Agota Giedrė Raišienė,

Lithuanian Institute of Agrarian Economics, Lithuania

E-mail: agota.raisiene@laei.lt

Interest-balanced agricultural policy-making: Key participative and collaborative capacities in the opinion of NGOs’ experts

Askoldas Podviezko,

Lithuanian Institute of Agrarian Economics, Lithuania

E-mail: askoldas@gmail.com

Virgilijus Skulskis,

Lithuanian Institute of Agrarian Economics, Lithuania

virgilijus.skulskis@laei.lt

Lina Baranauskaitė,

Lithuanian Institute of Agrarian Economics, Lithuania

Abstract. Stakeholder participation in the process of agricultural policy-making is a way to express public interest and thus to better ensure sustainability of the sector as well as of a country. In agriculture, variety of stakeholders and their organizations is huge, and their power and ability to protect common interests are uneven. Studies on interest management note that contradictions between interest-based actors could be solved most effectively through their collaboration. Thus, the article aims to identify key capacities of agricultural organizations to fulfil their members’ interests at the level of agricultural policy. With this aim, interviews with the leaders of agricultural NGOs were carried out. Opinions of experts were elicited using the 10-point Likert scale. The LiT method of grades’ transformation given in the Likert scale to weights was proposed and used. The resulting weights revealed the significance of each question. As the result, shared resources, stakeholders' motivation and commitment, teamwork and synergy between intersectorial actors was found as the main collaborative capacities while influence-making, and the ability to act according to regulations and procedures has been estimated as a highly important participative capacity for agricultural NGOs.

Received: March, 2019

1st Revision: June, 2019

Accepted: September, 2019

DOI: 10.14254/2071-789X.2019/12-3/20

JEL Classification: Q18

Keywords: participative and collaborative capacities, stakeholder involvement, policy-making, inter-sectorial interaction, interest management, LiT method, NGOs, agriculture, Lithuania