Archive

A translation of a major essay: “‘Well, this is bloody awful!’ How Kekkonen-narratives constitute the political identity and interests of Finland in the 1990’s”. This essay was an intervention in the post-Cold War debates about whether, during the Cold War, Finland should have distanced itself further from the Soviet Union and perhaps been more openly on the side of the West. At the time, my claim that “Finland still inhabits a Cold War world, though now having emerged as a humble imitator of the ‘West’” may have appeared a bit exaggerated and speculative, but three decades later this analysis of the prevailing social forces and deep structures of the discourse have proven correct. The essay focusses on two drastically different historical interpretations of President Kekkonen and the note crisis of 1961 (closely related to the Berlin crisis). I argued — in vain as it has turned out — that “an alternative lesson would rather start with the quest to overcome the Cold War categories and to change at least some of the ‘realist’ practices and institutions that have survived also the end of the Cold War”. The essay was originally published in Finnish in Kosmopolis, (23):2, 1993, pp.49-78, and raised some interest also in the mainstream media. A few years later, when I was based in Nottingham, I was asked to contribute to a volume on theoretical debates about and practical applications of ‘hermeneutics’, and decided to translate and recontextualise the text. However, the volume was never completed and thus the translation was left unpublished.

With Roy BHASKAR: ”Reconstructing global interconnectedness: the complementary roles of philosophy and social sciences – a conversation with Roy Bhaskar and Heikki Patomäki”. This conversation took place in Helsinki, 12 November 2005. The main editing of the text was done by Matti Jutila, but Roy and I edited our parts of the conversation. The introduction was written collectively by all three. We use the Harvard-style of references only in the introductory part in order to emphasise the oral origin of the conversation. A Finnish translation was published as “Ihmiskunnan kohtalon yhteys: filosofisia ja yhteiskuntatieteellisiä vastauksia – Roy Bhaskarin Ja Heikki Patomäen keskustelu”, Kosmopolis, (36):1, 2006, pp.6-25. This is the original in English that remains unpublished.

W.Warren WAGAR: ”Crisis and catastrophe”. This is an unpublished paper from 2004, originally meant for a TCS special issue on global democracy I was editing. Prof. Wagar died in November 2004 and only two of the papers meant for the TCS special issue were eventually published in 2006 (a dialogue about global democracy between me and David Held, available here, and Jamie Morgan’s interview of Michael Hardt). This gloomy paper that should have been published and widely read is now, two decades later, more pertinent and alarming than ever. Wagar argued: “The catastrophe of the Second World War was, so to speak, wasted. Will we waste the still greater catastrophe now on its way? Is it conceivable that the best hope for humankind is a global crisis so all-pervasive and threatening that the handwriting on the wall blazes too brightly for anyone to ignore?”

With Lieven A. Denys: ”Draft treaty on global currency transactions tax”. This is a slightly modified 2005 version of the Draft Treaty text we originally composed in 2002 and published as the NIGD Discussion Paper 1/2002 (NIGD ceased functioning in 2009 and NIGD publications have thus been unavailable for years). It was republished in B.De Schutter & J.Pas (eds.) About Globalisation. Views on the Trajectory of Mondialisation, Vub Brussels University Press: Brussels, 2004, pp.185-203, but also this book is out of print and unavailable. The Draft Treaty provided a partial basis for a law enacted by the Belgian parliament in 2004. We made some minor revisions to the text in 2005. A parallel but a more complicated project of preparing a fully-fledged draft treaty for a global greenhouse gas tax has been in progress for years.

With James K. Galbraith & Henning Meyer: ”Governance of the EU: problems and reform proposals”, Progressive Economy Policy Recommendation: Governance, published in August 2016. “We take as our premise that the ‘democracy deficit’ in Europe has become a crisis of legitimacy for the European Union, requiring early and dramatic action to begin to restore the trust, faith and confidence of European citizens in European institutions. The steps outlined below are feasible. And they are urgent.” In 2024, none of these urgent steps have been taken and the possibility of further disintegration looms in the air, although also the scenario of constructing unity through securitisation and militarisation remains relevant (see this).

Early 2000s manuscript: ”Multiple pasts, converging presents, and alternative futures for the EU”. This is a paper I was working on since the late 1990s. While I was never totally satisfied with it — I was just beginning to think about the future in a more systematic fashion — and while it must have been rejected twice in the early 2000s before a version came out in an edited volume on the future of Europe in 2007, in Finnish, in some ways it is quite prophetic. Scenario 1 has become almost common sensical. Perhaps the most likely future is Scenario 2 via Scenario 3. And what is the scenario 3? The EU partly disintegrates because of the conflict with the UK and the new Eastern European members with regard to the direction of the integration process and because of a general legitimation crisis of the Union. This possibility was not properly spelled out in my later scenarios in Uusliberalismi Suomessa (2007) and The Political Economy of Global Security (2008), perhaps partly because of discouragement, but mostly because that would have complicated my global scenarios further. There is also the possibility of more radical disintegration, as the underlying political economy contradictions and legitimation problems have not been resolved. PS. I first discussed the possibility of EU distingretation in ”Emu and the Legitimation Problems of the European Union”, in P.Minkkinen & H.Patomäki (eds.): The Politics of the European Monetary Union, Kluwer: Dordrecht, 1997, pp.164-206.

A new publication in Japan: “The relevance of the Helsinki Process and the Charter of Paris for future security policies and institutions“. This is a paper originally written as a background paper for the 2023-24 process called “Shaping Zeitenwende“, organised by Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and involving European social democratic parties. There is a reason why it is published in Japan. In 2012, when I was a Visiting Professor at the Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, I had many discussions with Akihiko Kimijima about the possibility of applying the idea of a “Helsinki process” in East Asia. Ritsumeikan Annual Review of International Studies, (23):1, 2024 is dedicated to Akihiko Kimijima and another professor at the same university.

A lecture on the methodology and purpose of social sciences: ”On the Nature of Social Scientific Research”. This is a long (4h) lecture where I first criticise quantitative and qualitative versions of empiricism and their irrealist consequences, and then provide a better alternative that stresses the role of contrasts, aporias and dialectical argumentation. Among other things, the lecture shows how artificial and problematic the standard dichotomies between theoretical-empirical, quantitative-qualitative and factual-normative are. From 2011 onwards I have given this lecture many times in Helsinki and a few times in Tampere and other universities. Empiricism still dominates the social sciences, but a better alternative in terms of collective learning is sketched here.