Political Sciences

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Research Topic Summary.

Parliament in democratic systems is the central institution of representative government where representatives of different political ideologies express their ideas. Since majority of other representative institutions are dominated by political actors representing limited number of ideologies, the parliament remains the only political forum where politicians representing largest ideological spectrum meet. Parliament, its institutions and the activities of its members can therefore become a source of data for researching a wide variety of issues relevant to political studies. Dissertation projects could include studies that examine the principles of democratic governance, issues of separation of powers, issues of horizontal and vertical accountability, political parties and political elites, attitudes, values and behavior of politicians, forms and models of political communication, political representation and polarization. They could be based on theoretical, institutional analysis and empirical research. The latter provides largest opportunities for comparative analysis both over time and between countries, so the analysis of their results would allow for a more comprehensive understanding of the trends of the studied phenomena. At least one defended dissertation is expected.

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Research Topic Summary.

The topic of climate change (CC) governance has been widely analysed in the international context. It is observed that global governance of CC is becoming increasingly fragmented in various international and transnational fora, such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its 2015 Paris Agreement. Scholarly work has explored the institutional design of CC governance (Zelli, 2009; Ostrom, 2010), risk management (De Sousa, 2022), decision effectiveness (Orlove et al, 2020) and uncertainty (Puig, Bakhtiari, 2019), actor networks and their interactions (Backstrand, 2008), the political communication of these actors (Nisbet, 2009; Holmes, Richardson, 2020), political debates and discourses (Pepermans, Maeseele, 2016) and more. The topic is new as it offers comparative analysis perspectives including the case of Lithuania and is based on the theory of polycentric governance (Jordan, Huitema, Hildén, et al, 2015). Global processes such as UNEP GEO-7 or IPCC, in which Balžekienė, Telešienė, and Rabitz are involved, have highlighted the lack of knowledge on local cases. There is a desire to develop policy recommendations for large-scale transformations, and a problem with the geographical balance of scientific knowledge - most of these studies have been carried out in English-speaking countries such as the USA. The dissertation project would include the case of Lithuania in the comparative analysis, thus filling the existing knowledge gap. This study aims to contribute to the scientific knowledge on the governance of CC. The aim is to develop explanatory models based on comparative analysis to understand what drives the adoption and acceptability of CC policy decisions and the architecture of climate change governance in comparative cases. Particular attention is paid to the uncertainty created by CC, crisis and risk management, and the analysis of polycentric governance. The dissertation will include not only the dissertation research and the description of the results in the dissertation, but also scientific publications, conference presentations, involvement in the research group's ongoing research, expert and dissemination activities.