Dvi skirtingos vietos demokratijos vizijos? Interesų atstovavimas, lyderystė ir gyventojų dalyvavimas savivaldoje
Two Different Visions of Local Democracy? Representation of Interests, Leadership and Citizens’ Participation in Self-governance

Summary/Abstract: The article focuses on the changes in political leadership on local governance level emphasizing the attitudes and values of local residents towards different visions of local democratic participation. The main problematic issue discuses the changes in the local political leadership referring to the context of self-governance administrative reforms. It also attempts to grasp the normative symbolic changes in attitudes and values on civic empowerment and democratic participation in decision-making processes. The theoretical conception of the article is based on a dual notion of local democracy, including distinction among representative and participatory modes of democratic participation on the municipal level. The concept of local democracy is regarded as a set of different attitudes and values of citizens towards the participation in local democratic decision-making mechanism. The theoretical discussion is complemented with the results of quantitative public opinion survey of Lithuanian habitants (over 18 years old) performed in February – March 2016. The main objective of the survey was to investigate the notions of Lithuanian habitants on mayor᾽s functions, power positions and leadership roles. Another crucial aspect examines the impact of decentralization and local governance reforms on democratic participation of local habitants on municipal level. Empirical results reveal the distinction among different attitudes towards participatory and representative local democracy types in local self-governance, which depends on variety of social-demographic factors. Common evaluation of self-governance aims, including economic development and encouragement of civic participation, as well as general assessment of self-governance performance becomes one of the main predictors to define the specificity of the local democracy mode in Lithuania.

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