How Does the Public Approach Representatives in Contemporary Democracy? Analysis of Perspectives used by Citizens while Evaluating Political Parties

The ideal of representative democracy, although widely recognized and cherished, nowadays confronts increasing evidence from empirical research indicating ideal’s estrangement from “real” democratic processes even in established democracies. A set of the most highlighted problems contains lack of citizens’ motivation, interest, knowledge and other prerequisites for meaningful use of representative instruments (f.e., Achen and Bartels, 2016). However, in some countries (Lithuania being one of the most illustrative cases), situation is further complicated by the fact that citizens do not possess stable party preferences, are not habituated to the left-right dimension as effective instrument for orienting in political field and just few political actors themselves can be evaluated as having clear ideological positions. In this situation, it seems especially challenging to see the efficient link between citizens and their representatives within the framework of representative democracy. Thus, this paper seeks to explore the nature of the existing link between citizens and their major representative agents in democratic process – political parties – in the context of challenged representative preconditions. How do the citizens approach and perceive main political parties, based on which criteria do evaluate them, how much and when these evaluations are based on parties’ issue stands, ideological positions, judgement of leaders or even mere “newness” of the party, etc.? How do the different perspectives of party evaluation relate to the citizens’ individual political sophistication, engagement in the politics, voting choices? Finally, what does it suggest about the existing link between citizens and political parties, the nature of representative democracy and its quality in the cases, where traditional representative linkages of ideology or party affiliation do not seem to be working? The answers to these questions are found by analyzing new survey data from Lithuania National Election Study 2016, especially – data coming from coded open-ended questions.