The Finnish presidential elections: first round analysis

The results of the Finnish presidential elections indicate a vote in favour of Europe – in so far as the president has much say on national EU policy (i.e. very little). Sauli Niinistö of National Coalition was the uncontestable winner with 38 percent of the vote. Pekka Haavisto from the Greens made it to the second round by 1.3 percentage points with 18.8 percent of the vote. It is a historical moment in many ways. For the first time in 30 years Finland will not have a social democratic president (after Mauno Koivisto, Martti Ahtisaari and Tarja Halonen). Neither will the country have a Centrist-Agrarian president (Urho Kekkonen), or even a president supported by the social democrats as Kekkonen (president from 1956) was at some point. For the first time there will not be a traditional left-right confrontation in the second round of the elections.

Niinistö is a more conservative candidate with strong experience as a former party leader and minister, not to mention that after he narrowly lost in the second round of the 2006 to Tarja Halonen, his supporters have been waiting for these elections. Haavisto is has more experience in the foreign policy through peace negotiations. He is a liberal, openly-gay candidate concerned about the widening income gap in Finland. Unlike some in the Green party, he has not seen the populist (True) Finns party as a political enemy. In two weeks he would need support across the party lines.

The small Green Party’s candidate Pekka Haavisto left behind Paavo Väyrynen, a veteran politician of the Centre Party who made highly successful campaign beating both his own initial gallup ratings of few percentages and his party’s ratings discredited in the previous years (2003–2007) in government. Having lost both the vote for the party leadership and his MP’s position after moving south from Lapland, this presented a potential comeback for the former party leader even though he lost, once again, the possibility to run on the second round.

After having scored a landslide in the general elections in 2010 for his party and himself Timo Soini of the (True) Finns Party was left fourth with only 9.4 percent of the vote. His own analysis was that half of the supporters of his party wanted him as the president but the other half wanted to keep him as the party-leader active in politics, which the Finnish tradition would not allow for presidents. Part of this would explain the fall of support into a half. But it is also possible, that his party’s support had come in part from the Centre Party’s traditional base, and choice of a more similar, EU-critical and anti-power-elite candidate Väyrynen with his fun campaign made them return. Soini tripled his vote from the previous presidential elections in 2006, but considering the phenomenal raise of his party to the club of the large parties in the meanwhile, this is a weak result.

The clear loser of the elections was Paavo Lipponen’s Social Democrats who lost the post of a president they had been holding for decades. He got over fifth of the vote on the Swedish speaking cost around Vaasa, but averaged to 6.7 percent. There are a number of reasons why he did not get the vote needed for a respectable score for large party: Some explain this with the decreased trade union’s role in these elections. Previously they have expressed their support in may ways to the social democratic candidate. This year, after corruption claims that have mainly be directed to the right-wing parties but also drew attention to the trade union support for the SDP, after notoriously backfired video campaign in the 2006 elections, and after Soini’s (True) Finns Party has been seeking to move into the trade union politics. Part of the explanation may be the profile of Lipponen as a great man of the past, who next to the other candidates, in particular, Paavo Arhinmäki, appeared too old for the job or a representative of the previous era (that Väyrynen ought also have seemed, but he ran a vibrant royalist campaign). Generally, it can be argued although Lipponen had his own vision, his party is still in the search for identity. Many traditional supporters of the party did not go to the polls of voted for another candidate.

The Left Alliance fared better than it had done in the previous time when it had its own candidate in the elections. The party leader Paavo Arhinmäki got 5.5 percent of the vote. Unlike Lipponen for the SDP, as the active party chairman, he could offer a vision not only of his Finland, world economy and European politics but also of his party’s. This is crucial for the local elections in the autumn 2012.

