From a Contingent Party System to Party System Convergence? Mapping Party System Change in Postwar Finland

The current imperative in journal articles of presenting new data and new 'theory' has largely been at the expense of new interpretations and 'big picture' analyses. This article proceeds from the failure of the comparative politics literature, from Sartori to Evans and Green-Pedersen, to grasp the essential dynamics of the Cold War Finnish party system and the curious absence of Finnish studies of the significant legislative party system change occurring thereafter. Following a critique of Green-Pedersen's notion of 'party system implosion' as applied to Finland, the article depicts a shift from the contingent party system of the Cold War era, when exogenous veto players formed institutional barriers to office-seeking parties, to the present convergent party system where most, if not all parties compete for, and converge on, the centre ground and cooperate interchangeably in governing coalitions without significant deviations in the main lines of public policy.