Level of Democracy in Finland: Two Measures of Democracy in Competition

Abstract or Introduction

Addressing a country that was located for approximately half of the examined time on the
edge of two ideologies, of two different concepts of Weltanschauung, it is likely to give rise
to interesting outcomes. Hence, Finland which for a long timeframe after the Second World
War was indeed cornered between the “free” West and the communist Soviet bloc was
chosen deliberately by the author. In this essay, he seeks to explore and to analyze in brief
the development of the level of democracy of this particular nation covering the period
between 1974 and 2006.
Hereby, two different types of measurement are applied and, subsequently, their results are
compared. Concretely, the data coming from Freedom House, respectively from Inglehart &
Welzel’s measure of “effective democracy”, are the main actors both exerting for preferably
appropriate findings. Freedom House measures the degree of democracy of a state by
assessing a two-part set of categories, namely political rights and civil liberties following the
definition of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As a result, countries are ranked on
a scale from 1 (highest amount) to 7 (least amount) which implies their level of democracy
(Freedom House 2005).
On the other hand, the concept of “effective democracy” argues that a democratic system of
government is mainly inspired by the idea to empower people. Inglehart and Welzel also
evaluate prevailing political and liberal rights. However, one has to familiarize oneself with
their thesis that rule of law is an additional crucial factor of a state determining whether it is
effective or not. By combining rule of law and democratic rights an index is compiled on a 0-
100 scale classifying the countries as non-democracies, ineffective democracies, and
effective democracies (Welzel 2007a).
Ultimately, it is to mention that a comparison between the two types of measures is only
possible from 1996 to 2006 due to limited data concerning the “effective democracy”.