Democratic Resilience in Lithuania and the EU: Examining the Role of Civil Society and Citizen Participation
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5755/j01.ppaa.24.3.42178Keywords:
democratic resilience, civil society, civic participation, Lithuania, EU resilience, public trustAbstract
This article examines the relationship between civil society, civic participation, and democratic resilience in Lithuania within a European Union (EU) comparative frame. A mixed-methods design integrates a nationally representative public survey (N = 1,255; May–July 2024) with indicators from the EU Resilience Dashboards (data through 2022). To substantiate inferences, we report an ordinal association matrix (Kendall’s τ-b) alongside a compact logistic model with average marginal effects. Readiness to engage in active protest is positively associated with civic engagement (+4.9 percentage points per one-step increase on a 0–3 scale) and with perceiving a citizens–government conflict (+12.1 pp), and declines modestly with age (−0.19 pp per year); the association with institutional trust is small and only marginal. In EU comparison, Lithuania ranks above the EU average on the geopolitical dimension, around the average on digital, and below the average on social-economic and green dimensions. We argue that cultivating civic habits and ensuring credible channels for voice constitute proximate (micro-level) levers of democratic resilience, while addressing capacity shortfalls identified by the dashboards operates at the meso/macro level. The study contributes an integrated micro–macro account of democratic resilience in a geopolitically exposed EU member state and clarifies where policy leverage is likely to be most effective.
References
References
Alessi, Lucia, Peter Benczur, Francesco Campolongo, et al. 2020. “The Resilience of EU Member States to the Financial and Economic Crisis.” Social Indicators Research 148: 569–598.
Bahadur, Aditya V., et al. 2010. The Resilience Renaissance? Unpacking of Resilience for Tackling Climate Change and Disasters. Strengthening Climate Resilience Discussion Paper 1. Brighton: IDS.
Bernhard, Michael, Allen Hicken, Christopher Reenock, and Staffan I. Lindberg. 2015. “Institutional Subsystems and the Survival of Democracy: Do Political and Civil Society Matter?” Working Paper Series 2015:4, Varieties of Democracy Institute, University of Gothenburg.
Boese, Vanessa A., Amanda B. Edgell, Sebastian Hellmeier, Seraphine F. Maerz, and Staffan I. Lindberg. 2021. “How Democracies Prevail: Democratic Resilience as a Two-Stage Process.” Democratization 28(5): 885–907.
Bourbeau, Philippe. 2018. “A Genealogy of Resilience.” International Political Sociology 12(1): 19–35.
Burnell, Peter, and Peter Calvert. 1999. “The Resilience of Democracy: An Introduction.” Democratization 6(1): 1–32.
Carmen, Elena, Ioan Fazey, Helen Ross, et al. 2022. “Building Community Resilience in a Context of Climate Change: The Role of Social Capital.” Ambio 51: 1371–1387. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-021-01678-9.
Cheeseman, Nic, Marie-Eve Desrosiers, Licia Cianetti, and Matthias Gehrke. 2024. How to Strengthen Democratic Resilience: Five Lessons for Democratic Renewal. European Democracy Hub. https://europeandemocracyhub.epd.eu/.
Creswell, John W., and Vicki L. Plano Clark. 2017. Designing and Conducting Mixed Methods Research. 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Croissant, Aurel, and Lukas Lott. 2024. Democratic Resilience in the Twenty-First Century: Search for an Analytical Framework and Explorative Analysis. Working Paper Series 2024:149. Varieties of Democracy Institute.
Denzin, Norman K. 2009. The Research Act: A Theoretical Introduction to Sociological Methods. London: Routledge.
Dewaele, Laurens, and Robyn Lucas. 2022. “Policymaking to Support Resilience in Democratic Countries: An Examination of Sweden, Israel, and Australia.” European Journal of Futures Research 10: 13.
Doyle, Emma E. H., Erin Lambie, C. Orchiston, et al. 2020. “Citizen Science as a Catalyst for Community Resilience Building: A Two-Phase Tsunami Case Study.” Australasian Journal of Disaster and Trauma Studies 24(1): 23–49.
European Commission. 2021. Resilience Dashboards: Report and Annex. https://commission.europa.eu/publications/resilience-dashboards-report-and-annex_en.
European Commission. 2023. Digital Decade 2024: Country Reports. Publications Office of the European Union.
European Commission. 2024a. 2024 Country Report – Lithuania. Publications Office of the European Union. https://economy-finance.ec.europa.eu/document/download/b2eea0d9-a516-4153-82ac-66d150d1ce7e_en?filename=SWD_2024_615_1_EN_Lithuania.pdf.
European Commission. 2024b. Digital Decade 2024: Country Reports. Publications Office of the European Union.
European Commission, Joint Research Centre. 2024. Resilience Dashboards 2024. Publications Office of the European Union. https://datam.jrc.ec.europa.eu/datam/embedded/contentDetails.xhtml?contentUniqueID=bbda7de4-9859-42e0-9604-27779c10f10c.
