Italian Premier Romano Prodi’s centre-left administration fails to get Senate backing for its perceived pro-American foreign policy, and the 61st Italian government since World War Two falls. Whatever hue the 62nd government now takes - and President Giorgio Napolitano, after exploring the alternatives, today asked Prodi to stay on as Prime Minister - it will still have to grapple with the problems the previous administration faced: a fractious Italian parliament and the grave economic woes of the country. Italy’s splintered political landscape undoubtedly fuels its current instability and seemingly puts large scale reform beyond reach. Taming such fragmentation is vital, but no satisfactory solution has thus far been found.
Often blamed is the system of almost pure Proportional Representation, introduced by former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in September 2005 in a failed attempt to stymie Prodi’s left-wing Union alliance’s electoral chances the following spring. But to blame PR itself for Italy’s current instability would be misleading. Political pluralism is a longstanding product of Italian history, culture and society, not merely the result of recent electoral reform. From 1993 to 2001, Italian elections operated on a largely uninominal basis, yet the radical left had the power to fell the first Prodi government in October 1998, just as they did the second this week.
It is also far from clear that the trend over the last 15 years towards a bipolar system, uniting a broad spectrums on the left and right into loose alliances (The Union and House of Freedoms respectively), has in any way aided stability - Berlusconi’s unprecedented five years in power from 2001-2006 notwithstanding. The House of Freedoms has already begun to unravel after its defeat to the Union in April last year, with the Union of Christian Democrats distancing themselves from their erstwhile partners, while the problems of a leftist alliance which encompasses such a broad swathe of opinion needs no further demonstration after the events of this week. A potentially more natural and stable coalition would see the UDC and other centre-right deputies drawn into coalition with the centre-left in emulation of the Christian Democrat-led governments which dominated the First Republic until the collapse of both the DC and the First Republic itself in the early nineties. DC administrations might have fallen with alarming rapidity, but this is misleading: the DC were a fixture of government for 44 years from 1948 to 1992. Indeed, the major problem of the old - proportional - system was not so much a lack of stability, as a lack of clear choice on the part of the electorate. The trend towards bipolarity has provided such choice, but only provided instead fragile governments beholden to the extremes.
Italy’s plurality cannot simply be written out of existence with a new electoral law instituting a higher election threshold designed to limit the number of parties in parliament. Such a law would serve only to disenfranchise those who vote for minor factions - a hypothetical hard cap requiring parties to secure just 3% of the vote for representation (without the current skewed system favouring coalitions) would have rendered one in six votes meaningless in 2006 - and rather exacerbate the influence of the extremes. Communist Refoundation, a Senator of whose defection caused the administration’s collapse this week, would have passed a threshold of even 5% in 2006, and found their influence with the Union coalition heightened with the exclusion of often more moderate minor parties.
Rather than abandoning PR, which allows parliament to function as a proper forum for a true diversity of Italian opinion and could potentially foster a healthy political debate which is at times lacking in more staid political climes, what is needed to secure stable Italian government is a strengthening of the executive at parliament’s expense. One option would be to bolster the power of the Italian president, who has since the 1948 constitution - a reaction to former dictator Benito Mussolini’s authoritarianism - operated as a mere head of state. An American-style president who had secured a mandate from the people would have the authority to go to parliament and knit together the coalition which best fits their platform, avoiding the artificial pre-election divide of parties in the centre.
Strengthening the executive needn’t imply such a radical break with Italy’s immediate past, however. Sensible proposals were put forward by the House of Freedoms as part of a package of constitutional reforms which were rejected in a referendum in June last year, largely due to opposition to additional measures increasing regional autonomy. The plans sought to bolster the power of the Prime Minister, whose title in Italian would no longer be merely ‘president of the council of ministers’ (Presidente del Consiglio dei Ministri), and who could only be ousted by parliament in a majority vote which simultaneously elected a successor. The competencies of each chamber of parliament would for the first time be clarified, ending the necessity of both approving a given law. Such a system would have allowed the Union to neatly sidestep the impasse in the Senate this week. Administrations should be primarily accountable to the lower house, not parliament as a whole.
Italy seems to have developed a knack for surviving in a perpetual state of crisis, but that is no reason for its political class not to act. Its economy is hobbled by a serious lack of competitiveness, and labours beneath commitments to bloated healthcare and social security systems and a national debt which amounts to over 100% of GNP. A weak executive is swamped by a nevertheless potentially healthy political plurality. Any reform requires sacrifice. A more powerful Italian executive would be a stronger position to radically reinvigorate the Italian economy by making hard choices as to where in society such sacrifices should be made. But first smaller parties need persuasion to sacrifice some of their influence in favour of the executive. Rather than threatening their continued representation in a proportional system, a bold Prime Minister, whether Romano Prodi or one of his successors, should guarantee it in a trade-off securing the future vibrancy of both Italian politics and the country as a whole.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I agree with your suggested remedy,if only because a failure to act might eventually lead to the sort of dictatorship they were trying to prevent when setting all this up in 1948. But a 'trade-off' of more power to the PM and lower house in return for the retention of seats by the tiny parties will only happen if the Italians are convinced that it has to. Do you favour a referendum on the matter?
One of the reasons Italy's constitution is so unsatisfactory are the obstacles in the path of reform. While any government can alter the electoral system - as the House of Freedoms did in 2005, switching from a uninominal system to PR - changes to the structure of government itself require both parliamentary chambers to give their assent twice within three months. Then, unless parliament approves these modifications by a two-thirds majority, a national referendum can be requested by those opposed to change. With both chambers presently divided, any reform securing a two-thirds majority would require the current leftist government to reach out to moderates on the right. If it can do so, this would be no bad thing - as argued above, a centrist consensus would be healthier for Italian politics than the current bipolarity.
But involving the Italian people in the process would be no bad thing either. The House of Freedom's planned reforms were rejected 61%-39% in a referendum last year. But there is every reason to believe that there is a desire for political reform in Italy, and that many electors voted 'no' last June to prevent Italy's regions gaining greater autonomy - against federalist proposals Berlusconi was obliged push by his Northern League allies - rather than to keep the executive weak. A referendum on fresh reforms without federalist distractions would, hopefully, show that this was the case.
Post a Comment