'Democracy' and 'People's Power' in the Finnish Parliament: the Struggle between Representative, Participatory and Direct Democracy

Abstract

The Finnish language is one that offers two translations of the <br/>concept ‘democracy,’ demokratia and kansanvalta (people’s <br/>power), which have remained in active political use. We analyse <br/>the existence of two terms as a linguistic affordance, providing <br/>political agents with possibilities for resisting and supporting the <br/>prevailing interpretations of democracy. We ask how and where <br/>the different versions occur in parliamentary speech (1980–2021) <br/>and in the MPs’ interviews (1998–2018). In quantitative analysis, <br/>we study the relative appearance of words close to these terms. <br/>In qualitative analysis, we study such terms (e.g. representative, <br/>Finnish and western) that have different profiles with demokratia<br/>and kansanvalta and study how these terms characterise and shape <br/>democracy. This way, we are able to question the dictionary-based <br/>understanding of these terms as synonyms. The difference between <br/>them is both geographical, kansanvalta referring more strictly to <br/>domestic phenomena, and functional, since demokratia covers <br/>most of the issues of procedural democracy and kansanvalta more <br/>distinctively the realisation of the presumed will of the people.<br/>