| Title |
Financial bureaucracy featuring innovation bureaucracy – insights from diverging pathways in Estonia and Lithuania |
| Authors |
Juuse, Egert ; Kuokštis, Vytautas ; Raudla, Ringa ; Cepilovs, Aleksandrs |
| DOI |
10.1080/13563467.2026.2737136 |
| Full Text |
|
| Is Part of |
New political economy.. Abingdon : Routledge; Taylor & Francis Group. 2026, first published online, p. [1-22].. ISSN 1356-3467. eISSN 1469-9923 |
| Keywords [eng] |
financial bureaucracy ; transformative capacity ; FinTech ; Estonia ; Lithuania |
| Abstract [eng] |
The paper investigates the integration of innovation-centriccharacteristics within traditional financial bureaucracies as theyconfront the rise of the FinTech sector. From the financialgovernance perspective, FinTech acts as a significant disruptiveforce, challenging the established operational mandates of statefinancial institutions and compelling them to reassess their role inthe digital economy. The paper explores this dynamic throughthe theoretical lens of ‘transformative capacity’, which analyseshow organisational roles, resources and abilities enable orconstrain adaptation to a socio-technical change underpinned byFinTech, focusing on the core tension between fosteringinnovation and ensuring financial market integrity and stability.Using a comparative case study of Estonia and Lithuania, theresearch reveals divergent national trajectories. Lithuania displaysa change-embracing, ‘innovation-oriented’ bureaucracy (at leastinitially), characterised by strong leadership, a unified institutionalstructure and robust coordination and learning mechanisms. Incontrast, Estonia exhibits a fragmented, ‘stability-oriented’bureaucracy marked by resource constraints, weaker coordinationand a reactive posture that leverages its e-state capacity more forinternal efficiency than sector-wide support. The study concludesthat institutional structures, resource allocation and leadershipare critical in shaping a financial bureaucracy’s capacity for agilestability, thereby determining the state’s effectiveness innavigating the FinTech landscape. |
| Published |
Abingdon : Routledge; Taylor & Francis Group |
| Type |
Journal article |
| Language |
English |
| Publication date |
2026 |
| CC license |
|
