ABSTRACT
Most new parties in Finland are small and have a limited influence. Only the Christian League and the Greens have been successful during the past decades. Others, like the populist Finnish Rural Party (now True Finns), have vanished after two successful elections in 1970 and 1983. As a result, the effective number of parties has only modestly increased. The number of parties in parliament has increased from six to ten, between the first general election in 1907 and 1999, and the effective number of parties in parliament from 3.57 to 5.15 during the same period (Sundberg 2002: 85-7). Eighteen parties contested the 1999 election, and nine of them were successful. The tenth party MP mandate is represented by the autonomous Åland, which is a one-member constituency.
