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Institutional History of the Ombudsman and Chancellor of Justice in Finland

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Ombudsman as a Global Institution

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Abstract

This chapter focuses on the institutional development of the Finnish Parliamentary Ombudsman and its peer institution, the Chancellor of Justice. Adopted in 1919 from Sweden, the Finnish Ombudsman has evolved over time with its institutional rival also relying on transnational ideational shifts, which have had a major impact on how the institution functions and communicates itself to citizens. Initially a legal overseer, the Finnish Parliamentary Ombudsman has since evolved to become a guardian of human rights and an advocate of good governance, and even started to operate as a mediator. While the Finnish case is related to transnational governance of the ombudsman institution, it also highlights the contextual—and even contingent—character of the institutional evolution as well as the role of actors as change agents, promoting policy ideas and making the institution visible. The intra-institutional context makes the Finnish case particularly interesting. The mandates of the Finnish Parliamentary Ombudsman and the Chancellor of Justice are almost identical, allowing citizens to complain to either institution. The Ombudsman institution has become a dominant legal overseer by adopting the promotion of human rights as its cause. This has helped the institution to successfully communicate its activities to the citizens who now predominantly file their complaints to the Ombudsman.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The Ombudsman and the Chancellor of Justice investigate complaints and may also launch own investigations to observe the lawfulness of activities by public authorities and officials as well as other actors performing public functions.

  2. 2.

    This has also added confusion to historical origin of the Ombudsman (Pajuoja and Pölönen 2011, 15–20).

  3. 3.

    It should be noted that the Ombudsman data concerns all annual reported cases, including complaints made by citizens and own inquiries initiated by the Ombudsman, whereas the data on the Chancellor of Justice is restricted on the amount of complaints. This does not really affect the results; in the interviews it was assessed that on average there might be some 20 own inquiries annually by the Chancellor. In 2016 there had been only nine own inquiries.

  4. 4.

    This expansion is also acknowledged by the Finnish Ombudsman, making the theme of its 95th anniversary. Eduskunnan oikeusasiamies [http://www.oikeusasiamies.fi/dman/Document.phx?documentId=ks32815102438920&cmd=download]

  5. 5.

    It is also important to note that overall public debate was still limited in the early 1920s, also owing to the historical lineages of the public sphere in Finland (Nieminen 2006).

  6. 6.

    Prior to becoming Parliamentary Ombudsman Jacob Söderman had been the governor of Uusimaa Province and a long-term member of Finnish Parliament, acting as Minister of Justice and Minister of Social Affairs and Health. He later became the first European Ombudsman (1995–2003).

  7. 7.

    While the impeachment case of Kauko Juhantalo was a great success of Jacob Söderman as the Ombudsman, it was noted in the interviews that Jaakko Jonkka, at the time working at the Ombudsman’s office, assisted Söderman in the case and had major responsibility over the legal substance of the case.

  8. 8.

    The impeachment was initiated and moved to the Ombudsman by the Constitutional Committee of Parliament.

  9. 9.

    Also in the annual reports of the Ombudsman, there is a reference to “fundamental rights” already in 1947 (Eduskunnan oikeusasiamies 1947, 36–37).

  10. 10.

    The Chancellor found no illegality, which even led to some parliamentarians call to investigate the legality of Chancellor’s actions, but the Parliament found no grounds for this (Seppinen 2009, 219–20; YLE 2004).

  11. 11.

    For example, Chancellor of Justice Nikula received media attention for his decision concerning a case on potential publication of the so-called Tiitinen list, a controversial list of names of people potentially to have collaborated with the STASI during the Cold War (YLE 2003a, b).

  12. 12.

    In fact, the number of electronically filed complaints started to grow rapidly already in 2004, when the Ombudsman received twice as many complaints electronically compared to the year before (968 cases in 2004 against 473 cases in 2003).

  13. 13.

    In 1998, the Finnish Parliamentary Ombudsman had 2528 cases (of which 49 cases were initiated by email) while the Chancellor of Justice received 1330 complaints.

  14. 14.

    There were some questions about the filing of the cases between the two legal overseers, whether additional information to an earlier inquiry would be associated with a pending case or lead to an opening of a new inquiry, but this was not seen to be an explaining factor for the increasing difference in the amount of complaints. There was also a difference in what was classified as a complaint. The Ombudsman had ceased to classify miscellaneous letters that were sent to it as complaints in 2001. This reduced the number of complaints it received by several hundred a year (see above).

  15. 15.

    In fact, Lehtimaja’s support also shifted from one nomination to another. While elected into his position as the Parliamentary Ombudsman in 1995 with the support of conservatives and Greens (Helsingin Sanomat 1995), he was the favoured candidate among Social Democrats in an earlier bid for the position of Vice Ombudsman, for which Riitta-Leena Paunio was nominated.

  16. 16.

    The three female Deputy Ombudsmen have been Pirkko K. Koskinen (1988–1995), Riitta-Leena Paunio (1996–2001) and Maija Sakslin (2010–).

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  1. Political Science, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Tero Erkkilä

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  1. Tero Erkkilä
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Correspondence to Tero Erkkilä .

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Erkkilä, T. (2020). Institutional History of the Ombudsman and Chancellor of Justice in Finland. In: Ombudsman as a Global Institution. Public Sector Organizations. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32675-3_3

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