Journal of European Area Studies Vol 10: 2 November 2002
An Open-Ended Transition: The Effects of Electoral Reform in Italy
AUTHOR: OMAR SANCHEZ, Lecturer, Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.
ABSTRACT: This article evaluates the impact of the 1993 electoral reform in Italy on four political dependent variables: clear winners and concomitant left-right alternation in government; fragmentation of the party system; governmental stability; and party polarization. The reform, under which 75 percent of parliamentary seats are allocated according to plurality rule and the remaining 25 percent according to proportional representation, had a declared majoritarian purpose. As a useful benchmark, the attributes associated with a pure majoritarian system are measured against the actual effects that the reform has brought about. Analyzing the outcomes of the general elections of 1994, 1996 and 2001, it is concluded that the changes the new electoral law has engendered on the Italian political system have fallen well short of the stated aspirations of the reformers.
Introduction The casual observer of Italian politics may be forgiven if he or she judges the often-quoted fact that Italy has had about 58 governments in about as many years as the chief problem with Italian politics--that is, governmental instability. More precisely, Italian governments have lasted an average of no more than eleven months in office, a figure without parallel in the established democracies of the world. However, probing a little deeper into the troubles that afflict the country’s political system (corruption, lack of circulation of the political class and others) reveals something quite different: it is coalitional stability that has been at the root of the Italian malaise. Every governing coalition has been a variant of the same four or five political parties, always led by the same dominant party and propped up by one, two, three, or four satellite parties, depending on the electoral strength of the dominant one at a given juncture. Since World War II and until its recent dissolution, the Christian Democrats had been part of every governing party coalition. In short, there has been a lack of alternation in power giving rise to familiar maladies: Inadequate turnover in, and thus the aging of, the political class; insufficient circulation of ideas and programs and thus insufficient public policies; and a crystallization of relationships between members of government and interest groups and hence systemic corruption (Mershon and Pasquino 1995, 48).
The article begins by providing a brief theoretical introduction about the relevance of electoral laws in shaping party systems. It then provides some background on the politics of the 1993 electoral law—the internal and external forces that helped bring it about as well as reasons for the lack of further reform impetus towards a pure majoritarian law. In what constitutes the central part of the paper, the effects of the new electoral formula on a few of the most important characteristics of the party system are analyzed. This article does not provide a rigorous, quantitative analysis of the effects of the new law, but rather a general account of the extent to which the expectations of the promoters of electoral law reform in the 1990s have been realized, also taking into consideration factors other than electoral law that may have had an influence upon the dependent variables.
Electoral Law: An Independent Variable? Are electoral systems of any great consequence? It has been common in the past to assert that they were themselves the result of deeper determinants of society rather than being a causative factor in the development of party systems. However, simple anecdotal experience and the behavior of politicians whenever the phrase “electoral reform” is pronounced, already provide hints that electoral laws are very important in shaping political systems. Indeed, If electoral systems were of little consequence why on earth would politicians fight so bitterly about them? And why would reformers fight so persistently to have them changed? Much ado about nothing? (Sartori 1994, 27).
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The obligatory starting point when one turns to the issue of electoral systems and their impact is Maurice Duverger. His famous first “law” states that plurality (majoritarian) systems tend to party dualism (two-party systems); the second “law” states that proportional representation (PR) systems tend to multipartism. To be sure, these formulas (stated in 1954) have been largely discredited for some time now. The reasons are straightforward. First, Durverger misses the difference between correlation and causation; and second, his laws are crippled by numerous exceptions. Unfortunately, says world-renown political scientist Giovanni Sartori, “a crushing majority of scholars have been content with showing that Duverger was mistaken (1994, 27).” Political science scholars worthy of their name, points out Sartori, have the duty not to give up in the search of consistent relationships, of generalizations with explanatory power (i.e. social science laws). As a matter of fact, Duverger was not entirely mistaken. He certainly neglected the role of social phenomena as determinants of party systems (social cleavages such as state-church, land-industry, owner-worker, or center-periphery, among others), but the significance of the sociological approach should not be overstated. The institutional approach has made a strong comeback in political science in recent years. The result of this debate has been a settlement resting on a synthesis of the institutional and sociological perspectives. Most mainstream political scientists nowadays consider party systems to be a product of both social forces and institutional structures (Reeves an Ware 1992).
