Values and Connotations of Democracy in Lithuania: Ordinary Citizens Vs. Local Elites
Values and Connotations of Democracy in Lithuania: Ordinary Citizens Vs. Local Elites

Summary/Abstract: Not only cultures and societies may have specific nuances in the meanings of seemingly universal social and political concepts but also, within one single society, there may be different, if not competing meanings attached to the same concept. Moreover, these diverse meanings are apt to change, and change quite substantially in the case of rapid post-communist developments. As for clusters of meanings of democracy along political affiliations, there is a lack of a clear pattern of distinct meanings being coherently reflected on the left, center or right in the local elites or ordinary citizens’ definitions of democracy. In fact, only the right-wing local elites and ordinary citizens to some degree systematically diverge from other groups, as they emphasize order/law and openness. The left-wing definitions are coherent in that they ignore order and emphasize freedoms in their definition of democracy. In general, political groupings are more similar than distinct in their definitions of democracy, and changes in definitions of democracy in time are similar within all political groupings (e.g., invariant decrease in the usage of freedoms and order in definitions of democracy). The coherence of meanings of democracy along political or party self-identification lines is not increasing, but it exists in a somewhat more attenuated version, whose interpretation requires other methods than those employed in this study.

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