Straipsnio tikslas - nustatyti, kokia itaka demokratijos veikimo verti-nimui ir pasitikejimui parlamentu daro politiniai veiksniai - partines siste-mos fragmentacija, poliarizacija ir valdanciosios koalicijos dydis. Tyrime, apimanciame desimt Vidurio ir Rytu Europos saliu nuo 1991 iki 2011 m., ivertinamas ir dvieju ekonominiu veiksniu - ekonomikos augimo ir nedarbo lygio - poveikis politines paramos rodikliams. Stipriausias statistinis rysys nustatytas tarp nedarbo lygio ir pasitenkinimo demokratija: kuo daugiau ne-turinciuju darbo, tuo maziau teigiamai vertinanciuju demokratijos veikima. Taip pat paaiskejo, kad demokratijos veikimo vertinimui neigiamai atsiliepia mazas parlamentiniu partiju skaicius ir dideles valdanciosios koalicijos. Pasi-tikejimas parlamentu buvo mazesnis tais atvejais, kai ideologiniai skirtumai tarp parlamentiniu partiju buvo dideli, ir tuomet, kai ekonomika traukesi arba augo tik labai nedaug. Ketvirtoje straipsnio dalyje siekiama nustatyti, kodel dideles valdanciosios koalicijos veda prie mazesnio patenkintuju demokrati-ja procento. Cekijos ir Bulgarijos lyginamoji analize parode, kad didele val-dancioji koalicija apriboja parlamento politini vaidmeni, sudaro palankias salygas grieztai ir nepopuliariai ekonominei politikai vykdyti ir palieka di-dele rinkeju dali be priimtinu politiniu alternatyvu. Siu politinio gyvenimo reiskiniu visuma didina nepasitenkinima demokratijos veikimu The article examines the effect of parliamentary fragmentation, polarization and ruling coalition size on satisfaction with democracy and trust in parliament. Statistical analysis, encompassing 10 CEE countries from 1991 to 2011, is used to measure the impact of political factors, while the effect of economic growth and unemployment rate is also evaluated. The strongest finding suggests that there is a negative relation between unemployment rate and satisfaction with democracy. Furthermore, satisfaction with a political regime is undermined by a small number of parliamentary parties and large ruling coalitions. Trust in parliament tends to be lower when ideological differences among parliamentary parties are sizable, as well as at the times of economic recession or marginal growth. Fourth section of the article deals with the question of why large ruling coalitions lead to lower satisfaction with democracy. A comparative analysis of political realities in the Czech Republic and Bulgaria has shown that a large ruling coalition diminishes the political role of parliament, provides a strong ground for the implementation of a strict and unpopular economic policy and leads to the lack of viable political alternatives in the ranks of parliamentary opposition. The complex of these political phenomena contributes to the low satisfaction with democracy. Adapted from the source document.
Straipsnyje nagrinejama Lietuvos geroves valstybes raida saliai istojus i Europos Sajunga (ES). Teksta sudaro trys dalys. Teorineje dalyje ivertinamas dvieju ilgalaikiu valstybe strukturuojanciu procesu - pokomunistines transformacijos ir europeizacijos - santykis. Antrojoje dalyje analizuojami viesojo diskurso pokyciai siekiant issiaiskinti, ar ir kiek skirta demesio geroves valstybes pertvarkai Lietuvoje pasiekus pagrindinius euroatlantines integracijos tikslus. Galiausiai, remiantis 'socialiniu investiciju' koncepcija, bus siekiama parodyti, kiek Lietuvos geroves valstybes raida atliepia europines tendencijas. Pagrindine tyrimo isvada yra ta, kad geroves valstybes raida islieka inertiska, nors finansavimo salygos istojus i ES is tiesu gerejo. Be to, palyginti su gretimomis ES salimis naremis, skiriama maziau demesio toms geroves politikoms, kurios galetu duoti didziausia 'investicine graza'. Taip pat labiau orientuojamasi i tretini paslaugu lygmeni. Tokia situacija pirmiausia aiskintina trimis veiksniais: ekonominio saugumo prioriteto islaikymu, partine poliarizacija ir istorine logika, kuria diktuoja jau susikloste galios santykiai The article analyses the development of the Lithuanian welfare state after the country joined the EU. The text consists of three parts. In a theoretical part one evaluates interrelation of two long-term state-structuring processes, i.e. post-communist transformation and Europeanisation. In the second part, the changes of the public discourse are analysed in order to evaluate, if and how much attention is paid for the reforms of the welfare state in Lithuania after the main goals of Euro-Atlantic integration have been reached. Finally, under the concept of 'social investment state', one seeks to evaluate, how much the evolution of Lithuanian welfare state reflects the European trends. The main conclusion of analysis is that the development of welfare state remains inert despite the fact that financial conditions after the access to the EU have indeed improved. Besides, in comparison with the neighbouring EU member states, Lithuania pays less attention to those welfare policies that may bring the biggest 'return on investment'. The system is also more oriented towards the tertiary level. Such situation is firstly to be explained by three factors - the overall strength of economic security as the main political priority, party polarisation and historical logic dictated by the established power relations. Adapted from the source document.