The Politics of Electoral Law Reform The postwar Italian version of proportional representation was the imperiali largest remainder formula for the House of Deputies and a slightly revised d’Hondt formula for the Senate. Perhaps for too long, proportional representation in Italy was equated with the democratic system as such, understandably in light of Italian historical experience, but nonetheless wrongly so (Pasquino 1989). As we all know, democracy has long remained strong in other countries despite use of majoritarian electoral systems, as in Britain. In Italy, the imperiali (PR) formula allowed the fragmentation of the party system and produced a privileged situation for some parties, preventing alternation in power. Talk about reforming the electoral system started in earnest in the 1970s but only gathered momentum in the late 1980s. As one might suspect, the birth of the new electoral law was not an easy one. At the risk of some simplification, one may say that the majoritarian electoral system strayed too far from the prevailing proportionalist culture in Italy to be given serious consideration. But apart from this general consideration, there was--as is always the case when attempting this most political of reforms--fierce opposition among all those political parties that perceived the new law to be detrimental to their political prospects. Indeed, in opposing electoral change, many small parties were fighting for their very survival in the Italian parliament. For larger parties, the considerations were of a different nature. The Italian Communist Party long opposed any reform towards majoritarianism because it deemed that it would lose power as an opposition party in government. Given the objective difficulties it faced in winning an election and its status as an “illegitimate” party with which to construct governmental coalitions (in the context of the Cold War), it stood to lose from such a reform. The Italian socialists, on their part, deemed that reform would force them to ally in advance
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with one of the two largest parties, forsaking its longstanding status as a king-maker party and all of its attendant benefits (Castiglioni 1994). In sum, electoral reform would not be born out of the wheeling and dealing of political parties alone. The crisis of the Italian political system--in particular the structural maladies of non-representation, ungovernability and immorality--was there for all Italians to see and despise. But in the battle to effect electoral change pure partisan political considerations proved stronger than the general climate of political decadence. It is the view of many analysts that, given this well-entrenched political dynamic, only a exogenous shock to the system could have pushed electoral law reform onto center-stage. And the earthquake did come. The fall of the Berlin Wall was the primary catalyst of change. While this momentous event left no country’s political system untouched, it is difficult to think of another Western democracy where it had more profound party system implications than in Italy. The end of the East-West confrontation and the attendant partial reconversion of the Italian Communist party into a socialdemocratic identity suddenly meant that it was now habilitated to govern.1 The prospect of rising to power was no longer hypothetical, removing their old rationale for opposing electoral reform. In fact, a new majoritarian-minded law that would increase the parliamentary share of seats of the largest vote-gathering parties carried potentially incalculable benefits for the old Communists. A second immediate catalyst that engendered change in the electoral law was Italy’s largest ever judiciary operation, known as Mani Pulite (Clean Hands). The operation showed in detailed and comprehensive fashion the web of corruption permeating the Italian political establishment and led to the rapid demise of the central pillar of the decadent post-war political system, the Christian Democratic party. The sprawling judicial investigation also dealt a death blow to other satellite parties. Some scholars have conjectured about the deeper, unstated motivations of the reformers. One such academic has stated that the “true purposes of the reform were to rescue Christian Democracy and its smaller parties (Morlino 1997, 126).” While this and other objectives may well have been pursued, it is difficult to verify them conclusively. This article will proceed by evaluating the effects of the new law against the standard of the stated majoritarian objectives. Following this criterium, the reformers, led by thenChristian Democrat Mario Segni aimed to: aggregate small parties into larger parties and bring about more stable governments backed by more secure parliamentary majorities; strengthen the personal resposibility of representatives to their electors The new electoral law 1993 was forced by means of a national referendum. It was approved overwhelmingly. Parliament introduced a system of single-member districts where candidates need only a simple majority to be elected for both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. To assure some representation of the smaller parties, proportional representation continues to be the means of electing one-fourth of the members of each chamber (75% M=1; 25% PR). But only those parties receiving at least 4 percent of the vote are able to win seats through proportional representation. In short, in the Chamber of Deputies (total of 630 districts), there are now 475 single-member districts allocated by FPTP and 155 seats distributed through proportional representation (PR); in the Senate, there are 232 single-member districts plus 83 allocated via PR. The Italian media labeled the change in electoral law an “Italian Revolution.”