Combined, the left-wing vote has shrunken, significantly, however. Even adding the two parties up with the Greens, it is less than a third of the total vote – less than their combined figure in the general elections in 2011 (the left-leaning, internationalist, social justice camp). The EU-critical Centre, Soini, and Christian Democrats got a similar share, also significantly less than in 2011 (the EU-critical social conservatives with regional support-base). The largest share, over a third went to the National Coalition (that could be characterized as a conservative-liberal camp, with pro-NATO, pro-nuclear, and pro-EU/euro sympathies). As expected many centrist and Soini-ist supporters have been expected to support Niinistö.

Niinistö and especially Haavisto need to add a regional dimension into their campaigns, after all there are Väyrynen’s votes in Northern Finland, in particular, to collect. None of the losing candidates have dedicated their vote to either Niinistö or Haavisto. The Greens and the civic movement around Haavisto have a near-impossible task to double their vote to match it with Niinistö’s and then gain as many extra votes. They would need to ignore or break the boundaries of the above mentioned camps (that for here mainly served analytical purposes). From the perspective of his campaign, these camps ought not to exist in appearance, so he would not be categorised in one. For Niinistö it the lead is so strong that it suffices to appear as more energetic than on the first round.

One thing that speaks for Haavisto is his upbeat campaign. Niinistö gained 39.6 percent of the votes cast before the actual voting day, and only 34.7 of those cast on the voting day, in contrast to Haavisto’s figures 14.6 and 22.3 percent. Many of the undecided voters cast their votes to Haavisto, and one can also ask whether all Niinistö’s advance votes are solid. There is also a potential trap in this thinking: many Niinistö’s supporters may have voted for Haavisto in attempt to keep Väyrynen or Soini out from the final race.

The advance voting starts already on Wednesday and Haavisto’s team should start their campaign without getting too tainted as a left-wing campaing yet collecting all left-leaning voters, and without appearing too self-righteous urban world-saving hipsters for the regions but serious about the increasing gaps in income and regional equality, if they want to have in the second round taking place on 5 January 2012. There is also still room for improvement also on the non-voters, as the turnout was 72.8 percent, whereas in 2006 it was 73.9, increasing on the second round to 77.2 percent.

(The results on YLE. My previous post accounts for the candidates and their campaigns.)

Finnish presidential elections 2012

There’s not that much analysis on today’s Finnish presidential elections in English, and even I have practically discontinued writing anything in this blog about Finland or Hungary. I’ll try my best in the near future to update it more. After two month’s absence from Finland studying populism based in California, I find the Finnish presidential elections turned into an interesting battle.

Election debates and advertisement brought out interesting aspects on the candidates, who had been hastily gathered to challenge – or at least appear to do so – the “uncrowned king” Sauli Niinistö of National Coalition. He has been waiting for six years, having made it to the second round in 2006, when he narrowly lost to Tarja Halonen social democrat, first female president of the country. In the meanwhile, the powers of the president has been diminished in favour of stronger parliamentarism. Many expected Niinistö to win 50 percent of the vote on the first round, which in the dark era of tightening budgets many also saw as a good thing. Not having to organise a second round would be a good place to save public finances.

On the election day Sunday 22nd January, the situation is slightly different. A second round is imminent, as following the polls, Niinistö’s support has shrunken from 49 to 29 in just two months. On Thursday, almost a third of the Finns could not yet name their candidates. (Yle poll)
For decades Finland has been run by three large parties, the formerly agrarian Centre Party, the Social Democratic Party, and the National Coalition, which have shared the power in coalition governments in this multi-party system. In the parliamentary elections in spring 2011, this holy trinity was put in question by the populist Finns Party. The elections were historical in terms of turnover in the parliament. Many politicians had been stained by corruption charges (indeed, in Finland!) due to electoral funding scandals.

