From the Porcellum to the Rosatellum: ‘political elite-judicial interaction’ in the Italian laboratory of electoral reforms

ABSTRACT

The period from 2013 to 2018 saw Parliament experiment with a number of different electoral systems, with several potential reforms being formally discussed and two of them being fully approved: the so-called Italicum in 2015 and the Rosatellum in 2017. These reforms were triggered by interventions of the Constitutional Court that have no precedent in established democracies. As these interventions resulted in (constrained) responses by the political elites, we argue that Italy has entered a cycle characterised by a new mode of electoral reform involving the interaction of political elites and judges. The article examines the processes that led to the adoption of the Italicum and the Rosatellum, analysing the interaction amongst the actors involved in a rather fluid political context, where the government/opposition divide was fuzzy, shifting and opaque. The article also highlights how the inadequacy both of the reasons given for these reforms, and of their content and the processes by which they were arrived at, prevented them from fully repairing the damage inflicted on electoral integrity by the pre-existing 2005 electoral law (the Porcellum), and concludes that the issue of the electoral system in Italy is far from being settled. However, we remain agnostic on whether the new political elite that emerged after the 2018 election will regain control of the process or whether the interaction between political elites and judges will continue with further judicial interventions.

Abbreviations: ALA: Liberal-popular Autonomies Alliance (group); AP: People’s Alternative (party); FdI: Brothers of Italy (party); FI: Forward Italy (party); FPTP: first past the post (i.e. plurality rule); LeU: Free and Equals (party); LN: Northern League (party); M5S: Five Star Movement (party); MDP: Democratic and Progressive Movement (party); MP: member of Parliament (applies to members of both houses); NCD: New Centre-Right (party); PD: Democratic Party; PdL: People of Freedom (party); PM: Prime Minister; PR: proportional representation; SEL: Left Ecology and Freedom (party); SI: Italian Left (party)

KEYWORDS:

• Electoral reform
• political elite-judicial interaction
• judicial intervention
• majority elite imposition
• electoral integrity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Renwick’s analytical framework also includes the elite settlement type, in which the reform is negotiated between majority and opposition parties in a principled manner aiming at systemic efficiency. However, as Renwick himself points out, when the analysis is restricted to established democracies, the occurrence of this type of reform is extremely unlikely (Renwick 2010, 11–12).

2. Renwick’s analytical framework also includes the following types: mass imposition, external imposition and elite-external interaction (Renwick 2010, 11). However, like the elite settlement type, these types of reform are extremely unlikely in established democracies.

3. The 1993 electoral reform too attracted authoritative criticism, albeit less intense and not framed in terms of violations of constitutional rights. See Sartori (2001).

4. The 2005 electoral law assigned 55% of the Chamber seats to the party/coalition winning most votes at the national level, independently of its actual vote share. For the Senate election, the new system introduced a majority premium, of 55% of the seats, allocated region by region. The law also established national thresholds for the Chamber and regional thresholds for the Senate, favouring parties belonging to a coalition vis-à-vis parties running on their own (Massetti 2006).

5. Research conducted within the framework of the Electoral Integrity Project calculates the index of Perceived Electoral Integrity (PEI index) for every country in which elections are held, by surveying country experts on eleven stages/aspects of the electoral cycle. ‘Electoral law’ represents the first stage of the cycle and is measured on the basis of three indicators: 1) fairness between large and small parties; 2) fairness between governing and opposition parties; 3) respect for citizens’ democratic rights (www.electoralintegrityproject.com). The PEI score for the electoral law used in the 2013 Italian general election (i.e. the 2005 law) was 56, eleven points below the world-wide average score for all national elections held in 2012–2013 (67). The Italian score was below average vis-à-vis nearly all world regions, including North Africa&Middle East (62), Latin America (60) and Central-Eastern Europe (58). It was just above Sub-Saharan Africa (55) and South-East Asia (49). For more details see Norris, Frank, and Martinez I Coma (2014).

6. For a comparison with rulings by American and German courts, see Martinuzzi (2014).

7. Nonetheless, multiple candidacies would have increased the number of candidates chosen by voters. With multiple candidacies, frontrunners compete in multiple districts. Once elected, they have to choose the district they want to represent. Thus, the remaining districts will go to candidates chosen through the casting of preference votes (D’Alimonte 2015).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Emanuele Massetti

Emanuele Massetti is Assistant Professor at the University of Trento, in the School of International Studies and in the Department of Sociology and Social Research. He is co-editor of the JCMS Annual Review of the European Union. His articles have been published in international journals, such as the European Journal of Political Research, West European Politics, Party Politics, Political Studies, and Comparative European Politics, amongst others. He co-edited The Party Politics of Territorial Reforms (2014, Routledge) and The People and the Nation: Populism and Ethno-Territorial Politics in Europe (forthcoming 2019, Routledge).

Arianna Farinelli

Arianna Farinelli holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (2009). Since 2009, she has been Adjunct Assistant Professor of Political Science at Baruch College, City University of New York, United States. Her academic interests concern political parties, institutional reforms, and the European Union. She has published in international journals such as West European Politics, Journal of Modern Italian Studies and Contemporary Italian Politics.