There is one theme, one issue, that always repeats itself in Estonia’s local elections. It is built into the structure of our politics; it cannot be softened or uprooted. It may not be desirable, but it is inevitable. Perhaps things would be better without it, but there is nothing to be done. That issue is the blurring of local and national politics.
Politics at the local level is carried out by the same people and the same parties as in the Riigikogu. And Estonia is small — distances between people and power hierarchies are very short. But the local dimension has never disappeared. In the bigger picture, this can be seen in different ways.
I will present, first, a recent and somewhat unconventional example of how local politics is inevitably also national politics and then a very simple and vivid example of how local politics is unmistakably local.
A good example of the overlap between the local and national levels is the recent power struggle in Tallinn, though in this case the direction was reversed: it was not national politics overshadowing local issues, but rather local maneuvers influencing politics at the national level. It is worth unpacking this a little with the benefit of hindsight.
It seems everything began with Reform Party’s concern about how it could remain in Tallinn’s city government after the elections and rebuild its image as a winning force.
Looking at the distribution of support and the parties’ prospects, Reform’s Tallinn district leader Pärtel-Peeter Pere was, of course, correct when he said that cooperation with Center Party was inevitable. Center is going to win the [October] elections in Tallinn and, with very high probability, will form the city government. Center will get to choose its coalition partner. The initial plan of working with Center in Tallinn looked like an attempt to tie Center to Reform already before the elections, thereby ensuring that afterward Center would select Reform as its partner.
But it seems they forgot that Center had no desire to be tied down in that way. For Center, that would have been clearly harmful. And that is probably why the initial plans collapsed.
Once this became clear, Plan B was put into motion: an attempt to make Center unfit in the eyes of other parties. That is what Reform’s announcement that cooperation with Center was off the table really meant. It was aimed at the Social Democratic Party and Isamaa, hoping they would adopt the same position. But given Reform’s historically low level of support and the fact that both Social Democrat and Isamaa voters would prefer a coalition with Center, the move was doomed to fail.
What is the likely outcome of that maneuver? First of all, Reform’s chances of joining Tallinn’s government after the elections shrank even further. Both Isamaa and the Social Democrats would probably prefer a coalition with Center, and for Center’s voters, a coalition with Reform is something they very much do not want to see. For Reform, an alliance with Center in Tallinn is now completely ruled out. In other words, one of their two possible paths into the city government has been eliminated and the likelihood of the other has certainly not increased.
This exclusion is likely to carry over into the next Riigikogu elections and the process of forming the next government. Those words cannot be taken back so easily or so soon. To do so, the party would need to change its leader and make a very clear political course correction.
If we think about how seats in the next Riigikogu might be distributed, then in a situation where both EKRE and Center are simultaneously ruled out, there is unlikely to be a coalition combination that includes Reform but does not also include Isamaa.
Isamaa, however, would have several options. In other words, the only possible governments would be those formed by Isamaa. Thus, by excluding Center during the Tallinn power struggle, Reform may have ended up excluding itself from power in the next Riigikogu as well.
Now let us turn to the local dimension. In addition to the uniqueness of local problems, the local nature of local elections can also be clearly seen in how support for parties is distributed differently across towns and municipalities. If the party system consists of both parties and the behavioral patterns shaped by their relative size, then in every municipality we have, in a sense, a different party system.
In local elections, electoral alliances have generally always performed very well, but only outside of Tallinn and Tartu. This also illustrates the varying degree of party dominance in local politics. The larger the municipality, the more party-driven the politics.
There are also very striking differences between parties and municipalities. For example, Isamaa’s support is fairly evenly distributed across Estonia, with the exception of certain predominantly Russian-speaking areas (Lasnamäe, Maardu, Loksa, and Northeast Estonia). EKRE has stronger support outside of the Tartu and Tallinn areas, in places far from any major center. It’s strongest in Southeast Estonia.
Center exists at the local level primarily in Tallinn and in Northeast Estonia — where there are more Russian-speaking voters. In this sense, Center’s overall local-level support numbers are a little misleading. If Tallinn and Ida-Viru County are excluded, Center’s position in the rest of Estonia is weak.
Reform has maintained a foothold in Tallinn (Nõmme), in Harju County (Rae Municipality) and in Tartu. Outside of Harju County and the Tartu area, its support is very low. And even in its strongholds, it currently trails Isamaa. The Social Democrats, meanwhile, have a presence primarily in Tallinn, Tartu and Võru. If the latter is set aside, they are, in Estonian terms, essentially an urban party.
Political competition in each municipality is different, and this alone is a very important local dimension of politics. Whatever happens on Toompea inevitably reaches every municipality, because the same parties operate there.
Against this backdrop, of course, are also the local problems and questions that every municipality should address according to its best judgment and the wishes of its local voters. If these become overshadowed by the parties’ general squabbling, then in the short term that is certainly a problem of how representation functions. But in the long term, in a free and democratic society, it should become a political resource. Where there is enough demand, supply will appear.
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