Idiosyncratic, Technocratic or Simply Democratic? A Parties' Perspective on Electoral System Change in Finland

There is a literature on the impact of electoral systems on parties, voters, candidates and legislators, but little or nothing on the incentives differing voting systems create for political activists in the campaign arena. Finland has employed its present 'personalised electoral system' - open-list PR - for general elections for over six decades. Accordingly, this paper asks whether the personalised voting system has spawned a personalisation of campaign activism. Has the intra-party competitive dynamic integral to strong preferential voting systems produced a shift from party-centred activism to candidate-centred activism? It compares the nature of political activism in Finland at the point of the adoption of the present electoral in the 1950s with campaign activism today.