The name "Italicum" was coined in 2014 by Democratic Party secretary and later Prime Minister of Italy, Matteo Renzi, who was one of the legislation's main proponent.

The failure of the reforms in the 2016 Italian constitutional referendum created unforeseen complications, as electoral law for the Chamber of Deputies and Senate of the Republic were not harmonised.

The use of long closed lists, which gave party executives great power in deciding the composition of Parliament, was called into question, as was the regional allocation of the majority bonus in the Senate, which made a "clear winner" of the elections less likely.

On 4 December 2013, the Constitutional Court judged the Porcellum partly unconstitutional: in particular, the implementation of a majority bonus without a threshold required to achieve it was struck down.

This made electoral reform even more urgent, since proportional representation without majoritarian correction was thought to be incompatible with the competitive party system of Italy.

In order for it to receive its final approval by the Chamber of Deputies, the government decided to link it to a confidence vote (hinting at a snap election in case of a negative outcome).

[5] Former president of Italy Giorgio Napolitano, who was a key player in pushing Italian parties into reforming the electoral system, remarked that "this law certainly hasn't been written in a month, it took more than one year, there have been many discussions, there has been a committee of scholars who opened the way, therefore I believe this has been an important accomplishment".

[6] Among the politicians critical of the reform, former prime minister Enrico Letta judged the Italicum "a close relative to the Porcellum" and voted against its adoption.

[9] Tommaso Frosini (Suor Orsola Benincasa University of Naples) stated that "it is to the lawmaker's credit to have been able to make a synthesis of the two principles" of governability and proportionality.

[11] Among critics, Gianfranco Pasquino (University of Bologna) wrote that "the Italicum is a bad reform with a single merit: the runoff giving real power to electors.

According to him, "the Italicum determines a direct election of the prime minister, giving him a turnkey majority", introducing a constitutional reform by means of an ordinary law.

[13] Among the foreign press, the Spanish newspaper El País commented that "the important thing is that the law approved by the Chamber of Deputies obtains stability and governability, nevertheless respecting the decision coming from the polls as much as possible"[14] Moshe Arens, writing for Haaretz (the main left-wing journal in Israel), has suggested to use the Italicum to regulate the election of the Knesset.

[19] After the ruling, the Italicum essentially provided for pure proportional representation, unless a party was able to win over 40% of the vote and secure a majority.

Electoral law became a pressing issue, as the Italicum was written under the assumption that the Senate would be an indirectly-elected body by the next general election.

Ultimately, a parallel voting system similar to the Mattarellum was passed in October 2017, succeeding both the Italicum in the Chamber of Deputies and the Porcellum in the Senate.