Science under siege

 

We need continued innovation to stay on top of global challenges.

The horizon looks bright thanks to science and technology (photo by author in Montenegro).

The Happiest Country Rejects Divisiveness

 

People in Finland are getting tired of cuts to the welfare state and the anti-immigrant rhetoric in recent years.

On Sunday, April 14^th, Finland had regional and local elections where subnational units, cities and communes elected their representatives. The results were a radical turnaround from the previous national elections in 2023, that ushered in the current right-wing coalition government. This time, the opposition Social Democratic Party gained the most and became the largest party, while the coalition government partners generally lost their shares. Most significantly, the anti-immigration Finns Party suffered a crushing blow.

I arrived in Helsinki soon after and was able to gauge the sentiments of some of the denizens of the capital city where I was born and spent the first 25 years of my life. The admittedly completely unscientific sample consisting of people in my circle nevertheless provided some insights into why this change happened. Mind you, the people I talked with represent a range of very different political views, although they all are from Helsinki and all have been academically educated.

Since the fall of the government of the Social Democratic prime minister Sanna Marin (famous for her social media presence, featuring dancing and partying), Finland has been governed by a right-wing coalition led by Petteri Orpo of the largest conservative party in the country, the National Coalition Party (NCP). In the parliamentary system of Finland where there currently are nine national parties represented in the parliament, no single party will ever come even close to garnering an absolute majority of votes. Consequently, all governments are coalition governments pulled together by the biggest winner of any election. The current government brings together members from the NCP, the Swedish People´s Party (SFP/RKP), the Christian Democrats, and the populist Finns Party. SFP and the Christians are minor players, respectively with 4.3% and 4.2% of the votes in the 2023 elections, but Orpo brought them along to pull together enough for a ruling majority.

The Finns Party with their 20.1% share of the votes in the 2023 election rose to the second place just behind NCP. With this, they laid claim to a large number of seats in the government, including that of the Minister of Finance: Riikka Purra’s rather extreme views regarding immigrants have shocked many citizens, while gaining approval from her supporters.

The government embarked on an unabashed assault on the welfare state that has long been the foundation of the Finnish society, as in its Nordic neighbors. The government policies have focused on cutting public services, including support to health care, students and the unemployed. International development assistance faces reductions of one-quarter of the funding. The government program also includes tax cuts for firms and the wealthy, while the value added tax was increased resulting in higher costs for everyone, including those with the fewest means.

Finland has been ranked the world’s happiest country for eight years in a row. Most of my compatriots scoff at this distinction: we don’t feel that we’re particularly happy—and certainly don’t show it by dancing or hugging each other or smiling excessively. In fact, there’s an old saying in Finland advising us that s/he who is happy should hide their happiness (Kell’ onni on se onnen kätkeköön). The UN-sponsored World Happiness Report ranks countries based on a single question of subjective feeling. But it also looks into areas such as income, healthy life expectancy, social support, generosity, freedom to make life choices, and perceptions of corruption. It clearly doesn’t measure individual happiness. Molly Young in a perceptive article in the New York Times Magazine makes the distinction between “affective” and “evaluative” happiness. The Finnish kind is more the latter, like contentedness.

The fact that Finland has ranked so high on this happiness list for such a long time is largely due to the extensive welfare state. Finland is a high-income country with relatively small differences between the rich and poor, at least compared with the USA. We have world class education (although the standards have sunk somewhat in recent years) and universal healthcare. We have a lengthy life expectancy, which stems partly from that access to healthcare, but also from the clean environment and relatively healthy lifestyle, with most people enjoying outdoors activities in nature. Importantly, the Finns have a high level of trust in each other—a lost wallet is likely to be returned to the rightful owner; and we generally trust our elected officials and government employees to be honest. It’s one of the least corrupt countries in the world (which obviously doesn’t mean everyone is squeaky clean).

The welfare state is of course expensive and has resulted in soaring public debt. It reached 82.1% of GDP in the last quarter of 2024 (which is bad, or not so bad, depending on what you compare with; for neighboring Sweden the percentage is just 46.18% but for the mighty USA it is 97.8%—and counting). Maintaining the welfare state translates into a high rate and highly progressive taxation, which is a constant complaint you hear in Helsinki. The current government’s strategy is to shift the tax burden from firms and wealthy individuals to the everyman, relying on the universally discredited trickle-down theory. When it cuts services at the same time, the result is people being squeezed. Which is not popular.

As a result, the biggest winner in the April elections were the Social Democrats, which collected 22.5% of the vote and became the largest party. The voters’ message was clear: no more cuts. However, the money has to come from somewhere. A professor friend of mine, who is quite unhappy with the current government, also indicated that he would not vote for the Social Democrats because of their profligate spending.

