Lithuania: executive dominance in the context of usual confrontational politics
ENLithuania has been among the first countries in the EU to impose the lock-down in mid-March 2020, to contain the pandemic on the basis of the suppression strategy. The economic support plan was adopted fast and relatively large sums of money foreseen, but soon had to be adjusted as too cumbersome procedures slowed down the disbursement of funds. The executive government, especially prime minister and minister of health, have been the most visible actors. The politics of crisis management in Lithuania is interesting because it took place in the background of parliamentary elections scheduled in October 2020 with opposition contesting many measures proposed by the ruling centre-left coalition government. In December 2020, the newly formed centre-right coalition government re-imposed country-wide lock-down measures under the second quarantine which lasted for 8 months till summer 2021. The executive government remained the key actor within the crisis management process, relying mostly on health care experts in their decision-making. Generally, the patterns of governance under two different ruling coalitions have been characterised by the dominance of executive government usual in the times of normal politics. Politics of crisis management resembled the typical confrontational politics characteristic to Lithuania. [From the publication]
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