International influences in the revision of Finnish Forest Act

Major revisions of the Finnish Forest Act were carried out in 1994–1996 and 2010–2013. The need for revision emerged from societal changes and changes in the forest sector’s operational environment that related to the globalisation of markets and influences of international policies. This study analysed the influences of global and European Union forest and environmental policies on the revision of the Forest Act by combining advocacy coalition framework with the four pathways of influence framework introduced by Bernstein and Cashore. The results show that the three identified advocacy coalitions, namely Forestry administration, Private forestry and Environmental coalition remained rather stable over the two revision processes from 1990s to 2010s. The importance of the different pathways of international influence differed between the coalitions. Private forestry and Forestry administration coalitions, which represented forestry paradigm, stressed market-related arguments, whereas Environmental coalition representing environmental paradigm mainly referred to international legally binding rules and non-legally binding initiatives. The argumentation of the actors indicated that international rules and international norms and discourse were regarded to be as equally important.