•The April 2015 election consolidated the big-four system in Finland.•The Finnish Centre won back its losses in 2011 and became the largest parliamentary party.•The political left continued to ...decline.•The government coalition consists of only three parties: the Finnish Centre, National Coalition Party and the Finns Party.
Matti Vanhanen's second government ruled the country following the March 2007 election in which his KESK (Finnish Centre Party) and Jyrki Katainen's KOK (National Coalition Party) almost tied for ...victory in terms of parliamentary seats (Nurmi and Nurmi, 2007). Smaller members of the governing coalition were VIHR (the Greens) and RKP (Swedish Peoples Party). The latter was following an established tradition: over more than three decades RKP has been present in each governing coalition. Although the government ruled throughout the four-year parliamentary term, Vanhanen did not. He decided to resign roughly a year before the 2011 election. At the KESK party conference, he was replaced as leader by Mari Kiviniemi and the latter was then nominated as prime minister for the remaining term. The reasons behind Vanhanen's resignation are still to some extent a matter of speculation. His private life had been under intensive journalistic scrutiny for nearly the entire period of his premiership. More importantly, however, the intensifying debate about party financing irregularities -- a debate which centred on KESK -- and the ensuing police investigations very likely contributed to Vanhanen's willingness to seek pastures greener (or at least calmer) well before the election. That decision may have been in the interests of the party as well. Despite the replacement of the prime minister, the government coalition seemed to work without major friction. Copyright Elsevier Ltd.
Reports on the March 2007 parliamentary election in Finland which followed the 2006 presidential election in which incumbent Tarja Halonen of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) narrowly defeated ...National Coalition Party (KOK) opponent Sauli Niinisto. Finland's proportional open-party list electoral system & the uneventful 2007 electoral campaign are described. The 67.9 percent turnout continued a downward trend that began in 1979 & was only interrupted in 2003 when turnout was almost 70 percent. Although the Finnish Center Party continued to play a major role, the KOK was the clear election winner while the SDP took a serious beating with the loss of eight seats, a serious setback for the political left. The geography of Finnish electoral districts is discussed, along with the position of minor parties; the record high number of women members now in parliament; & the shift in the governing coalition brought about by the surprisingly strong success of the KOK, which was largely due to support for Sauli Niinisto. Tables, Figures, References. J. Lindroth
On the morning of September 28, 1994 the ferry Estonia sank off the coast of Finland. The loss of life reached 852 persons, while 137 persons were rescued. This study investigated the effectiveness ...of Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD) as a crisis intervention process. Results of this controlled investigation revealed that the CISD intervention proved effective in reducing symptoms of distress and psychological trauma as psychometrically assessed.
The study examined how well subjects were able to ignore the presence of irrelevant stimulus information in noise and in silence, as a function of age. Children aged six and nine, and adults, ...performed speeded card-sorting tasks with one binary dimension relevant and zero or two dimensions irrelevant. The presence of irrelevant information interfered with performance, the magnitude of interference declining with age. The interfering effects of irrelevant information were greater when it was (relatively) more salient than when it was less salient, but there was no interaction between relative salience and the effects of noise. Noise (95 dB(A)) slowed down sorting performance of adult subjects in all conditions, it slightly improved the performance of nine-year-old children, and it improved the performance of six-year-old children significantly when irrelevant information was present. The effects of noise on attentional control are discussed, mainly with reference to inhibitory effects of noise on subvocal activity.
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