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Notes -
Finland has a new right-wing government. It's been called the most right-wing one in Finland's postwar history, since it is headed by centre-right National Coalition, contains the right-wing populist/nationalist Finns Party and doesn't contain the Centre Party, which has been previously been in government with these two but is, as the name says, more centrist.
Essentially, the new government is combining an anti-union, austerity-oriented economic agenda of the center-right with a list of anti-immigration measures favored by the nationalists. However, while the foreign papers have mostly been concerned with the claims that the most important thing about this govt is far-right inclusion, the economic agenda comes first; the anti-immigration measures, while they probably will lead to immigration cuts, are still not as hard as , for instance, what a roughly similar coalition in Sweden has set last year.
Insofar as economic measures go,
There's also two minor parties, the Christian Democrats who basically set no demands for participation and are just happy to be a part of this government and Swedish People's Party, a liberal party that watches over the interests of the Swedish-speaking minority and had considerable troubles fitting in with the Finns Party's nationalism and probably managed to prevent some of their more hardline immigration proposals from taking force.
It's nice to see a party platform that doesn't hinge on American idpol exports.
Do you expect these policy changes to be effective? That's a pretty loaded question, so perhaps split it:
Will they be able to implement most or all of their policies?
Are said policies likely to have the intended effect?
Are they leaving existing democratic norms intact?
The big issues are what happens when the economic policies face the test of Finland's powerful union movement and when economic and social policies come to grips with Finland's welfare-state-oriented constitution. Regarding the latter one, I've read (though can't fully confirm) a number of people saying that the economic measures are likely to pass the constitutional test but at least some immigration measures might not, which would of course be just another example of the economic right being the top dog in this coalition compared to the nationalist right.
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