An American Guide To Italian Government – Parliament
The Legislative Branch
By far the most powerful arm of the government, Italy’s legislative branch is called Parliament. Just like out Congress, it is divided into two main branches, the Chamber of Deputies (Camera dei Deputati) and the Senate of the Republic (Senato della Republica). The similarities tend to stop there, however. Unlike our system, there are no distinctions in the duties of the two chambers. They perform the same functions with memberships elected via very similar electoral methods codified in a 2017 electoral reform.
The minimum age to become a member of the Chamber of Deputies is 25, whereas the minimum age for a Senator is 40. Both Deputies and Senators, are given the title “Honorable” (Onorevole) , much in the same way we refer to judges. Unlike in the US, there is no single Capitol building that encompasses both chambers, with the Bernini designed Palazzo Montecitorio housing the Deputies and the Senate conducting its business about a five minute walk away in the Palazzo Madama. Senators and Deputies are elected for the same five year term, in contrast to our staggered system designed to lesson the impact of one election. In practice, due to the instability of governments many legislators don’t get to serve the full five years before new elections are called.
Membership and Elections
The Chamber has 630 members, while the Senate has 315 members. In each chamber, roughly 37% of the members (232 Deputies and 116 Senators) are elected the way we elect House members in the United States. The country is divided up into different districts (Camera, Senate) that are roughly equaly in population. Parties (or party coalitions) run one candidate per geographical district, and the candidate with the most votes wins. This system of single member districts, used in the UK as well as the US, is usually referred to as First Past The Post (FPTP). The advantages of this system include a close connection between the voters in a district and their representative, but over time, FPTP tends towards a two party system.
As you can imagine, the smaller Italian parties weren’t about to support a system that would lead to their extinction, and they were able to secure a large number of seats to be selected via a different method. 61% of members in both chambers (386 Deputies and 193 Senators) are elected via proportional representation (PR). In this system, citizens cast a vote for the party (not an individual candidate) that they prefer. The number of seats each party gets depends on the proportion of votes that the party receives in the country overall, but parties must at least receive 3% of the vote nationally to qualify. For example, in 2018, Silvio Berlusconi‘s Forza Italia party won 14% of the votes in the proportional ballot for the Chamber of Deputies which earned them 59 of the PR assigned seats. Who gets to sit in those seats? Each party creates a list of members with the most important and loyal leaders at the top. In this example, the first 59 names on the Forza Italia’s party list were seated. That has to be a real bummer for the dude that was next in line, but it’s out of their hands. There’s actually another layer of complexity that deals with the fact that parties need to make short lists of candidates for each region, but we’ve already gone far enough down the rabbit hole of Italian electoral law for one blog post.
In addition to the seats mentioned above, there’s a non-negligible number of Deputies (12) and Senators (6) elected proportionally by Italian citizens living outside of Italy. Finally, there are roughly a handful of people who have been designated Senators for Life. These people aren’t necessarily politicians, but by virtue of their success in other fields (architecture, music, science, literature, etc.), they are recognized and given the same priviliges as the rest of the Senate.
As far as voters are concerned, they only receive one ballot per chamber. If they vote for a candidate in the single member district section, they also vote for that member’s party list. If they vote for the party, they also vote for that party’s favored candidate in the district. A voter cannot vote for a candidate and a list representing a different party, so there’s no ticket splitting of the kind we’re accustomed on this side of the Atlantic. Perhaps the biggest difference between the House and Senate elections concerns the age of the voters. Any Italian citizen eighteen years and older can vote for Deputies, but you must be 25 years old to vote in the Senate elections, so I guess that means that turning 25 means more than just being able to rent a car!
Legislating
The two houses of the Italian Parliament go about the business of legislating in much the same way as their American counterparts in Congress. Bills are introduced, sent to committee, debated, passed to the other chamber, and a bill can not be sent to the President of the Republic until both chambers pass the same version of the bill. Unlike in the US, the President of the Republic cannot veto legislative action. His only option is to ask Parliament to reconsider the bill. If after the debating the bill a second time, both chambers pass the bill with a simple majority, the President must promulgate the law.
Parliament also handles amendments to the Constitution, where two thirds of both chambers are needed to vote in favor to successfully pass an amendment. If the amendment only receives a majority, then it is susceptible to a nationwide referendum.
Interbranch Relations:
Perhaps most importantly, the Italian Parliament plays the pivotal role of selecting the chief executive, known as the Premier or Prime Minister (Presidente Del Consiglio). There are no separate elections for those positions like we have in the United States for President. It’s not uncommon for us in the United States to vote for divided government. For example, after the 2018 midterms, Democrats controlled the House of Representatives and Republicans controlled the Senate and Presidency. This is basically impossible in Italy. Italian citizens vote in the Parliamentary elections that directly determine the makeup of Parliament’s two chambers, and indirectly determine the makeup of the Executive Council led by the Prime Minister. An analogy to our situation would be to have the House and Senate get together and agree on who the President is with no extra input from the American people. And just to reinforce how strong the Italian Parliament is, they can initiate a vote of no confidence against any council minister or the entire government, and a simple majority is all that is needed to remove the minister or collapse the government.
In addition to selecting the Prime Minister, the Deputies and Senators that comprise Parliament team up with regional leaders to select the largely ceremonial, but still important head of state, called the President of the Republic (Presidente della Repubblica). Finally, although Judicial branch is nominally independent, many judges are selected by Parliament and are overseen by the Justice Minister approved by Parliament. The power of judicial review, understood as the ability of the courts to deem legislation unconstitutional, is limited compared to the Supreme Courts power to overturn laws here in the United States.
Coalition Building
As mentioned, the PR system leads to an abundance of parties sending members to the legislature, which renders it rather difficult for one party to have an absolute majority in one chamber, let alone both. This necessitates coalition building between like minded parties in order to consolidate the absolute majority needed in both chambers to create the Executive Council that ultimately governs the country. Parties with compatible platforms run together, with the Center-Right (Centrodestra) and Center-Left (Centrosinistra) coalitions each comprising several parties. But with the presence of other parties, it’s not a sure thing that one of those coaltions will have a majority of seats in the Chamber and Senate. When the main coalitions can’t form a majority, they need to work with parties they didn’t run with to form a majority. Sometimes the coaltions mesh together easily, but as you can imagine, that’s not always the case.
For example, the 2018 election gave the outsider Five-Star Movement (Movimento Cinque Stelle – M5S) party the most seats, but they were far from the majority needed to govern. The only party that would agree to partner with them to form a government was Matteo Salvini’s League (Lega) party. After an uneasy fifteen months, Salvini pulled the Lega out of the coalition in a bid to trigger new elections. Much to his chagrin, the Center-Left Democratic Party (Partito Democratico) changed course and decided to partner with M5S in a new government. This little anecdote should probably give you a good idea of how Italy has had over sixty governments in the post WWII era.
Here’s the breakdown of seats in the Camera and the Senate … fow now!