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Although such characterization is admittedly simplistic and overstated, it is a testament to the high expectations that the new law raised among supporters of political change. Almost ten years and three general elections after, it may not be too soon to try to answer the inevitable question2: how much of a revolution will it prove to be? In other words, to what extent has the new law ushered in hoped-for political outputs? So as to avoid misinterpretation or confusion, one must be clear and specific as to what is the reformers’ desired political outcome. In short, “a system of moderate pluralism, characterized by bipolar competition between alternative coalitions, each of which stands a reasonable chance of winning the elections (i.e. obtaining a majority of seats in both chambers) and thus of governing (Bartolini and D’Alimonte 1998, 163).” Although such an end-state may have represented wishful thinking from the start on the part of reform-mongers, it is nevertheless a useful benchmark against which to measure the actual effects of the new electoral formula. The seeming inability of the new law to bring stable governments and a bipolar structure together with parliamentary inaction on the issue provided the impetus to attempt further reform via a referendum. There was a pervasive sense that outcomes were unsatisfactory because the 1993 reform was unsatisfactory itself—insofar as it was partial. It is in this spirit that the Italian electorate was summoned to the voting booths on April 18th, 1999, to vote on a referendum to abrogate the proportional quota of the electoral system. Referendums require the participation of at least 50 percent of the eligible electorate in other to be valid. Only 49.6 percent of Italians showed up that Sunday and the referendum was ruled invalid. Thus, the electoral formula remains unchanged, even though some 90 percent of those who did vote demanded further reform.3 Convinced that securing reform was only a matter of trying again, in June of that year the electoral reformers once more began to collect signatures to be able to put the question to the electorate in second referendum. This one took place in May 2000. Only one-third of eligible Italians voted this time around, reflecting the increasing tiredness of a populace whose political system was assigning them responsibility to make decisions that should be resolved in parliament and reflecting also the effective campaign in favor of abstention orchestrated by a number of political parties. The confrontation between supporters and opponents of the referendum was fierce on both occasions. Forza Italia took a decisive role in opposing reform. Its active campaign urging voters to abstain and not participate proved a death blow to the hopes of electoral reformers, which immediately begs the question: why would the principal party of the Center-Right, created on the wave of the referendum movement, and whose party that had explicitly called for a pure first-past the post system on its 1994 institutional program, now change its views? Two answers have been given (Fabrini 2001). One highlights the short-term context. Berlusconi and his circle had polling information reflecting declining public interest in the referendum as a political tool, and riding the wave of public opinion would allow the party to claim a political victory of sorts ahead of the 2001 elections. The second, more long-term interpretation, highlights the political project to move Forza Italia towards the center of the political spectrum to try and capture that substantial sector of the Italian electoral that free floats with the disappearance of the Christian Democrats. If as it seems, this interpretation is correct, the referenda were thus an obstacle to the formation of a new Center in Italian politics.
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The momentum that began in 1991 in favor of overall institutional change once seemed unstoppable. Things now are not so clear. The array of forces against further reform is formidable, and reformers are no longer aided by the atmosphere of crisis and decay that gripped Italy during the Mani Pulite period.
INDEPENDENT VARIABLE:
1993 change in electoral law (75% M=1; 25% PR)
1945-1993 FRAGMENTATION OF PARTY SYSTEM (N)
Expected Output
Actual output (1994, 1996, 2001)
HIGH
LOW
PARTY POLARIZATION (P)
HIGH
LOWER
LEFT-RIGHT ALTERNATION IN GOVT.
NO
A. CLEAR MANDATES GIVEN TO GOVERNMENTS?
YES
YES
YES
B. ARE GOVTS BEING JUDGED ON PERFORMANCE?
NO
YES
NO
GOVERNMENTAL STABILITY (TIME)
NO
YES
NO
CIRCULATION OF POLITICAL CLASS (PARTY LEADERS, GOVTS..)
