Julkaisut Archives - Sivu 5 12:stä

Zhen Jie Im & Kathrin Komp-Leukkunen

Automation and public support for workfare

Published 15.4.2021

Automation has permeated workplaces and threatens labour in the production process. Concurrently, European governments have expanded workfare which imposes stringent conditions and sanctions on unemployed workers after the onset of austerity. We explore how automation risk affects workfare support. Recent research finds that most routine workers ‘survive’ in their routine jobs. Despite avoiding unemployment, routine workers may face the threat of status decline as automation erodes the value of routine work. They may respond by differentiating themselves from lower-ranked social groups such as unemployed workers. Such boundary drawing may manifest views that the unemployed are less deserving of welfare. We thus posit that routine workers may support workfare to assuage their fears of status decline. We further explore if worsening economic hardship, proxied as rising unemployment rates over time, increases their support for workfare. We conducted pooled and multilevel analyses using data from the European Social Survey. We find that routine workers significantly support workfare. We also find that routine workers support workfare when economic hardship worsens, but oppose it when conditions ameliorate. Findings suggest that status threat is an important channel by which automation risk may affect workfare support, but its impact depends on social context, hence yielding country-differences. Worsening economic hardship may exacerbate routine workers’ status decline fears, and intensify their harsh views against unemployed workers. Automation risk may thus have a greater impact on workfare support under such conditions. Policymakers can use these findings to assess how workfare may be publicly received and under various economic conditions.

get the Article here

Johanna Kallio, Hannu Lahtinen & Hanna Wass

A Tale of Two Professions in Elections: Party Choice Among Diaconal and Social Workers

Published 18.3.2021

Diaconal and social workers spend their days implementing social policy and exercising discretional power while being regularly exposed to social inequalities. As an occupational group, they are heavily influenced by official government decisions, which might be expected to shape their political preferences. Our analyses, based on the Street-Level Bureaucrats Survey 2011 (n = 1,237) and the Finnish National Election Study 2011 (n = 1,298) reveal that more than half of diaconal workers voted for conservative centrist parties – the Christian Democrats and the Centre Party – in the 2011 parliamentary elections, whereas two-thirds of social workers supported leftist or green parties. The work context – the municipality/parish, length of work experience, and primary work duties – also influenced voting behavior. The professional identities and work environments of diaconal and social workers thus differentiate them not only from other members of the same social class, but also from each other in terms of partisanship.

get the Article here

Hanna Wass & Elisabeth Gidengil

Editorial: “Health and Political Behavior”: Towards an Integrative Approach

Published 12.3.2021

Editorial on the Research Topic: Health and Political Behavior (Open Access)

Nearly ten years of intense study has established that health affects political behavior. It has become increasingly clear that “health and illness shape who we are politically” (Carpenter 2012, 303). Physical and mental health influence people’s political interest and their sense of efficacy, electoral and other forms of political participation, ideological orientations, issue preferences and vote choice, and ultimately political representation and policy responsiveness. We have also learnt a lot about the complex cognitive, psychological, financial and social mechanisms that moderate and mediate these relationships, as well as how these relationships vary across countries and welfare regimes.

get the Article here

Sigurd Allern, Mark Blach-Ørsten, Anu Kantola & Ester Pollack

Development trends and challenges in Nordic political journalism

Published 11.3.2021

In Eli Skogerbø, E., Øyvind Ihlen, Nete Noorgaard Kristensen & Lars Nord (toim.) Power, Communication, and Politics in the Nordic Countries. Gothenburg: Nordicom, 2021, p. 135-154.

The objective of this chapter is to describe and discuss some important political journalism development trends in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. The term political journalism traditionally refers to news, commentaries, and other genres related to the coverage of political processes, institutions, and policy questions. It is, however, difficult to draw a clear dividing line between political news and other types of current affairs coverage. While political logic once dominated the discourses of political journalism, the emergence of the news media as an independent institution gave journalists a substantial definitional power and an ability to define the communicative rules of the game, but professional political sources quickly learned to exploit news media logics for their own aims and objectives. During the last decade, the growth of social media networks and the relative weakening of the legacy media has created a less stable situation for the negotiation of control between journalists and their sources.

get the Article here

Hanna Kuusela & Anu Kantola

The role of the owner in new capitalist accumulation processes: the case of Finland

Julkaistu 11.3.2021

In Marlène Benquet ja Théo Bourgeron (toim.) Accumulating Capital Today Contemporary Strategies of Profit and Dispossessive Policies. Abingdon: Routledge, 2020, s. 181-195.

This book explores the renewal of forms of capital accumulation and the institutions that shape it. It focuses on three main sources of accumulation: the extraction of profit through labor and the commodification of nature, financial speculation and the ways in which profit is converted into wealth. It thus offers a new understanding of the economic and political logics of capital accumulation within capitalism in the 21st century. It shows the recomposition of the sources of profit, from the traditional mechanisms of labor exploitation to the contemporary logics of speculation and dispossession. Bringing together the work of scholars who study the social fabric of capitalist accumulation, Accumulating Capital Today goes beyond disciplinary frontiers to describe how capital is accumulating in a world threatened by social and environmental collapse. This book heralds the emergence of "accumulation studies" and will be of interest to researchers in sociology, anthropology, politics, political economy, geography and economics.

