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The extent of the social and political transformations that have taken place in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania since the collapse of the Soviet Union is remarkable, but the research has pointed out some controversial aspects of their developments. Crucially, there is a discrepancy between the governments' commitment to creating democratic political regimes, to ensuring harmonious social relations and to accommodating the ethno-cultural diversity of the resident communities.

Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited / Lithuania's security rests at present on several pillars, including membership in NATO and the European Union and its relations with Russia. Without doubt Lithuania's membership in NATO and the European Union is the most promising way to preserve its independence and to promote its security. At the same time, however, Lithuania wishes to maintain constructive relations with Russia and to address Moscow's legitimate political, military, and economic concerns. In view of the importance of domestic political factors, this thesis examines the hypothesis that Lithuania should base its security on a mix of deterrence strategies and reassurance policies pursued in cooperation with fellow members of NATO and the European Union. The thesis therefore analyzes post-Cold War trends in Lithuanian-Russian relations in light of theories of deterrence and reassurance. Three cases-NATO enlargement from 1997 to 2004, the Russian military troop withdrawal from Lithuania in 1991-1993, and Lithuanian-Russian relations concerning Kaliningrad-are discussed to assess the effects of reassurance and cooperative policies and to infer possible implications for the future. / Major, Lithuanian Army

Thesis (M.A.)--Naval Postgraduate School, 2002. / Thesis advisor(s): David Abenheim, Tjarck Roessler. Includes bibliographical references (p. 61-74). Also available online.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Aberdeen University, 2008. / Title from web page (viewed on Mar. 23, 2009). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Aberdeen University, 2009. / Title from web page (viewed on Dec. 23, 2009). Includes bibliographical references.

The thesis proposes the analytical review on how the Baltic States, namely, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia perceive Russia as a threat to their national security by addressing and evaluating the main changes in their security policies. To analyze the changes and differences in their perception, the securitization theory is applied. Following the most recent changes in the security environment in Europe, starting from the Ukraine crisis and annexation of Crimea in 2014, supplementary theoretic concept such as security dilemma is used for better understanding of the challenges that the Baltic States/NATO - Russia relations face. The main goal of this thesis is to provide a detailed overview of how Russian interference in Ukraine's domestic affairs, created a sense of anxiety in the Eastern Europe and affected security sectors of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. Keywords: the Baltic States, Russia, Ukraine Crisis, Securitization theory, Security Dilemma, NATO

The border between Russia and Estonia has undergone significant changes in the past two and a half decades from a border between two Soviet republics to an international border and external EU border. In the public discourse and the scholarly literature, this border has been characterised as a battlefield shaped by divergent geopolitical visions and evaluations of the shared past. While Estonia has sought to distance itself from Russia and condemns the Soviet past as an occupation, Russia derives pride from its historical role in liberating Europe in World War II and continues to hold on to positive memories of the Soviet past and its role in the Baltic states. The thesis looks at how these official narratives have been negotiated locally in the once united border towns of Narva and Ivangorod in the Russian-Estonian borderland. Based on an extended fieldwork stay and the analysis 58 life-story interviews with people living on both sides of the border, it examines how people living in the borderland position themselves in the context of shifting narrative and structural frameworks. How do they re-evaluate the relations to the other side and reconsider their memories of the shared past? In examining these questions, the thesis seeks to make two general contributions to existing literature: it brings together the fields of border studies and memory studies to explore the reconfiguration of both temporal and spatial orderings in the making of a border. Secondly, it outlines a model for studying border change that focuses on the interrelations between the vernacular and the official level. The first part of the thesis looks at the politics of temporal orderings in the borderland and explores how people belonging to different ethnic groups and generations remember the past in the context of changing borders. It shows how people in part reproduce the polarised narratives mobilised at the official level but also how local experiences and generational change lead to a diversification of temporal orderings. The second part of the thesis explores the politics of spatial orderings in post-socialist memories. It looks at how by remembering the past people both reproduce and undermine borders; it demonstrates that it is not simply the memories of a shared past but also new inequalities following the establishment of the border that shape the ways in which people relate to their cross-border neighbours. Overall, the thesis provides a complex and differentiated account of border change in which different temporalities and spatialities at the vernacular and official levels can interact, interrelate and stand in opposition to each other. It shows that although people living in the borderland experience constraints and even powerlessness in the face of changes in the border, they have an active role in negotiating the changes and develop multiple responses to official narratives. It demonstrates how by appropriating official narratives and relating them to their own purposes, people articulate local concerns and make claims for belonging, recognition and state care in the face of the changes.