On the candidates

Sauli Niinistö of the National Coalition has been in the minds of half of Finland as the next president, having failed in the previous second round. He is taken for granted, for better or worse: if only he wanted to run, the National Coalition would set him. At some point he seemed reluctant, perhaps because the responsibilities of a president – the powers – were shrunken. He also has a young wife and family. He has been campaigning alone, seemingly without putting in much effort – as he would not need to. This shows in the election debates where he has not said much new, as if he wanted to avoid jeopardizing his vote by saying something wrong. His persona and name act as the prime signifier for anything and the party, which has the highest rating and is the leading party of the six-party coalition, would itself bring in enough votes for making it to the second round. It seems from the slogans, “working for Finland”, that the party is trying to profile itself more and more as the party of the working middle-class. In the election advertisement Niinistö wears jeans, jacket and a checker pattern shirts. It is at odds with the dignified statement image Niinistö carries, or is projected to him by the electorate. He represents conservative values – even more than many fellow politicians in his party. Finally on the election day, he is wearing a suit in the advertisement and saying “working for you”. The concept of “work” that National Coalition seeks to monopolise, is a double-edged one: not everybody is passionate about working. There is some reluctance in people’s minds when they say, “I’m off to work now”, and for many it is just to cover expenses.

The party leader of the Finns Party (formerly True Finns, that never was their official name, now they would prefer to be called the Finns, but that would be slightly confusing), Timo Soini is the unquestioned leader of the party, an MEP, and also the candidate in these elections. One would have expected his popularity and his landslide to have helped him to gain a good standing at the polls, but Soini’s rating have not been promising (scoring 6 percent in the above mentioned poll, putting him still on the 4th place in the race). It seems to have been difficult for Soini to act not as an underdog but the acknowledged political prodigy. Yet, this is hardly would be the post most people in his party would like to see him holding: a president in Finland would have to give up their party ID. What would the (True) Finns Party be without Soini? Soini has managed to question the political elite, but is he now part of it himself?

Yet, one of the most important things for Soini in these elections has been to beat the SDP and smaller Left Alliance to boost their party’s importance on a new ground, the imminent trade union elections. According to the polls this is possible. The Social Democrats chose as their candidate a former Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen, who has prior work experience in the diplomatic field through to his PM posts (two full terms 1995–2003) and beyond, and is a house-hold name across generations – and even known in foreign press. He’s been associated with the Western and European attitude and taking Finland to the EU. But at the same time has been discredited for losing his party’s image in the coalition governments (although this could have happened anyway given the international crisis of social democracy), and in recovery from the recession, that hit Finland in after the collapse of the Soviet Union and profitable Eastern trade. Recently the left has regretted the way in which wealth tax was removed under Lipponen’s government. As a controversial figure, his support may show core support of the SDP loyals (though dissent is possible as the party secretary disliked by some has promised to step down if the elections do not fare well). Lipponen calls for courage, in his pro-European election message. The oldest and slower than the rest of the candidates, Lipponen has had his moments in the debates agree many commentators.

Considering Soini is an MEP and cannot step outside all discussions of the EU, the seemingly most anti-European candidate of the elections comes from the Centre party. Paavo Väyrynen is a veteran politician many have a love-hate-relationship with. Unsuccessful in becoming the leader of his party in 2010, he changed from his home voting district Lapland to the region surrounding Helsinki (Uusimaa), and failed to make it to the parliament where he had first been elected at 23 in 1970. He became the party leader at 33. He run as the party’s candidate in the presidential elections in 1988 and 1994. His campaign has been the most innovative, for the post that has little more ceremonial giving an impression of a royal candidate (that would question any King Sauli associations). He sells election mugs in coronation porcelain style, with him and his wife’s picture. Bringing in American style of campaigning Vuokko Väyrynen has been present in the campaigns, bringing an ethos of equality and balance, or life-long heterosexual marriage – and make a difference to other candidates whose partners have not been featured in this way. Luckily for Väyrynen, whose party is one of two opposition parties, a memo was leaked from the ministry of Public Administration and Local Government that the 336 Finnish local governments are to be reduced to roughly 70, which unsurprisingly has caused controversy. As the voice from the North, Väyrynen’s profile differs from the rest of the candidates and the regional vote for him can be significant. Having fallen off the bandwagon of his own party as well as from the MP’s post, though in the absence of other plausible candidates he was chosen to run in this impossible-seeming race, he also now appears to many as an anti-elite candidate. Commentators have argued that an obstacle to his success could be his self-righteous attitude and narcissism, which gives a comical flair to his public image, for better or worse. His tactic has been to appear slightly over-the-top. His advertisement in the newspapers leading to the election has been the best: him portrayed as a president, behind a wooden table, in front of a painting representing the Finnish countryside and with the flag of Finland and a mug of him and his wife (Saturday) and with him and his wife with “Happy six years”, a reference to new year as in finnish uusi is new and kuusi is six, signed by Vuokko and Paavo Väyrynen. Here you can see passion, and that politics can be fun.

