International | The Constitution Unit Blog

The selection of the Republican and Democratic candidates for November’s US presidential election, beginning on Monday with the Iowa Caucus, will be followed with interest around the world. Daniel Goldstein and Jennifer vanHeerde-Hudson explain how an eclectic mix of caucuses, primaries and superdelegates will decide who gets to run for the White House.

Ten months out from the US presidential election and, amidst one of the most unpredictable presidential election campaigns in recent memory, the process of selecting the Democratic and Republican nominees via state-level primaries and caucuses will begin on February 1 with the Iowa Caucus. A splintered Republican Party currently has two frontrunners for the nomination, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, both of whom lack support from current party leaders. Further, the seemingly inevitable nomination of Hillary Clinton looks less assured as younger Democrats are supporting the distinctly more liberal Bernie Sanders, with recent polls showing Sanders could win the first two contests (Iowa and New Hampshire). The nomination season will serve to gauge the legitimacy of candidates with the voting public.

The process of selecting the party’s nominee is relatively straightforward. The two major parties allocate a certain number of ‘delegates’ to each of the 50 states and territories in which there are contests. Delegates are then allocated to candidates based on the results of state-level voting. Delegates cast their vote for a candidate during their party’s national convention where the official party nominee for president is selected. To win the nomination, a candidate must win a majority of delegates. In 2016, the Republican nominee will require 1,237 of 2,472 total delegates and the Democratic nominee will require 2,383 of 4,764 delegates. This year the Iowa Caucus will have 52 Democratic delegates and 30 Republican delegates at stake. Should Clinton, for example, win Iowa she will receive a plurality of the 52 delegates (but almost certainly not all 52), who will then be ‘bound’ to vote for her at the Democratic National Convention held in July of this year.

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The UK is far from the only country with a long-standing controversy over the composition and powers of its second chamber. In this post Roberta Damiani provides an update on the latest attempt to reform the Italian Senate. Prime Minister Matteo Renzi is proposing to significantly reduce the Senate’s powers, and to move from direct to indirect elections, but it is far from certain that he will be successful.

The House of Lords has recently come under the spotlight for challenging the elected chamber on tax credit cuts, reviving the never-ending debate about the appropriate powers of a second chamber. But the UK is not the only European country experiencing such controversy: in Italy, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s government is pursuing radical Senate reform. There too, both the powers and the composition of the second chamber are at stake. And there too, reformers may find that achieving major change is harder than they first imagined.

The starting point for the debate in Italy is a feature of the country’s political system that is almost unique among parliamentary democracies: so-called ‘perfect’ bicameralism. That is, the two parliamentary chambers have exactly the same powers as each other – including on financial matters, and even with respect to votes of confidence in the government. Both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate also share the legitimacy of direct election: the latter currently consists of 315 elected members, plus a few life senators, who are either former Presidents of the Republic or highly accomplished citizens appointed by the President.

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