IBSS (International Bibliography of the Social Sciences)

This article show the most general obstacles for the creation of the higher quality welfare state creation in Lithuania. It is done in the article by a legal and administrative disclosure, and it is said that the world loses as much money as it invests in all infrastructure projects due to poor governance, so proper management and proper exploitation of the scientific potential in the field of public regulation is an undeniable and significant factor in the creation of general wealth. The authors argue that the negative tendencies of traditional clientelistic-hierarchical model of management in Lithuania, with its negative expressions of nepotism and corruption, can be prevented in a democratic order by the New Public Management or the New Public Governance. The prospect of creating of a higher quality welfare state in Lithuania depends both on changes in internal politics associated more with the introduction of the New Public Governance, its openness, accountability and the development of a common democratic culture.

Macro-environmental factors such as global and national public management reforms, economic crises, the COVID-19 pandemic, changing security situations (for example, the war in Ukraine), and the evolution of political and legal systems, the development of a knowledge economy and innovations (eg, big data, e-government initiatives), climate change, migration and demographic challenges, changing societal values and needs, are some of the factors that form various level requirements for public sector institutions to implement changes. Institutional changes at the micro and nano levels can be driven by various objective and subjective reasons, such as the desire to improve the quality of public services, refine internal processes and structure, increase accountability, reduce institutional budget expenditures, increase efficiency, change civil servants’ behavior in the desired direction, implement technological systems, consolidate institutions. It should be noted that changes in public sector insti tutions can be understood as planned and purposeful activities, or as unplanned activities dictated by various external environmental factors, hence the tools and results of these change programs dif fer.(Schmidt, et. al., 2017, p. 11-13, Nograšek, 2011, Karp, Helgo, 2007, Brown, et. al., 2003, 2, Barcan, 2010, p. 94).

Sometimes social assistance is not taken, even though it is legally due. Potential recipients do not apply or are simply unaware of the social assistance available. The results of the research „Causes, extent, and identification methodology of social assistance benefits non-take-up in municipalities of Lithuania, and nationwide“, which was carried under the project in 2021-2022 by a group of researchers from Mykolas Romeris University, Vilnius, Lithuania, led by assoc. prof. Vida Česnuitytė (the other members of the group - lect. Dainius Bernotas, Ingrida Grincevičiūtė, prof. Arvydas Guogis), have appeared in several media articles, as well as TV and radio programmes in Lithuania. The project was related to the following monetary social assistance benefits in Lithuania: social benefits in case of poverty, heating compensation, cold and hot water tax compensation and home loan interest coverage. The project presented a review of foreign literature on the topic, which did not appear to be extensive, and a combination of quantitative and qualitative research was conducted: observation, a representative quantitative survey of the Lithuanian population, focus groups with experts in Lithuanian regions (rajonai), and a Delphi survey of experts. The results of the research confirm to great extent the earlier findings of Reijnders, the main reasons of social assistance non-take-up are: 1) social-psychological, 2) social-informational, 3) socio-cultural (also known as socio-normative reasons), and 4) public administration reasons, which include bureaucratic-organisational obstacles. In this article the author presents some of the results obtained during the project and suggests the recommendations for overcoming the problem of non-take-up of cash social assistance in Lithuania.

The authors of the article raise a question about the relevance of new public governance principles and its implementation perspectives, and what methods could ensure this. The reforms based on the principles of Good Governance or New Public Management, should be introduced first. Co-creation and co-delivery of services are considered to be significant methods of applying the new public governance. Among the more specific new public governance methods, a mention should be made about the development and calculation of social reintegration indicators, benchmarking, „participatory research”, as proposed by the authors, and the calculation of the happiness index. It is also worthwhile to change the structure of social administration in search of new opportunities for public-private partnership, e.g. creating and administering the state - accumulative social insurance system. The pandemic and the response of the population to it, have demonstrated a more conducive environment for the implementation of the new public governance, as opposed to its rejection, and above all, this is because of moral and psychological reasons.

On the Counteraction of the Public Sector in the Conditions of COVID-19 - Europe and Worldwide in the Fields of Income Protection and Social Security The global COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the priorities of health and social policy, economics and public administration in Europe and the rest of the world. It can be argued that this crisis has not only caused and continues to cause many deaths but has forced us to reassess the concept of the welfare state under the new conditions. On the other hand, rising inflation and unemployment, ageing population, technological revolution and digitalisation, and new strains of the virus continue to pose significant challenges. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic have been more severe for socially vulnerable and disadvantaged groups (younger and older adults, women, immigrants, freelancers, etc.) and generally people that are less protected by job retention, income support, subsidized wages and other welfare schemes. Various countries around the world have implemented eloquent pandemic management programs, projects and other packages of measures and improved the legal framework. In Europe the counteraction to pandemic was significant, trying to keep income protection and social security at decent and adequate level, when the measures to mitigate the impact of the coronavirus crisis were divided into the following categories: measures for companies, measures for employees and measures for citizens.

1. The old Western democracy countries have various long existing profound content based forms of implementation of democracy, the most famous of which are référendums in Switzerland, collective bargaining and work place democracy in Sweden, the activity of the ombudsmen’s institution in Sweden and other countries of the world, etc. 2. It is important for Lithuania to find its own way of genuine rather than formal democracy, with a genuine political democracy on the national level, democracy in work places both in the public and private sectors, reduction of social inequality and increase of empathy and benevolence towards the weaker ones. 3. The past twenty years in Lithuania marked the entrenchment of formal rather than genuine democracy, when the weaker members of the society were not adequately represented, and the opinion of the governed ones, as well as their interests, were often not taken into account. 4. The mass media in Lithuania was independent for a long time and was fiinctioning as an instrument for encouraging democracy, however, in the current geopolitical context, one can observe dangerous trends of dividing rather than consolidating the society. 5. To achieve genuine rather than formal democracy in Lithuania, it is essential to better observe the principle of separation of powers and give more attention to the solution of domestic problems. 6. One of the contemporary democracy development forms in the management of public services should be strengthening of the co-participation of the services clients and their empowerment.

The government, in order to achieve the welfare of the citizens in the retirement age to keep pace with the working people, carried out the various pension systems transformations. The working people’s welfare is growing due to the economic progress, so there is a theory of economics, which examines the existing income redistribution in time. It should be noted that in order to ensure the financial well-being in old age it is necessary to efficiently allocate the scarce resources. In Lithuania, the existing three pillar pension system allows each employee to contribute to their own financial well-being in the future. This article aims to assess the second pillar pension fund performance and how fund differences affect the amount of old age pension. The analysis made it possible to determine the correlation between the return generated by the fund and the number of participants in the fund; the spreadsheet is provided, which allows estimating the influence of the choice of different funds on the size of the retirement pension. It was found that fund return and the number of participants in the fund have a negative correlation. This shows that the part of households who raise money in fund with the lowest return will be much poorer, and the corresponding result is a smaller pension. It may be noted that the accumulation of different pension fund reserves have a significant impact on the future pension size (this difference can be as high as 230%).