The candidate of the Greens, Pekka Haavisto started gathering a civic association to back his candidacy well on time for the elections. A former minister for the Greens, lost MP’s seat in 2007 and regained it 2011 – perhaps also boosted by the popular campaign. The Finnish Green Party reaches circa 8 percent support and situates itself between the left and right on a socially liberal position (environment, human rights, equality, welfare), and Haavisto was a potential candidate for the red-green wide alliance. As all parties decided to set a candidate the campaign has turned to a liberal direction. It also contested previous Green positions – after all they had lead an anti-populist campaign in the 2011 elections. Haavisto made friends with Teuvo Hakkarainen, a MP for Soini’s party, notorious for his racist and homophobic remarks. This was to show how instead of standing against one should foster communication between people with different beliefs and backgrounds. It caused some controversy but also gained points for Haavisto. Similarly controversially, in a marginal media interview he had seemed to be related environmentalist action group that made videos of farm animals in poor conditions to neo-Nazis. Another blow for the campaign was Haavisto’s Equadorian born husband’s drunken driving, which finally perhaps made him look human. Haavisto’s potential presidency has raised debate on whether such an public office, which substantially, from the perspective of the electorate, involves organizing a yearly gathering of political and cultural elite and diplomats, the Independence Day Ball, and standing next to one’s spouse welcoming each guest to the event and starting the celebratory waltz with him or her. In 2011, the few invited gay couples made headlines, setting a new climate. Many would like to see the first female president to be followed by the first gay president. And from the perspective of political science, we should not ignore the sizable (closet) gay vote as my colleague Tuula Juvonen has emphasized. Haavisto’s prime qualities in the election race are not linked to him being gay, but being a calm but knowledgeable debater and a fresh face in the race, in comparison to Niinistö and Soini or Väyrynen. Tipped as the new Ahtisaari on the basis of his skills in peace-negotiation, Haavisto’s slogan has been “the negotiator of the state”, said simply in a grey suit.

Paavo Arhinmäki, the leader of the Left Alliance, has also done well in the debates. Born in 1976, he represents the youth in the campaign. He also represents his own party, which is in the race mainly to improve its profile, difficult to do in a rainbow coalition government. He sounds different and delivers a message critical of the current economic climate and often of the EU. He also raises issues such as environment, global justice, existing social inequality and welfare. He also has been eager debater. Interestingly, in the last debate organized by the national broadcasting company YLE, Arhinmäki contested the way in which he was set to sit next to Soini, Väyrynen and Sari Essayah of the Christian Democrats as the Euro-critics. Arhinmäki’s campaign has been a success for his party, even if it may not be visible in these elections. Arhinmäki has been consistent in his image making throughout his political career, to the extent that paradoxically the checkered shirts, jeans and jacket Niinistö is wearing make him look more like Arhinmäki than himself. Tellingly of the success for the campaign, Arhinmäki is the most suitable candidate in the elections for 23 percent of those who filled the election test of the national daily Helsingin Sanomat, with Soini second, Lipponen third and Haavisto third. Niinistö only made it to fifth but got most votes 30 percent when asked, prior to the results of best-suited candidates, “whom I am actually going to vote for”.

