Parliament as an arena for politicisation: The Finnish Eduskunta and crisis management operations

Abstract

The literature on parliamentary war powers has focused on the veto rights of legislatures. This case study on the Finnish Eduskunta adopts a more comprehensive approach. Based on parliamentary documents and statistics, it reconstructs parliamentary involvement in decision-making on individual crisis management operations, laws on crisis management, and ‘grand strategy’ documents since the mid-1990s. The findings underscore the importance of politicisation, with conflicts over legislation and the Government Security and Defence Policy Reports enabling political parties and the Eduskunta to set parameters for subsequent decisions on individual operations. The politicisation of crisis management facilitated stronger participation rights for the Eduskunta and created ‘ownership’ of troop deployments among members of parliament (MPs). Debates have nonetheless become less intense, with broader cross-party support for participation in crisis management and for European Union (EU)-led operations in particular.