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.