The impact of technocratic government on the relationship between the legislature and the executive: evidence from Lithuania

In recent years many European parliamentary democracies experienced the weakening of party government, indicated by the cabinets, increasingly filled with non-partisan technocrats without parliamentary background (Pinto, Cotta & de Almeida 2018). This paper aims to answer the question whether and how the ‘technocratisation’ of the executive affects the relationship between the executive and the legislature. The existing research predicts that technocratic government changes the patterns of behaviour in the legislature. The principal-agent theory predicts that non-partisan ministers pose a greater risk of agency-loss for a party responsible for the making of the cabinet (Saalfeld 2000; Strøm 1995). The uncertainty about the preferences of non-partisan ministers leads to an increased scrutiny of executive by the leaders and backbenchers of the parties of a governing coalition, though the level of the scrutiny might be moderated by other factors (Bundi 2018; Camerlo & Pérez-Liñán 2015; King, 1976; Maor 1999). Case study of the technical government led by Monti in Italy shows that the behaviour of opposition parties and inter-party relationship might be affected, as well (Marangoni & Verzichelli 2015; Zulianello 2013). Yet the question remains how well these observations travel across different parliamentary systems. To test the theoretical predictions about the effects of technocratic government, this paper conducts the content analysis of the parliamentary questions (PQ), asked orally during 88 “government’s hours” in Lithuanian parliament in 2016-2020 when the government was led by the prime-minister Skvernelis. Skvernelis’s cabinet is particularly suitable for analysis because for more than half of its term it was composed of mainly non-partisan ministers, while eventually a number of non-partisan ministers were replaced by partisan ministers. Therefore, the observed change of PQ pattern can be with higher certainty attributed to the changing composition of the executive, and not to the general characteristics of the parliament. The coding of PQ was based on the coding framework developed by Maricut‐Akbik (2021), which relates the types of questions to different degrees of scrutiny strength, though the framework was adapted to Lithuanian context to better reflect the variation of speech acts performed by asking parliamentary questions (Russo & Wiberg 2010). The data shows that: (a) non-partisan ministers tend to be challenged by the backbenchers of the party, which delegated them, more often than partisan ministers. The latter are supported by the party even despite negative public opinion. This observation leads to the inference that MPs identify with policies by unpopular ministers, delegated by the party, only if the ministers are party members; (b) opposition MPs tend to focus more on policy principles than on the lack of competence and quality of decisions when scrutinizing non-partisan ministers and vice versa for partisan ministers. The typical line of challenge to the policies of non-partisan ministers by the opposition MPs is that the policies do not conform to the principles and promises of the party which delegated them, thus challenging the connections between governing coalition and its cabinet.