Lithuanian Annual Strategic Review

This article analyzes a case of a minority government in Lithuania. The main attention is paid to the circumstances surrounding its formation and activity problems. The research is based on Kaare Strom's, Valentine Herman's, John Pope's and other authors' theoretical expertise of a rational choice and the new institutionalism, making it possible to estimate the institutional and political factors that preconditioned the formation of a minority government, determine the key features (type) of the government, its survival, and also activity problems. The author of the article makes the assumption that the formation of the minority government was primarily a rational choice of political parties, making it possible to seek both short-term ('intermediate') and long-term ('electoral') goals. The key issue of the article is not the stability of the governing coalition and the government that it supports, but the effectiveness of its activity.

This article in an analysis of the prolonged political crisis in Hungary, the 2006 highlights issues pertinent to a broader study of democratic politics. The study shows that the weakness of anchors binding the masses and elite is crucial, since in such circumstances mediatisation takes over in politics, toting up political promises, which leads to budget overspending. Shortcomings of the elite theory itself are identified: a realistic weighting is necessary to measure the influence of political, business, media and other elites; not political leadership as such but also different types of leadership need to be addressed; institutional, structural and behavioural innovations taking place on the elite level should be considered; the richness of the institutional variety is also to be noted.

In 2006, the trends in the change of ecological risk factors in Lithuania were similar to those of 2005. The risk factors, which contributed to the change of the state's ecological condition in the field of the atmosphere protection, included the rapidly growing number of automobiles, inefficient city traffic control systems, and the lack of bypasses, whereas the risks in the sector of water consumption safety were posed by a worn out central water supply networks, insufficient quality of the drinking water and dug well water. Thus, the objectives set down in the National Ecological Security Assurance Programme are to reduce ecological risk, prevent a negative impact on the environment and to set the national priorities in the sphere of the prevention of emergencies.