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Abstract
In order to understand the evolution of the Italian political system over the past two decades, we have to consider the changes undergone by one fundamental institutional actor, that is, the parliamentary opposition. Its transformation can in fact be used as a valid indicator of change in the whole political system and it will also help us to reflect on the possible transformation of the Italian model of democracy. The 20-year path that has brought Italy to the current political situation, with the emergence of three different poles of approximately equal strength; the rise of the Five Star Movement; and the creation of a grand coalition consisting of traditional political opponents will be reconstructed by re-examining the evolution of the political system from the perspective of the changing role and functions of the parliamentary opposition, thus contributing to a better understanding of the (new) political phase initiated by the outcome of the 2013 election.
Notes
1. Together with some other minor parliamentary party groups.
2. This until November 2013, when the PDL split into two separate groups: on the one hand, the re-established Forza Italia (FI) that was led by Silvio Berlusconi and which opposed the new Renzi government, and on the other hand, the New Centre Right (Nuovo Centro Destra, NCD) led by Angelino Alfano, the current Minister of the Interior.
3. The main opposition parties (and above all the Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI)) performed their role only in part by controlling and criticising the executive’s activities and attempting to influence its policies – exploiting the governments’ intrinsic weaknesses – and they were never able to present a realistic alternative to the incumbents (Di Palma Citation1977).
4. Particularly the PCI on the left, and the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement (Movimento Sociale Italiano, MSI) on the right.
5. For a full explanation of the electoral laws approved in Italy since the early 1990s, see Chiaramonte’s contribution to this special issue.
6. The UDC had until 2006 actually been a member of the centre–right coalition led by Silvio Berlusconi.
7. FLI was founded by the President of the Chamber of Deputies, Gianfranco Fini, who was expelled from the PDL, together with a number of PDL deputies and senators who decided to leave the party with him.
8. The majority of the bills approved deal with narrow issues that are usually quite consensual; it is consequently crucial to control, among others, the content variable when investigating the voting behaviour of the opposition parties.
9. Votes for the ratification of international treaties are excluded from the count.
10. This result can be explained by taking account of the fact that the ‘programme’ of the Letta government, especially at the beginning, was still bound by the situation of crisis (more than that of Renzi). Legislative initiatives addressing the crisis situation may have encountered fewer obstacles. Furthermore, for the XVII legislature (that is, for the Letta and Renzi governments) we should bear in mind that we are speaking of a small number of laws.
11. In addition, index scores are of course sensitive to the size of the opposition, which varies from one government to another. So it more useful for a comparison of the programmatic and non-programmatic initiatives of the same government than it is for a comparison of different governments.
12. An expert survey on the role and image of the Italian parliamentary opposition in the alternation era was conducted in 2011 (see De Giorgi Citation2012). Of the 55 journalists who had been interviewed on that occasion, 28 agreed to respond again to the same set of questions, this time concerning the M5S in opposition.
13. We do not consider MPs who are not present because they are ‘on a mission’ as being absent.
14. We decided not to include the centre-right Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia) in our analysis because, given the small number of MPs belonging to the group, the comparison might have been biased. In addition, data about FI are of course related to a shorter period, because the group was (re)founded only in November 2013 when they decided to move from the ranks of the governing majority to the opposition.
15. For this purpose, the Movement established an Internet-based platform to give citizens the possibility of regularly shaping political decisions. In addition, the heart of the M5S PG is the ‘assembly’, composed of all Five Star deputies and senators and it is responsible for taking decisions on legislative voting (including how MPs should vote on the floor), bill proposals and allocation of the places assigned to it in parliamentary committees (Pinto and Pedrazzani forthcoming 2015).
16. Data updated to early October 2014.
17. In this count, FI is not exactly comparable with the other opposition groups, since the group was formed 9 months later than the others.
18. However, if we divide these numbers by the number of MPs in each group, we see that the difference between the M5S and the other opposition parties is again not that big and it is again ‘in favour’ of LN and SEL MPs.
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Elisabetta De Giorgi
Elisabetta De Giorgi is a post-doctoral fellow at the CesNova, the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences (FCSH), NOVA University of Lisbon. Her main research interests are parliaments from a comparative perspective, in particular, parliamentary opposition and the law-making process. She has published several articles in national and international journals – Acta Politica, Journal of Legislative Studies, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, Italian Political Science Review, South European Society and Politics, among others – and book chapters.