Parliament of Italy
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The Parliament of Italy (Italian: Parlamento Italiano) is the national parliament of Italy. It is a bicameral legislature with 945 elected members (parlamentari). The Chamber of Deputies, with 630 members (deputati) is the lower house. The Senate of the Republic is the upper house and has 315 members (senatori).
Since 2005, a Proportional System electoral law is being used in both houses. A majority prize is given to the coalition obtaining a plurality: at national level for the House of Deputies, at regional level for the Senate.
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[edit] Function of the Parliament
The Parliament is the representative body of the citizens in the republican Institutions, and act accordingly.
By the Republican Constitution of 1948, the two Houses of the Italian Parliament possess the same rights and powers: this particular form of parliamentary democracy (the so-called perfect bicameralism) has been coded in the current form after the dismissal of the fascist dictatorship of the 1920s and 1930s and after World War II.
The two Houses are independent from each other and never meet jointly except under circumstances specified by the Constitution. The House of Deputies has 630 members, while the Senate has 315 elected members and a small number of life senators: former Presidents of the Republic and up to five members appointed by the President for having contributed to the Country high achievement in the social or scientific field. As of 15 May 2006 there are seven life senators (of whom three are former presidents).
The main prerogative of the Parliament is the exercise of legislative power, that is the power to enact laws. For a text to become law, it must receive the vote of both Houses independently in the same form. A bill is discussed in one of the Houses, amended, and approved or rejected: if approved, it is passed to the other House, which can amend it and approve or reject it. If approved without amendments, the text is promulgated by the President of the Republic and becomes law. If approved with amendments, it is passed back to the originating House, which can approve the bill as amended, in which case the law is promulgated, or reject it.
The Parliament votes support to the Government, which is appointed by the President of the Republic and usually led by the leader of the coalition winning the elections. The Government must receive a support vote by both Houses before being officially in power, and the Parliament can request a new vote of support at any moment if a quota of any House so requests. Should a Government fail to obtain a vote, it must resign; if it does, either a new Government is formed or the President of the Republic can dissolve the Houses and new elections are held.
The Parliament in joint session of both Houses elects the President of the Republic, five (one third) members of the Corte Costituzionale and one third of the Consiglio Superiore della Magistratura. It can vote to decide an accusation of high treason or attack to the Constitution against the President of the Republic (situation has never occurred).
[edit] Overseas constituency
The Italian Parliament is one of the few legislatures in the world to reserve seats for citizens residing abroad. There are twelve such seats in the Chamber of Deputies and six in the Senate.
The Overseas Constituency consists of four electoral zones, each of which elect at least one Deputy and one Senator:
- Europe (including Russia and Turkey)
- South America
- North and Central America
- Africa, Asia, Oceania and Antarctica
The remaining seats are distributed between the same overseas electoral zones in proportion to the number of Italian citizens resident in each.
[edit] Electoral system
The electoral system was changed in the run-up to the 2006 General Election from an Additional Member electoral system to a proportional one. The opposition coalition at the time, L'Unione, pledged to reinstate the previous system if they won the election. In the event, L'Unione did win the election by a very narrow margin.
[edit] New electoral system (2005-)
The new electoral system, approved on December 14 2005, is based on proportional representation with a series of thresholds to encourage parties to form coalitions.
Both for the lower and higher house of the Parliament, Italy is divided in a certain number of constituencies, in which seats will be distributed according to the share of votes received by a party. Available seats are assigned to these constituencies proportionally to their population. In all cases, the lists of party candidates is given beforehand, and citizens cannot state a preference for any given candidate: if a list wins 10 seats, its first ten candidates will be elected.
The law officially recognizes coalitions of parties: to be part of a coalition, a party must sign its official program and indicate a candidate to prime-ministership.
[edit] Chamber of Deputies
Italy is divided in 26 constituencies: Lombardy has three constituencies, whereas Piedmont, Veneto, Latium, Campania, and Sicily have two and all other regions one. These constituencies elect 617 MPs. Another one is elected in Aosta Valley and 12 are reserved to the constituency of Italians living abroad.
To obtain seats, some thresholds must be surpassed on national basis:
- Minimum 10% for a coalition. If this requirement is not met, the 4% limit for single parties apply.
- Minimum 4% for any party not in a coalition.
- Minimum 2% for any party in a coalition. However, the first party in a coalition that rates below 2% is also assigned seats.
Also, parties representing regional linguistic minorities obtain seats if they receive at least 20% ballots in their constituency. The coalition or party that obtains a plurality, but is assigned less than 340 seats, is assigned additional seats to reach this number, corresponding roughly to a 54% majority. Seats are allocated proportionally to received votes in each constituency, among the parties that passed the thresholds on a national basis.
[edit] Senate of the Republic
For the Senate, the constituencies correspond to the 20 regions of Italy, with 6 senators allocated for Italians living abroad. The electoral system is very similar to the one for the lower house, but is in many ways transferred to regional basis. The thresholds are also different, and applied on regional basis:
- Minimum 20% for a coalition.
