Far from finished - what happens after the elections?
On Sunday, April 13, Finland’s municipalities and wellbeing services counties elected new leaders in the municipal and county elections. The elections, of course, distributed power and set guidelines for exercising local authority, but what actually happens afterward?
After the elections, parties have two tasks: to negotiate with other parties about positions of trust and political content, and to internally decide on their own appointments. The negotiations between parties are among the fastest processes across Finland, but internal wrangling can take surprisingly much time.
In most Finnish municipalities, the distribution of trust positions is a relatively straightforward process: based on the election results, each party is allocated a proportionate share of the available positions. Each party gets a number of positions in various bodies, such as committees and city councils, in proportion to its support. The same applies to the wellbeing services counties, where similar negotiations take place.
Political content negotiations, on the other hand, are longer and more rarely conducted. Negotiating content means forming a political agreement on key policy issues for the upcoming council term. These agreements can include, for example, mayoral agreements made in large mayor-led cities, where decisions on major issues for the council term are agreed upon. Such agreements are not common, but even in smaller localities, council agreements can be made similarly on major policy issues expected during the term.
The benefit of political agreements is predictability in decision-making. If consensus on major decisions during the term is reached from the outset, it reduces the likelihood of political deadlocks. As an incentive to make such agreements, trust position distribution is often tied in — for example, in Turku, being left out of the mayoral agreement means a party doesn’t have the same access to key trust positions or meetings of the mayoral coalition.
Negotiations between parties over trust positions are usually completed within a few weeks. Content negotiations take longer and, even this spring, may continue well into spring in large cities. In wellbeing services counties, political agreements have rarely been seen at the beginning of council terms, mainly due to the newness of the system and the fact that funding remains largely in the hands of the state.
The biggest disputes and most unpleasant feelings arise during the parties’ internal negotiations over positions. The purpose of these negotiations speaks for itself: who gets what position. The decisions are made according to each party’s own practices, which vary between parties. The allocation considers the number of votes, experience, and candidates’ interest in various trust positions. Understandably, those who ran for office have high expectations for getting a trust position, but since the number of positions is limited, disappointment is inevitably part of the process.
Internal position negotiations usually last until early summer, and final decisions are confirmed in council groups in June before the first council meetings.
The work of different bodies begins when the council term starts. Then comes the summer break in July, and the real work kicks off in August. A harsh reality soon hits the councilors: the next year’s budget won’t wait, and decisions must be made immediately on how to allocate scarce resources to essential daily services.
Alvar Euro
The author is an analyst at Blic.