Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Baltic States

15/06/2026

📢 Work Opportunity at FES Riga!

We're looking for a Communication manager/project assistant to join our team in Riga!

At the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES), we are architects of social-democracy, championing freedom, social justice and solidarity. With over 100 offices globally, we contribute to international dialogue and cooperation.

Our Regional Office Baltic States collaborates with partners across Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and beyond to drive progressive perspectives and proposals.

If you share our values and thrive in a collaborative environment, we want to hear from you!

💡 Send your application to [email protected].

08/06/2026

❗Only 42% of Latvians believe their vote actually makes a difference. That is the lowest figure in the European Union.

New research on voter participation in Latvia, part of the Europe-wide Unequal Democracies project, shows that non-voting is not evenly distributed. It is concentrated among specific groups:

👉 younger citizens

👉 people with lower incomes and less formal education

👉 and Russian-speaking residents, whose participation has declined sharply over the past decade.

The regional picture makes the inequality concrete. In the wealthiest municipalities around Riga, turnout in the 2022 elections reached 84%. In Rēzekne district — Latvia's most economically disadvantaged area — fewer than 1 in 2 eligible voters cast a ballot.

Income is the strongest predictor of whether someone votes. More than age, more than ethnicity, more than geography on its own: Where you sit in the income distribution shapes whether you participate in elections.

🇱🇻 Latvia is not an outlier in facing these challenges, but the depth of political disillusionment here is among the most pronounced in Europe. Around 17% of Latvian citizens are chronic non-voters.

​​💡 What can be done about this?
The research identifies specific entry points: strengthening civic education, building more meaningful youth participation pathways, and addressing the income inequality that is the single strongest predictor of whether someone votes. Latvia already has tools — participatory budgeting, digital petition platforms, pilot elections for under-18s — that point in the right direction.

The full report is available at https://baltic.fes.de/publications.html.

Thank you to Domnīca Providus / Centre for Public Policy Providus and Līga Stafecka.

03/06/2026

Who sits in the Latvian parliament?

New research within the Unequal Democracies framework maps the full social profile of Latvia's parliament against the population it represents. And it shows consistent gaps:

👉 75% of Latvia's MPs come from one occupational background: senior managers and administrators.

👉 The median age in the Saeima is 48.

👉 70% are men, in a country where women make up 55% of the adult population. Nearly all hold a university degree.

👉 Young adults under 30 hold just 5% of seats, despite making up nearly 13% of the adult population.

👉 Working-class and technical professionals are almost entirely absent.
And the pathways into parliament are narrow: nearly 80% of MPs entered through internal political pipelines — as career politicians, local government officials, or ministerial appointees — rather than from broader professional or civic life.

When a legislature is drawn from such a thin slice of society, the perspectives and lived experiences of most citizens have no direct voice in the room where decisions are made.

​​💡 Could this be changed? If so, how?
The research also points to where change is possible: Parties need to broaden how they recruit candidates, moving beyond the established pool of political insiders toward more open selection processes, transparent ranking criteria, and active outreach to underrepresented groups. Public funding rules could be redesigned to reward parties that demonstrate genuine diversity in candidate selection.

The full report will be available soon.

Thank you to Domnīca Providus / Centre for Public Policy Providus and Līga Stafecka.

29/05/2026

Who is missing from democracy?

Across Europe, research on political representation has identified two patterns that tend to appear together.

👉 First: young people, people with lower levels of education, and members of lower social classes participate less in elections — and this gap has been widening.
👉 Second: these same groups are also markedly underrepresented in national parliaments, where highly educated, middle-aged professionals from managerial backgrounds dominate.

The convergence of these two trends is a cycle: When underrepresented groups participate less in elections, political parties have weaker incentives to address their concerns. When those parties then recruit candidates from a narrow pool of educated professionals and political insiders, the distance between parliament and large parts of the population grows.

❗ So: If the groups least present in parliament are also the groups least likely to vote, who exactly is democracy representing?

This is the central question of the Unequal Democracies project, a comparative research initiative coordinated by Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung that maps the representation gap in lower-house parliaments across Europe. The project examines four dimensions: age, gender, education, and social class — comparing the composition of parliaments to the societies they are supposed to reflect.

The findings, country by country, point to the same structural problem: democratic institutions are shaped by, and increasingly speak to, a narrow part of the populations they serve.

But the research also shows that where political parties have actively broadened their recruitment, and where civic engagement is treated as a public investment rather than a personal choice, these gaps can narrow. The question is whether the will exists to act on what the evidence shows.

🇱🇻 In an exclusive research project by Līga Stafecka and PROVIDUS, we have looked at these issues in the context of Latvia. We will be sharing these findings in the coming weeks.

🔗 Learn more about the Unequal Democracies project:

Release: New studies and data on unequal voter trends since the 1970s and the representation gap in national parliaments!

02/02/2026

On the occasion of the Latvian launch of her book, Politics of Uncertainty, last Friday, historian Una Bergmane sat down with us to discuss the Baltic role in the end of the Cold War, moments when history could have gone differently, and why international norms matter:

▶️ When people think about the end of the Cold War, they often think of Berlin. Why look to the Baltics instead?

💬 The German story is an important part of the end of the Cold War, but it is only one of many. We understand history and each other better when we broaden the perspectives from which we view it, rather than limiting ourselves to big-power and imperial narratives.

▶️ Were there moments when the situation could have gone very differently?

💬 Yes. The Soviet attempt in January 1991 to stop the Baltic drive for independence by force was a key moment, when hardliners in Moscow were testing the possibility of a wider crackdown. If it had succeeded in the Baltic states, it likely would have marked the end of perestroika reforms across the USSR.

▶️ What surprised you most in your archival research?

💬 I was struck by how important the Baltic question was to major international players Washington, Bonn, Paris, London, and of course Moscow. And how surprisingly important for the West was the fact that they not recognised Baltic 1940 annexation by the USSR as legal.

▶️ What should readers take away from your book today?

💬 Sadly, it feels like my book describes a different world one that no longer exists. It was an imperfect world, but there was still more respect for international norms than there is today. Both Moscow and Washington at least wanted to appear committed to international law and human rights. The situation now is very different, but I hope readers come away remembering that what we are living through today is not normal and that we should, and can, strive for a return to normalcy.

📘 Interested in learning more? Get a free copy of the book by writing to [email protected].

28/01/2026

What do the Barricades mean 35 years later?

This week in Riga, scholars, diplomats, and the public came together to reflect on one of the defining moments of Latvia’s modern history and on why its lessons still matter today. A full audience gathered for the Latvian launch of Una Bergmane’s Politics of Uncertainty, published with the support of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation Baltic States.

We are especially grateful to our speakers and panelists: Una Bergmane, Agnese Lāce , PaulsRaudseps, Dainis Īvāns, and Ineta Ziemele, as well as to all participants who made the discussion so rich and timely.

📖 Read more about the event and the discussion here: https://baltic.fes.de/article/35-years-after-the-barricades-history-uncertainty-and-latvias-place-in-the-world.html