Italian electoral law of 2017
[5] The law regulates the election of the Chamber and Senate, replacing Porcellum of 2005 and Italicum of 2015, both modified by the Constitutional Court of Italy after judging them to be partly unconstitutional.
As a matter of fact, the electoral law for the Chamber of Deputies passed by Matteo Renzi's government, the so-called Italicum, based on a strong winner-take-all principle, was still in effect, whereas in the Senate a pure proportional system (the remnants of the so-called Porcellum, the electoral law approved by the cabinet of Silvio Berlusconi in 2005 and then declared extensively unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court in January 2014) was in force.
In June 2017, the Democratic Party together with the Five Star Movement, Forza Italia and Northern League agreed on a law, known as Tedeschellum, which was based on a similar system to the one used in Germany.
The bill was not popular in its original version, since several opposition parties considered the number of seats allocated with the FPTP system too high.
Chamber of Deputies Senate of the Republic Law 51/2019 was meant to adapt the Rosatellum to a reduction of the number of seats in both houses of the Italian Parliament.
The ratio of single-winner districts over the total number of seats in Rosatellum was equal to 3/8 in both houses, and the law 51/2019 retains those proportions.
Besides the Five Stars Movement, the law was supported by Lega and was opposed by the Democratic Party, until it joined the Conte II Cabinet in August 2019.
[citation needed] On the 9 January 2020, Giuseppe Brescia, President of the lower house's Constitutional Affairs Committee, submitted bill AC 2329 (nicknamed Germanicum) that would replace Rosatellum with a system based on proportional representation.
[14][15][16] The Italian electoral law of 2015, better known as Italicum,[17] a name given to it in 2014 by the Democratic Party secretary and subsequently head of government Matteo Renzi, who was its main proponent (until the end of January 2015 with the support of Forza Italia's leader Silvio Berlusconi) provides for a two-round system based on party-list proportional representation (the former being ruled out as unconstitutional),[18] corrected by a majority bonus and a 3% election threshold.
[6] The law was written under the assumption that, by the time it came into force, the upper house would have become an indirectly-elected body representing regions, with greatly reduced powers, thus making a reform of its electoral system unnecessary.
The electoral law passed by the centre-right government in 2005 immediately received widespread criticism: among other things, critics called into question the use of long closed lists of candidates (which gave party executives great power in deciding the composition of the Parliament), and the regional mechanism of allocation of seats in the Senate (which made the existence of a "clear winner" of the elections less likely).
On 4 December 2013, the Constitutional Court judged the electoral law of 2005 partly unconstitutional: in particular, its unlimited majority bonus was repealed.
This made an electoral reform ever more urgent, since proportional representation without majoritarian correction is thought to be incompatible with the competitive party system of Italy.
Finally, Renzi made a deal with Silvio Berlusconi for a set of institutional reforms, including a new majority-assuring law based on a two-round system, conceived to make the event of a forced Grand Coalition impossible.
The bill still faced harsh opposition, even from members of the proposing parties: however it was approved by the Chamber of Deputies on 12 March 2014 and, in an amended form, by the Senate on 27 January 2015 with the support of a large majority.
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).
An uncommon feature of this system is that it is majority assuring, thanks to a jackpot that is assigned to the winning party, possibly after a second electoral round.
Inside each coalition, seats are divided between parties with a Hare method, and consequently assigned to each constituency to elect single candidates.
After judgment 1/2014 of the Constitutional Court, the voting system for the Senate aims at party-list proportional representation without majority bonus.
The region-based system in the upper house is not guaranteed to produce a clear majority, and may pave the way for governmental crises.
It was widely alleged in the press at the time of its introduction, that the new system had been custom-designed by Silvio Berlusconi's government to give advantage to his House of Freedoms coalition in the 2006 elections, by eliminating seats for the numerous small parties on the Left that might not reach the 2% threshold.
In the event, these small parties formed alliances to reach the threshold, and the centre-left won a surprise victory despite the system.
In Italian elections, the left tend to fare better in direct confrontation than in proportional voting, a sign there are voters who trust left-wing candidates but not right-wing parties.
It is alleged that the centre-right majority in the Parliament undertook this reform to boost their chances in the upcoming elections of 2006, which they lost by a very small margin.
The nearly pure proportional representation system of the First Republic had resulted not only in political fragmentation and therefore governmental instability, but also insulation of the parties from the electorate and civil society.
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, abolishing the proportional representation system of the Italian Senate, implicitly supporting a plurality system that would theoretically force parties to come together around two ideological poles, thereby providing governmental stability.
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.
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.
