The disappearing chain of responsibility: Legitimacy challenges in the political governance of Finnish Forest and Park Service

This article analyses the consequences of institutional and organisational arrangements for the legitimacy of the governance of Finnish public forests. It focuses on normative legitimacy, which comprises input legitimacy (accountability), throughput legitimacy (power relationships, transparency and inclusiveness) and output legitimacy (problem-solving capacity). These components, and the challenges involved in them, are analysed in relation to the governance of the Finnish Forest and Park Service. It is a hybrid agency which combines business economic tasks with broader societal duties related to public forests. The article draws on the relevant laws, parliamentary reports and comments, policy and planning documents, as well as interviews with MPs, government officials and agency staff. The discrepancy between written regulations and policies on the one hand, and the actual governance practices and rationalities that guide informants' interpretations and implementation of the regulations on the other, constitutes (in addition to the regulatory vagueness) the key challenge to the system's legitimacy. The Finnish case shows that assigning to Parliament a central formal role in the governance of public forests may serve more as window-dressing than providing genuine legitimacy to the decisions being made, as its actual role is dependent on how - and by whom - such decisions are prepared. The results highlight the importance of inclusiveness and transparency in the governance process; and of concrete, measurable criteria and indicators for each policy goal, against which performance may be assessed on a regular basis. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.