NO
YES
HIGHER
YES
HIGHER
HIGH
YES
Clear Winners, Clear Mandates One of the main problems of Italian political system has been that it is partydominated, sometimes referred to as patitocrazia (partitocracy). In essence, this means that the formal democratic institutions of government play only secondary roles. Historically, the parochial interests of the parties have been so strong that they determined the creation and the fall of cabinets, and it was the strength or weakness of political parties which determined the nature of the coalitions. Traditionally, the Italian electorate 5
has not been offered a clear-cut alternative between potential governments. It could only marginally influence a possible coalition by strengthening a particular party’s parliamentary representation. One of the main desired effects of the new electoral law is to bridge the gap between voters and governing cabinets; in other words, to give the electorate the ability to decide with their votes who the winner is. And, as a corollary, to give them the ability to boot out governments whose performance in office is subpar. The slogan here is “more power to the voters.” Defenders of majoritarian systems do not tire in pointing out that, unlike proportional formulas, they produce clear winners and thus clear mandates. Britain is always mentioned as the exemplary case: a party is elected to office on a Thrusday and in a matter of days its leader takes hold of 10 Downing Street. A corollary of clear winners is the production of clear mandates. By ‘mandate’ what is meant here is that the most voted party leads the process to form the governing cabinet. In other words, governments are based on electoral choice rather than inter and intraparty negotiations. If Britain is the example par excellence of clear mandates, at the opposite side of the spectrum lays the Netherlands, where it takes four months from the time of the election to the time a new government assumes its responsibilities. This is the time it takes for alliances to form, with the outcome being unknown to the electorate. (It has even occurred that the most voted party has not been part of the governing coalition). Italy lies between these two extremes. From 1945 to the early 1990s, the Christian Democrats always won a plurality of votes and always formed government, but there was no telling who their partners in office would be. Socialists, Social Democrats, Republicans, and Liberals have at different times come to join in CD-led cabinets. Firstpast-the-post formulas are meant to strengthen the link between voters and the composition of governments. In Italy, the jury is still out concerning the effects of electoral law on engendering mandates. The 1994 did not produce a clear winner or mandate. Furthermore, the Berlusconi government was to fall in December of 1994 after only seven months in office. A ‘non-partisan’ government led by Lamberto Dini took over in February of 1995, weakening the link between voters and government coalition. The 1996 and 2001 general elections did produce a winner. That is, a plurality of votes for one coalition did translate into an absolute majority of seats. In the Italian case, an added requisite for success of the plurality system is that the winning coalition is triumphant in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. In 1996, the victor was the center-left coalition. The parties of L’Ulivo (Olive Tree) coalition won the absolute majority of seats in the senate, and had a similar majority in the Chamber of Deputies with the support of Rifondazione Comunista (RC). The electoral system unambiguously helped to produce a winner. With a share of 44.9 percent of plurality votes (i.e. those won in single-member constituencies), L’Ulivo-RC won 55.2 percent of plurality seats—a bonus of more than 10 percent of (plurality) seats. The center-right coalition, Polo Liberta gathered 40.3 percent of plurality votes, but only 35.6 percent of plurality seats, a significant penalty. When seats allocated by PR were added, the picture in 1996 ended up as follows: out of 630 total seats in the Chamber of Deputies, 320 went to the center-left; 264 to the center-right; and 59 to the non-aligned Lega Nord (in addition to four seats to three small independent parties).