Order book here

Julia Jousilahti

KOKEILLEN KOHTI PAREMPAA DEMOKRATIAA – Opas demokratiakokeiluihin

Julkaistu 17.2.2021

Demokratia ei pysy pystyssä itsestään, kuten viime vuosien uutiset Yhdysvalloista ja Itä-Euroopasta ovat muistuttaneet. Suomessa demokratia voi hyvin, mutta sitä nakertavat kansalaisten passivoituminen ja huono osaisten jääminen syrjään päätöksenteosta. Demokratiaa voidaan vahvistaa kehittämällä ja kokeilemalla ja kehittämällä uusia, entistä monipuolisempia ja suorempia osallistumisen tapoja.

Viisi ohjetta onnistuneelle demokratiakokeilulle:

1. Tunnista tarve ja sitoudu kokeiluun. 2. Varaa kokeiluun aikaa ja rahaa. 3. Järjestä yhdenvertaiset mahdollisuudet osallistua. 4. Kerro tulosten käytöstä selkeästi. 5. Kerää kokeilun opit talteen.

Lataa julkaisu tästä

Hanna Wass

Nuorten sopimusyhteiskunta: 16–29-vuotiaiden näkemykset työmarkkinapolitiikasta

Julkaistu 4.2.2021

Raportissa tarkastellaan 16–29-vuotiaiden nuorten käsityksiä paikallisen sopimisen laajentamisesta, palkankorotusten joustoista ja työaikojen pidentämisestä yritysten työllistämismahdollisuuksien parantamiseksi sekä työttömyyskassojen jäsenyyden muuttamisesta pakolliseksi. Keskeiset tulokset:

Nuorilla on selkeitä ja koko väestön kanssa samansuuntaisia käsityksiä sopimusyhteiskunnan tulevaisuuteen liittyvistä kysymyksistä.

2. Nuorilta löytyy valmiutta palkkajoustoihin kilpailu- kyvyn edistämiseksi, mutta työajan pidentämistä vastustetaan jyrkästi.

3. Nuorille paikallinen sopiminen ja palkkajoustot näyttäytyvät toisistaan irrallisina asioina. Runsas puolet nuorista kannattaa työehdoista ja palkois- ta sopimista yritysten tasolla, mutta lähes yhtä suuri osa ei pidä palkkajoustoja hyvänä ratkaisu- na kilpailukyvyn parantamiseksi.

Lataa julkaisu tästä

Miroslav Nemcok & Hanna Wass

Generations and Political Engagement

Published 26.1.2021 (Publisher link)

The concept of “generation” constitutes a useful tool to understand the world of politics. Trends in political behavior typical for the youngest generation are indicative for future development. In a wider perspective, large differences between generations also reveal potential for intergenerational conflict and a shift in the entire political paradigm. Four important topics need to be addressed in order to properly understand the body of research studying specifics of political behavior across generations and the use of generation as an analytical tool: (a) conceptual definition of generation, (b) its distinction from other time-related concepts, (c) methodological challenges in applying the time-related factors in research, and (d) understanding the wider implications of these factors for individuals’ political behavior which has already been identified in the scholarship.

get the Article here

Bokyong Shin & Mikko Rask

Assessment of Online Deliberative Quality: New Indicators Using Network Analysis and Time-Series Analysis

Published 23.1.2021

Online deliberation research has recently developed automated indicators to assess the deliberative quality of much user-generated online data. While most previous studies have developed indicators based on content analysis and network analysis, time-series data and associated methods have been studied less thoroughly. This article contributes to the literature by proposing indicators based on a combination of network analysis and time-series analysis, arguing that it will help monitor how online deliberation evolves. Based on Habermasian deliberative criteria, we develop six throughput indicators and demonstrate their applications in the OmaStadi participatory budgeting project in Helsinki, Finland. The study results show that these indicators consist of intuitive figures and visualizations that will facilitate collective intelligence on ongoing processes and ways to solve problems promptly.

get the Article here

Hanna Wass

Puolueiden kannatuspohja talouden rakennemuutoksessa

Julkaistu 21.1.2021

Teoksessa Puolueet tienhaarassa – Ruotsin ja Suomen muuttuva poliittinen maisema (2020), Olof Ehrenkrona (toim.), Carsten Anckar, Fredrik Bergman, Malena Britz, Jyrki Katainen, Cecilia Malmström, Tommy Möller, Andreas Norlén, Siv Sandberg, Åsa von Schoultz, Annika Ström Melin, Jan Teorell, Teija Tiilikainen, Matti Vanhanen, Emil Waris, Hanna Wass, Elin Wihlborg. 176 s.

Globalisaatio ja talouden rakennemuutos ovat viimeisen parinkymmenen vuoden aikana muokanneet perusteellisesti tuotantotapoja, työvoiman kysyntää ja eri ammattialojen luonnetta. Yhteiskuntaan on syntynyt uudenlaisia jakolinjoja, jotka vaikuttavat kansalaisten sosiaalisiin identiteetteihin ja heidän näkemyksiinsä paikastaan yhteiskunnassa. Osalle ihmisistä maailma on avoin: kansallisvaltioiden rajat ovat menettäneet pitkälti merkityksensä, teknologiset innovaatiot tarjoavat uusia mahdollisuuksia ja omalle ammattitaidolle riittää työmarkkinoilla kysyntää. Samanaikaisesti yhteiskunnassa on useita ryhmiä, joiden elämää varjostaa huoli työpaikan säilymisestä, toimeentulon turvaamisesta ja lasten pärjäämisestä. Näihin jakolinjoihin ei päästä kiinni pelkästään perinteisillä sosioekonomisen aseman mittareilla vaan kyse on myös omakohtaisesta kokemuksesta: kuulunko globaalin uusjaon voittajiin vai häviäjiin?

Lataa julkaisu tästä

Ladda ner publikationen här