Valstybės viduje: pilietinės savivokos galimybė ir pilietinio elgesio trajektorijos

Abstract

The successes and failures of participants in civil society in specific situations as well as legitimized or delegitimized goals help to define civil society. By studying the specific strategies and citizens’ activities with respect to the details of the context, we can get a clearer image of the peculiarities of civil society. The paper, devoted to a well-known civic dispute involving the historic Romuva movie theater, discusses the functionality of civil society during this conflict. The study is based on the case study method; therefore the data representation is contextual and cannot be generalized to the whole of Lithuania, but it can provide plenty of information on the analyzed object. Post-communist civil societies face different challenges than Western societies, as they have arisen in a different context; hence they face a specific problem: to form, justify, and legitimate the civil society. By analyzing the civil struggle surrounding the Romuva cinema, we examine the lack of civil society legitimacy in the face of the different interests of citizens, business, and government. What challenges and problems confront citizens who take it upon themselves to defend the public interest? The study showed the lack of legitimacy of noninstitutionalized civil society groups. In view of the activities of government bureaucracies, or rather of their failures, and the pragmatic interests of businessmen, it turned out that citizens’ enthusiasm, creativity, and critical reasoning are not sufficient in order to protect the public interest, as noninstitutionalized civic groups’ activities are not considered legitimate and thus are often not taken into account.