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The article explores positivism-postpositivism debate in social sciences that has been lasting already for many years. The author does not suppose this debate will end soon since it raises fundamental questions concerning the aims, tasks and methods of social sciences. Though representatives of these sciences differ significantly in views on these questions, the most of them and, in particular, evident majority of representatives of political science virtually holds positivist views. Such questions, which may be called conceptual, are essentially disputable, so they cannot be resolved by any empirical research. When examining positivism-postpositivism debate the author singles out, paying tribute to tradition, three aspects of debate: (1) ontological, (2) epistemological, and (3) methodological. Yet he presents the arguments to support his claim that because of its antimetaphysical character positivism can have no ontology at all. Therefore an ontological dispute between positivists and postpositivists is simply impossible. Postpositivists, in discussing epistemological questions, would be inclined to reject positivist viewpoint that our statements and theories about social life can be true (though according to modern positivists, we can never know it for sure). They also would reject the positivist distinction between facts and values, which likewise can be considered as epistemological. But the most serious dispute that is taking place in social sciences concerns methodological questions. The author, in analyzing it, pays most attention to two most influential forms of postpositivism, namely to critical theory and postmodernism. Having discussed genealogy and deconstruction which, though with serious reservations, may be considered as postpositivist methods, the author claims that postpositivism lacks the main part of methodology, i.e. rules of accepting scientific statements and theories. And that is why postpositivism cannot win the methodological debate over positivism which has such rules. Adapted from the source document.

This article deals with the present mechanism of political parties funding in Lithuania. Although the legislator of Lithuania has passed laws that should have influence on prevention of corruption in politics, but the results of quantitative & qualitative researches show that the rules concerned with funding of parties are not enough effective de facto. In this article author analyzes in detail the particularities of private & public funding models of political parties & expand the concept that in a modern democracy it is necessary not to choose one of those patterns, but try to combine them effectively. The author concludes that the main obstacle for the transparent funding of political parties in Lithuania is "the corrupted mentality" which regulations are not able to surmount yet. Adapted from the source document.

This article describes the problem of conflict of interest and its regulation in Lithuania. After a short introduction of conflict of interest and related notions, types, and forms of conflict of interest the Lithuanian case study is followed. After a short historical review of such conflict regulation in interwar Lithuanian Republic period the analyses turns to contemporary legislation concerning this ethical problem. Lithuanian Law on the Compatibility of Public and Private Interests in the Public Service was edited three times what allows the author to distinguish tendencies and evaluate them in the broader context. The author provides a snapshot of the conflict of interest in codes of ethics of Lithuanian public institutions. The analyses of legislation regulating conflict of interest in politicians and civil servants activity allows concluding that behavior of civil servants is more regulated due to their role. Adapted from the source document.

After liberation Lithuanian society & Lithuanian nation expected to build nation state & to consolidate & recreate national identity at the same time denouncing the Soviet legacy, however European integrational processes promoted the political & cultural attitude to create new European civil identity. The author of this article examines the deconstructional impact on the debates about the Idea of Europe & the efforts to deconstruct all types of identities, including national identity, & national essentialism. Some features of new European identity are highlighted by critical analysis of the meditations of J. Derrida on today's Europe, his & J. Habermas' joint efforts to ground the necessity of European Constitution & base new European identity on constitutional patriotism, solidarity, unconditional openness to the Other & the feeling of common destiny. The article examines the radical criticism of the Idea of Europe & Europeanness provided by G. Agamben & A. Amin. The author of this article comes to conclusion that the efforts to create & embed European civil identity disconnected from national identity features & feelings & national state power disavow the possibility of promoting a manifest European identity politics & disclaim the idea of Europeanness, because of the idea of multi-ethnicity on which these efforts are based. Adapted from the source document.

Straipsnyje pateikiamas konceptualus pagrindas, kuris naudojamas nagrinejant pokycius Lietuvoje per desimt narystes Europos Sajungoje metu. Teigiama, kad, norint juos ivertinti ir paaiskinti, neuztenka naudotis klasikinemis europeizacijos teorijomis. Todel siuloma i europeizacija zvelgti platesniame vystymosi teoriju kontekste. Tokiam prapletimui naudojama Douglasso C. Northo, Johno Josepho Walliso ir Barry R. Weingasto teorija, kuri apibrezia perejima nuo prigimtines valstybes prie atviros prieigos santvarkos ir sio perejimo salygas Paper presents conceptual framework used to assess Europeanization in Lithuania during the last 10 years across the classical to Europeanization literature dimensions of polity, politics and policy. Author argues that because usually consequences of Europeanization are fragmented and hardly possible to generalize, therefore, it is wise to look at the new EU member states, where this impact was concentrated. Author states that Europeanization theory has to be complemented by additional approaches accounting for a domestic change. Therefore, Europeanization is put into a broader development studies. Theory of development produced by Douglass C. North, John Joseph Wallis and Barry R. Weingast serves as a theoretical framework in the research. This developmental approach puts an emphasis on the role of elites, state capture and broader transformation of the society and thus focuses and complements the current theory of Europeanization. It also provides a framework to analyse the issue of corruption and state capture, which is no longer considered as a deviation, but rather as a norm. Adapted from the source document.

Value orientations of Lithuanian civil servants are analyzed in the context of political culture of society. After the short summing-up on Lithuanian political culture research author concentrates on such features of political culture as distrust in authorities, public institutions, state & democracy; negative attitude towards legislation & attempts to drive through using informal rules & networks; inability to envisage difference between private and public. The role model of civil servant prescribed by Lithuanian legislation reflect the striving, meanwhile in reality officials' practiced values correspond with the orientations of consuming society & some negative habits & stereotypes inherited from the soviet times. Adapted from the source document.

