From fragile majoritarianism to the ‘technocratic addendum’: some data on the legislative activity of the governments of the sixteenth legislature

Abstract

The opening of the sixteenth legislature took place against a ‘majoritarian background’. This seemed to mark the final stage in the evolution of the Italian system towards competitive democracy – involving the control, by two main parties, of most of the seats in parliament; a highly simplified majority coalition; a strong government (sustained by the large size of the majority itself), with authority to implement the programme it had presented to voters and potentially able to survive until the natural end of the legislature. In the event, the prospect of this scenario coming to pass faded away during the course of the legislature, to be substituted by new centrifugal drives in parliament, by problems in managing the governing coalition and then finally by the crisis of the executive and the formation of a new technocratic government. This article analyses data that summarise the legislative activities of government during this parliament beginning with the activity of the fourth Berlusconi government, whose difficulties became increasingly apparent during the course of its term as conflict within the coalition became more acute. We then analyse the activity of the Monti government, highlighting in particular the way in which it was influenced by the shortage of time available to it at the end of the legislature (and by the urgency of the measures to be adopted), and which very often sought to secure its aims by means other than the ordinary legislative procedures.

Keywords:

• XVI legislature
• executive
• legislative activity
• fourth Berlusconi government
• Monti government

Acknowledgements

This article was translated by James L. Newell.

Notes

1. The largest that had ever been formed in the history of the Italian republic.

2. More specifically, at the outset of the legislature the PD had 218 seats and the PdL 273 for a total of 491 in the Chamber; while the PD had 119 seats and the PdL 146, for a total of 265 in the Senate.

3. The effective number of groups is calculated by applying the well-known formula suggested by Laakso and Taagepera (1979): 1/Ʃp2, where p is the proportion of seats controlled by each parliamentary group.

4. The key words used in the research (and combined appropriately using Boolean operators) were: conflitto (conflict), contrasto (clash), disaccordo (disagreement), lite (quarrel), contro (against), governo (government), ministri (ministers), maggioranza (majority) and partiti (parties).

5. Naturally the degree of conflict within a government is not just a matter of the number of disputes, but also (and especially) of their intensity – that is, of the danger the various conflicts pose to the stability and functioning of the government. Consequently, on the basis of those involved and the fundamental dynamics in play, conflicts between government actors are generally placed on a scale of growing severity (Müller and Strøm 2000; Andeweg and Timmermans 2008; Vercesi 2010) ranging from: inter-ministerial conflicts (where two or more components of the executive lock horns in defence of the interests of their respective ministries); intra-party conflicts (signifying a dispute that takes place entirely within a party forming part of the governing majority); government party conflicts (where one or more of the governing parties are opposed to initiatives taken by one or more ministers or to government policy more generally); and inter-party conflicts (involving disputes between the representatives of the governing parties). The latter type of conflict, and government party conflicts, are those considered in the literature to be the most severe and the most dangerous for the stability of a governing coalition. And they were the most frequently occurring types of conflict (accounting for about 60% of the cases) during the brief period in office of the second Prodi government. In the case of the fourth Berlusconi government, on the other hand, these types amounted to less than 50% of the total, while intra-party conflicts were frequent (accounting for over 20% of the total). Most were conflicts within the PdL. Though not of the severest type, they were nonetheless particularly acute; and they led to the weakening of Berlusconi’s party (with the exit of the party’s co-founder, Gianfranco Fini, together with a substantial number of parliamentarians who decided to follow him). Consequently, they led to the weakening of the coalition as a whole.

6. Which themselves were associated with notably lower volumes of government initiatives as compared to the governments of the First Republic (Capano and Giuliani 2001).

7. We have again used the Centre for the Study of Political Change (CIRCaP, Siena) database housing information on the legislative initiatives of Italian governments. Among the variables drawn upon from the database, in fact, we considered the programmatic nature (or otherwise) of government measures (the categorisation being carried out by means of a comparison, using keywords, between the text contained in the measures and the text of the government’s programme).

8. This was the traditional purpose of the transition governments that held office during the First Republic.

9. In this instance, they can be defined as such because they can be related to the ‘real’ objectives contained in the programmatic statement made to parliament, by Monti, at the time of the inaugural confidence vote (for a more detailed analysis, see Marangoni 2012). Overall, the initiatives classifiable as programmatic come to 26 – amounting to about 45% cent of the legislative measures (excluding treaty ratifications) approved by the Monti government.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Francesco Marangoni

Francesco Marangoni is a research fellow in the Department of Social, Political and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Siena.