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In 2001, the House of Freedoms coalition obtained 45.4 percent of plurality votes but was rewarded by the electoral law with close to 60 percent of plurality seats—a bonus of about 15 percent of single-member constituency seats. Meanwhile the 44.3 percent of plurality votes obtained by the Olive coalition translated into only about 40 percent of plurality seats. This is understandable when one considers that parties standing outside both coalitions, with a total of over 10 percent of plurality votes, were severely punished by the electoral formula as they won only 1 plurality seat. When seats allocated by proportional representation were added the result was as follows: out of 630 seats, 368 went to the Center-Right Casa della Liberta coalition and 252 to the Center-Left Ulivo cartel, led by Francesco Rutelli. However, one must not be too sanguine or complacent about the ability of the new electoral law to produce winners. As a few Italian academics have observed with a touch of irony, the 1996 election results were maggioritario per caso (majoritarian by chance). In other words, there is nothing about the electoral law that necessarily and automatically assigns a majority in parliament to an electoral coalition. By contrast, a pure majoritarian system like Britain’s normally produces winners. Of course, if the aim is to produce clear winners and alternation in power, striving towards a system that is purely majoritarian is not the only option. Scholars Milani and Pasquino had already proposed in the late 1980s, a double ballot system as superior in accomplishing those goals. Here is how the proponents themselves describe it: In the first round of voting, the voters would choose a certain number of parliamentary representatives (400) in 40 constituencies, according to the d’Hondt formula. In the second round, one or two weeks later, the voters would choose among competing coalitions. The winning coalition would receive 75 seats and the losing one 25. In order to get the bonus of seats, a coalition would have to present a program and a prime minister and receive at least 40 percent of the national vote. Governments so empowered would last as long as their parliamentary majorities held; otherwise, Parliament would be dissolved and new elections called (Pasquino 1989, 287).
The merit of this system is that the second ballot would encourage the voters to reward or punish the opposition in a clear-cut manner. Other proposals that circulated in the 1970s included a French-style run-off majority system with some modifications. However, these schemes are no longer on anybody’s lips. The 1993 reform has created what institutionalists call “path dependence.” It is unlikely that the Italian political establishment will want to turn the clock back and return to a PR system—although the losers of reform would surely wish to do so. The question now is whether to retain the mixed system or, as would be the more congruent with the goals of the reformers, move towards a pure majoritarian one. An interesting query related to alternation in government is that of the circulation of the political class. One of the ills of Italian politics has been that the same faces have dotted the political landscape for years and years. Has there been any positive change in recent years in this regard? The answer is a qualified ‘yes’. But one must define what political class means. The Italian political scene displays remarkable continuity in party personnel. Party names are new and they claim innovative approaches or programs but many of their members of parliament served earlier as representatives of the old, now defunct parties. For example, the 1996 elections brought back into parliament over 110
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individuals who had earlier served as Christian Democracy deputies or senators (Wilson 1999, 328). However, as regards party leaders, there are new faces: Gianfranco Fini of the National Alliance, Umberto Bossi of the Lega Nord, Silvio Berlusconi of Forza Italia, etc... This is perhaps inevitable: these parties were born out of the rejection of the Italian electorate with the old establishment. The AN and the LN are anti-establishment parties while Berlusconi (although not new to politics) clearly markets himself as an outsider. However, it must be emphasized that the birth of these parties and the renovation of the political class dates to 1992 and has little to do with the new electoral law. Again the two political earthquakes mentioned previously (Manu Pulite and the fall of the Berlin Wall) bear chief responsibility. Even if we take circulation of the political class to mean circulation of government figures, there has been an improvement (Verzichelli 1998). The 1996 victory by the Olive Tree coalition brought into power figures of the old Communist Party that had not been in government before. Similarly, the 8-month spell of Berlusconi, a media tycoon, also proved to be a break with the past. By contrast, Lamberto Dini, who headed a technocratic government after Berlusconi’s lost support, is a longtime veteran of Italian politics. In any case, it is too soon to evaluate whether alternation of right-left electoral cartels in government will translate into a healthy rotation of the political class. More historical perspective is needed.
