Reconfiguring the state: executive powers, emergency legislation, and neoliberalization in Italy

ABSTRACT

The article examines the evolution of legal and institutional mechanisms over four decades in Italy (1976–2015). Through an original data analysis of legislation on macroeconomic and financial measures, the paper investigates the reconfiguration of state institutions during the rise, consolidation and crisis of neoliberalism. I argue that the strengthening of the policy-making role of the executive, in particular through emergency legislation, proved to be key in the insulation and imposition of neoliberal and austerity policies. Furthermore, in the post-2008 period further coercive dynamics, such as the abuse of confidence question, the abuse of decree laws to impose austerity measures, and the constitutionalization of the balanced budget principle gained momentum. The data presented in this article also shows that the rise of executive power is paralleled by a gradual but steady marginalization of the policy-making role of the parliament, now often relegated to a mere ratifying institution of decisions taken elsewhere. Moreover, the growing tendency to resort to emergency and delegated legislation can be found in centre-left, centre-right and technocratic governments. Accordingly, the paper calls attention not only to the increasingly coercive legal and institutional dynamics that enshrine neoliberal policy-making, but also to an intrinsic and structural tension between the liberal democratic form of the state and increasingly authoritarian forms of neoliberalization.

KEYWORDS:

• Executive powers
• emergency legislation
• neoliberalization
• reconfiguration of the state
• Italy
• parliamentary crisis

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Angela Wigger for comments on the first draft of the paper. Thanks also to the two anonymous reviewers and to the editors of this special issue, who carefully read and commented on the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Mario Monti was Professor of Political Economy and Dean of the Italian private business school Luigi Bocconi; head and/or member of several Italian reform commissions for the liberalization of financial markets during the 1980s; adviser to the global investment bank Goldman Sachs; president of the Italian group of the Trilateral Commission; and former European Commissioner of the Internal Market DG (1995–1998) and Competition DG (1999–2004).

2. Cf. Articles 92, 93, and 94 of the Italian Constitution. More importantly, this period was characterized by the unprecedented stretching of the political power of the Presidency of the Republic under the aegis of Giorgio Napolitano.

3. ‘Macroeconomic issues’ in the areas of political economy policy-making include measures on competitiveness, productivity, supply-side oriented reforms, tax breaks for enterprises, general market regulations and multiple economic dispositions.

4. According to the Italian Constitution (Article 77.2), the executive has the power to enact a decree law only in cases of extraordinary necessity and urgency. The decree law comes automatically into force; nonetheless, the Parliament has to ratify the decree within sixty days through a specific bill called law of conversion. If the Parliament does not issue the law of conversion of the decree law after 60 days, the status quo ante of the decree law is restored. Importantly, the decree law, due to the strict deadline, is a way to impose the policy priorities of the executive over those of parliamentary forces.

5. The delegating law is a law formally approved by the Parliament that contains one or more provisions through which it delegates the executive to enact legislative decrees. In the delegating act, the Parliament states the general criteria and the timeline of the legislative activity, while the specific content of the law is left to the executive (Article 76).

6. The first major reform occurred in 1988, when Law no. 400 reorganized and strengthened the overall structure of the presidency of the council. The presidency of the council was reformed again by two-centre left governments in 1997 (Law no. 59) and 1999 (Law no. 303).

7. In July 1981, the Treasury and the Bank of Italy split (the so-called ‘divorce’). Central bank independence was thus fundamental to the imposition of monetarist policy.

8. A system of illegal financing to political parties that in a few months wiped out, directly or indirectly, a large portion of the political establishment of the time. The scandal erupted in 1992.

9. The first government was led by Giuliano Amato, a law professor (June 1992 to April 1993); the second was a technocratic government, and was led by the governor of the Bank of Italy, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi (April 1993 to May 1994); the third, similarly a fully technocratic cabinet, was led by Lamberto Dini, general director of the Bank of Italy (January 1995 to October 1998).

10. Ordinary laws of ratification of international treaties, budget law and finanziaria were not included in Figure 2, for they would have biased the result.

11. See, for example, the rising frequency of the other type of government-sponsored law: the legislative decree. The legislative decrees, which were marginal until the early 1990s, substituted the decree law after the censorship ruling of the constitutional court in 1996 (Figure 2).

12. The data excluded budget laws (Article 81 of the Constitution) and financial bills (meaningfully introduced in 1978) in order to place emphasis on the specific interventions implemented ‘outside’ these laws.

13. The data concerning macroeconomic policy, local and regional finance, and fiscal policy are part of a broader dataset constructed for my PhD project and based on the collection and classification of all the laws passed in the Italian Parliament between 1976 and 2015 regarding the political economy in general (Cozzolino, 2018).

14. Attempts to reform the Constitution materialized in 2006 and in 2016, respectively under the centre-right Berlusconi government and the centre-left Renzi government. Such attempts, both rejected by a popular referendum, aimed at changing the architecture of government in order to speed up the legislative process and enhance further the centralization of decision-making. Their rejection indicated the growing structural crisis of political legitimation in Italy, as further exemplified in the March 2018 elections.

15. The use of decrees to implement measures was systematic in the crisis years. See, among others, Salva Italia Decree (214/2011), Cresci Italia Decree (27/2012), Decreto Sviluppo (134/2012) (Monti government); Decreto del fare (98/2013), Decreto Imu (124/2013), Destinazione Italia (9/2014) (Letta government), decree no. 80/2014, 89/2014, Decreto Competitività (116/2014) (Renzi government).

16. Among others, see the reform packages ‘Anti-crisis Decree’ (no. 2/2009), ‘Anti-crisis Measures’ (no. 102/2009), ‘Urgent measures to reduce public spending of local public authorities and regions’ (no. 42/2010), ‘European semester – first urgent economic dispositions’ (no. 106/2011), ‘Urgent measures for financial stabilization’ (no. 111/2011).

17. According to my own calculations based on the database Normattiva.it and the statistics produced in the Senate database, out of 24 bills (mainly decree laws) regarding the political economy from 2008 to 2016, the confidence question was imposed on 21 bills (in several cases, also more than once).

18. See the note of the parliamentary activity Il Pareggio di Bilancio in Costituzione, available at http://leg16.camera.it/465?area=1&tema=496&Il±pareggio±di±bilancio±in±Costituzione.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Adriano Cozzolino

Notes on contributor

Adriano Cozzolino recently earned his PhD in International Political Economy from the University of Naples L’Orientale, Italy, with a dissertation entitled The political economy of state transformation in Italy from the crisis of keynesian welfare state to the crisis of the neoliberal paradigm. He is currently researching the dynamics of state transformation, particularly the rise of executive power, in the neoliberal phase of capitalism in the European Union space.