The two other candidates from small parties are only going to gain few percentage of the vote: Eva Biaudet from the Swedish National Party representing the six-percent-strong Swedish minority, and Sari Essayah, an MEP for the Christian Democratic Party. While both have their strengths in the campaign, I will be brief (sorry). It suffices to say that Biaudet’s vote will leak perhaps to Haavisto and Niinistö in terms of liberal values in social liberal and conservative strands, and I would not be surprised if some in the area surrounding Vaasa would not be voting for Väyrynen in contesting the government’s reforms of the hitherto independent local governments. She has been a feminist candidate, and but this time it was not the issue after 12 years of presidency of Tarja Halonen. Sari Essayah has also according to some commentators given a human face for her party, whose main public involvements have been in opposing same-sex couple’s marriage. Now, their candidate has had to talk about many other issues, and Essayah, a former champion in race walking, with her knowledge from the European Parliament as an MEP has had the durability and skill for that. Her vote would pour to any of the right-wing parties, seen that in terms of the second place it may be a tight race.

So, here we go for now. I hope to add some analysis later tonight, as the results come in.

Success in a design competition: A New European Symbol?

My design from the Bauhaus Kolleg Programme on an EU flag has been selected out of 1400 entries as one of the twelve “new symbols” for Europe, by an international jury in a competition organised by a Dutch think thank for design and government. The design has been printed in a 2×3 meter size flag and is now hanging in the Hague for this week.

The point behind is “united in diversity”: I simply offered a chance to locals in Sibiu, the European Capital of Culture in 2007, to deconstruct and reconstruct the European flag placing stars on a blue door mat. I took pictures of each and every design, and gathered them into one single flag. The idea is that this flag could be repeated in other cities too. (Do let me know if you’re interested in hosting it!)

Funny that, being a political scientist / theorist, and making it to the top in a design competition… But that only means that symbols are for us all? More reflective thoughts, slide shows of the process, texts and photos are on the website of the memorial: http://euflagmemorial.wordpress.com.

professional news 2010

It’s indeed so that blogging has been replaced by facebook, where much of the colleagues and friends are. It’s especially popular in Finland, where I’ve now been based for two years.

Currently, I’m at the newly established Department of Political and Economic Studies at the University of Helsinki, where in Political Science I’ve been also in 2008 prior to my 13 months at Jyväskylä. I’ve got two postdoc scholarships which basically capture what I’ve been doing for two years and will be doing for just over one in terms of research:

1) Political Symbolic Spaces in Budapest, Helsinki, Luxembourg and London (Finnish Cultural Foundation)

2) Political frontiers and populism in Finland in comparative perpective (Hungary)

Professionally all is well, I’m teaching (30 students in Ideology and Discourse Analysis, and double that next year) and I’ve got PhD students working on fascinating themes. I just spent 8 weeks abroad doing conferences and fieldwork mainly in Luxembourg, Germany, Scotland, Chicago, Washington DC, Mexico City and London. Quite exhausted but happy after that. Eager to get on with research. Will update more things later…

In Jyväskylä: professional news again

I started working as the Senior Lecturer in Cultural Politics/Policy at the University of Jyväskylä in December 2008. It’s a job for 13 months – the longest my wondering academic’s (suitcase-academic’s) life has ever wittnessed in terms of funding for living expenses or work. In Finland, it’s a relative to a decent win in the Lottery.

Jyväskylä runs a lovely engaged interdisciplinary MA programme, and I’m the second person in charge for it – after professor Anita Kangas. The yearly intake is circa 25 students, so it keeps us busy. At the same time we apply for projects for the future. What we are committed in presently, that I’m involved in, is research on Turku European Capital of Culture 2011. Is an exciting process of cultural policy and politics from many angles that I’m not yet outlining here.

Jyväskylä is three hours from my hometown Helsinki (the capital of Finland…), and the same distance from Turku (by train). It’s famous for it’s Alvar Aalto architecture, and there’s snow here in the winter, lakes, hills and woods in the summer. In other words it’s a pretty town.

