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Finnish democracy has been a success story. We are worked to ensure that success continues by supporting the development of democracy through experiments and studies and by encouraging new forms of participation. The project ended in 2024 but the work to strengthen democracy continues.
What is it about?
In comparative analyses, Finland frequently ranks highly for issues such as human rights, media freedom, lack of corruption and governance. However, the news is not all good. An OECD Trust Report published in spring 2021 revealed that Finns had very little trust in their own opportunities to influence societal decision-making.
Other indicators of participation are also worrying. According to national election studies, Finns are increasingly clearly divided into two groups: people who are active and participative and those who are alienated and marginalised from politics and political parties. The turnout in the spring 2021 municipal elections, 55 per cent, was the lowest in 70 years.
According to the PALO research project’s policy brief, only about one in four Finns trust their local decision-makers and under a fifth believe that residents’ opinions are heard in municipal decision-making.
Political parties, one of the cornerstones of Finnish democracy, also have problems. An extensive survey commissioned by Sitra in 2020 showed that more than half of Finnish people thought that political parties were disconnected from ordinary people and that the public’s opinions were not taken into consideration by political parties in decision-making.
The figures show that the development of democracy has not kept up with today’s fast-paced world and technological development. The acceptability of the system as a whole becomes eroded if people become side-lined and feel that their concerns do not make it onto the political agenda. Political alienation should be fought in all ways possible. The New forms of participation project aims to develop new ways to participate to support the representative system.
What did we do?
The New forms of participation project strengthened participatory democracy in Finland through experiments and studies and by supporting the adoption of new forms of participation. We aimed to disseminate our work extensively across Finland and strengthened the coupling of these new forms of participation with decision-making. The key focus areas of our work were as follows:
- Increasing awareness: We increased awareness of the methods and opportunities of participatory democracy. We provided information about the forms of participation that attract different participant profiles and how they could be promoted.
- Method development: Together with researchers, developers, government and civil society parties, we developed existing and created new forms of participation to make them easily adoptable, applicable and more effective. We offered development workshops to help with the adoption and application of these new participative methods.
- Experiments: we carried out and supported experiments with digital, deliberative and direct forms of participation.
- Coupling with decision-making: we anchored new and advanced existing forms of participation more deeply in the structures of decision-making.
- International co-operation: we engaged in international co-operation with leading experts in the field of innovative democracy and strengthened Finnish development networks.
Who was involved?
We wanted to inspire an extensive group of developers of democracy to join us in reforming Finnish democracy. We aimed to be an intermediary between research, political decision-making and civil society.
A key focus area in our operations was the new well-being services counties established in connection with the county elections in January 2022. We supported the well-being services counties to create a structure that was democratic, strengthened civil servants’ and elected representatives’ awareness of the importance of resident participation and increased the residents’ opportunities to influence by developing new forms of participation. Our work supported the execution of the National Democracy Programme 2025 and new public governance strategy, the key goals of which were expanding citizens’ opportunities to influence.
What is happening now?
The project launched in November 2021 and continued as part of the Democracy and Participation theme until the end of 2024, but Sitra’s work to strengthen democracy continues in the Democracy Innovations programme.
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