An Engine of Growth or a Public Burden? Economic Knowledge and Expertise in Finnish Parliamentary Discourse on Social Policy, 1960–2020.
While several studies have focused on the production and dissemination of Keynesian and neoliberal ideas in Northern Europe, less is known about how these intellectual frameworks have been received and employed in parliamentary political discourse. In this article we help fill this gap by examining...
| Publicado en: | Scandinavian Journal of History Vol. 50; no. 4; pp. 404 - 430 |
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| Autores principales: | , |
| Formato: | Artículo |
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Taylor & Francis Ltd
Sep2025
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| Sumario: | While several studies have focused on the production and dissemination of Keynesian and neoliberal ideas in Northern Europe, less is known about how these intellectual frameworks have been received and employed in parliamentary political discourse. In this article we help fill this gap by examining how politicians have evoked or contested economic knowledge and expertise in Finnish parliamentary debates over social policy in connection with claims on the relationship between social policy and economic growth. The data consists of Finnish parliamentary debates on social policy legislation from the last seven decades. Our results indicate that politicians most often conceptualize social policy and economic growth as a procyclical link, where growth creates limits on the expansion and reduction of public social spending. We suggest that the analytical framework of epistemic governance provides a fruitful way for making sense of the changing role of expert knowledge in modern societies. |
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