<p>This dissertation takes a step towards providing a better understanding of post-socialist welfare state development from a theoretical as well as an empirical perspective. The overall analytical goal of this thesis has been to critically assess the development of social policies in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania using them as illustrative examples of post-socialist welfare state development in the light of the theories, approaches and typologies that have been developed to study affluent capitalist democracies. The four studies included in this dissertation aspire to a common aim in a number of specific ways.</p><p>The first study tries to place the ideal-typical welfare state models of the Baltic States within the well-known welfare state typologies. At the same time, it provides a rich overview of the main social security institutions in the three countries by comparing them with each other and with the previous structures of the Soviet period. It examines the social insurance institutions of the Baltic States (old-age pensions, unemployment insurance, short-term benefits, sickness, maternity and parental insurance and family benefits) with respect to conditions of eligibility, replacement rates, financing and contributions. The findings of this study indicate that the Latvian social security system can generally be labelled as a mix of the basic security and corporatist models. The Estonian social security system can generally also be characterised as a mix of the basic security and corporatist models, even if there are some weak elements of the targeted model in it. It appears that the institutional changes developing in the social security system of Lithuania have led to a combination of the basic security and targeted models of the welfare state. Nevertheless, as the example of the three Baltic States shows, there is diversity in how these countries solve problems within the field of social policy. In studying the social security schemes in detail, some common features were found that could be attributed to all three countries. Therefore, the critical analysis of the main social security institutions of the Baltic States in this study gave strong supporting evidence in favour of identifying the post-socialist regime type that is already gaining acceptance within comparative welfare state research.</p><p>Study Two compares the system of social maintenance and insurance in the Soviet Union, which was in force in the three Baltic countries before their independence, with the currently existing social security systems. The aim of the essay is to highlight the forces that have influenced the transformation of the social policy from its former highly universal, albeit authoritarian, form, to the less universal, social insurance-based systems of present-day Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. This study demonstrates that the welfare–economy nexus is not the only important factor in the development of social programs. The results of this analysis revealed that people's attitudes towards distributive justice and the developmental level of civil society also play an important part in shaping social policies. The shift to individualism in people’s mentality and the decline of the labour movement, or, to be more precise, the decline in trade union membership and influence, does nothing to promote the development of social rights in the Baltic countries and hinders the expansion of social policies. The legacy of the past has been another important factor in shaping social programs. It can be concluded that social policy should be studied as if embedded not only in the welfare-economy nexus, but also in the societal, historical and cultural nexus of a given society. </p><p>Study Three discusses the views of the state elites on family policy within a wider theoretical setting covering family policy and social policy in a broader sense and attempts to expand this analytical framework to include other post-socialist countries. The aim of this essay is to explore the various views of the state elites in the Baltics concerning family policy and, in particular, family benefits as one of the possible explanations for the observed policy differences. The qualitative analyses indicate that the Baltic States differ significantly with regard to the motives behind their family policies. Lithuanian decision-makers seek to reduce poverty among families with children and enhance the parents’ responsibility for bringing up their children. Latvian policy-makers act so as to increase the birth rate and create equal opportunities for children from all families. Estonian policy-makers seek to create equal opportunities for all children and the desire to enhance gender equality is more visible in the case of Estonia in comparison with the other two countries. It is strongly arguable that there is a link between the underlying motives and the kinds of family benefits in a given country. This study, thus, indicates how intimately the attitudes of the state bureaucrats, policy-makers, political elite and researchers shape social policy. It confirms that family policy is a product of the prevailing ideology within a country, while the potential influence of globalisation and Europeanisation is detectable too.</p><p> The final essay takes into account the opinions of welfare users and examines the performances of the institutionalised family benefits by relying on the recipients’ opinions regarding these benefits. The opinions of the populations as a whole regarding government efforts to help families are compared with those of the welfare users. Various family benefits are evaluated according to the recipients' satisfaction with those benefits as well as the contemporaneous levels of subjective satisfaction with the welfare programs related to the absolute level of expenditure on each program. The findings of this paper indicate that, in Latvia, people experience a lower level of success regarding state-run family insurance institutions, as compared to those in Lithuania and Estonia. This is deemed to be because the cash benefits for families and children in Latvia are, on average, seen as marginally influencing the overall financial situation of the families concerned. In Lithuania and Estonia, the overwhelming majority think that the family benefit systems improve the financial situation of families. It appears that recipients evaluated universal family benefits as less positive than targeted benefits. Some universal benefits negatively influenced the level of general satisfaction with the family benefits system provided in the countries being researched. This study puts forward a discussion about whether universalism is always more legitimate than targeting. In transitional economies, in which resources are highly constrained, some forms of universal benefits could turn out to be very expensive in relative terms, without being seen as useful or legitimate forms of help to families.</p><p> In sum, by closely examining the different aspects of social policy, this dissertation goes beyond the over-generalisation of Eastern European welfare state development and, instead, takes a more detailed look at what is really going on in these countries through the examples of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. In addition, another important contribution made by this study is that it revives ‘western’ theoretical knowledge through ‘eastern’ empirical evidence and provides the opportunity to expand the theoretical framework for post-socialist societies.</p>

<p>The purpose of this thesis is to identify a general model to forecast GDP growth for the Baltic States, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. If the model provides reliable results for these states, then the model should be able to forecast GDP growth for other countries of interest. Forecasts are made by using a reduced vector autoregressive (VAR) model. The VAR models make use of past values of Gross Domestic Product-Inflation-Unemployment as explanatory variables.</p><p>The performed forecasts have provided good results for horizons up to t+8. The forecasts for 2009 (t+12) are in line with those of several other actors. It is reasonable to assume that some of the forecasts for t+16 have reliable results. The Lithuanian forecast show a fall in GDP with 12.51 per cent in 2009 and a GDP growth of 4.23 per cent in 2010. The forecast for Estonia show that the GDP will decrease with 1.49 per cent in 2009 and 12.72 per cent in 2010. Finally the forecast for Latvia show a fall in GDP of 3.1 per cent in 2009 and 18 per cent in 2010. From the findings it is possible to conclude that the model provided reliable estimates of future levels of GDP for the Baltic States and the benchmark countries. This indicates that the model should be applicable on other countries of interest.</p>