Civil Society Participation in Family Policy Formation in Lithuania ; Visuomenės dalyvavimas formuojant šeimos politiką Lietuvoje

Abstract

It is generally accepted that civil society participation in state governance is an inherent feature of the democratic system. Participation in the process of formation and implementation of public policy enables the society and its representatives to have impact on decisions which are important in their lives. The work seeks to formulate and test a tool which enables to identify obstacles and facilitations incurring to the civil society when seeking to exert influence upon decisions in a selected field of public policy, i.e., family policy, by analysing preconditions and the factual implementation of the submitted rights. The work consists of four parts. The first part formulates a research model of civil society participation in public policy formation. The second one describes methodology of the empirical research. The third part presents the results of the empirical research on the preconditions of civil society participation in family policy formation (external empowerment, participating state institutions and NGOs) and the practice of participation. The last part discusses the soundness of the formulated research model and the methodology and the results of the research in the context of scientific discussion. The work as well presents findings and proposals on further research and development of civil society participation in family policy formation.