The first Conte government: ‘government of change’ or business as usual?

ABSTRACT

The birth of the yellow-green ‘government of change’ − formed by the Five-star Movement (M5 s) and the League in 2018 − was a significant novelty in Italian politics. Concerns about its populist character co-existed with enthusiastic expectations concerning its capacity to overhaul politics. In what respects did the Conte I government mark a significant departure from its predecessors? To answer this question, we rely on data concerning legislative activity to analyse the executive’s capacity to implement its policy agenda. Given the uneasy alliance upon which the coalition was based, we also attempt to evaluate whether or not the coalition agreement signed by the coalition partners actually worked as a focal point for government action. We find that, despite rhetorical claims about radical change, the Conte I government was less pro-active than its predecessors. We also find that the League was better able to affect the Government’s policy priorities than was the M5 s.

KEYWORDS:

• Coalition agreement
• legislative activity
• comparative agenda project
• coalition government

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. M. Anelli, I. Colantone, M. Pulejo, and P. Stanig, ‘Italy just voted for two very different kinds of populism’, The Washington Post, 28 March 2018.

2. The expert survey methodology is characterised by an a priori approach whereby policy dimensions or scales are predefined and parties are located on these scales by country experts. Estimates of party positions are therefore the aggregated results of expert judgements (Benoit and Laver 2006).

3. The Berlusconi IV government was a post-electoral minimal winning coalition government formed by the Northern League and FI. The Monti government was an inter-electoral caretaker government. The Letta government was a post-electoral surplus majority coalition formed by the PD and other centre and left wing parties. The Renzi government was an inter-electoral surplus majority government formed by the PD and other centre parties. The Gentiloni government was an inter-electoral surplus majority coalition formed by the PD and other centre parties. The Conte I government was a minimal winning coalition.

4. According to Italian politics experts, the distance on the left-right dimension between the PD and the Popolo delle libertà (People of Freedom, Pdl) − the two parties supporting the Letta executive − was about nine points (Di Virgilio et al. 2015).

5. The classificatory scheme of the CAP was drawn up to study how attention toward different political issues varies and how such oscillations affect policy. The scheme is used to analyse the policy content of various kinds of agendas, including party manifestos, government programmes, and legislative production.

6. See Hix, Noury, and Roland (2005) for further details about the way the index is computed.

7. For instance, FI and FdI voted in favour of the two decree-laws on immigration and security sponsored by Salvini’s League.

8. For instance, in the vote on the citizens’ income law, 37 per cent of the PD MPs did not participate in the voting while 63 per cent voted against. It should be noted that, given the Government’s majority in the Chamber, we can rule out the possibility that absences were motivated by attempts to sabotage legislation by rendering the assembly inquorate.

9. We are grateful to Niccolò Conti for providing the data.

10. An alternative approach would have been to analyse the rate of enactment of electoral pledges (Mansergh and Thompson 2007). We opted for the CAP classification for consistency with the analysis carried out in the previous section and given the fact that our study focuses on the post-electoral period taking the coalition agreement as a starting point.

11. J. Horowitz, ‘How Giuseppe Conte of Italy Went From Irrelevant to Irreplaceable’, New York Times, 29 August 2019.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Daniela Giannetti

Daniela Giannetti is Full Professor at the University of Bologna. Her research interests are in the field of rational choice approach and comparative politics. She has published extensively in books and major journals.

Luca Pinto

Luca Pinto is Assistant Professor at the University of Bologna. His research interests include party competition, legislative studies and coalition governments. He has published on these topics several contributions in books and international journals.

Carolina Plescia

Carolina Plescia is Assistant Professor at the University of Vienna. Her research interests are in the field of electoral behavior and public opinion. Her work has been published in journals such as European Journal of Political Research, West European Politics, Political Psychology, amongst others.