| Abstract [eng] |
This Master’s Thesis aims to determine what kind of roles Lithuania has perfomed during the second term of D. Grybauskaitė (2014-2019). It also seeks to answer the question, what development trends of identified roles could be noticed? To achieve the main purpose the following tasks were formulated: 1. To discuss role theory and reveal the position of political leader; 2. To formule the narrowed set of possible Lithuania’s roles, taking into account the frames of Lithuanian identity; 3. To analize the declared foreign policy goals and choices of D. Grybauskaitė in order to identify what roles Lithuania has tried to perform in the international system in 2014-2019; 4. To investigate how does the expactations from other actors in the international system match with national role performance; 5. To determine the interaction between theoretically declared and practically constructed role. Role theory is used as a theoretical approach in this Master‘s thesis. In this case, the term of role has three elements – role conception, role expectation and role performance. In order to identify what roles Lithuania has performed during the second term of Grybauskaitė, the method of qualitative content analysis was chosen. Official speeches, interviews and statements were analyzed in order to determine role conception of D. Grybauskaitė. To determine the interaction between role conception and role performance, official documents, decisions and actions were important and also was taken into consideration. Finally, the speeches and interviews of leaders and their representatives from US, EU and the Eastern partners Ukraine and George revealed the expectations towards Lithuania. It provided the opportunity to examine whether the role conception of Lithuania matches with expectations from other actors in the international system. It was discovered that during the second term of D. Grybauskaitė, Lithuania played six main roles in the international arena: "anti-imperialist agent", "faithfull ally-atlanticist", "territorial defender", "pro-European multilateralist", "promoter of regional cooperation" and "bridge". The set of roles confirmed rather stable than unexpected guidelines for Lithuanian foreign policy: US prioritization, the pro-European direction, harsh stance towards Russia, active support for the Eastern Partnership. However, it is important to indicate that compared to the first term of D. Grybauskaitė, her position during the second term returned to the tracks drawn by V. Adamkus. The main factor which has led to these changes was aggresive Russian behavior. The President of Lithuania took a consistent and extremely rigorous stance against it, constantly reminding Western leaders of the Russian expansion possibility. Russian actions also highlighted the importance of US and NATO. The factor of Russian aggression can also be seen as an impetus for taking measures to strengthen the country's defense and thus consolidating the role of the “ territorial defender”. Such role changes because of the circumstances in the international arena, proves that structural factors are much more influencial than leader‘s preferences. It is important to mention that all three elements of role coincided with one another. |
