Entrepreneurial Parties and the Quality of Representative Democracy in Lithuania

Success of parties with entrepreneurial characteristics has been observed in Lithuania since the 2000 parliamentary elections. The aim of this paper is to analyse how these trends affect the quality of representative democracy, focusing on the issue congruence between parties and voters. We analyse quantitative data from two series of surveys that presented the same questions (measuring political values) for party candidates in parliamentary elections and voters. Two different interpretations of entrepreneurial parties’ impact are explored. First, we present argument that there is a reason to expect a positive contribution of entrepreneurial parties to the representative democracy. Since the formation of party systems in the post-communist countries was very much an elite-driven process, ideological orientation and issues of parties could substantially differ from the views of electorate. In such a context, entrepreneurial parties may serve a function of bringing political elite closer to the median voter. Second interpretation is more in line with the conventional wisdom: since entrepreneurial parties are ideologically incoherent, they impede the formation of meaningful programmatic representation. This is especially important if voters themselves have contradicting views on policies in same ideological dimension (for example, having pro-life position on abortions, but supporting same-sex partnership). Strong competition from new entrepreneurial parties may affect the strategies of established organizations: in order to survive, they are pushed to adopt entrepreneurial characteristics and loosen their programmatic appeal.