Left-Right Alternation in Government As Gianfranco Pasquino remarks, proportional representation in Italy has been criticized “for making difficult any attempt to create a credible coalition to oppose the long-lasting sequence of more or less centrist governing coalitions (1994b, 143).” That is, proportional representation has accommodated the spreading out of Italian political groups and provided no incentive to aggregation. The biggest casualty of the disincentive to aggregation that has accompanied PR in Italy has been the possibility of rotation at the level of national governments. This is precisely one of the main defects of the Italian system that the new electoral formula was meant to redress. After all, the possibility of political rotation at the national level is considered to be one of the hallmarks of democracy. Where no rotation takes place, quality of democracy and the independence of democratic institutions suffers. Consider the cases of Germany, Britain and Spain, where Christian Democrats (16 years in power), Conservatives (18 years), and Socialists (14 years) respectively have atrophied the vitality of democratic institutions with their long spells in government. Whereas democracy itself was not in crisis in these cases, for many observers its health and vitality certainly was.4 The recent alternations in power in these three countries come as a much-needed check on the deterioration of democracy. In the case of Italy, centrist coalitions (with the Christian Democrats in charge) formed governments in uninterrupted fashion from 1946 until 1992, leading to many of the ills that afflicted and still afflict politics in Italy. Yet, the lack of alternation must not be placed solely on the shoulders of the PR electoral law. Among other factors, the political dynamics of the Cold War is partly responsible.5 To be sure, the new electoral rule is a simplifying force that is producing two coalition blocs (electoral cartels), as in France: one on the center-left and the other on the center-right. What the elections of 1994, 1996 and 2001 have shown is that governmental alternation, once an elusive dream, is now a distinct reality. If all three elections were
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contested by two major and wide-ranging alliances, it was because, to a significant extent, the new law created a new structure of political incentives. To compete effectively in the single-member constituency elections, parties must make alliances. The right’s electoral success in 1994 was greatly dependent on the inclusion of both the Alianza Nationale and the Lega Nord along with Forza Italia. In 1996, the center-right coalition (Polo per le Liberta) was diminished by the absence of Bossi’s party, while the center-left alliance extended its embrace to include more parties of the center in 1996. Predictably enough, the latter won the contest. In 2001 the moral of the story repeated itself again. Berlusconi was able to woo back the Northern League as part of the House of Freedom coalition. Meanwhile, the center-left presented a narrower coalition than it did five years earlier, as the unreconstructed communists (Rifundazione Communista) were not part of the Ulivo alliance this time around. Not surprinsingly, the center-right won. In sum, the political right in 1996 and the political left in 2001 were both heavily penalized in terms of seats by the absence of one important party within their respective alliances. The lesson to be learned here is that the more encompassing alliance won the electoral contest. Indeed, electoral victory went to the coalition which achieved greatest success in the plurality stage of the competition. What must be made clear is that the alternation from right to left in 1996 and from left to right in 2001 is not at all the result of an electoral earthquake. The Italian electorate did not move in any significant way in any direction; the distribution of votes has been rather stable from one election to the other. In 1996, the main party of the right, Forza Italia, suffered a negligible decline of 0.4 percentage of votes, the main party of the left, PDS, gained only 0.8 percentage votes, Rifondazione Comunista increased its share by 2.6, Lega Nord improved 1.7 and the AN improved 2.2. On the whole, then, the vote distribution was unchanged. 2001 was no electoral earthquake either. The overall left/right distribution of the vote generally followed the same pattern as in 1996. In fact, right-wing parties obtained a lower collective share of voting in 2001: 42.5 percent as opposed to 47.7 percent in the previous election. The total tally for the parties of the left was also a marginal decline, even a smaller variation. It is clear that the majoritarian character of the new system was at play here. Quite simply, under the old imperiali formula it is less likely that the left would have risen to power in 1996. In 1996, the Polo coalition received more total votes than those of L’Ulivo in the PR stage, and yet lost the election. (Meanwhile, the Lega, this time running on its own, saw its share of seats fall even though it share of votes increased). The election of Berlusconi’s House of Freedoms in 2001 confirmed that Italy is moving closer to a bipolar model in which opposing center-right and center-left camps alternate in government. We have now seen alternation in government twice (right-left-right). “After 50 years of stodgy electoral immobilism, [Italian voters] seem to have developed a taste for turfing out the rascals,” as two analysts put it (Fabrini and Gilbert, 520). A potentially significant element of the 2001 election is that Italians eschewed parties that stood on their own and thus had no chance of being part of government. The practical vote prevailed. In fact, parties that withdrew from the two large coalitions were punished—both by voters and the majoritarian system. With a combined total of 4.7 million votes or over 13 percent of the electorate, the Communist Refoundation , the Bonino List, Italy of Values, and the European Democracy managed only to snatch six
