Capacity Building of Parliamentarians: Problems and Perspectives in Lithuania

Members of parliament have central constitutional roles in passing laws, approving budgets, being accountable to the people and making decisions on behalf of the entire nation. Thus they have necessarily to possess the needed capacities and qualifications enabling them to fulfil their functions efficiently and effectively in a complex and globalised world (Donohue and Holland, 2012). Purpose of this paper is to introduce the empirical research relating to the Lithuanian parliamentarians and former candidates to the parliament attitudes towards capacity building. The findings of this paper are based on the analysis of 29 semi-structured expert interviews conducted with the members of the Lithuanian parliament and former candidates to the parliament. The empirical research indicated that capacity building of the Lithuanian parliamentarians is not systematic and attitudes of the experts towards capacity building are ambiguous: from considerations that such activities are waste of tax payers’ money to personal responsibility taking and active involvement into qualification development activities. The conclusions were made that the system of capacity building of the Lithuanian parliamentarians should be improved paying special attention to the parliamentarians’ consciousness, ability to understand their own limitations and readiness to learn.