A. G. Raišienė, A. Podviezko, V. Skulskis, L. Baranauskaitė ISSN 2071-789X RECENT ISSUES IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Economics & Sociology, Vol. 12, No. 3, 2019 301 INTEREST-BALANCED AGRICULTURAL POLICY-MAKING: KEY PARTICIPATIVE AND COLLABORATIVE CAPACITIES IN THE OPINION OF NGOS’ EXPERTS Agota Giedrė Raišienė, Lithuanian Institute of Agrarian Economics, Lithuania E-mail: agota.raisiene@laei.lt 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 Received: March, 2019 1st Revision: June, 2019 Accepted: September, 2019 DOI: 10.14254/2071- 789X.2019/12-3/20 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. JEL Classification: Q18 Keywords: participative and collaborative capacities, stakeholder involvement, policy-making, inter-sectorial interaction, interest management, LiT method, NGOs, agriculture, Lithuania Introduction The issue of stakeholders’ involvement in the process of policy decision-making is relevant in most sectors of public interest, e.g. in healthcare (Harris et al., 2016), education (Vargas et al., 2019), social protection (Wang & Ma, 2017; Revilla & der Valk, 2016), environment (Linke & Jentoft, 2016; Lacroix & Megdal, 2016; Garard & Kowarsch, 2017) as Raišienė, A. G., Podviezko, A., Skulskis, V., & Baranauskaitė, L. (2019). Interest-balanced agricultural policy-making: Key participative and collaborative capacities in the opinion of NGOs’ experts. Economics and Sociology, 12(3), 301-318. doi:10.14254/2071-789X.2019/12-3/20