Voices for Europe: Maija Setälä from Finland (23.04.2025)

The podcast-series "Voices for Europe" is a series of interviews.
It gives researchers from all over Europe a voice. We exchange
views from different countries, talk about background specifics,
and try to give an honest assessment of the state of the EU.


In this episode Maija Setälä from Turku/Finland
explains the political situation in Finland such as growing
animosity between the right and the left wing parties,
geopolitical factors like the proximity to Russia and the effects
of climate change.


Maija Setälä is a professor of Political Science at the
University of Turku/Finland. In her research she specializes in
democratic theories, especially theories of deliberative
democracy, political trust, as well as various types of
democratic innovations such as citizens' initiatives and
deliberative mini-publics. She has published widely on these
topics. An further focus of her research is future-regarding
policy-making, which was the topic of the recent co-edited book
Democracy and the Future (Michael MacKenzie, Maija Setälä and
Simo Kyllönen (eds), Edinburgh University Press 2023). In the
recent and ongoing research projects FACTOR, FLAIRE and SINCRONY,
her interests are in the role of citizen deliberation in climate
and energy transitions and issues of inclusion in deliberative
forums. In the future, Her plans include an increasing focus on
the prospects and pitfalls of AI in citizen participation and
deliberation.