Two steps forward and one step back: the majority principle in the Italian Parliament since 1994

Abstract

Since the early 1990s, political actors, journalists and scholars have been monitoring the evolution of the parliamentary arena in order to spot any signs of adaptation to the majoritarian logic characterising the electoral arena. However, this process has been slow and discontinuous as a result of the extreme resilience of certain consensual practices that have continued to prevail within the parliamentary arena. The hung parliament resulting from the 2013 general election, with the emergence of the Five Star Movement as a significant third electoral force, has questioned the very applicability of the transitional framework and terminology. This article analyses the evolution of the main aspects of parliamentary politics over the last two decades, placing particular emphasis on the initial months in the life of the XVII legislature. The fragmentation of the parliamentary arena and the nature of the process leading to the formation of governments are both analysed in detail. Finally, the article provides an assessment of the majoritarian and consensual features of Italy’s Parliament, two decades after the collapse of the post-war party system.

Keywords:

• party system
• government formation
• Parliament
• 2013 Italian elections

Notes

1. I deliberately refrain from using the labels ‘First Republic/Second Republic’ because they originated from the same rhetoric based on biased expectations.

2. Farneti (1983) points out that both the declining turnout and the recrudescence of extreme left-wing terrorism were in part the consequences of the National Solidarity phase.

3. Technically speaking, the cabinets in power from the 8th to the 11th legislature were almost all ‘oversized majorities’ because some of the smallest allies were not strictly necessary in order to have a slight numerical majority. However, governing with such a limited parliamentary majority has never been easy in Italy.

4. Electoral rules encouraged the formation of very large alliances, even at the price of fragmented coalitions coming to the fore. Excessive fragmentation, especially in the centre-left camp, gave rise to conflictual, short-lived governments (D’Alimonte and Chiaramonte 2007; Zucchini 2014).

5. Unlike other consensual democracies such as Belgium or the Netherlands, the main cleavages separating Italian parties derive from ideological conflict rather than cultural differences. Morlino (2014) argues that despite the waning of certain traditional forms of conflict and the emergence of new forms, the number of cleavages dividing Italian political parties has remained fairly constant.

6. For the 1994, 1996 and 2001 elections, the EEP is calculated using the total votes obtained by coalitions and by parties not included in coalitions (Bardi 2007).

7. While it is undeniable that those cabinets were not uniquely technocratic, since partisan ministers had either a preeminent (Amato) or rather important (Ciampi) role to play, in both cases parties as organisations had to relax their control over the executive (Verzichelli and Cotta 2003). Ciampi himself was not a member of any political party.

8. ‘Irreverent protest movement unnerves Italian establishment’ – The New York Times, 12 September 2007. Retrieved 16 June 2014, from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/12/world/europe/12iht-italy.4.7483565.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar.

9. According to article 70 of the Italian Constitution, ‘The people may initiate legislation by proposing a bill drawn up in sections and signed by at least fifty-thousand voters’. This procedure, commonly known as the ‘popular legislative initiative’, has been frequently used by Italian citizens despite the strict numerical requirements. The petition organised by Beppe Grillo did not follow the strict rules on certifying the signatures of voters and was thus of merely symbolic value.

10. Lijphart classifies any coalition cabinet based on more than 80% of the seats in Parliament as oversized (Lijphart 2012, 95). The Letta government had the support of about 71% of Parliament, but is classified as oversized because its parliamentary base included more parties than necessary.

11. We considered the Ciampi cabinet as a technocratic government and the Prodi cabinet as a minority coalition. Both governments are classified by Woldendorp et al. as surplus coalitions.

12. The formal investiture procedure set out in the Constitution states that ‘The President of the Republic appoints the President of the Council of Ministers and, on his/her proposal, the Ministers’ (article 92); after being sworn in by the President of the Republic (art. 93), the Government has ten days to obtain the confidence of both Houses (article 94). Bergman (1993) distinguishes between those countries in which the government is deemed to enjoy the confidence of the Parliament unless a majority votes in favour of a no-confidence motion, and those countries in which governments must win an investiture vote in order to take power. The former are said to display negative parliamentarism, while the latter are said to display positive parliamentarism. Positive parliamentarism is usually believed to make life harder for minority governments (Bergman 1993; Strøm 1990). The Italian Constitution clearly prescribes a positive formation rule, but the lack of viable alternatives has sometimes forced the President of the Republic to appoint cabinets with no solid majority.

13. However, it is difficult to classify technocratic governments using a consensual-majority scale since their most salient feature is the limited degree of policy delegation. According to Verzichelli and Cotta (2012), in this sense technocratic governments resemble ‘caretaker governments, albeit entrusted with certain important missions’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Federico Russo

Federico Russo is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Siena, where he teaches Political Science and collaborate to the activities of the Centre for the Study of Political Change (CIRCaP). His research interests include the comparative study of parliaments with a special focus on the career and behaviour of Members of Parliament. His most recent publications include the book Gli Onorevoli (Il Mulino, 2013).