Germanwatch, New Climate Institute, and Climate Action Network. 2025. Climate Change Performance Index 2025. Bonn: Germanwatch. https://ccpi.org/.
Guasti, Petra. 2020. “Populism in Power and Democracy: Democratic Decay and Resilience in the Czech Republic (2013–2020).” Politics and Governance 8(4): 473–484.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1996. Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Holloway, Jack, and Rob Manwaring. 2022. “How Well Does ‘Resilience’ Apply to Democracy? A Systematic Review.” Contemporary Politics 29(1): 68–92.
Inglehart, Ronald, and Christian Welzel. 2003. “Political Culture and Democracy: Analyzing Cross-Level Linkages.” Comparative Politics 36(1): 61–79.
Kaluinaitė, Jekaterina, Giedrė Jankauskaitė, Karolis Žibas, Vitalija Aleksejūnė, and Rūta Morkūnaitė. 2019. Inequalities in Lithuania. SDG Watch Europe.
Krishnan, A. R. 2022. “Past Efforts in Determining Suitable Normalization Methods for Multi-Criteria Decision-Making: A Short Survey.” Frontiers in Big Data 5: 990699. https://doi.org/10.3389/fdata.2022.990699.
Levitsky, Steven, and Lucan A. Way. 2024. “La Sorprendente Resiliencia de la Democracia.” Elecciones 23(27): 19–44. https://doi.org/10.53557/Elecciones.2024.v23n27.01.
Li, X., X. Wang, and G. Xiao. 2019. “A Comparative Study of Rank Aggregation Methods for Partial and Top Ranked Lists in Genomic Applications.” Briefings in Bioinformatics 20(1): 178–189. https://doi.org/10.1093/bib/bbx101.
LRT English. 2019. “Five Years Ago, Lithuania Broke Russian Gas Monopoly, but at What Cost?” LRT, October 30. https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-english/19/1111346/five-years-ago-lithuania-broke-russian-gas-monopoly-but-at-what-cost.
Martini, Sergio, and Mario Quaranta. 2020. Citizens and Democracy in Europe: Contexts, Changes and Political Support. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Meléndez, Carlos, and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser. 2021. “Negative Partisanship towards the Populist Radical Right and Democratic Resilience in Western Europe.” Democratization 28(5): 949–969.
Merkel, Wolfgang, and Anna Lührmann. 2021. “Resilience of Democracies: Responses to Illiberal and Authoritarian Challenges.” Democratization 28(5): 869–884.
Mill, John Stuart. 1859. On Liberty. London: John W. Parker and Son.
Newport, Frank. 2004. Polling Matters: Why Leaders Must Listen to the Wisdom of the People. New York: Warner Books.
Norris, Fran H., Susan P. Stevens, Betty Pfefferbaum, et al. 2008. “Community Resilience as a Metaphor, Theory, Set of Capacities, and Strategy for Disaster Readiness.” American Journal of Community Psychology 41: 127–150.
OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). 2021. OECD Environmental Performance Reviews: Lithuania 2021. Paris: OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/48d82b17-en.
Pateman, Carole. 1970. Participation and Democratic Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Patton, Michael Quinn. 2014. Qualitative Research & Evaluation Methods: Integrating Theory and Practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Pettit, Jethro. 2016. Why Citizens Don’t Engage – Power, Poverty and Civic Habitus. Brighton: Institute of Development Studies. https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12413/12665.
Popescu-Zamfir, Oana, and Dumitru Sandu, eds. 2021. Democratic Resilience Index: A Pilot Project in Romania, Hungary, and the Republic of Moldova. Bucharest: GlobalFocus Center.
Putnam, Robert D. 1995. “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital.” Journal of Democracy 6(1): 65–78.
Quinn, Dennis P., and John T. Woolley. 2001. “Democracy and National Economic Performance: The Preference for Stability.” American Journal of Political Science 45(3): 634–657.
Rosenthal, Irina. 2016. “Aggression and Play in the Face of Adversity: A Psychoanalytic Reading of Democratic Resilience.” Political Theory 44(3): 337–362. https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591714543859.
Sisk, Timothy D. 2017. Democracy and Resilience: Conceptual Approaches and Considerations. Stockholm: International IDEA.
Tocqueville, Alexis de. (1835) 2003. Democracy in America. Translated by Gerald E. Bevan. New York: Harper Perennial.
Volacu, Alexandru, and Paul Dragos Aligica. 2023. “Conceptualising Democratic Resilience: A Minimalist Account.” Contemporary Politics 29(5): 621–639.
Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy and Center for International Earth Science Information Network. 2024. 2024 Environmental Performance Index. New Haven, CT: Yale University. https://epi.yale.edu/country/2024/LTU.
