Traditional Voters or Postmodern Citizens? Citizenship Typology in Lithuania

Democracy is rather fragile, when it is based on formal democratic institutions. Support for democracy, high levels of institutional trust and conventional modes of participation constitute a precondition for a stable democratic system. On the other hand, other authors argue that participation in legal protest actions may be considered as acts of self-expression and it is not dangerous for stability of democracy. The focus of this paper is to identify and investigate types of citizenship in Lithuania. What groups of citizens in Lithuania may be distinguished in accordance with their level of trust to political institutions and participation in political actions? What are the factors that determine the differences between types of citizens? What are the causes and explanations of different patterns of political trust and participation between groups of citizens? Based on the representative survey conducted in Lithuania and 60 semi-structured interviews, the paper draws conclusions that four types of citizens (trustful optimists, traditional voters, distrustful active, distrustful passive) may be identified and they significantly differ by their age, political knowledge, evaluations of country‘s economy, and evaluations of procedural justice in public sector. From theoretical perspectives of active traditional and postmodern citizenship, the characteristics of identified groups are mixed, because of socioeconomic and cultural conditions in Lithuania.