of attention in national media. This probably due to the constellations of the present government and the opposition parties but also of the much debated content of the current governments work — e.g. the social and health care reform “SOTE”- that has been heavily criticized.
Some examples of the reporting:
Kaleva.fi (15.5.2017)
Iltasanomat/ taloussanomat (15.5.2017)
Iltalehti (15.5.2017)
Hufvudstadsblandet (15.5.2017)
Left opposition leader Li Andersson both tweeted the news and wrote a column in the Hufvudstadsbladet.
The study will be published in the journal Research on Finnish Society.
All Finnish government programed are available here.
Press release in Finnish.
Press Release in Swedish