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senate seats. In fact, Giovanni Sartori has written that the bipolar structure of the political contest is more a product of “depolarization” of the party system than a product of the electoral system as such (Sartori 2001). Indeed, among other things, the 2001 showed that two extreme parties, the Northern League and (to a lesser extent) the National Alliance are losing some political appeal. Depolarization here means that parties on the extremes have been steadily losing support. It must be emphasized that depolarization is reconcilable with the idea that there have been no important shifts in left/right voting patterns. The fact that single-issue parties lose support need not imply that the electorate is moving the left or right. In all three electoral contests victory went to the coalition which did better in the plurality stage of the election. In other words, alliance strategy proved decisive in all three instances. Insofar as we can speak of political learning among political parties, this clear lesson bodes well for the prospect of alternation in government in the future, for the incentive of the largest party in the center-right and in the center-left will be to field as strong and broad coalition as possible. Further, 2001 could herald a trend towards pragmatic voting that could accentuate the bipolarization of the Italian political system. What is clear is that, due to the majoritarian character of the 1993 law, small differences of total votes between the two main coalitions in the plurality portion of the electoral competition have been magnified in parliament to help the cause of alternation. The latest national election signified the first time there was a clear incumbent government (Olive Tree coalition) and a credible and viable alternative in the form of a challenger had played the role of parliamentary opposition during 1996-2001. This was a first in Italian politics and must be considered as a positive development for the health of Italian democracy.
Left-Right Alternation in Government It is the production of clear winners that allows for the alternation of different ideological and programmatic platforms in government. In a real sense, then, alternation is not a separate effect of the new electoral law. Bearing this in mind, the separate treatment of this variable is useful for analytical purposes, given the crucial importance of alternation in government for the health of a democracy. This is particularly the case for a democracy that has for so long been afflicted by coalitional permanence (with the perennial Christian Democrats at the center). Proportional representation in Italy has been criticized “for making difficult any attempt to create a credible coalition to oppose the long-lasting sequence of more or less centrist governing coalitions (Pasquino 1994b, 143).” That is, proportional representation has accommodated the spreading out of Italian political groups and provided no incentive to aggregation. The biggest casualty of the disincentive to aggregation that has accompanied PR in Italy has been the possibility of rotation at the level of national governments. This is precisely one of the main defects of the Italian system that the new electoral formula was meant to redress. After all, the possibility of political rotation at the national level is considered to be one of the hallmarks of democracy. Where no rotation takes place, quality of democracy and the independence of democratic institutions suffers. Consider the cases of Germany, Britain and Spain, where Christian Democrats (16 years in power), Conservatives (18 years), and Socialists (14 years) respectively have atrophied the vitality of democratic institutions
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with their long spells in government. Whereas democracy itself was not in crisis in these cases, its health and vitality certainly was. The recent alternations in power in these three countries come as a much-needed check on the deterioration of the quality of democracy. In the case of Italy, centrist coalitions (with the Christian Democrats in charge) formed governments in uninterrupted fashion from 1946 until 1992, leading to many of the ills that afflicted and still afflict politics in Italy. Yet, the lack of alternation must not be placed solely on the shoulders of the PR electoral law. Among other factors, the political dynamics of the Cold War is partly responsible.6 To be sure, the new electoral rule is a simplifying force that is producing two coalition blocs (electoral cartels), as in France: one on the center-left and the other on the center-right. What the elections of 1994, 1996 and 2001 have shown is that governmental alternation, once an elusive dream, is now a distinct reality. If all three elections were contested by two major and wide-ranging alliances, it was because, to a significant extent, the new law created a new structure of political incentives. To compete effectively in the single-member constituency elections, parties must make alliances. The right’s electoral success in 1994 was greatly dependent on the inclusion of both the Alianza Nationale and the Lega Nord along with Forza Italia. In 1996, the center-right coalition (Polo per le Liberta) was diminished by the absence of Bossi’s party, while the center-left alliance