A map-based place-browser for a PDA

This article describes PlaceBrowser, a PDA based application that allows the user of the application to navigate around an area of geographical interest, such as a city, using a zoomable, panable hierarchy of aerial images, in a fashion similar to Google Maps. The novel aspect to the work is that an area of precise interest within the map can be pin-pointed by the user by directly dragging out a rectangular area on the map. This forms the source to a spatial search that returns landmarks that are then used to trigger a Web based query. The results of this query are displayed to the user. The net effect is that, in response to dragging out a rectangular area, web pages that are relevant to this area but have not been explicitly geo-spatially tagged with metadata (longitude,latitude) are shown to the user

Evaluating the Implementation of Indiana Area ‘Communities That Care’

‘Communities That Care’ (CTC) is a research-based operating system designed to help communities identify and reduce risk factors, enhance protective factors, and prevent a number of adolescent problem behaviors, including delinquency, violence, substance abuse, school drop-out, and teen pregnancy. Indiana, PA, is one of approximately 125 communities throughout Pennsylvania that have chosen to use the CTC approach to promote the positive development of children and youth in the local area. This paper presents an initial review of Indiana Area CTC, in terms of the planning and implementation efforts that have taken place during the past five years

Idiosyncratic, Technocratic, Democratic or Simply Pragmatic? A Parties’ Perspective on Electoral System Change in Finland, 1906-1969

Whilst in Klaus Törnudd’s (1968, 57) words “converting the Finnish electoral system into a unique list system with votes for individual candidates”, the extent of electoral system change in 1955 was relatively limited. In Carey and Shugart’s (1995) terms, Finland shifted from the 1906 system of ‘open lists with open endorsement and multiple votes’ – voters could rank order candidates – to a system in 1955 of ‘open lists with open endorsement and a single vote’. Indeed, the scholarly debate about this electoral system change has revolved not so much around its scale as i) the contemporary perception of its long-term significance and ii) the extent to which the reform was party politicised. Was the 1955 reform a case of ‘idiosyncratic change’ (Benoit 2004, 372) that emerged more by default than design (Karvonen 2011, 130, Railo 2016, 76); ‘technocratic change’ (Sundberg 2002, Renwick and Pilet 2016, 115), driven by legal experts rather than the political parties; ‘democratic change’ initiated primarily out of concern to enhance the proportionality of the electoral system – or what? I make the case that the 1955 reform represented ‘simply pragmatic change’. I argue that, when viewed from a parties’ standpoint, the 1955 legislation gave statutory force to a progressive de facto reduction in the preferential element in the electoral system that the parties had engineered over the previous half century. In a real sense the parties, in running singlecandidate ‘lists,’ had fostered a personalisation of electoral politics and an individualisation of candidate campaigning. Equally, in reducing the number of candidate preference votes, the 1955 legislation, when viewed from a voter standpoint, gave de jure force to a de facto de-personalisation of the electoral system. Paradoxically, a personalisation of electoral politics was in no small measure driven by a de-personalisation of the electoral rules

The making of an ‘unhappy marriage’? The 2023 Finnish general election

Rarely, if ever, has a Finnish general election attracted such foreign media interest. Reporters came from across the globe, not to witness Finland become NATO’s thirty-first member-state on 4 April, two days after the general election, but to see if the party-loving Social Democrat prime minister Sanna Marin could secure a second term at the helm. 1 In the event, Marin became only the third prime minister in recent times to increase the party vote, albeit by not quite enough, and she promptly indicated she would stand down as party leader. The election was won by the two main opposition parties, the National Coalition and Finns Party. The National Coalition became the largest parliamentary party for only the second time in its history, whilst the Finns Party gained over one-fifth of the national poll for the first time and became the largest party on the basis of the popular vote in no less than half the 12 mainland constituencies. Despite their deep differences on major policy issues–including immigration, taxation, development aid and climate policy–the National Coalition and Finns Party ultimately formed the core of a centre-right government, although it took almost to midsummer to do so, and it was then characterised by a minor coalition party leader as an ‘unhappy marriage’ made out of necessity.Non peer reviewe

Personal representation or party representation? Elections in the autonomous Åland Islands