- Minimum 8% for any party not in a coalition.
- Minimum 3% for any party in a coalition (there is no exception for the first party in a coalition below this threshold, as in the lower house).
The coalition that wins a plurality in a region is automatically given 55% of the region's seats, if it has not reached that percentage already. It is possible for a coalition to win in a region and lose in another: there is ostensibly no mechanism to guarantee a nation-wide majority in the Senate.
[edit] Criticism
The new electoral law came under wide criticism from the centre-left opposition for a series of reasons:
- Instability
- The system was considered to be less stable than the previous additional member system, and to give more room for political intrigue. The region-based system in the higher house is not guaranteed to produce a clear majority, and may pave the way for crises.
- Large Party Bias
- It was alleged that the system is thoroughly studied to advantage prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's House of Freedoms: in particular, there are many small parties below or around the 2% threshold in the opposition coalition L'Unione (such as the Italian Democratic Socialists, the Federation of the Greens, Italy of Values, Popular Alliance-UDEUR, the Party of Italian Communists, and the European Republican Movement), whereas there are much fewer in Berlusconi's alliance. However, these parties did form electoral alliances to avoid losing votes. One such alliance is the Rose in the Fist.
- "Partitocracy"
- It has been alleged that Italian parties have retained too much power in the First Republic, screening the choices citizens had in elections; this electoral law would reinstate fixed electoral lists, where voters can only express a preference for a list but not for a specific candidate. This can be used by parties to all but guarantee re-election to unpopular but powerful figures, who would be weaker in a first past the post electoral system.
- Adaptation to gallups
- In Italian elections the left-wing tends to fare better in direct confrontation than in proportional voting, a sign there are voters who trust left-wing candidates but right-wing political parties, for reasons that can be debated. It is alleged that the centre-right majority in the Parliament undertook this reform to boost their chances in the upcoming elections of 2006 (they indeed lost by a very small margin).
- No agreement with the opposition
- The law was passed by the majority against the opinion of the opposition. Whereas all recognize their full right to do so, many feel that the "rules of the game" should be agreed upon by everybody, and not imposed by one side.
See also this series of articles by La Repubblica and this description by the Forza Italia Web site.
[edit] The previous electoral system (August 1993-2005)
Between 1991 and 1993, resulting from two referendums and legislation, Italian electoral law was altered substantially. Electoral law in Italy is determined by Parliament, not the constitution. This, taken with the concurrent collapse of the Italian party system, marks the transition between the First and Second Italian Republics.
[edit] Two referendums
The nearly pure proportional representation system of the First Republic had resulted not only in party fragmentation and therefore governmental instability, but also insulation of the parties from the electorate and civil society. This was known in Italian as partitocrazia, in contrast to democracy, and resulted in corruption and pork-barrel politics. The Italian constitution allows, with substantial hurdles, abrogative referendums, enabling citizens to delete laws or parts of laws past by Parliament (with exceptions).
A reform movement known as COREL (Committee to Promote Referendums on Elections), led by maverick DC-member Mario Segni, proposed three referendums, one of which was allowed by the Constitutional Court (at that time packed with members of the PSI and hostile to the movement). The June 1991 referendum therefore asked voters if they wanted to reduce the number of preferences, from three or four to one, in the Chamber of Deputies, to reduce the abuse of the open-list system by party elites and ensure accurate delegation of parliamentary seats to candidates popular with voters. With 62.5% of the Italian electorate voting, the referendum passed with 95% of those voting in favor. This was seen as a vote against the partitocrazia, which had campaigned against the referendum.
Emboldened by their victory in 1991, and encouraged by the unfolding Mani pulite scandals and the substantial loss of votes for the traditional parties in the 1992 general elections, the reformers pushed forward with another referendum, abrogating the proportional representation system of the Italian Senate, implicitly supporting a plurality system that would theoretically force parties to coalesce around two ideological poles, thereby providing governmental stability. This referendum was held in April, 1993, and passed with the support of 80% of those voting. This caused the Amato government to collapse three days later. Municipal elections were held in June, 1993, further illustrating the lack of legitimacy the sitting parliament held. The President of Italy, Francesco Cossiga, thereupon appointed a technocratic government, led by former head of the Bank of Italy, Carlo Ciampi, with the sole task of writing a new electoral law.
As it was under no constitutional obligation to enact a purely majoritarian system (nor were they under obligation to promulgate a new electoral law for the Chamber of Deputies), and cognizant of its declining popular support, the sitting parliament enacted a new electoral law in August, 1993 that provided for single-member districts while reflecting their own interests. Despite this, many of them would be voted out of office in the national election in March, 1994.
[edit] The electoral law
The national elections used an Additional Member System, which in Italy was a mixed system, with 75% of seats allocated using a First Past the Post electoral system and 25% using a proportional method, with one round of voting. The Senate and the Chamber of Deputies differed in the way they allocated the proportional seats, although both used the D'Hondt method of allocating seats.
The Senate includes 315 elected members, of whom:
- 232 are directly elected in single-member districts.
