Emerging Repertoires of Political Participation in Lithuania: A Latent Class Analysis

Abstract

Most scholars argue that the decline of citizen participation and confidence in political institutions might be explained as the transformation of traditional forms of political participation to new ones. However, some authors indicate that citizens are not exclusively oriented towards institutionalized or de-institutionalized forms of participation and use all available mechanisms of influence by participating in various forms of action. The focus of this article is an empirical investigation of repertoires of political participation in Lithuania. The article, which is based on the data of the fifth wave of the European Values Study, concludes that repertoires of political participation in Lithuania are diversified and complex. They are significantly associated with gender, age, education, income, place of residence, interpersonal trust, confidence in political institutions, materialist/postmaterialist values, authority orientations, democratic support, autocratic orientations, and family socialization. The repertoires of the all-around activists, the duty-based participants, and the low-involved protesters are mixed and include all forms of political participation. However, there is a slightly noticeable trend toward the repertoire of an assertive citizen among the low-involved protesters and the apolitical volunteers.