The article discusses factors, determining loyalty of the European Parliament members, which is marginalized in most of researches on the European Parliament. The initial assumption holds that as given the rates of loyalty to the national states are high it is groundless to assess it as a neutral variable. Loyalty of the European Parliament members to national states can significantly contribute to the studies of European Parliament's internal relations and power contribution. The first section of this article presents and analyses main insights of the influence of national parties and political groups on the voting behavior of the European Parliament members, justifying objective reasons which caused marginalization of importance of the European Parliament members' loyalty to national states. It should be noted that the European Parliament members, like most of other politicians, have fixed set of objectives forming their choices. Goals of re-election, positions and policy (leading to power gains/losses) are leading. In the hands of national parties and political groups these goals become instruments of pressure and enforcement, determining behavior of the European Parliament members. National parties controlling the access of candidates to the electoral lists and defining their position on those lists gain extreme importance in the competition for loyalty. Since political groups of the European Parliament have dominant political force for the second objective of the parliament members each of them have an interest in maintaining balance between loyalty to the national party and particular political group. Loyalty to national states loses its importance as it has minimal influence on the success of achieving objectives of the parliament members. The second section is devoted to the research of links between voting of European Parliament members and their national states, more specifically -- to the analysis of European Parliament members' loyalty to their national states. Lithuania is chosen as a case study. The fact that loyalty to the national states during 2004-2009 and 2009-2014 terms of the European Parliament is over 85 % indicates that this variable should not be seen as accidental or insignificant. It is argued that loyalty to the national state mainly reflects voting unity of national delegation. The rest of this section analyzes factors which can explain why, despite the fact that national delegation is very diverse in the context of left-right ideological divide, rates of loyalty to the national states, demonstrated by the national delegations, remain very high. The article concludes stating that loyalty of European Parliament members to their national states is a valuable source of data for the analysis of the party behavior in the European Parliament as well as outside it and should not be overlooked. Adapted from the source document.
Political corruption in Japan is a very important issue. According to the Global Corruption Barometer 2009 survey Japanese perceived political parties, public officials and civil servants to be the institutions which are the most affected by corruption. In addition, governmental measures against corruption are regarded to be ineffective and inadequate to the real situation. Japanese have keen concern toward Japanese political parties, intransparent activity of politicians and preventive measures taken by government. The purpose of this research is to examine political corruption phenomena in contemporary Japanese politics. Research questions are what are the structure, scale, and causes of political corruption in Japan during 2001-2009. For answering to these research questions first of all it is discussed the concept and definition of political corruption itself. Article overviews previous political corruption studies in Japan from the time of Second World War to the recent times, including the report of the Transparency International National Integrity System. In third chapter of article the scale, the varieties and the main practitioners of political corruption in Japan are to be analyzed. It reveals the biggest political corruption scandals in Japanese politics in given time-period. Last chapter focuses on the explanation of political corruption mechanism in Japan and in particular relationship with clientelism practises. Combination of primary and secondary sources led me to make the following conclusions on the main political corruption tendencies in Japan during 2001-2009. First, the Asahi Shimbun front page content analysis indicates that 2002 and 2007 are special years in the context of corruption studies because in those years published the largest number of political corruption articles and the biggest number of the new themes on the political corruption issue revealed. Second, the common point of the three most significant political corruption scandals during 2001-2009 is that all of them have the relationship with political finance issue and in particular a suspicion on the violation of the PFRL. This finding reaffirms the NIS statement that political finance is one of the top priority issues in Japanese corruption scheme. Third, illegal political donation and influence peddling are the most frequent types of corruption in Japan during the period of 2001-2009. Fourth, main practitioners of political corruption in Japan were the LDP members from the House of Representatives. In addition, in as many as nine cases the Diet member secretaries were involved in political corruption scandals. The Diet member secretaries play an important role in political corruption scheme because they are often responsible for the political fund management. Fifth, the most vulnerable institution to political corruption seems to be Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries and Ministry of Construction. Finally, article concludes that political corruption in Japan, to some extent, could be explained through the analysis of political clientelism. Adapted from the source document.
