Tag Archives: Italy

Democracy and the coronavirus: how might parliament adapt?

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sir_david_natzler.smiling.cropped.3840x1920.jpgParliament is currently in recess but its work continues, with select committees moving to remote hearings, and the Speaker promising to move, if only temporarily, towards a ‘virtual parliament’. David Natzler, who spent almost 40 years working in the House of Commons, draws on his experience to suggest how issues relating to the remote conduct of oral questions, voting, committees, and other key matters, might be resolved before parliament returns in late April.

In my blog of 23 March, I suggested that parliament would be judged on how well it had dealt with COVID-19. Over the past fortnight parliament has passed the Coronavirus Act and Commons select committees have held several hearings (see below) in procedurally unique circumstances. Developments in other parliaments and institutions have given an indication of how Westminster might adapt in the coming months. And there have been growing calls for business – in  some radically different form – to be resumed well before 21 April, when parliament is due to reassemble following its standard, if slightly extended, Easter break. The proceedings in both Houses on 23-25 March are of course available to read in Hansard. They do not seem to have been widely reported in the press, save for the observation that there were no votes. 

Speaker’s letter of 27 March: Chamber proceedings 

On 27 March the Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, wrote a letter to all members of the House of Commons. The letter confirmed that he would be considering several practical measures to enable the number of members present in the Commons chamber at any one time to be reduced. These measures included advance publication of the order of speaking in debate, which the Chair has hitherto not revealed, thus requiring members to attend the debate and wait until called. In the past it has been suggested that the draft list be published, as it is in many other parliaments; this already happens in the House of Lords. If this were introduced it could take some persuasion to return to the existing practice, which allows the Chair to show some flexibility in response to debate.

Oral and written questions and statements

The Speaker’s letter also envisages possible adaptations of the oral question regime, conceivably allowing for questions and supplementary questions to be posed remotely by absent members. Advance submission by MPs of their desire to be called to ask a supplementary question following a statement or urgent question is also canvassed as a possible change. And the Speaker gave a strong signal that he would expect the government to allow for answers to written questions to be given during any future extended period of adjournment, much as happened in the mid-2000s when September sittings were abandoned for several years (see Standing Order 22B and Erskine May 22.4, footnote 3). This was repeated in his letter to the Leader of the Commons on 2 April. Continue reading →

How Italy experienced (yet another) electoral system and why it may soon change it again

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download.000lp (1)ap (1)This year saw the Italian electorate vote under a new electoral system for the first time. However, this is the fourth time in 25 years that legislative reform has been passed by the Italian parliament. Gianfranco Baldini, Andrea Pedrazzani and Luca Pinto discuss how the new law came about and analyse how it operated in practice. 

On 4 March 2018, Italy went to the polls using the fourth new electoral law (the Rosato law) approved since 1993, when Italy created a mixed-member majoritarian system selecting 75% of MPs in single-member constituencies, and the remaining 25% via proportional representation. The Mattarella Law, named after Sergio Mattarella, who now serves as President of the Republic, helped to bring about a bi-polarization of the party system along two main centre-right and centre-left coalitions. This year, no coalition or party obtained an absolute majority of seats in parliament. More than two months has passed since the vote and no government has yet been formed. If and when one emerges, a possible consensus could rise on a new electoral law, before calling fresh elections to break the deadlock.

Matthew Shugart has assessed the first effects of the new electoral law and here we analyse the main reasons behind this continuous change of provisions, some of the effects with regard to party system fragmentation, and two controversial aspects of the Rosato law, namely the provision for multiple candidacies and gender parity.

Why so many reforms?

The record number of electoral reforms over the last quarter of a century is due both to partisan reasons and to some Italian peculiarities. Among the latter, two (intertwined) factors stand out: the uncertain path of institutional reforms over the same period and the lack of institutionalisation of the party system that emerged after the 1994 election. Continue reading →

A new phase for Italy’s regional system? The referendums in Lombardy and Veneto on greater autonomy

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On Sunday 22 October voters in the Italian regions of Lombardy and Veneto expressed their support for greater regional autonomy in two consultative referendums. Is this the start of a new attempt at overhauling and modernising Italy’s two-track regional system, after a constitutional reform proposal that would have re-centralised Italy’s regional system (and reformed its bicameralism) was rejected in December 2016? Jens Woelk provides an overview of recent developments in Italy and suggests that despite the two referendums in favour of more autonomy, consensus and a coherent design for reforms of the Italian system are still lacking.

What kind of answer do you expect to the question, ‘Do you like chocolate?’ The answer seems obvious. The same applies to the question asked in consultative referendums held in wealthy regions in northern Italy on Sunday 22 October: ‘Are you in favour of greater autonomy (for your region)’? As widely expected, including by the organisers, the results were positive. In Veneto, the threshold of 50% established for the validity of the consultation was not a problem: with a turnout of 57.2% an overwhelming 98.1% voted in favour. Although the turnout in Lombardy, where no threshold applied, was considerably lower (38.34%), the ‘Yes’ votes were a large majority (95.29%) there too.

