Finland has traditionally been regarded as having a corporatist policy advisory system. Commissions of inquiry which include academics and researchers as members have been the format in which scientific policy advice has typically been organised in the Nordic countries. Finland, exceptionally, however dissolved its formal commission system in the early 2000s, and has since then been preparing policies in ministerial broad-based working groups, which are more strongly steered by ministries. Recent developments suggest that the Finnish policy advisory system may be adopting neoliberal features or becoming more hybridised.
On the basis of both quantitative data and qualitative interviews, the paper analyses the changes in Finnish ministerial policy preparatory working groups in terms of their inclusion of academics and researchers. The quantitative data comprises of memberships in such groups in 2000-2015 (by five year intervals). Their results can be compared to earlier results concerning Finland from 1980-1995 (e.g. Helander 1997) to analyze temporal change over time. They can also be compared with parallel results concerning the share and role of academics in the other Nordic countries, particularly Norway. The aim of the collection of qualitative data, on the other hand, is to gain more information about the changes that have occurred in forms of scientific policy advice in preparatory working groups and their host ministries.
The results are expected to show that while occupying a relatively modest, though stable, share of committee memberships earlier on, the proportion of researchers/academics has been declining. Together with a more fine-grained analysis of membership roles and different policy fields, the results suggest that the role of researchers and scientific knowledge has become less significant and more symbolic in this institutional setting. The results also contrast with the development towards increased ‘scientisation’ which has been observed in Norwegian commissions (Christensen & Hesstvedt 2019; Christensen 2018)
The results raise queries about the factors that are driving science/policy relations to divergent directions in the Nordic countries. In Finland, first, the rising popularity of evidence-based policymaking and the externalisation of policy advice to a growing “research market”, comprised not only of state investigators but also of private consultancy firms, indicate the emergence of a more hybridised and neoliberal policy advisory system. Second, recent developments also indicate Finnish ministries’ and political decision-makers’ attempts to tighten their control over traditional policy-making mechanisms and to curb their limited autonomy further. Third, a parallel trend is also evident in the construction of new governmentally controlled financial instruments for strategic research, which is considered to benefit policy-making ‘more directly’. In terms of research on policy advisory systems, the results from the Finnish case point to the need to analyse the trends towards ‘scientisation’ or ‘expertisation’ critically and in their context, paying close attention to the change and hybridisation of the systems.
