Nominated by Finnish Political Science Association

Abstract

Fundamental state restructuring has taken place in Finland over the past fifteen years and this transformation is increasingly revolving around the spatial dimension of statehood. The nation-state as the primary scale of political regulation and articulation from the 1960s onwards is increasingly challenged in contemporary political action concerning the "survival of Finland." The analysis discloses a new discursive field which structures and regulates political thinking about the Finnish state and which has surfaced during the past decade. This new discursive field includes four key dimensions: 1) the national question is purely global in nature, 2) the national question is based on continuous change, 3) nations and states are competing in world markets similarly to the way corporations do, and 4) global competition between states manifests itself in the locational preferences of national and international firms and creative class. The welfare spatiality which is based on social compromise and a particular decentralized settlement structure is increasingly challenged in pro-business argumentation which emphasizes the need to create economically effective, centralized as well as internationally attractive state space. The paper therefore argues that in Finland the key dimension of the current debate on state transformation especially touches upon the issue of getting out of the Keynesian welfare state tradition that evolved during the past decades. Three conclusions follow from the empirical analysis. First, the role of state territory is increasingly re-imagined in most of the neoliberal arguments of state space. Secondly, the Keynesian spatial fixes still cause a significant inertia regarding the construction of a state that would be based on pure economic engineering. Thirdly, the discrepancy between Keynesian spatial compromise and Schumpeterian economic reasoning will most obviously lead to growing tensions in the field of regional politics and planning.

Erratum

This article was originally published on November 4, 2008 with the title: ``Towards Attractive and Cost-Efficient State Space: The Political Geography of the Production of State Transformation in Finland."

The title was corrected to: ``Towards Attractive and Cost-Efficient State Space: Political Geography of the Production of State Transformation in Finland" on November 21, 2008.

On page 22, the last sentence of the second paragraph which reads:
``According to the editor in chief of the "The success of the greater Helsinki region is decisive for the opportunities of all of Finland" (Virkkunen 2007)."
should read:
``According to the editor in chief of the leading Finnish daily newspaper, "the success of the greater Helsinki region is decisive for the opportunities of all of Finland" (Virkkunen 2007)."

Recommended Citation

Moisio, Sami (2008) "Towards Attractive and Cost-Efficient State Space: Political Geography of the Production of State Transformation in Finland," World Political Science Review: Vol. 4 : Iss. 3, Article 2.
DOI: 10.2202/1935-6226.1053
Available at: http://www.bepress.com/wpsr/vol4/iss3/art2