Bringing politics closer to the people: responsiveness of public election comitees in lithuanian local government

Bringing Politics Closer to the People: Responsiveness of Public Election Comitees in Lithuanian Local Government Nowadays representative democracy faces many challenges and it is easy to notice these challenges in such a young democratic country as Lithuania. Hanna Pitkin noted that one of the main factors that determines quality of democracy is responsiveness so this research tried to find out how responsiveness works, specifically, in Lithuanian local government after electoral reforms were introduced in 2015. Aim of these reforms was to bring politics closer to the people so an assumption was made that recently elected public election comitees are characterized by the biggest and the most various responsiveness in Lithuanian politics. Goal of this work was to understand what kind of responsiveness reveals itself in representation perceptions of these newly elected city council members and why, how and when it functions. To achieve this goal qualitative research method was adopted: 19 semi structured interviews were organized in Kaunas and Alytus – cities in whose councils public election comitees formed the biggest ruling majorities. Members of these coalitions were asked to share their political experience of representing interests of citizens. Questionnaire was constructed under H. Eulau and P. Karps study „Puzzle of Representation“, also, other scholar works in the field of political representation. Theoretical basis and research data allowed to classify perceptible responsiveness into different types while showing each one‘s features. The most common types of responsiveness observed in the concepts of representation formed by Lithuanian local politicians were service responsiveness, pragmatic responsiveness and selective a posteriori responsiveness. Cases of nonresponsiveness were spotted either. After classification was made, causes of current trends also were disclosed. One of the most interesting findings – repeated responsiveness concepts among those city council members who call themselves competent professionals in their field of work. These people came to politics to solve the problems they faced while working so they are either characterized by selective a posteriori responsiveness in their work related area or nonresponsiveness because some of them feel that ordinary people do not comprehend their field, also, they admit that they do not comprehend other fields themselves so they do not interfere with the issues in that other fields. Research findings have opened deeper insights about results of Lithuanian electoral reforms that were implemented in order to make local politics in the country more responsive by allowing non-party candidates to be elected. These non-party members of public election comitees believe that openness helps them to be much more responsive than party members, also, mayors believe that they are more responsive than previous mayors because now they are accountable not only to council members but also to citizens. On the other hand, it was also revealed that changes were not so effective like politicians expected themselves. While analyzing democratic representation problems such as political distrust and passivity, investigating council members perpective might seem not so purposeful after learning that many of them do not consider themselves as politicians because they do not see any politics in a farm compared municipality. However, while discussing possibilities of bringing politics closer to the people, it seems important to investigate political institution which is really close to everyone – local government. This research showed how representatives at this level perceive the concept of representation and how does this concept become the satisfaction of citizens interests in real life