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Due to the tradition of ‘Nordic openness’, and intensified by international trends, the norm of policy-making transparency is strong in Finland. Inspired by organizational institutionalism, the present article studies what this notion of transparency means in practice. A case study of a social security reform committee is presented. The consensus-building practices typical of Finnish corporatist policy-making significantly constrained the transparency of government communication during the lifetime of the committee. The government communicated actively in public to meet the demand for transparency; but in order to secure effective bargaining, the government communicated issues concerning the committee so vaguely that it did not inspire wide public discussion. Public discussion was instead mainly fuelled by leaks. These findings suggest that a strong norm of transparency can lead to ceremonial transparency, where government public communication is loosely coupled with policy-making practices. These ceremonies might strengthen the notion of Nordic openness.

As the wealthiest groups have emerged as increasingly significant in societies, this article explores society's wealth elites from the vantage point of media and communication studies. Bridging the literature on policy advocacy and mediatisation, the article examines the hidden and public advocacy strategies of the wealthy. Drawing from 90 interviews with the wealthiest 0.1% in Finland, this study shows the wealthy's highly strategic stance towards the media and journalism. Most of all, they prefer to avoid the media and journalism, while actively using hidden advocacy strategies and being confident in their ability to wield political influence. As a consequence, the wealth elites may remain hidden from the public eye, making them 'shadow elites', whose power and scrutinisation pose a challenge to society and journalists as well. The findings support the view that paradoxically, one reaction to mediatisation – the media's heightened powers – is the deliberate avoidance of it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]