The University – especially our Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy is excellent, and I’ve got very nice and good students and colleagues here. This is just to update a bit – the work on Ydin magazine still continues as a hobby, and it’s taken the time outside academia pretty much, so this page gets rarely updated. Sorry about that.

on hungarian riots 22 october 2007

This video – despite the problems that it might have for privacy – is a very good one for seeing what was going on in the riots on the one-year anniversary of the riots of 2006 on the eve of the national day commemorating the revolution of 1956.

See elsewhere in this blog for my analysis of last year’s riots, that started after the exposure of the lie of the Hungarian Prime Minister.

professional news: new post as the editor of ydin

There might be some traffic here on my relatively rarely updated professional webpage.

Besides working in the Academy of Finland funded project, at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies and teaching ideology and discourse analysis in two Universities in Finland, I’ve also ended up on the practical field of ideology and discourse analysis as the Editor of Ydin magazine. Ydin is a non(party)-aligned magazine analysing politics and society in Finland. Established in 1966 (I’m hoping to get this figure right) it has its roots in the Finnish Peace Movement. This is not a job – doesn’t pay me money as most these kind of things, but it should be a great hobby.

Having been a member of the Finnish Committee of 100 for the whole of my adult life, and a member of the CND and Stop the War Coalition – but crucially an active member and for some time the figure head of the Essex Uni Peace Campaign – I’m glad and honoured to have such a post (although it means having a good hobby rather than a job with a salary).

The aim is to rejuvenate the magazine, which as many political fora, is greying after having failed to attract young readership. I’m visioning a turn towards, but perhaps not as far in the young, sexy and colourful side as the Red Pepper in the UK, but to start covering more issues beyond peace and security and renew the layout and hopefully some of the readership and contributors. Also, the currently web presence of this magazine is minimal. Ydin should become a forum for political activity and discussions.

The connections to other political magazines, such as the Red Pepper will be a great asset for Ydin, I believe. Internationalisation of the magazine should not come through translation only. All its potential readers in my age would be able to get interesting insights into international politics in other languages over the internet – what’s lacking is the contextualisation of that in the Finnish political and everyday realities.

In a country plagued by consensus – where the election debates often end up in agreement and not in the teasing out of the differences in the parties, it’s important to open up the discussion on an issue by bringing up different perspectives to it. That’s exactly what we plan to do with Ydin from its first issue in 2008.

The beautiful thing about this is that I can now start integrating into the Finnish society – having a fixed point of professional identification – direct my frustrations and the need to change the world to somewhere beyond the academia.

how to organise low-budget, low-maintenance conference

How to organise an international academic conference with a low budget?

1) make sure you’ve got even a low budget, or a clear plan of how to get one.

2) get partners. there are two things you should be interested in a) institutional support and finance: if you have a budget to share, they might chip in. make sure they realise it’s not gonna be too much work for them and that they get their names on the organisers’ list. b) practical help: it is much easier and more fun to organise a conference with someone else, but it is important that this person should be working near-by (not in a different country) and you should share a common vision about the practicalities, too.

3) write the Call for Papers (CFP): choose and clarify a theme that is wide enough, but not too wide, depending the audience you look for. pose the research question and the thematic in an interesting and even challenging way. this ensures that people who really want to engage with this would bother to send in a paper, and you are not overloaded with papers.

4) set up a deadline in the CFP that is far enough from the conference date so you can make sure that you can organise the rest of the conference with more confidence about its contents and close enough that you would be confident that these people actually will be able to make it and are motivated to plan sending in a paper. send out reminders and if needed extend the deadline.

5) distribute the CFP – remember that once it’s in email distribution it may end up anywhere. there is also a difference  in the results between sending it to all possible networks that one knows and just certain ones. there is also a difference between national and international networks – even if they feed into one another. you might want to target the call so that you do not get a load of responses – or you might want to reach far (especially with a narrow topic).

6) choosing the papers makes sense to talk consult other people. never think that you do not want to invite people that you already know – think rather that these are the backbone for your confidence with the conference. if you know them they are likely to come. don’t, nevertheless, only rely on people you know: it’s much more intellectually stimulating to have a real mixture. (and anyway, you are the organiser will have little time to socialise.) reject weak papers. make sure people understand that you really appreciate they sent their abstracts.

