Mažvydas Jastramskis’s research while affiliated with Vilnius University and other places

Few presidents in Europe have the power to propose legislation directly to Parliament. Accordingly, presidential legal initiatives in Europe are not very well researched or understood. This paper seeks to address this research gap by providing an analysis of presidential legal initiatives in Lithuania. We have assembled a dataset of all the presidential legal initiatives proposed in Lithuania since 1993. Using this dataset, we find that factors in the political environment significantly affect the success of presidential legislative initiatives. Additionally, we find that the success of these initiatives partly depends on policy content, as initiatives in foreign and defense policy, on average, tend to be more successful. Lastly, non-partisan presidents in Lithuania become more successful over time; our results suggest a consolidation of consultation mechanisms between the presidents and the legislature.

In 2023, the NATO Vilnius Summit was the major political event in Lithuania that attracted significant global media attention. In addition, Lithuania underwent local elections and faced a municipal expenses scandal that nearly brought down the government. Nevertheless, the Cabinet remained stable with only one minister being replaced.

Presidential research commonly focuses on the most prominent cases of going public by presidents in semi-presidential regimes: such as expressing a lack of trust in the cabinet members. However, it is also important to understand the day-to-day functioning of semi-presidential republics and routine efforts by the presidents to insert themselves into government decisions. Moreover, presidents in parliamentary republics may also try to influence the government through the power of the public word. In this article, we conceptualize going public as an instance when a president weighs in on the performance of the cabinet and/or individual minister in the media. We analyze the focus and intensity of these instances in semi-presidential (Lithuania) and parliamentary (Latvia) regimes. Our main finding is that on average, presidents are more routinely active in public under semi-presidentialism. We also find that the intensity and focus of presidential attention on the cabinet are highly correlated to the media attention. Furthermore, presidents go public more often during the first year of their terms and pay more attention to foreign and defense policy than to other areas. Our results tend to support the presidency-centered arguments that emphasize the institutional prerogatives and political culture in the explanation of presidential activism.

As no elections were held in Lithuania in 2022 and the Cabinet experienced no changes, the article mainly focuses on issues in national politics and institutional adjustments that have affected the conditions for non‐partisan electoral committees to compete in elections and changed the balance of power between mayors and municipal councils. Moreover, the article presents developments in the party system, mainly focusing on the newly established Democratic Party “For Lithuania,” which became one of the most popular political parties in Lithuania immediately after its establishment.

Under semi-presidential regimes, directly elected presidents often play a central role in foreign policy, but their responsibility for the economy is limited. I propose an office-centred explanation of voter behaviour in semi-presidential elections based on the foreign policy preferences of the electorate. In order to explore the empirical applicability of this addition to the theory, I explore the Lithuanian case: a semi-presidential country where the president has substantial powers in foreign and defence policy and the presidents are usually non-partisan. I employ a dataset from the Lithuanian 2019 post-election survey that offers a battery of items measuring the positions of voters on foreign policy issues. When controlling for alternative explanations, I find that foreign policy preferences (measured as an index of voter attitudes towards Russia and defence) are a strong and stable determinant of vote choice, in both the first and second rounds of presidential elections.

The main political developments in Lithuania in 2021 were mayoral elections in three municipalities, tensions in the Cabinet related to management of the COVID‐19 pandemic and a conflict between Lithuania and China, splits in the parliamentary political groups, and party leadership changes. Much of the article is devoted to issue politics, including the migration crisis, and social unrests directed against both the government's pandemic measures and the progressive agenda of the ruling parties.

This article explores the roots of electoral hyper-accountability in Central and Eastern Europe. I focus on Lithuania: a country that is a stable liberal democracy, but has re-elected none of its governments (in the same party composition) since the restoration of independence. Survey data from the Lithuanian National Election Study reveal that Lithuanian voters are constantly dissatisfied with the economy and retrospectively evaluate it worse than the objective indicators would suggest. This partially explains why the Lithuanian voters constantly turn away from the government parties at parliamentary elections. However, their subsequent choice between parliamentary and new (previously marginal) parties is another puzzle. Using the 2016 Lithuanian post-election survey, I test how retrospective voting (economic and corruption issues) and political factors (trust and satisfaction with democracy) explain vote choice between the three types of parties (governmental, oppositional, and successful new party). It appears that new parties in Lithuania capitalize on double dissatisfaction, as the logic of the punisher comprises two steps. First, due to economic discontent, she turns away from the incumbent. Second, due to political mistrust, she often turns not to the parliamentary opposition, but to new parties. An analysis of retrospective economic evaluations hints at the political roots of hyper-accountability: these two steps are connected, as dissatisfaction with democracy is a strong predictor of negative retrospective evaluations of economy. Additional analysis of the 2019 post-election survey corroborates the results and reveals that a similar logic also applies in direct presidential elections.