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