For an electorate numbering under 21,000 persons, voters in the autonomous Åland islands are remarkably well represented. They vote in Finnish general elections, presidential elections and European Parliament elections; they vote for a 30-seat regional assembly, the Lagting; and they vote for one of the 16 municipal councils on the islands. For Lagting elections there is one MP for barely seven-hundred voters. This low MP-voter ratio, when taken together with open-list PR electoral rules enabling citizens to cast a personal vote, and a broad consensus over Åland’s self-governing status, would appear to militate against the need for party representation. Yet Ålanders are today served by an institutionalised party system which, while reflecting Scandinavian influences, is distinctive in its own right. Accordingly, this report poses three basic questions: (i) When and why did an Åland party system emerge? (ii) To what extent does it resemble the classical ‘Scandinavian party system model’? (iii) What does the most recent 2019 Lagting election indicate about the balance between personal representation and party representation?.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

Can a religious-niche party change – or was Kirchheimer right? Analysing the Finnish Christians’ search to become a catchall electoral party

Small-party persistence is a story in itself, especially when the party in question emerged as an entirely new party, lacked societal rootedness and did not boast any recognisable persons among its founding figures. The particular case is the Finnish Christian League SKL (from 2001 Christian Democrats KD), one of a family of post-Second World War fundamentalist Christian parties in the Nordic region which, over the six decades of its existence, has, unlike its Swedish and Danish counterparts, consistently surpassed the threshold of representation, but only once gained over 5 per cent of the national vote. This article asks firstly: What factors would account for SKL/KD’s persistence as a small party? Secondly, why has SKL/KD remained a small party despite efforts to expand its electoral base? Was Kirchheimer correct that certain types of party simply cannot become catchall parties? Kirchheimer, it is argued, was essentially right: SKL/KD’s ‘nicheness’ has been its greatest electoral strength but also the greatest barrier to electoral growth and significant party change.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

From Finlandisation and post-Finlandisation to the end of Finlandisation? Finland’s road to a NATO application

Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 triggered a process that saw Finland abandon its traditional policy of military non-alignment and, together with Sweden, submit an application for NATO membership. Finland’s history of Finlandisation came up routinely in the parliamentary debates on a NATO application and there was a broad consensus that NATO membership would mark the end of Finlandised Finland. Accordingly, this article has a dual aim. First, it seeks to chart the main lines of post-war Finnish foreign and security policy since the late 1960s using Finlandisation and post-Finlandisation as the organising concepts. Second, it explores why, ultimately, Finland applied for NATO membership in May 2022. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, it is suggested, engendered a psychosis of fear among the Finnish public, stirring collective memories of the loss of land, lives and livelihood at the hands of unprovoked Soviet aggression in the 1939–40 Winter War and the fear of history repeating itself at various tension points in Finno-Soviet relations thereafter. Strikingly, until 24 February a clear majority of politicians and the Finnish public opposed NATO membership.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

‘Bigwig hatred’ and the emergence of the first Scandinavian agrarian-populist party

In the genealogy of the Scandinavian populist-party family, agrarian populism has been largely neglected and, when discussed at all, it is traced back to Finland in the late 1950s. This paper argues: (i) that agrarian populism long predated the 1950s and that it was politically salient from the decade before Finnish independence in 1917; (ii) that it is useful to distinguish between an agrarian-class and agrarian-populist party type; (iii) that in wider comparative perspective, first-wave Finnish agrarian populism was distinctive; and iv) that during the critical party-building phase, the Finnish Agrarian Party (AP) is best characterised a populist party embodying a diffuse small-farmer antipathy towards socially superior urban elites. The AP did not create this ‘bigwig hatred’ (herraviha), but in perpetuating it and ‘othering it’ within a binary ‘us-and-them’ paradigm, it became the first populist party in both Finland and Scandinavia.Peer reviewe

The democratic role of campaign journalism: partisan representation and public participation

Campaign journalism is a distinctive but under-researched form of editorialised news reporting that aims to influence politicians rather than inform voters. In this it diverges from liberal norms of social responsibility, but instead campaigning newspapers make claims to represent the interests or opinions of publics such as their readers or groups affected by the issue. This could be understood as democratically valid in relation to alternative models such as participatory or corporatist democracy. This essay examines journalists’ understanding of the identity and views of these publics, and how their professional norms are operationalised in their journalistic practice in relation to five case studies in the Scottish press. The campaigns are analysed in terms of four normative criteria associated with corporatist and participatory democracy: firstly, the extent to which subjective advocacy is combined with objectivity and accuracy; secondly, the extent to which civic society organisations are accorded access; thirdly, whether the disadvantage of resource-poor groups in society is compensated for; and finally, to what extent the mobilisation of public support for the campaigns aims to encourage an active citizenry