National citizenship policy: an analytic comp arison of Hungary, Poland, and Lithuania

This paper aims to investigate, from a comparative perspective, the policy of citizenship as a species of public policy with a view of both its objective content and of its interaction with other public policies. Our guiding assumption is that the basic principles of citizenship policy are highly stable and practically do not change over very long periods of time, and that those elements that do change serve other public policies; i. e., they perform an auxiliary function serving other policies. In this paper naturalization policy and policy with respect to dual/multiple citizenship are held to be the changing elements of citizenship policy as a species of public policy; and these elements can best serve, or be accommodated to, the pragmatic needs of society. It is these elements of citizenship policy that we delve into on the basis of a comparative case analysis of Hungary, Poland, and Lithuania. A statistical analysis of naturalization data shows that, viewed from the EU perspective, all three countries follow a strict conditionbased conservative naturalization policy. With respect to the legal regulations concerning naturalization in Lithuania, Poland, and Hungary, Lithuania‘s policy can be judged to be one of the least open: compared with Poland and Hungary, it sets the longest residence-requirement and also requires passing exams on the Constitution and the state language. There is also a strict requirement of renouncing previously held nationality. Of the three countries investigated, Lithuania‘s naturalization policy is the very strictest,although during the past years Poland also evinced a tendency to tighten naturalization conditions (at least at the level of legal regulation) with respect to persons of non-Polish descent. Comparing Poland and Hungary with Lithuania discloses yet another significant difference in naturalization policy.[...]Politikos mokslų ir diplomatijos fakult.Viešojo administravimo katedraVytauto Didžiojo universiteta