UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 7th Annual International Postgraduate Conference

Modern democratic polity is grounded on citizens’ participation in public decision-making process. Citizen participation is a key indicator of democratic performance. This paper focuses on the impact of human capital, social capital and cultural capital on political participation in urban and rural areas of Lithuania. The method of the study is an analysis of the data of survey sample "Baltic Barometer 2001" and 40 in-depth interviews with NGO members and nonmembers conducted in urban and rural areas of Lithuania. The first section of the paper defines the concepts of human capital, social capital and cultural capital and reveals their relationship to political participation and political exclusion in modern democracy. The second section describes the impact of the Soviet legacy and political/economic reforms related to transition to democracy on human capital, social capital, cultural capital and political participation in urban and rural areas of Lithuania. The third section presents empirical survey data, comparing human capital, social capital, cultural capital and modes of political participation of respondents in urban and rural areas. In the fourth section, using the data of in-depth interviews, the differences in human capital, social capital and cultural capital in urban and rural areas and the consequences of those differences on citizens’ participation and direct and/or indirect interaction with public institutions are analyzed. The paper draws conclusions that the differences in human capital, social capital and cultural capital in urban and rural areas foster political exclusion of a huge part of the population in rural areas of Lithuania. Along with other actors, NGOs are able to cope with political exclusion in rural areas, because of their social education, public sphere and institutional effects.