This study analyzes the political legitimacy of forest and forest-related nature conservation policies in Finland. Legitimacy is defined here that the forest and nature conservation regimes and related political institutions are perceived as rightful among the people.
The major contribution of this study is the comprehensive conceptual framework of legitimacy based on several theories, mainly from political science. The framework analyzes the objects of support, patterns of legitimacy, performance evaluations, and how these relate to one another. In this study, the objects of support refer to forest-related political institutions; these include regulations and public incentives, as well as decision-making processes, political programs, and administrative procedures. The framework is intended to be especially useful in the empirical analyses of pluralistic public political discussion and uses a methodology developed for this purpose. The study also analyses the social values of organized political actors.
The empirical part of this study explores a data set from Finnish print media discourse, based on letters to editors in three newspapers and in one journal, along with comments given during the preparation of Finland's National Forest Programme 2010. Another empirical data set consists of qualitative semi-structured interviews and the writings of the organized interest groups.
Many different groups of citizens were found to participate in public discussion on forests. Quite a large number of individuals shared the overall publicity, despite the fact that there were some very active writers. Nature conservation organizations, researchers, and politicians were well represented. However, the participation of governmental officials from both the forest and environmental sectors can be characterized as insufficient, considering their importance in the implementation of policies.
The study of letters to editors found that groups of common social values served as patterns of legitimacy in the performance evaluations of forest policies. These include welfare and wellbeing derived from forests; values related to nature conservation; democratic values; distributive justice; good governance; core regime principles; and fair markets. Of all performance evaluations, 52% were negative while 26% were positive and 22 % were mixed.
The welfare of citizens and the nation, export incomes and employment were the most common justifications used in the legitimacy evaluations while economic growth was a topic that divided opinions. Principles related to values of nature and sustainable development were almost as common in the data. A common argument related to the wellbeing of future generations combined the ideas of benefits and nature values with the idea of distributive justice.
Democratic values, especially the public participation of the involved groups of people and public deliberation were common sources of legitimacy. Most political actors supported the ideal of conciliatory decision-making, while smaller group preferred strictness and non-compromising political action.
Private property rights and the so-called everyman's right were found to be strong supporting arguments. In addition to the recognition of private ownership of forests, they were on the other hand perceived as national heritage. The perceived fairness of the distribution of benefits and burdens was mostly based on comparisons between people or groups of people; these include countryside vs. cities, Finland vs. foreign countries, forestry vs. other forest user groups, and present vs. future generations.
Both forest and nature conservation-related public administration faced positive and negative feedback. Public officials were expected to obey domestic and international legislation and to oversee the implementation of laws in an impartial and consistent manner. On the contrary, perceived arbitrariness, paternalism, and disrespectful behavior by officials were perceived as illegitimate.
Concerning the markets, the rules of fair competition were often mentioned as a source of legitimacy, while monopolies and cartels were mentioned as sources of illegitimacy.
In the interviews of organized actors, the forestry actors maintained that the central sources of legitimacy are the benefits for the national economy, employment and export incomes, as well as property rights and the value of nature in terms of its benefit for humans while the nature conservation-oriented actors had an understanding that nature has an intrinsic value independent of its benefits to people. Lack of trust was characteristic of the polarized policy field. However, traditional rights of ownership, everyman's right, and citizens’ rights to influence forest policy comprised a common ground between the actors.
Domestic, EU-level, and international legality were commonly perceived as sources of the legitimacy of policies. Finland's good international standing and its role as a moral and economic forerunner were very common principles in the evaluations in both the forest and nature conservation policies, in all parts of data. The same idea was also found central in the national forest programs and strategies. The shared goal of the Finns seems to be that the nation would be best in the world both in forest and nature conservation policies.
Despite some disagreements concerning the performance of institutions, most of the social values that serve as a basis of legitimacy seem to be quite commonly supported in Finland, where support of major governmental institutions and general trust among people are at a relatively high level. The value discussion related to forests is part of a larger discussion on social values that seems to continue far into the future.