Elections in Italy: “Traditional” flirtation with political instability

Italy has a long tradition, dating back to World War II, of electoral contests and ephemeral governments, the result of a political system that favors coalitions and, therefore, indirectly, political instability.

This political system results from the will of the founders of the post-war Italian Republic to avoid the overconcentration of power in a single person, when the memory of Benito Mussolini was still alive in the minds…

The result is a regime where the parliament, which raises and lowers governments, is constituted on the basis of an electoral system, which mixes proportional and majoritarian system in its latest version and forces parties to form coalitions.

Since 1946 and the establishment of the Italian Republic, more or less 67 governments have been formed in Italy as well.

The first government of the young Italian Republic is that of Alcinde de Gasperi II. The government already consists of four parties and bears the seeds of the chronic political instability that will mark Italian political life: if no party is strong enough to govern alone, this means he will be held hostage by his government partners.

If Alcide de Gasperi, with a record of 8 prime ministerial terms, had to work with four parties, what can one say about the government of Romano Prodi II, in 2006, which counted 14 parties in its coalition and, despite this, only had a slim majority two seats in the Senate?

“Trash”

The irony is that the electoral law that allowed Romano Prodi to win the 2006 election, albeit with such a slim majority, was drafted by the Italian right during the previous parliamentary term to prevent a victory for the left…

Whatever the use of its Latin name porcellum wants to embellish it, that electoral law drawn up at the behest of Silvio Berlusconi went down in history as “garbage”.

Another peculiarity of the Italian system is the change of party mantle of the deputies: a deputy who has been elected under the colors of one party can quietly change his party in the parliament and become a member of another parliamentary group and he can do this as many times as he deems necessary or handy.

“I don’t understand Italian politics very well. Only these 20 governments in 20 years, it’s a little strange, but everyone has their own way of dancing the tango,” Pope Francis recently commented.

Italians will encounter many innovations during the vote on September 25, fruits of the latest electoral law and the amendment of the Constitution: the House goes from 630 to 400 members and the Senate from 315 to 200.

For the first time, Italians can elect senators from the age of 18, while until now voters had to be at least 25 years old. To be elected to the Senate, someone must be at least 40 years old, an age limit that does not apply to the Parliament.

In the two houses of Parliament, which have exactly the same powers, 61% of the seats are distributed according to the proportional electoral system, with different electoral thresholds in force, 37% are elected according to the majority electoral system and 2% belong to Italians living abroad .

Participation in parliamentary elections is relatively high in Italy, even if the trend is downward: in 2008 more than 80% of voters had participated in the voting, in 2013 more than 75% and in 2018 73% had moved to the polls.

RES-EMP

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