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David Arter
Work on the representational focus of Finnish parliamentarians has been largely conspicuous by its absence and the notion of ‘constituency service’ is neither familiar to Finns, nor does it translate into Finnish. Based on interviews with MPs and their personal assistants, data from the Finnish leg of the Comparative Candidate Survey and official statistical material, this article makes a first, rudimentary stab at analysing constituency service in the Finnish context. Drawing on the comparative literature, there appear strong electoral and party system incentives for Finnish MPs to engage in constituency effort. The combination of decentralised candidate selection procedures and an open-list PR voting system makes a strong case for personal-vote-cultivation through constituency service. The article asks whether this is the case and, if so, how do Finns do constituency service. The distinction is drawn between action that is primarily internal to the constituency and action beyond the boundaries of the constituency and three indicators of constituency service are employed (i) the staging of ‘surgeries’ and concomitant casework (ii) ‘delivery’ through participation on municipal councils (iii) various forms of legislative initiative, especially those connected with the annual Finance Bill. It is argued that in Finland constituency service does not involve action that is primarily constituency based. Measured by the frequency with which they submit constituency-specific budget motions, a core of ‘constituency MPs’ is identified and varying motives for their constituency effort suggested.