With the so-called war on terror launched by the USA in 2001, a new era started in one of the fields of the propaganda war -- the Internet. Ability to disseminate information to as wide as possible audience due to globality of the Internet has become a powerful mean of influence. Many Muslim politically engaged religiously motivated groups, who perceive themselves to be in the state of such war, create their own elaborate web-sites. "KavkazCenter" is just one of them. "KavkazCenter" declares itself to be a product of the Chechen Independent International Islamic Internet Agency, which was set up in 1999 in Grozny by the Chechen National Center for Strategic Research & Political Technologies. However, its content is somewhat problematic, as the site appears to have been solely a propaganda tool for the Chechen Jihadist group Riyadhu as-Salihin, led by the late Shamil Basayev, who often boasted about his organized bloody attacks, frequently against civilians. Lithuania first noticed the site in early 2003, when it started being serviced by a Lithuanian firm "Microlink Data," which at the time hosted the site on its server. Back then the Lithuanian State Security Department (SSD) declared the site to be free from terrorist propaganda & insisted it did not pose any threat to Lithuania, though it was known that the site had been earlier closed down in the USA & the UK. However, half a year later the very same SSD confiscated the server of the firm "Elneta," which at that time hosted the site, thus shutting down its operations from Lithuania. This launched a long marathon of legal deliberations going all the way up to the Constitutional Court. The case divided the Lithuanian public into two parts -- those, who considered the "KavkazCenter" to be an information agency of independence-seeking Chechen freedom fighters & those, who considered the site to contain terrorist propaganda. The "defenders" group was championed by some MPs, Soviet-era dissidents, while the "accusers" group was led by the SSD. The unfolding of the case revealed that both sides were ill-prepared to meet the challenge the site "KavkazCenter" had caused. One can argue that even state institutions were taken by surprise by it. This first of all applies to the SSD, who showed itself at its worst -- its lack of professionalism was astonishing. At the same time, gaps in legislation & by extension in the work of courts were exposed. Most journalists, who took to bashing of the SSD for presumed persecution of media on the freedom of expression grounds, displayed ignorance & lack of deeper insight into the case. The general public was left puzzled. Moreover, Russia's involvement, though often referred to in the media, has never been fully revealed. The epopee of the "KavkazCenter" in Lithuania sucked both the Lithuanian government & the general society into the whirlpool of the global information wars. And though the experience shows that most of the actors were ill-prepared or not prepared at all, the very experience is very useful -- it allowed for identifying of the weaknesses in political, legal & social life of the country. Learning from its mistakes, the society can progress & improve. It is plausible to hope that in the event of another "kavkazcentr," the Lithuanian government & non-state actors will be better informed & equipped to tackle the issue. Adapted from the source document.
An unambiguous assessment of the results of changes in the post-communist political regime of Ukraine is hardly possible. The political system of this country has experienced both periods of democratic expectations & democratic setbacks during the last fifteen years. For example, in 1990-1994, before the first competitive parliamentary elections, there was a clear fragmentation among the old (communist) political elite in Ukraine; the country's first democratic constitution was adopted in 1996. However, after Leonid Kuchma was elected President in 1994, authoritarian tendencies gradually recrudesced, "oligarchic" clans took hold of the country's political system, & the elections were increasingly blatantly manipulated & rigged to the advantage of the ruling elite. This cycle of political development recurred ten years later. Manipulations of the results of the 2004 presidential election raised a massive protest among the inhabitants of Ukraine, which was symbolically dubbed the "Orange Revolution." A new influx of democratic expectations forced the ruling elite to concede to re-running the second round of Ukraine's presidential election, which was won by the opposition. However, the political crisis which struck the new government in September 2005 & the mutual accusations of corruption raised by the former "revolutionary" comrades-in-arms -- President Viktor Yushchenko & former Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko -- raised new questions regarding the vitality of the democratic processes in Ukraine. The main question examined in this article is therefore whether the vacillation of Ukraine's political regime is not a regular, permanent condition. Having two main aims -- (1) to construct a theory of Ukraine's post-soviet political transformation, & (2) to disclose the possibilities of democracy consolidation in this country -- the article starts with making some "corrections" to the transitologist approach to regime change. Firstly, it is argued that political transformation theories should have a shared concept of democracy, irrespective of the number or type of the stages of democratization distinguished. The experience of post-communist countries shows that formal procedural democratic criteria are insufficient in order to characterize a political system as democratic. Secondly, traditional theories of regime change focus mostly on the analysis of the behavior of the main political actors (the political elite) & their decisions (agreements). The structural conditions (eg., the characteristics of socio-economic development) should be also included into theoretical thinking about regime change. Thirdly, the analysis of elites & their agreements is sufficiently