A Long Way to Tipperary: Time in the Italian Legislative Process 1987–2008

Abstract

The Italian legislature does not enjoy widespread trust. At least one of the reasons has to be the perception of its inefficiency. Comparatively, the Italian law-making process is slow and most policy-makers complain about the difficulties experienced in trying to speed up the process. In spite of the political relevance of the topic, the issue has not attracted much scientific attention. This study tries to cover that void, focusing explicitly on the temporal dimension of law-making and analysing the duration of more than 3,000 laws approved during the period of 1987–2008: 21 years of intense Italian political history. Our exploratory analysis finds that successful proposals spend most of their time in those stages preceding the discussion in parliament, waiting to find room on the agenda. Concentrating on ordinary laws, we realise that the factors that expedite a legislative process are its sponsorship, the procedure adopted, the policy sector, and the timing of introduction, whereas the level of consensus is not associated with the duration of the process.

Keywords:

• Law-Making
• Time
• Parliament
• Italy

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the financial support of the Italian Ministry of Education and Research, Project Prin 2009TPW4NL_002, “Institutions and agenda-setting: actors, time and information”.

Notes

[1] For further insights and stimuli see the recent article by Grzymala-Busse (2011).

[2] On Italian bicameralism and the level of congruence between the two chambers, see Zucchini (2008).

[3] In the past, law-makers had not yet developed this capacity to estimate the arrival of crises and early elections, as is clearly argued by Motta (1985).

[4] The differences between the procedures in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate are generally unimportant – with the relevant exception of the roll-call rules (Giuliani & Zucchini, 2008) – and have no concrete effect on what we are discussing.

[5] In Borghetto, Giuliani, and Zucchini (2009; 2012), the influence of the EU on Italian law-making is explicitly dealt with.

[6] For further details on the index see Giuliani (2008).