Narrowing the gap between the two tracks of Italy’s regional system?

The asymmetrical Italian regional system consists of five autonomous or ‘special’ regions and of 15 ‘ordinary’ regions. While the Constitution itself contains detailed regulations regarding the latter, the autonomy of each special region is individually based upon a special ‘statuto’. This Act with constitutional rank lists legislative powers and administrative functions and contains specific institutional and financial arrangements. There are peculiar features in each special region; these and their powers distinguish special regions from ordinary ones which have fewer (and no exclusive) competencies and only generic guarantees of financial resources.

A constitutional reform in 2001 aimed at narrowing the gap between the two categories by strengthening the powers of the ordinary regions (therefore the reform is widely known as ‘federalisation reform’). However, the ambitious reform did not produce positive results, due to a combination of poor and slow implementation; passivity of the regions themselves, which hardly made use of their new powers; and the activity of the Constitutional Court, which has  at times overturned the devolutionary logic of the reform in order to preserve the unity of the state and the co-ordinating function of central government.

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The Italian Constitutional Court judgement on the ‘Italicum’ electoral law: another new reform for Italy?

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Last month the Italian Constitutional Court declared several crucial elements of the ‘Italicum’ electoral system for the Chamber of Deputies, approved by parliament in 2015, to be unconstitutional. Further electoral reform is therefore now being discussed, ahead of an election that must take place by next spring at the latest. Roberta Damiani explains the background to the judgement and its implications.

On 25 January the Italian Constitutional Court announced its judgement on the latest electoral law for the lower chamber of Parliament (the Chamber of Deputies), promulgated by Matteo Renzi’s government and approved in 2015, known as the ‘Italicum’. While retaining some of its features, the Court declared that several of the Italicum’s most crucial elements are unconstitutional, and modified them accordingly. It effectively turned what would have been a majoritarian system into a proportional one.

Before examining this judgement in detail, we need to understand how it fitted into broader debates about the appropriate constitutional structure for Italy.

The Constitution of the Italian Republic, founded in 1946 in the wake of the experience of fascism, was based on the principle that power should be dispersed, in order to prevent the rise of another dictatorship. This was achieved through the creation of two coequal parliamentary chambers: not only did both have to agree all legislation; in addition, either could dismiss the government through a vote of no confidence. Some level of governability was achieved only by the fact that both chambers were directly elected through proportional representation: their compositions were almost identical, such that they rarely disagreed sharply with each other.

Nevertheless, by the 1980s there was a widespread perception that the dispersion of power had gone too far. The need for fundamental reforms became particularly acute after a major corruption scandal, known as ‘Tangentopoli’, that was uncovered in 1992 and led to an almost complete breakdown of the party system. In response, a new electoral system – the so-called ‘Mattarellum’ – was introduced in 1993, which reduced electoral proportionality in both chambers.

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More than just populism: Renzi, the Italian Senate referendum and the perils of second chamber reform

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Roberta Damiani passport-styleMeg-RussellOn 4 December Italians decisively rejected Matteo Renzi’s proposed constitutional reforms, which centred on reforming the Senate – leading to his resignation as Prime Minister. The international media widely reported this as a victory for populism. In this post Roberta Damiani and Meg Russell argue that the referendum result was more complex than that. It demonstrated the perils of referendums on detailed constitutional matters and in particular – with echoes of Nick Clegg’s experience in the UK – of attempted second chamber reform.

Italian ‘perfect’ bicameralism has dodged another bullet. After a long, fragmented, and highly personalised referendum campaign, on 4 December the Italian electorate voted against Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s constitutional reform by 59 per cent to 41 per cent, on a turnout of 65 per cent. The main elements of the reform would have been to drastically cut the powers of the upper chamber (the Senate), reduce its membership from 315 to 100, and turn it from a directly elected chamber into an indirectly-elected one, comprising representatives of the regions. Vincenzo Scarpetta has previously described what else the reform entailed on this blog.

Opinion polls over the last few months showed a shift towards a No outcome. The latest, published before the two-week ‘electoral silence’, indicated that 54 per cent of respondents would vote against the reform. This time, the polls showed the correct outcome. Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who had linked the passage of this reform to his government’s survival, resigned the following day. In an emotional speech delivered on the evening of the defeat, he claimed: ‘I wanted to get rid of some seats in Italian politics. I failed, and hence the only seat I can get rid of is my own’.

Many commentators described the possibility of a No victory as the third anti-establishment vote of the year, following the Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s election. The main reason for this interpretation was that Renzi, a little too confident of the merits of his reform, highly personalised the campaign, and bet his political career on it. This naturally meant that his opponents would vote against him, and turned the referendum into a protest vote against the government. Renzi eventually personalised the loss just as much as the campaign: ‘To all my friends from the Yes front I say that you didn’t lose. I lost’, he said in his speech.

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