One of the issues plaguing Finland is productivity, which is affected by the population structure. Like most European countries, Finland’s population is aging rapidly (most Asian countries, too, including China and Japan are facing the same trend). Another scientist friend of mine attributed many of Finland’s economic problems to this fundamental issue. The dependency ratio—that is, persons below 15 or over 65 years of age compared to working age population—is now 61.1, with 23.6% of people older than 65. With the below-replacement birth rate of just 1.3 children per woman, and the longevity (79.0 years for men and 84.2 years for women), aging of the population structure is inevitable

Except for immigration. Without it, the Finnish population actually decreased by 17,956 people in 2023. In the same year, net migration to the country was 57,914, thus more than compensating for the decline. The immigrants also tend to be younger, working age adults. Like elsewhere in Europe and the United States, immigration is a hot political issue. The neighboring countries—Russia, Estonia and Sweden—have always been top origins of immigrants, with the addition of Ukrainians since Russia’s attack on the country (while the inflow of Russians has been halted by closed borders). However, it is the immigrants and asylum seekers from countries like Iraq, Somalia, Syria, Afghanistan, and Kurds from Iran and Turkey, who get most of the attention.

The Finns Party built their platform largely on opposing immigration and they were for some years very successful in their strategy. Now the latest election results suggest otherwise. They received only 7.8% of the vote in the regional elections and even less (7.6%) at the municipal level.

Russia with which Finland shares a 1,340 km-long border is a problematic neighbor, not least in recent years. Putin’s aggression in Ukraine and beyond prompted Finland to abandon its traditional neutrality and join NATO in 2024. This decision was supported by an overwhelming majority of Finns, including those I talked with. The highly popular President Alexander Stubb has provided solid leadership in the country and beyond when it comes to foreign policy. (Stubb who started his presidency in 2024 came from NCP. However, in Finland when elected, the president habitually gives up his party affiliation to truly unify the entire nation.)

One friend, an art historian told me that, while she has never been a fan of Russia and has never visited Moscow, she used to travel regularly to St. Petersburg, a cosmopolitan city with handsome architecture and great art collections, only about 380 km from Helsinki. There used to be a lot of cross-border traffic while the border was open. My friend confessed to being a bit nostalgic about the trips but she accepts that the city being off-limits is the price we have to pay.

All parties, including the traditionally anti-NATO Left Alliance, supported Finland’s membership in the military alliance. However, a recent poll shows a decrease in trust in NATO since President Trump has cast doubt on American commitment to come to the aid of fellow NATO members. Still, two-thirds of the Finns support NATO membership. Due to Russia’s proximity and the wars Finland fought with the Soviet Union (1939; and 1941-42), Finland, unlike many other Western European countries, never neglected its own defense or relied solely on US security guarantees. In 2023, it spent 2.4% of its GDP on defense and has pledged to increase spending to 3% before the end of the decade. This obviously poses further budgetary challenges and competes with other needs of the welfare state.

Finland is a country where people live close to nature and it is not surprising that the Greens have been relatively strong. This time around, too, they gathered 9.1% of the vote. I was curious why more Finns don’t vote for the Greens (in fact, their share nationally was almost identical to that of the Left Alliance). I asked two of my friends—a musician and a university professor—about their views. Both gave similar answers, having to do with too broad a coalition of special interests, which dilutes the focus and reduces the excitement regarding the Green agenda. This influence of special interests may be similar to the situation of the Democratic Party in the US.

So far, I’ve written about the country as a whole. Helsinki is a bit of an anomaly. Of Finland’s 5.6 million people, about 1.4 million live in the capital region. There NCP remains dominant, although the Social Democrats almost caught up with them. Although the Greens lost somewhat as compared with the 2021 municipal elections, they still remained the third largest party with 17.9% of the vote. In Helsinki, the Finns Party received only 5.5% of the vote. This reflects the fact that Helsinki is the wealthiest, best educated and most cosmopolitan place in the country. Both the NCP and the Social Democrats are largely supported by urbanites and well-educated people. The same goes for the Greens, while the Finns Party and the Center Party tend to be popular outside of the cities.

Like elsewhere, Finnish politicians and people alike face difficult choices. One fundamental tension is between the financial burden of maintaining the welfare state and the growing fiscal deficits. The need to invest more into defense also competes with other priorities.

The Russian war against Ukraine and the generally unstable situation in Europe and the world, has diverted attention from other issues, such as climate change. Still, a recent survey by the Ministry of the Environment shows that almost everyone (91%) is worried about climate change and global biodiversity loss, and 97% of the respondents believe that clean nature enhances people’s health and well-being.

Another tension appears between the need to maintain Finland’s productivity and working-age population and the perceived problems caused by immigration. While Finland overall is still a fairly low-immigration country, as compared with many other European countries, such as France and Germany (apart from policy, there’s no doubt that the northern climate and the challenging language contribute to this), there has been an increase in recent years. This is felt especially with regard to non-European immigrants whose culture may make assimilation in the Finnish society harder. While 85% of immigrants live in cities, the opposition to them is highest outside, as the support to the Finns Party shows.

As population ages in all major regions of the world, except in Africa, and the UN projects that the global population will start shrinking during the second half of this century, many countries have tried establishing pronatal policies encouraging people to have more children. We do have to have a serious debate of population and whether its continued growth is needed or there are other ways to deal with the challenges (look especially to Japan). But that’s an entirely different discussion for another day.

It will be interesting to see which way future directions in the Finnish politics will turn. As a Finn living outside of the country for many years, I for one will be watching it carefully.

[Originally published at https://juhauitto.substack.com on May 12, 2025.]