Drawing upon the work by C. Buchen & M. Feldmann, the author argues that among postcommunist countries Slovenia approximates most closely the ideal type of liberal market economy, while Estonia comes most closely to its antipode -- liberal market economy in the sense of P. A. Hall & D. Soskice. While Lithuania together with Estonia lean toward liberal type, postcommunist liberal capitalism displays some unique features, their list including underdeveloped financial sector, strong position of foreign capital, "cocktail" quality of many institutions due to their eclectic import. Lack of institutional complementarity between different institutional spheres is considered as driving force behind recent attempts to reform pension & education systems in Lithuania. Adapted from the source document.

One of the brand new areas of historiography is analyzed. Availing of the research of historical conscience launched in Germany, the author explores the possibility of applying this new practice to the analysis of Lithuanians' historical conscience. The perspectives, theoretical-methodological objectives & tasks are analyzed. Special attention is drawn to the ideological aspect of a historical conscience & to the problem of "left" & "right" in the Lithuanians' mass conscience during the last decade. A relationship between the "left" & "right" identity & a specific version of the past being defended, an attempt by Lithuania's politicians to manipulate the historical perspectives, a tendency toward mythologization as evident in Lithuania's contemporary historical conscience is emphasized. Adapted from the source document.

The paper explores the epistemic fruitfulness of the contemporary theories of modern relations for historical research about the relations between premodern polities. The author suggests to replace the concepts of "international system" and "international society" by the broader notions of "interpolity system" and that of "interpolity society". It is demonstrated that A. Wendt's thesis that in the premodern times international politics was dominated by the Hobbesian culture of anarchy disregards historical evidence about the "Lockean" realities of the dynastic politics in the medieval Europe and other places. The author also criticise H. Bull's concept of international society because of its assumption that Westphalian peace treaty of 1648 was the date of birth of the international law and international society as historical reality. Paper includes a case study about the changing roles and challenges of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL) as the subject of interpolity relations in XIII-XV centuries. It focuses on the rise of GDL from the polity playing the role of the barrier (but not that of buffer) polity, separating Central European and Eastern European interpolity systems and belonging to both of them, to the regional empire and suzerain polity of the Eastern European interpolity system by the early XVth century. However, Lithuanian hegemony in Eastern Europe lasted only very few years. After 1430, the Eastern European interpolity system was about to transform itself from the suzerain polity system into a multipolar sovereign interpolity system of the type that consolidated in the Central and Western Europe after 1648 and survived for 300 years. However, the political leadership of GDL failed to meet the challenge to maintain an emerging multipolar balance of power in this system. Adapted from the source document.

In this article phenomenon of the "color revolution" as a new step in the revolutionary theory is discussed. The main purpose was to define its relation to the classical revolutionary studies & its specific features. As a result author constructed definition of the "color revolution" & its process model is proposed in the article. As a practical case the "tulip revolution" in Kyrgyzstan was taken in order to find out how much it fits newly appeared "color revolution" type. The main conclusion of the article is that "color revolution" in some way differs from early proposed revolution & its process definitions & its crucial new feature is the use of the political technologies seeking to affect people mind ("moment society" creation for power attainment). Adapted from the source document.

Security studies have survived a lot of transformations. Like any other social theory, security studies have gone through a number of consecutive development stages: the dominance of traditional theories (realism/neorealism), the rise of critical & discourse approaches as well as the attempts to modify the traditional theories & methodological frameworks & to search for the synthetic or universal theoretic models. Author reviews how the security studies developed in the last few decades. Further attention is devoted to the attempts of Barry Buzan to provide for a compromised frameworks for security analysis in his works People, States and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era (1991), & Security: A New Framework for Analysis (1998). The first work was an attempt to sum up the most valuable inputs for a widening security agenda; it includes the new aspects of security (economic, political, social & ecological), acknowledging that a state can be one of the many other subjects in the security studies. The greatest value of this work is a model of sectorization of security studies -- analytical proposition to classify threats by sectors. The second framework for analysis seeks to preserve the use of the security sectors' concept. However B. Buzan, 0. Waever & J. de Wilde propose to include a discursive theory of securitization into the framework. Authors suggest that security is not an objective condition -- it is about presenting issues as existential threats that require emergency measures. Some critiques (eg. J. Eriksson) argue, theories of securitization & sectonzation are incompatible in methodological meaning. The author of this article gives some suggestions that a model of sectorization of security studies should be supplemented by a new sector -- the communication sector. This expansion of the model could help fill some gaps left in the B. Buzan model -- i.e. the way threats emerge, the reason why one threat is considered differently from the other one as well as why they enjoy a specific influence on the other security sectors. 3 Schemas. Adapted from the source document.

The article deals with the fundamentals of Lithuanian foreign policy. It is an attempt to evaluate its understructure, principles, advantages & shortcomings. The article proceeds to exploring a rather strenuous question: are the tensions between Lithuanian & Russia caused solely by the Russian misbehavior as Lithuanian politicians mostly claim or is the Lithuanian foreign policy also to blame. The crucial idea of the "new Lithuanian foreign policy," that of the center or leader of an unnamed & undefined region, presumably of the Eastern Europe or at least a part of it, is put under scrutiny. The author claims that (1) for a small country such a role is utterly unrealistic, (2) attempts to play that role have nothing to do with national interests the foreign policy has serve, (3) playing the chosen role complicates relations both with other EU countries & with Russia. The article ends with the conclusion that the foundation of the Lithuanian foreign policy must be its Western, not Eastern policy. Adapted from the source document.