Klaipėdos universitetas

The problem of quality of governance is one of the most important issues raised nowadays by international and local organisations. In order to adapt to the rapid processes of globalisation and glocalisation, various methods are being sought to optimise forms of democratic governance in Western countries or among countries which are leaning towards the West. The aim of the article is to increase government accountability and responsibility, promote citizen involvement, and strengthen government-societal relations and trust. In order to achieve this goal, the European Union proposes to give more powers to local government institutions, because they are closest to the citizens, can more effectively assess their needs, and attain them more effectively. To achieve this goal, the 12 principles of Good Governance, recommended by the Council of Europe, are used, and ELoGE (European Label of Governance Excellence) is used as a tool to assess the existence of these principles in local government. The purpose of this article is to identify factors that determine the implementation of the principles in local government, and to ascertain the most important characteristics that would influence the implementation of Good Governance in local government, taking into account the ELoGE evaluation methodology.

The Swedish Social Democratic Party has held power in Sweden most years for a whole century. For many years, it held it in coalition with other left-wing parties, proposing the general course of democratic functional socialist ideology, regular measures to strengthen the welfare state, a benevolent immigration policy, and a peaceful foreign policy, by mediating between west and east, and also north and south. Social Democrat activities were often carried out clearly and with predictability, with great hopes of counteracting future economic, social, political and cultural challenges. When too many of these challenges appeared in public and foreign policy, the ‘social democratic arsenal’ vanished, and less preventive measures appeared to counteract the cataclysms. The radical Sweden Democrats Party rushed into the political arena, and became the third party after the 2018 Riksdag election, and the second party after the 2022 Riksdag election. The Sweden Democrats proposed not only widening and deepening the welfare state’s programmes, and strengthening punishments for crime, but also a strict anti-immigration policy, primarily a racist anti-immigration policy towards newcomers from the Middle East and Africa. Other right-wing parties viewed the programme and the activities of the Sweden Democrats with reservation, but they had to form a coalition with four right-wing parties in order to win the Riksdag elections. After a right-wing victory in the 2022 election, Ulf Kristersson, the leader of the Moderates, attained the right to form a government on behalf of a coalition between the Moderates, the Sweden Democrats, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals. The political situation in Sweden before and after the 2018 and 2022 Riksdag elections is presented in the article, together with the political crisis between these two elections, as well as the results of the 2018 and 2022 elections. In the article, the author uses the descriptive analytical method, together with synthesis and some evaluations of the Riksdag elections.

In the article, the activities of presidents in the creation of welfare states are analysed. The main factors behind successful effectiveness in the creation of the welfare state are: public opinion towards the president, his/her individual philosophy, clear communication, and relations with political parties. The case of Gitanas Nausėda, the President of the Republic of Lithuania, with his vision of the creation of the welfare state as the main aim of governance and social rights, is presented in the article. The role of President Nausėda is significant because of the proposals and changes he has inititated. The president not only supports the welfare state, but also suggests concrete proposals for changes to the tax environment in the country, improving social security conditions and conditions for the disabled, enforcing equal opportunities, etc.

In the article the notion of “sustainable development” is analysed gnoseologically, onthologically and axiologically, and the historical meaning of the term is presented. The article is of analytical review type, which is implicating the remarks on theoretical and practical analysis of the phenomena by formulating and implementing the aims of sustainable development. Substantial attention of the readers is drawn to the tasks and aggregated indicators of sustainable development, which encompass the environmental, social and economical aspects, and the significance of sustainable development for mankind’s survival and prosperity is underlined. The authors stress the harmful impact of the extreme economization of social and environmental spheres, and affirm that only the balanced and sustainable development has the future, if we do not want to take away the resources from the future generations and want to improve the present social life and environmental quality.

It is pointed in the article that a significant and relevant direction of new social sciences in the body of the problems of research into welfare states (in general) and in Central and Eastern European countries in particular, could be the investigation of the problem of compatibility and coherence between welfare state models and public administration models, to be more precise, examining if this relation is accidental or not. This problem of coherence between welfare state and public administration models has to be investigated empirically in subsequent research, as the author raises this problem firstly in this article theoretically.

The aim of this article is to identify and analyse welfare state models and their features in East and Southeast Asia. With this in mind, the article examines welfare state models in East and Southeast Asia and their characteristics. Different attempts to define the welfare state systems of East and Southeast Asia are provided, as well as a comparison with G. Esping-Andersen’s typology of three models. The characteristics of the welfare states of East and Southeast Asia are distinguished, such as the influence of Confucianism, productivity, the role of the family in the field of social welfare, and the influence of politics and the economy on the development of the welfare state. The article uses methods of analysis of scientific literature, expert evaluation, synthesis, descriptive analysis and comparative analysis.

The essence of the “Swedish socialism” created in the 20th century lies in “democratic functional socialism”. During the last 30 years, even after having refused part of its elements, it remains the foundation of the Swedish welfare state, and historically the name of the “Swedish socialism” is mostly related to the famous Swedish and global figure of the smart political powers, social democrat Olof Palme. The article reviews the features of the biography of Olof Palme and his both theoretical and practical activity opting for social justice and by creating a welfare state in Sweden by the means of “democratic functional socialism”. Olof Palme was also an advocate of human rights and freedoms, neutrality of small countries, an international mediator, an advocate of nuclear disarmament policy and a severe critic of neo-liberal ideas.

In the article the paradigm of traditional public administration is analysed by trying to accomplish the critique of the model in the cultural dimension direction and by identifying the crucial elements of post-modernism which, according to the authors, had made an impact for the formation of such a model. There are also revealed the parameters of post-modernism in metanarrative theories of rationality, as the grounded technological and instrumental relation towards traditional paradigm principles by stressing the hierarchical governance, bureaucratic relations, control mechanisms, rational organisational structure and functional division with professionalism. By identifying the main traits of traditional paradigm, the aspects and tendencies of post-modernist organisations are revealed and the controversial answer to the question about the relevance of traditional public administration model is presented.

In the article the importance of national cultures towards effectiveness of public sector‘s modernization reforms is analyzed with the aim of creation of public value abstractedly – on the governance macro level, as well as on meza level – concretely and adequately corresponding to the trajectories of national states development. The significance of national cultures in the article is analyzed in such dimensions as acquired status, length of service, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, contradiction with hierarchy, standpoint of time, universalism and particularism, integration, individualism and collectivism, masculinity and femininity.

There is presented and shortly evaluated in the article the basic development of public administration in Central and Eastern European countries by indicating the most important stages of modernization in the light of prevailing theoretical paradigms. The authors identify three main stages – traditional public administration, New Public Management and New Public Governance, which are sometimes interrelated or contradicting to each other at the same time. New Public Governance is the most wanted and admired paradigm in Central and Eastern Europe, especially because of its social attractiveness and sensitivity, but it is still lacking more certain methods and tools to be implemented in practice. New Public Management, because of its capitalist entrepreneurship spirit, only partially changed public administration model. It was not an excellent model of reform, that’s why it is possible to point to NPM as socially irresponsible reform of the public sector. At the same time the principles of New Public Governance are orientated not only to the participation of citizens and citizens’ groups, but also to the development of social welfare, social quality, social responsibility and social justice. These are the values, which are most necessary to overcome the side effects of modernization. It is possible to draw a conclusion about this article, that by developing and presenting the more progressive principles and values of NPG, such as openness, transparency, social justice, social quality, absence of corruption and more active non-governmental organisations, Central and Eastern European countries could achieve more stable democratic development, as well as elimination or minimization of the negative impact of New Public Management for various spheres of public sector’s reforms.