Are local independent lists different from political parties in municipal councils? A study on the behaviour of councillors in Lithuania

Today, the party democracy model faces a number of challenges: citizens do not trust parliament (Catterberg and Moreno, 2006), voter turnout is declining (Gray and Caul, 2000; Blais, Gidengil, and Nevitte, 2004), and the role of political parties as intermediaries between the citizens and the authorities is weakening (Dalton and Wattenberg, 2002; Dalton, 2004). Meanwhile, independent local lists have been successful in local elections in various countries (Otjes, 2018; Drápalová and Vampa, 2018). Local independent lists compete with political parties for political representation in local governments. This article addresses one of the critical questions in the scholarly literature on local independent lists: whether and how local independent lists are different from the local branches of traditional political parties in municipal councils (An Heyerick, 2016). This paper uses data from Lithuanian municipal councils to investigate whether and how members of independent lists behave differently from members of political parties at council meetings. To explain the behaviour of politicians in representative institutions, researchers typically analyze politicians' personal goals and institutional and electoral rules. In this study, the main factor explaining the different behaviour of politicians is the form of organization to which they belong. Since the same electoral rules apply to political parties and independent lists in the Lithuanian local election, the country is suitable for exploring the relationship between the type of organization and the behaviour of council members. Local independent lists have been allowed to nominate candidates for municipal councils in the country since 2015. In addition, it is assumed that members of political parties and independent lists pursue the same objectives (re-election, personal career and policy implementation). Based on previous research, I predict that membership of different forms of organization (independent lists and political parties) leads to the different behaviour of councillors in the municipal council. I hypothesize that members of independent lists are more likely to vote against their group and the ruling coalition (opposition); they speak more often and for longer in council meetings than party members. The dataset consists of one year (2019-2020) of coded municipal council meetings in three Lithuanian municipalities.