- 83 are elected by regional proportional representation
- six represent Italians residing overseas
- a small, variable number of senators-for-life include former presidents of the Republic and several other persons appointed for life by a president of the Republic (no more than 5), according to special constitutional provisions (scientists, writers, artists, social workers, politicians, tycoons).
The Senate was elected on a single ballot. All those votes not contributing to a winning candidate were thrown into a regional pool (of which there were 40), and within that district were then used to allocate the seats proportionally. There was no electoral threshold for the Senate.
The Italian Chamber of Deputies has 630 members, of whom
- 475 are directly elected in single member districts.
- 155 are elected by regional proportional representation
- 12 will represent Italians residing overseas at the next elections (2006).
The Chamber of Deputies used two ballots. The first ballot elected that district's member, on a purely plurality basis. The second ballot, in which only parties and party-lists were listed, was used to determine the proportional seats, allocated within one single national constituency, with a 4% minimum threshold for party representation.
A horridly complicated mechanism known as scorporo, a previously unknown word in Italian politics, was used to tabulate PR votes. The number of votes cast for candidates coming in second place on the first ballot (SMD) would be subtracted from the (obviously much larger) number of votes earned on the second ballot (PR) by the party of the winning candidate in the first ballot. This would be repeated for each single-member district. This was developed -- against the overwhelming opinion expressed in the referendums -- to dampen the effect of the first-past-the-post system, which it was feared might promote the prevalence of one political party, especially parties that were strong in one geographical area.
The law also introduced a closed list system for the party lists on the second ballot, i.e., excluding voters from the decision as to which members of that party would enter parliament, thereby guaranteeing reelection of party leaders whose popular support was rapidly declining (new elections were to be held once the new electoral law was fully implemented). Ironically, that is what allowed Mario Segni, the leader of the reform movement, to enter parliament on the proportional ballot after the March, 1994, elections, having broken with his party in March, 1993, and then reunited with one of its shattered remnants that December.
In practice, the system has proven egregiously useless, even for its own corrupt purposes. First-past-the-post candidates usually declare their formal allegiance to some decoy list that will collect no votes, known as liste civetta, thereby relieving their own party of a reduction in votes in the proportional quota. The bypass worked so well that in the elections of 2001 Forza Italia had not enough candidates to fill all the seats it was assigned.
Nor has the system accomplished the goals desired by the voters. The first parliament elected after the electoral reform produced Silvio Berlusconi's first government, which lasted eight months. Small parties still enter parliament and form unstable coalitions. On the other hand, political parties in Italy seem to be coalescing around two poles, if imperfectly so, and governments have lasted much longer, at least by Italian standards. On that level, the electoral reform can be seen as an improvement over the electoral law prior to it, even if Italy has now returned to a PR system.
[edit] The 1947-1993 electoral system
Between 1947 and 1993, Italy used an electoral system that was a nearly pure proportional representation system, which was subject to two insignificant thresholds:
1) that a party needed to achieve 300,000 votes at the national level;
2) Italy was divided into 27 electoral regions (circoscrizione), of unequal size, which were awarded a certain number of seats in Parliament based on population (e.g., Rome received more than 50). Within these regions, seats were divided proportionally; in order to become a member of parliament, a party member needed to be directly elected within one of these regions - approximately 60,000 votes. This system allocated 90% of the seats in both houses of parliament. The votes that did not go to a winning candidate were then thrown into one national electoral district, which was then divided proportionally and used to determine the remaining 10%, thereby going to candidates not directly elected.
Furthermore, voters were able to list their preferences for candidates on a party list, in order to prevent the parties from exploiting the power they acquired from being able to write their party lists. In practice, however, parties were able to manipulate these numbers to that preferred members, i.e., members loyal to one faction within a party, could enter parliament.
As neither of these thresholds was difficult to achieve, this system naturally benefitted the small parties. This was exacerbated by the fact that the Lower House has 630 seats. Because of the design of the electoral law did not provide for any mechanism to exclude small parties (indeed it seemed designed to encourage them) or provide any incentives to avoid splintering, by the 1970s the Italian party system had become completely fragmented, with 17 parties represented in parliament in contrast to the eight represented in 1947. This resulted in highly unstable coalition governments (the average length was nine months) and political turbulence. And because voters had little control over which candidates entered parliament, political parties were insulated from the wishes civil society. Relations between political elites and the masses therefore became clientelistic; voter behavior and politics in general became a contest as to which party could secure more pork-barrel investment for a specific region. It also allowed politicians to become corrupt.
[edit] References
Gilbert, Mark (1995). The Italian Revolution: The End of Politics, Italian Style?
Pasquino, Gianfranco (1995). "Die Reform eines Wahlrechtssystems: Der Fall Italien." In Birgitta Nedelmann (1995), Politische Institutionen im Wandel.
Koff, Sondra, and Stephen P. Koff (2000). Italy: From the First to the Second Republic. Others.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Official website (in Italian)
- Election resources for the Parliament
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