David Farrell argues that the extent of the decline of political parties and democratic decline is at risk of being exaggerated, and that the role of parties in democratic innovation is often underappreciated. He concludes that political parties continue to make fundamental contributions to democracy, not least in driving processes of reform to both democracy and their own internal structures and policies.
Continue readingTag Archives: Five Star Movement
More direct democracy or a more directed democracy in populist-run Italy?
For the first time since its inception, the Five Star Movement finds itself in government, with the stated intention of increasing the use of direct democracy by increasing the circumstances in which a national referendum can be held. Carlo Fusaro examines the proposals and their potential impact on Italian democracy.
This post intends to report on the most recent initiatives concerning referendums by the new populist majority in Italy, as represented in the government formed by the Five Star Movement (M5S) and by the League (formerly known as the Northern League), following the 4 March 2018 elections.
The proposals
While the two vice-premiers Matteo Salvini and Luigi di Maio have been making headlines in other areas, Riccardo Fraccaro, a University of Trento graduate in international environmental law who serves as the “minister for relations with parliament and direct democracy”, has recently announced the constitutional reform strategy of the Cabinet.
Since the Conte Cabinet was formed on 1 June 2018, the denomination of Mr Fraccaro’s ministerial assignment was intended to symbolise the M5S preference for direct democracy. The M5S claims to be a ‘non party’ (therefore a ‘movement’), based on the apparently bottom-up organisation of the followers of comedian Beppe Grillo’s blog. In fact it has been entirely created via the internet and factually set up by a web marketing company (Casaleggio Associati) whose present owner, Davide Casaleggio, holds full and personal control of the movement’s official internet platform (and the related big data). The latter is significantly named ‘Rousseau’ after the Swiss-French theoretician of direct democracy.
Understandably neglecting the total lack of transparency of the Rousseau platform, Davide Casaleggio himself has recently theorised that parliaments might cease to exist in the near future and has emphasised the unlimited potential of people’s direct participation via the net. Mr Fraccaro himself, as a member of parliament, introduced a private member’s bill in 2015 that was meant to strengthen and multiply the instruments of direct democracy already present in the Italian Constitution. It was not enacted.
Before any text had been submitted this time around, Mr Fraccaro (in parliamentary hearings on 12 and 26 July 2018) and his chief adviser on constitutional reforms, Professor Lorenzo Spadacini (in a password-protected article for the think-thank Astrid), had presented sufficiently detailed descriptions of the reform package they have in mind.
It is a relatively prudent set of proposals which would be difficult to describe as revolutionary, but which must be framed within the extraordinary conditions in which Italian democracy is struggling these days. The package is based upon the premise that any ambition of comprehensive reform even only of part II of the Italian Constitution should be set aside: this approach, it is claimed, is more in line with a full compliance of article 138 of the Italian Constitution (which regulates the constitutional amendment procedure). This said, the government (not without some hypocrisy) refrained from directly submitting proposals: but has in fact offered a detailed strategy, expecting parliamentary groups to introduce one single bill for each reform along the same lines. The novelty is that the voters will be allowed to cherry-pick among a series of single texts, one for each item. This might be justified by the fact that the announced amendments are in fact punctual and allow such an approach. Continue reading
The challenges of studying bicameralism and the legislative process: reflections from the Rome workshop ‘Bicameralism and Law-making in the UK and Italy’
On 11 and 12 June 2018 the Constitution Unit co-hosted two workshops with Rome LUISS university, the second of which was on ‘Bicameralism and the legislative process in the UK and Italy’. In this post Roberta Damiani summarises some of the themes from the day, and what conclusions can be drawn for those researching the work and influence of parliaments.
Studying the legislative process is not an easy task, and it becomes even more complex when done through the lens of bicameralism. Difficulties include the definitional issue of what constitutes influence on legislation, and the challenges of accurately reconstructing how two chambers of parliament work in practice and interact with each other. In the second day of events organised jointly by the Constitution Unit and LUISS University a well-attended workshop, held on June 12th in the Sala della Lupa in the Italian Chamber of Deputies, explored how to tackle this subject from both a methodological and a substantive point of view. Here I draw on some of the points raised during the workshop, in an attempt to stimulate debate on how to approach such topics in future work.
The comparative literature often attempts to rank national parliaments according to their policy-making powers. Usually, these stop at the formal powers that a legislature has – for instance, to introduce bills and to amend government legislation. Examples are the Parliamentary Powers Index compiled by Fish and Kroenig, and its weighted version proposed by Chernykh, Doyle and Power in 2016. These comparative studies can be very useful to have a broad overview of how formal legislative powers vary from one country to another. However, they also start to highlight some challenges of studying legislatures: when one moves down to the level of the individual country, reconstructing what actually goes on in a certain parliament tends to be much more complicated.
Continue reading
Constitutional Change and Upper Houses: the Italian Case
On 11 and 12 June 2018 the Constitution Unit co-hosted a workshop at Rome LUISS university, on ‘The challenges of reforming upper houses in the UK and Italy’. This is the second in a series of posts summarising the speakers’ contributions. Professor Carlo Fusaro, a leading proponent of Matteo Renzi’s failed Senate reform of 2016, reflects on why the proposals were defeated and what wider lessons can be learned from their failure.
In a previous blog, Constitution Unit Director Meg Russell set out some more general obstacles to bicameral reform. In this post, reflecting on the recent Italian experience, I argue that the challenges of reforming second chambers have changed, and grown, significantly in recent years.
Constitutional change is difficult by design. Transformation of those constitutional bodies which have a say in the decision making process of constitutional revisions is even more difficult, the most difficult of all. This is something we all have been acutely aware of for decades both in Italy and abroad. Continue reading