7) decide on the scope of the conference once you’ve seen the proposals. it makes sense to ask others to participate (by giving a paper too, if you find suitable sets of papers they are interested in. obviously financial possibilities etc. restrict the size of the conference. and the more people the more work.

8) if possible gather the abstracts into a set, since that’s easier to show it around to your partners, (potential) sponsors, publishing houses etc.

9) book rooms in advance. nevertheless, you might realise only closer to the conference how much of the ‘ordinary’ audience (non-paper-givers) will be present, so try to be realistic from the start but do make new estimates if things change. check the rooms you book and advertise in person, if at all possible, and make sure the official booking and the advertised ones match. make sure they are not too far apart from each other.

10) fix the catering: offering coffee may be the most expensive thing in your conference, but it might be just that what people remember about it. even a nominal fee might make the visitors unsatisfied, even if this would be a perfectly reasonable system. remember, that they have come a long way to contribute to your conference. try to get sponsors (university, city hall, foundations, think thanks or any institution that may benefit from your conference) for the coffee breaks – and also importantly wine and soft-drink receptions after key notes. it is very important not to let people just wither away – especially in conferences like the european ones which take place on university campuses, often in city centres. if you can’t get sponsors go for coffee tickets or ask for donations – or a conference fee that would cover at least these. (but if you ask for a conference fee, do not ask money for coffee!) fix one conference dinner – making sure it’s not too expensive for most people and asking for menu and participation figures well ahead of time.

11) conference packs – having some set of papers to offer to all participants, especially paper givers is important. in major conferences conference bags are also somehow seen as important: doing a low-budget conference, you must make sure that people do not expect all the material things and focus on the contents!

12) one of the thing to fill the conference bags with is material from publishers, while doing advertisement you are creating a conference atmosphere. in larger conferences also invite publishers along if possible. do make sure that you invite them ahead of time and book space for them. otherwise you can try to find way to exhibit things without the publishers themselves being present. in larger conferences publishers sponsor receptions, which is handy for the conference organiser and for the publishers themselves.

13) advertisement. once the conference venues are fixed, start doing advertisement. also do it after the panels are drawn. posters are useful thing, especially on location – but nowadays the internet has taken over. make sure you have a conference web page, which you keep updated. it is easy for the paper-givers and participants to keep updated with it. it is also good for cross-linking and web searches. also inform the press and the university, faculty, department (and their public relations people) about the conference. close to the time of the conference make sure it’s on the university webpage, mailing list etc. you might be surprised how many people would actually have been interested in the conference had they known about it.

14) reserve time for email enquiries and other contacts.

15) organising a low-budget, low-maintenance conference – never offer any funding for people. if you have the chance collect a list of other available funds, do so and send it on. you can of course spend a lot of time trying to get these funds, and it would be lovely to get people from especially from beyond the richest countries to participate, but if you are limited with time and resources, skip this step. remember that administering the available funds will require an effort (booking and paying tickets, etc.) so do it if you can.

16) if you can, recycle left over things from previous conferences that have been organised in your university. also recycle the badges. keep low profile: do not impose pre-registration or fees, if you do not have the infrastructure (people) to help you on the day.

17) to cope with stress make sure that you have some institutional support, and someone who tells you that it will be alright. it is good to have people around who tell you that your are facing a challenge, but that one could imagine you know and believe yourself. it’s more important to have those who support you.

18) make sure you have some volonteers (or if you can afford paid aid) for the days you organise the conference, preferably already a few days before. make sure that they know what they are supposed to help you with – even have tasks to fulfill and responsibilities to take. that is why it is vital to confer before the conference days itself. you can also ask your friends, if nothing else, but do it directly so that they understand what you ask from them and that they can also reject your request. make sure there’s someone beside you, whom you can trust when you should be in two or more places at the same time!

