Baltic Journal of Political Science
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Examining political participation in Lithuania: The direct and mediated effects of social trust
Get PDFThis article investigates the effects of social trust, both direct and mediated – via internal and external efficacy – on different forms of political participation in post-communist Lithuania. The relationship between social trust and participation features prominently in the social capital and civic culture literature, but little empirical evidence exists that supports it, especially in post-communist democracies. We use the Lithuanian National Elections Study 2012 to test our hypotheses and replicate our analysis with the European Social Survey waves of 2014 and 2016. Our results show that social trust increases turnout, because it is related to a sense of external efficacy, which in turn enhances the likelihood that people vote. There is, however, no association between social trust and being involved in other institutionalised politics, namely, working for a political party. Interestingly, we find a positive indirect effect for non-institutionalised political participation: social trust increases external efficacy, which in turn enhances protest behaviour. Overall, however, social trust does not lead to more protesting, because the former is at the same time positively related to political trust, which seems to decrease, rather than increase non-institutionalised participation. In sum, our findings demonstrate that explanations for political participation based on the core element of social capital – social trust – work out differently for different forms of political participation
Cyborg as a Destroyer of G. Agamben’s Anthropological Machine
Get PDFThe ambition of this paper is to reason the consistency and logical coherence of the concept of Giorgio Agamben‘s anthropological machine. The important puzzle is that although Agamben emphasized the importance of having this machine destroyed, he did not suggest any clear and specific way to achieve it. The concept of a cyborg, developed by Donna Haraway, has been introduced to rethink the anthropological machine through the eyes of the cyborg. So, the main question of this paper is: whether or not the destruction of the anthropological machine is possible using the concept of the cyborg? The cyborg has been chosen because it blurs the boundaries among various oppositions. Oppositions (e.g. animal / human, man / woman, public / private) are exactly what the anthropological machine establishes, moreover, it also empowers itself through the existence of those oppositions. Cyborg has material substance inside its own “body” right from the beginning, so through this understanding we can incorporate the questions about the environment (broadly understood) and the self in every cyborg. The cyborgs, paraphrasing Haraway, are very good at cat’s cradle game when the interactions could be seen very clearly between our everyday acts and some global or political issues
Periphery as Context: Enlightenment Influences Towards Conceptual Change in Polish-Lithuanian Political Thinking in the Later 18th Century
Get PDFThe specific political culture of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and its changes, leading to state reforms by the end of the 18th century, require a methodological approach, which would allow understanding the flow and interconnectedness of the ideas between wider European and smaller local contexts. Arguing that entangled history approach allows understanding peripheral contexts better, the article presents specific aspects of the Polish-Lithuanian Enlightenment creating the context for conceptual change in political thinking. The context specific details are presented with the analysis of Vilnius University related discourse showing that the Enlightenment ideas were used to achieve certain goals of local improvement
DECLINING SYSTEMIC TRUST IN THE POLITICAL ELITE IN THE EU’S NEW MEMBER STATES: THE DIVERGENCE BETWEEN EAST-CENTRAL EUROPE AND THE BALTIC STATES
Get PDFIn the last decade there has been a process of rolling-back Europeanization efforts in the EU’s new member states (NMS), a process intensified by the global crisis. This de-Europeanization and de-democratization process in the NMS has become a significant part of a more general polycrisis in the EU. The backslide of democracy in the NMS as a topical issue has usually been analysed in terms of macro-politics, formal-legal state institutions, party systems, and macroeconomics. The most significant decline of democratization, however, is evident in the public’s decreasing participation in politics and in the eroding trust. This decline in systemic trust in political elites in the NMS has been largely neglected by analysts. Therefore, this paper concentrates on this relatively overlooked dimension of declining trust and social capital in the NMS. This analysis employs the concepts of governance, trust, and social capital to balance the usual formalistic top-down approach with a bottom-up approach that better illustrates the divergence between East-Central Europe and the Baltic states’ sub-regional development
Memories of Discipline in Soviet Lithuania: Stories in Oral History
Get PDFTotalitarian regimes attempt to restrict and control virtually every aspect of human life. Interestingly, conscious reflection on disciplinary practises takes up only a small part of the life-stories of interviewed Lithuanians, as far as the memory of the post-Stalin era is concerned. The interviews that form the foundation for this paper were conducted during the summer of 2017 in three different districts in Lithuania. The article aims to answer the following two research questions:1) Which mechanisms of discipline did people recognize and reflect upon?2) How were disciplinary actions remembered and described?According to interviews, tangible individuals filled the role of disciplinarians in schools and workplaces. In addition, the responsibility for discipline and control lies within the imperceptible disciplinarian, supplemented by the invisible discipline of the collective. This led to overwhelming uncertainty in the society, where people invoked intuition and interpretations of who is trustworthy to adapt to uncertain situations. The greatest impact of the totalitarian discipline was that people effectively internalized it and consequently became their own most significant disciplinarians
PARTY POSITIONS ON THE EUROPEAN UNION IN THE BALTIC STATES: DO THEY COMPETE? DO THEY MIRROR VOTERS’ POSITIONS?
Get PDFThis paper aims to determine Lithuania’s, Latvia’s, and Estonia’s parties’ positions on the European Union (EU) and to ascertain whether these party positions mirror their voters’ positions on the EU. Analysis suggests that parties in this region have rather varied positions on the EU, with the exception of hard-Eurosceptic views, which are absent in Baltic states’ party systems. This paper also indicates that parties in the Baltic states tend to mirror, with some exceptions, their voters positions on the EU. This suggests that there may be additional factors determining parties’ positions regarding the EU in the Baltics
INSIGHTS INTO INTRA-PARTY DECISION-MAKING IN LATVIA’S POLITICAL PARTIES
Get PDFThis article examines the decision–making processes within political parties in Latvia. Two important variables have been chosen for analysis: 1) policy formulation (which actors are involved in the elaboration of election programs), and 2) candidate selection (how parties create their electoral lists). A survey of Saeima (Latvia’s parliamentary body) deputies indicates that party board members have the most say in deciding which individuals to include on electoral lists and which policies to pursue; financial supporters seem to have almost no impact on parties’ internal decision-making processes
Mars and Venus in Action? The US and EU’s foreign relations strategies in academic discourse
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This article reviews the existing academic literature that compares and explains the differences between the US and the EU’s external actions. An analytical matrix is devised to group publications by level of analysis (micro-, mid-, and macro) and by theme of comparison criteria. The key findings are that in the macro level of analysis, authors tend to compare the role actors have in international relations before claiming either that the EU is a different kind of power due to its peculiar historical experience, or that the EU is weak due to its complicated structure and lack of military capacities. Furthermore, authors conducting their analyses at the micro level tend to find more similarities between the EU and the US’s external actions than those working at the macro level. The article concludes by making a point in favour of further comparisons as an essential tool to better understand the EU and other actors in international relations.[straipsnis ir santrauka anglų kalba