V. Jankauskaitė “The organizational and political behavior of Lithuanian interest groups and its determinants” doctoral thesis defence

Author, Institution: Vaida Jankauskaitė, Kaunas University of Technology

Science area, field of science: Social Sciences, Sociology, 05S

Scientific Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Algis Krupavičius (Kaunas University of Technology and Vytautas Magnus University, Social Sciences, Political Sciences, 02S).

Dissertation Defence Board of Sociology Science Field:
Prof. Dr. Vylius Leonavičius (Vytautas Magnus University, Social Sciences, Sociology, 05S) – Chairman;
Prof. Dr. Eglė Butkevičienė (Kaunas University of Technology, Social Sciences, Sociology, 05S);
Dr. Aida Just (Bilkent University, Turkey, Social Sciences, Political Sciences, 02S);
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Alvidas Lukošaitis (Vilnius University, Social Sciences, Political Sciences, 02S);
Prof. Dr. Ainė Ramonaitė (Vilnius University, Social Sciences, Sociology, 05S).

The doctoral dissertation is available at the libraries of Kaunas University of Technology (K. Donelaičio St. 20, Kaunas), Lithuanian Social Research Centre (A. Goštauto St. 11, Vilnius) and Vytautas Magnus University (K. Donelaičio St. 58, Kaunas).

Annotation:

The fragmented nature of Lithuanian interest group’s research allows making limited conclusions about the way the modern Lithuanian interest organizations look. Investigating the aspects of organizational and political behaviour of interest groups, this dissertation seeks to understand the workings of Lithuanian interest groups: what are their main characteristics, how their organizational structure and development look, how strong and varied is their political engagement and, finally, whether and how they differ from one another and what factors determine these differences. The empirical analysis is based on Lithuanian interest group survey carried out in 2016.  The empirical investigation revealed that most Lithuanian interest groups are not professionalized, their human resources are poor and organizational structures are underdeveloped. Larger and richer groups are more professionalized as well as those that have legal entity membership. One third of Lithuanian interest groups operate in a narrow niche and are policy specialists. Policy specialization is mostly determined by lower financial resources and weaker internal democracy. While Lithuanian interest groups use a wide range of insider and outsider strategies, they are poorly Europeanised and mostly oriented towards national decision-makers. Lobbying at the EU level is driven by operating in policy areas in which EU has most competence, bigger budgets as well as embeddedness in national political environment.