Tag Archives: LUISS

The challenges of reforming the Italian Senate

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u8TSxoiJ_400x400 (1)On 11 and 12 June 2018 the Constitution Unit co-hosted two workshops with Rome LUISS university, the first being on ‘The challenges of reforming upper houses in the UK and Italy’. The contributions of Unit Director Meg Russell and Carlo Fusaro of the University of Florence were summarised in the first two posts in this series. Here, Roberta Damiani summarises what was said by the other contributors. 

 

Claudio Tucciarelli, Chamber of Deputies. 

Claudio Tucciarelli discussed how Italian ‘perfect’ bicameralism, where the two chambers have the same powers and functions and are both directly elected (as explained here), was a ‘disappointing’ outcome that in the end emerged from the negotiations of the 1946 Constituent Assembly. Nevertheless, he argued that some of the accusations that are often made against Italian bicameralism are not true. For instance, it is generally said that the system is too slow and that the process to approve bills is too lengthy, but Tucciarelli argued that ‘good decisions are better than quick ones’, and he pointed out that the majority of bills in Italy are approved without the use of the navette procedure (shuttling bills back and forth between the chambers). Furthermore, he remarked that the 2016 reform proposal would have diminished the legitimacy of the Italian Senate. The lack of legitimacy is often a cause of controversy about second chambers (as argued by Meg Russell), and hence Renzi’s reform would have introduced problems of a different kind.

Francesca Rosa, Associate Professor of Comparative Public Law at the University of Foggia

Professor Rosa discussed the main hurdles to reforming Italian bicameralism. One obstacle is very long-term: simply that the complete symmetry of Italian bicameralism is now very long-standing. While the Chamber of Deputies and Senate always had the same legislative powers and functions, originally the 1948 republican Constitution predicted at least some minor differences between the two chambers, in terms of the duration of their terms (five years for the Chamber and six years for the Senate), and in terms of composition, as the Senate should have been elected ‘on a regional basis’. However, these differences were quickly nullified: in 1953, the terms of the two chambers were equalised to five years, and the electoral laws used to elect the Senate, which never went beyond using the regions as constituencies, did not result in meaningful regional representation This made the two chambers completely identical, and this parity has now been in place for decades – and as argued by Donald Shell, ‘inertia’ is in itself a reason why second chambers often continue to exist unreformed. Continue reading →

Constitutional Change and Upper Houses: the Italian Case

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downloadOn 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 →

The failed Senate reform in Italy: international lessons on why bicameral reforms so often (but not quite always) fail

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On 11 and 12 June 2018 the Constitution Unit co-hosted two workshops with Rome LUISS university, the first being on ‘The challenges of reforming upper houses in the UK and Italy’. This post is the first in a series summarising the speakers’ contributions. Here the Unit’s Meg Russell reflects broadly on the international challenges of bicameral reform, drawing on experiences in the UK, Italy, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and Spain.

In reflecting on comparisons between the UK and Italy, in many ways our two parliaments are very different. The UK parliament is traditionally seen as weak (though I have disputed this), while the Italian parliament is seen as strong. Connectedly, the UK House of Lords is a wholly unelected institution, while the Italian Senate is largely made up of directly elected members. Nonetheless, one thing that unites the two systems is long-running pressure for bicameral reform. In both countries there have been numerous proposals made for second chamber reform over decades, most of which have failed. The most recent and fairly spectacular examples were the failure of Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg’s proposals for Lords reform in 2012, and Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s proposals for Senate reform in 2016, which led to his resignation after voters rejected them at a referendum.

My own interest in bicameral reform dates back to 20 years ago when I began research for my first book, Reforming the House of Lords: Lessons from Overseas. In seeking to learn lessons for Lords reform from other countries, it soon became clear that reform pressures in the UK were far from isolated – if anything, they were the norm. So much so that I dedicated a chapter in that book to comparative pressures for reform.

So why are second chambers worldwide so controversial? And why, given these pressures, do they prove in practice so difficult to reform? The answers to these questions are closely related. Continue reading →