In this paper, I argue that contemporary political and intellectual conflicts over the right course for European integration are reflected in the historiography of Jean Monnet, the so-called founding father of the European Union (EU). Multiple and mutually antithetical representations of Monnet are explored across the central themes of the contemporary European debate: nationalism, sovereignty, political methodology, and economic ideology. I investigate how the different faces of Monnet are constructed and used to legitimate contradictory scholarly standpoints regarding these central themes. Along the way, I attempt to decipher the puzzle of Monnet’s elevation to the status of a theoretical pioneer in EU Studies. Finally, I also explore how different roles assigned to Monnet in the various narratives of the EU’s origins contribute to the construction of European identity.

In this article, we propose a new variable in the formation of individual attitudes towards govern­mental responsibilities to the unemployed – the perceived magnitude of unemployment. Our choice is based on the argument that people’s reactions are strongly influenced by subjective meanings ascribed to social realities. We apply a multilevel analysis approach and mainly use the European Social Survey (2008). Results show that the perceived magnitude of unemployment positively inf­luences public attitudes towards governmental responsibilities to the unemployed, when corrected for a series of relevant individual and national characteristics. Moreover, of all tested measures of actual unemployment rates, only the long-term unemployment rate has a significant effect on atti­tudes towards governmental responsibilities to the unemployed. Interestingly, this effect is negative, which raises questions about how the social realities of unemployment translate into perceptions of unemployment.

The aim of this article is to review the ideas presented by the Nordic scholars of the “Welfare State Model – Nordic Experiences and Perspectives in Lithuania” project and to discuss the applicability of these ideas to the Lithuanian context. During the program, held in Lithuania, in 2013–2014, Nordic scholars and their Lithuanian colleagues debated Nordic welfare model features such as active labour market policies, family policies, digital welfare innovations, the role of culture, and social trust. They also discussed contemporary challenges to Nordic success. The project intended to: promote the Nordic countries’ experiences of becoming welfare states, increase knowledge of the Nordic welfare model among Lithuanians, and initiate a debate on the potential for this model to function in Lithuania.

Several years ago, the 20th anniversary of the fall of Communism prompted a considerable number of academic meetings and publication. By that time, most ex-communist states had already made their new identities clear and familiar to the world – or so it seemed. Transitology was slowly growing out of intellectual fashion, and the whole region affected by the post-communist transformation was more and more frequently regarded as stable and comparatively uninteresting. Amid this fading interest, conferences that aimed to re-examine of the post-communist transition were considered, even by the participants themselves, more of a ritual commemoration than a necessary attempt to solve pressing issues.

The aim of this article is to review key aspects of family demographics and family policies in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Iceland, and discuss similarities and differences between the five countries. After a brief historical sketch, some aspect s of family demographics – union formation and dissolution, fertility, and female employment rates – are presented. The main part of the article reviews family policies: family benefits, parental leaves, public child-care and financial support for home-based care. The article ends with a discussion of future challenges for Nordic family policies, and the potential for policy transfer. It is emphasised that the “Nordic model” of family policy is a model with at least four faces: the “low-key” Finnish version, the maximalist equality-and-choice-oriented Norwegian version, the Swedish dual earner/dual carer version and the universal employment-oriented Danish version.

The majority of comparative analyses of family policy have been oriented towards western European countries and only very few have included Baltic and eastern European countries. The aim of this paper is to analyse family policy in Baltic countries in European comparison about ten years after regaining independence, in 2002, and in 2010. Family policy is divided into two categories for analysis: 1) support for families from around the birth of a child until the first birthday of the child, pronatalist policies; and 2) child well-being policies, support for the family when the child is older. All policy data are standardised according to the relative wealth in the particular country. Results demonstrate that after ten years of country specific family policy processes, Lithuania developed a very specific pronatalist family policy type compared with Estonia and Latvia. In 2010, Estonia and Latvia also obtained a more pronatalist approach, but the Baltic countries did not belong to any one particular crystallised family policy group.

The rise and roots of Nazi Germany is one of the most debated issues in social science today. It is a recurrent topic in the media and new books continue to provide further analyses and perspectives. The key question, of course, is how much did the Germans themselves know and approve of? Friedrich Lenger, a historian at the University of Giessen, gives a fascinating perspective on what has been called “the German catastrophe” with his penetrating study of the life and writings of Werner Sombart, the most quoted political and social scientist of the interwar years. [...]

Literature on personalization of politics emphasizes growing salience of individuals and private issues when party democracy is in decline. These trends are believed to strengthen personal appeal of politicians. However, what is the secret of party-leader’s personal appeal? Are politician’s personal traits the major key to popular sympathies? The article examines the impact of voter’s perception of party-leader’s personality along Big Five and personal charm on voter’s affinity for the leader. Analysis of the Lithuanian pre-election survey data (2012) on national party-leaders’ popular appeal, measured with “feeling thermometer”, and popular perception of leaders’ personality traits, measured with a set of semantic differentials, reveals that the significance of personality differs both across personality dimensions and between politicians under consideration. Agreeableness is the most important and universally desirable dimension of a political leader’s personality, followed by conscientiousness, with classic predictors of electoral choice under control. The significance of other personality dimensions of Big Five is much smaller if any, and personal charm seems to be inwrought with the five personality dimensions. The results prove that popular yearning for moral leadership, complemented with high performance, persists regardless of changes in political communication and (post)modern citizenship.

When the Baltic States regained their independence in 1991, Denmark had been one of their very strongest supporters, at a time when many European countries looked at the Baltic aspirations with caution. It was one of the first examples of the new post-Cold War “activist” Danish foreign policy strategy. It was not, however, without difficulties. Thus, the article argues that the Danish Social Democratic centre-left and Conservative-Liberal centre-right disagreed on how to support the Balts in practice and at what price. The difference was rooted in a hawk-dove disagreement over detente and the Soviet Union. Government party colour, the article argues, is therefore likely to have been crucial for the Danish policy. Had the relatively hawkish centre-right government not been in po­wer, it is very doubtful that we would have seen the kind of aggressive diplomatic support for Baltic independence as we saw from Denmark leading up to 1991.

This article compares the actual patterns of agencification and depoliticisation in Lithuania and explains the extent to which the EU influenced these changes. Our research employs (descriptive and inferential) statistical analysis of data on the organisational changes of Lithuanian agencies and the political participation of their managers in the 1990-2012 period. The article found that the EU made a significant contribution to the establishment of new agencies but changes in the scope of politicisation can be explained by a combination of evolution in the political conditionality of EU membership and wholesale government changes. The differentiated impact of the EU on public administration changes was observed with the management of the Europeanised agencies becoming increasingly professional over time. Overall, the results of our research confirm the stronger and more enduring impact of specific acquis rules in the policy domain compared to the much weaker influence of the EU’s political conditionality.