developed to explain how & when the transition to democracy occurs. However, the democratic consolidation stage has remained somewhat mystified by 'transitologists.' The article argues that an assumption should probably be made that the behavior of political elite factions competing in the political system is always rational & self-interested, ie., democracy (or any other form of political regime) becomes "the only game in town" only if & when it is mostly advantageous for the political elite functioning in that system. Taking into account the above mentioned "corrections" to the transitologist approach, in the article, there is produced a model for analyzing post-soviet regime transformations. The model consists of three main explanatory variables: (1) the structure of political elite, (2) the 'rules of game' prevalent in the system, & (3) the strategies of political elite aiming at gaining business and/or mass support. Consequently, various interrelations of these variables may produce four possible ideal-type outcomes of regime change -- (1) democracy, (2) 'democracy with adjectives,' (3) zero-sum game (a very unstable option when political regime may be temporarily democratic but is at a huge risk of downfall), (4) authoritarianism. In post-soviet countries, it is not enough to examine the structure of political elite & the institutions in order to predict the consolidation of one or another form of political regime. 'Building politicians' "alliances" with business & (or) mobilizing mass support may negate any such predictions & produce additional (regressive, in terms of democratization) impulses to further regime change. The very possibilities of the political elite to form "alliances" with business & (or) to mobilize the masses are mostly determined by the structural characteristics of the country. Thus, the analysis of the latter may not also be omitted in examining post-soviet transitions. Political regime in Ukraine, which beginning of 1990s started evolving as a probable liberal democracy or at least 'democracy with adjectives,' after 1998 Verkhovna Rada elections moved to the situation of the zero-sum game. Such transition was conditioned by two factors. First, the changes within political elite structure -- the communist camp, which occupied an important, although not the most important place in the pluralist political elite structure in 1994-1998, became an anti-systemic political force after the adoption of the 1996 Constitution. For these reasons, only two opposing elite factions (oligarchs-"centrists" vs. national democrats) remained in the political system of Ukraine after the 1998 elections, the ideological confrontation of which was constantly increasing & became particularly acute at the outset of the "Orange Revolution" in 2004. Second, the fact that the business class in Ukraine was forming with the "assistance" of politicians allowed the political elite to build an alliance with business community already in 1994-1996 & maintain these tight clientelist relations even after the privatization period was over. When at the end of 2004 the national democrats gathered mass support & became virtually equal or even more influential than the so-called "centrists," who traditionally draw support from business structures, the zero-sum game in Ukraine became especially acute. Such it remains by now, even after the Orange revolution is over. In more than ten years of independence the business community of Ukraine has consolidated its positions in the Verkhovna Rada & accumulated control over almost all national TV channels & other media outlets, as well as separate industrial regions. Therefore even anti-oligarchically disposed government cannot ignore this power. The ruling elite that cares about its survival & political success is forced to co-ordinate its decisions with the interests of various business clans. On the other hand, since Ukraine's business class consists of several competing clans, any government decisions that seek to limit the political influence of business groups immediately affect the interests of competing business clans. The government cannot remain neutral in principal. Any attempts of the supposed "deoligarchisation" will only result in provoking sharper disagreements between business groups because the curtailment of the positions of one clan will open new prospects for the strengthening of the influence of its competitors. It may be argued that for these reasons there will always be at least one (and, most likely, the strongest one) oligarchic political camp supported by an "alliance" with business. In other words, Ukraine's political regime does not have any chance to be consolidated in the liberal democracy perspective. Another structural characteristic of Ukraine is the politically unorganized working class. At least several competing political forces claim to represent the workers' interests -- the Communist Party of Ukraine, the Socialist Party of Ukraine, & the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine. The internal competition among the left-wing forces encourages at least one of them (the Communist Party of Ukraine, the Progressive Socialist Party) to take a radical, anti-systemic position in order that potential supporters may distinguish it from other leftist parties. Therefore, it is likely that the political system of Ukraine will preserve a left-wing segment that will not wield much power but will propagate an anti-systemic ideology without "communicating" with other political forces. Due to its anti-systemic nature it will not be able to participate in the government of the state & the votes of the left-wing voters (comprising the basis for mass support) will probably be collected by the national democrats. This circumstance enables predicting that the zero-sum game will remain very intensive in Ukraine in the future as well. Thus, the permanent instability of the state & both -- democracy & authoritarianism -- in Ukraine (a zero-sum game) may actually be considered to be its consolidated political regime form. Adapted from the source document.