19) make that the people close to you know what you are dealing with, when organising the conference. even if it was really a low-maintenance conference, it causes a lot of stress as you can never know for sure whether everyone is turning up, what kind of catastrophes will occur, and so on. as in many other stressful situations you might really be a nuisance to your loved ones, friends and family. do not make any hasty decisions just before or after the conference.

20) after the conference follow up the situation, keep in touch with the people. sort out last minute bills and other things.  check the budget. try to fix a publication for the conference papers. stay active towards the people who turned up and reserve time for responses about the conference. (i know i had to take a week off myself, to try to deal with the other things that i had no time before the conference.)

21) finally, be patient, open for new challenges and ready to innovate and make big things out of small things. be sincere about your failures (in time keeping etc.) and allow these misgivings for others too. pretty normal stuff, eh?

it’s not that i would have followed all these ten points… but they were hopefully useful thoughts emerging out of the conference i just organised, on discourses about nationalism and populism at the University of Helsinki.

it was a difficult task as most of the time i wasn’t in finland – and i hardly knew that university. luckily i had the access to the university computer system even off location, and i could make calls through skype-out even from abroad.

i had no idea how many people there would be, when booking the rooms. it could well have been only the paper-givers, as it was a conference season with major european conferences taking place at the same time. in the end besides the ca. 30 papers there were upto 150 participants present. the response was overwhelmingly positive – even if there of course were a lot of things that didn’t go according to the plan. no-one would know the whole extent.

one more thing: try to sleep and do not drink a glass of orange juice with vitamin C if you wake up in the middle of the night. that killed my freshness for the second conference day… oops.

thanks to everyone who has been there for me!

‘us’ and ‘them’ conference is successfully over

The conference (The constructions of ‘Us’ and ‘Them’: Discourses on Nationalism and Populism) with the visit from my old professor Ernesto Laclau went well. Thanks to all the speakers and participants.

What was praised was the interdisciplinary environment and the intellectual stimulation that it brought. Sometimes interdisciplinary events produce a situation where people speak nominally about the same things but no real discussion can be brought about – perhaps because they are stuck defending their ‘mother’ discipline. Here there was such a plurality of disciplines in a plurality of panels, including the final round table, that the disciplinary boundaries were questioned, brought down – and in some cases realised again but now with more tangible evidence. I hope the discussions will continue in one form or another. The whole point of the conference was to produce interesting constellations of views and topics – I guess that worked.

I’ll only get to work on the conference proceeding after tonight (as I’m teaching this afternoon). Last night I submitted an application at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, the research institute where I’m currently based as a Visiting Fellow. It was one of the three institutes in the University of Helsinki supporting the conference. They expect 400 applicants by this afternoon, there is space for a dozen fellows, so you can imagine how much luck on top of any good application is needed in this process.

PhD thesis reviewed online

I just came accross Seán Hanley‘s blog, where there was a nice review of my PhD thesis (the manuscript is rewritten as we speak into a book) and my comments on Finnish politics here last spring. It’s actually a very nice blog, with stuff on Central Eastern Europe and beyond – mainly Czech and Slovak politics. Nice to hear from a guy who’s work I appreciate. (Seán now lectures at my former university School of Slavonic and East European Studies, UCL, London.) Also glad to see that there’s some point of publishing the thesis online.

I take Seán’s criticism about the updates on PolEmics… and add my apologies. For instance Finnish election updates were simply hard to handle with couple of projects and the mobile life China-Germany-etc. But I hope that my recent analysis of Finnish politics (e.g. the small analysis on ideologies of local politicians) will continuing here in a way that’s approachable to readers beyond Finland – both in terms of language, references and scope.

First, however, I must get through the start of teaching and the conference, which has received a lot of positive attention here in Finland among the colleagues and beyond. Even my friends think it sounds cool and want to come by to hear some presentations. Admittedly, I am positively surprised and am (if at all possible) ever more eager to meet everyone and hear the presentations myself – despite all the organising hassle.