Territorial Policy Agenda Revised: Public Perceptions on Local Non-Electoral Participation Capacities in Lithuania

Abstract

This paper contributes to the ongoing debates on the relationship between municipality
size and non-electoral citizen participation at the local level. We use
the data from Lithuania as a case of strongly consolidated local government
structures. We discuss three main points. First, our focus is on the limited question
of how municipality size affects the intensity of citizens’ non-electoral participation
in local decision-making, taking into account citizens’ participatory
capacities, contact with municipal authorities and local agents, and municipal
performance evaluations. Second, we consider the specificity of the territorial
rescaling policy agenda in Lithuania, which is characterised by the long-term
direction of the territorial consolidation process. Third, representative population
survey data serve as a reasonable platform for testing the hypothesis on the relationship
between different citizen participatory practices and municipality size.
We assumed that citizen perceptions of municipal problem-solving capacities,
local government accessibility, and assessment of local government performance
could vary in municipalities of different size. We also expected to find significant
correlation between citizen assessment of municipal performance, local
government accessibility (varying by local contact activity), and citizen perception
of municipal problem-solving capacities by producing statistical clusters of
citizen participatory capacity types. The limitations of quantitative statistical
approaches constitute a barrier to explaining the subjective perceptions of local
citizens hold about their non-electoral participatory behaviour. Our conclusions
demonstrate that the perceived potential of non-electoral democratic participation
capacities is relatively limited in both small and large Lithuanian municipalities.
Nevertheless, the findings indicate that citizens in large municipalities
are more likely to establish local contact activity and have better perceptions of
municipal problem-solving capacities than those in small municipalities.