extended its embrace to include parties of the left in 1996. Predictably enough, the latter won the contest. In 2001 the moral of the story repeated itself again. Berlusconi was able to woo back the Northern League as part of the House of Freedom coalition. Meanwhile, the center-left presented a narrower coalition than it did five years earlier, as the unreconstructed communists (Rifundazione Communista) were not part of the Ulivo alliance this time around. Not surprinsingly, the center-right won. In sum, the political right in 1996 and the political left in 2001 were both heavily penalized in terms of seats by the absence of one important party within their respective alliances. The lesson to be learned here is that the more encompassing alliance won the electoral contest. Indeed, electoral victory went to the coalition which achieved greatest success in the plurality stage of the competition. What must be made clear is that the alternation from right to left in 1996 and from left to right in 2001 is not at all the result of an electoral earthquake. The Italian electorate did not move in any significant way in any direction; the distribution of votes has been rather stable from one election to the other. In 1996, the main party of the right, Forza Italia, suffered a negligible decline of 0.4 percentage of votes, the main party of the left, PDS, gained only 0.8 percentage votes, Rifondazione Comunista increased its share by 2.6, Lega Nord improved 1.7 and the AN improved 2.2. On the whole, then, the vote distribution was unchanged. 2001 was no electoral earthquake either. The overall left/right distribution of the vote generally followed the same pattern as in 1996. In fact, right-wing parties obtained a lower collective share of voting in 2001: 42.5 percent as opposed to 47.7 percent in the previous election. The total tally for the parties of the left was also a marginal decline, even a smaller variation. It is clear that the majoritarian character of the new system was at play here. Quite simply, under the old imperiali formula it is less likely that the left would have risen to power in 1996. In 1996, the Polo coalition received more total votes than those of L’Ulivo in the PR stage, and yet lost the election. (Meanwhile, the Lega, this time running on its own, saw its share of seats fall
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even though it share of votes increased). The election of Berlusconi’s House of Freedoms in 2001 confirmed that Italy is moving closer to a bipolar model in which opposing center-right and center-left camps alternate in government. We have now seen alternation in government twice (right-left-right). “After 50 years of stodgy electoral immobilism, [Italian voters] seem to have developed a taste for turfing out the rascals,” as two analysts put it (Fabrini and Gilbert, 520). A potentially significant element of the 2001 election is that Italians eschewed parties that stood on their own and thus had no chance of being part of government. The practical vote prevailed. In fact, parties that withdrew from the two large coalitions were punished—both by voters and the majoritarian system. With a combined total of 4.7 million votes or over 13 percent of the electorate, the Communist Refoundation , the Bonino List, Italy of Values, and the European Democracy managed only to snatch six senate seats. In fact, Giovanni Sartori has written that the bipolar structure of the political contest is more a product of “depolarization” of the party system than a product of the electoral system as such (Sartori 2001). Indeed, among other things, the 2001 showed that two extreme parties, the Northern League and (to a lesser extent) the National Alliance are losing some political appeal. Depolarization here means that parties on the extremes have been steadily losing support. It must be emphasized that depolarization is reconcilable with the idea that there have been no important shifts in left/right voting patterns. The fact that single-issue parties lose support need not imply that the electorate is moving the left or right. In all three electoral contests victory went to the coalition which did better in the plurality stage of the election. In other words, alliance strategy proved decisive in all three instances. Insofar as we can speak of political learning among political parties, this clear lesson bodes well for the prospect of alternation in government in the future, for the incentive of the largest party in the center-right and in the center-left will be to field as strong and broad coalition as possible. Further, 2001 could herald a trend towards pragmatic voting that could accentuate the bipolarization of the Italian political system. What is clear is that, due to the majoritarian character of the 1993 law, small differences of total votes between the two main coalitions in the plurality portion of the electoral competition have been magnified in parliament to help the cause of alternation. The latest national election signified the first time there was a clear incumbent government (Olive Tree coalition) and a credible and viable alternative in the form of a challenger had played the role of parliamentary opposition during 1996-2001. This was a first in Italian politics and must be considered as a positive development for the health of Italian democracy.
Fragmentation of the Party System Many observers have traditionally seen in the highly fragmented nature of the Italian system many of its maladies. The highly proportional Imperiali formula has rightly been blamed. Italy has always ranked among the most politically fragmented countries in Europe. Tabulating by decade, the mean number (not a measure of effective number) of parties in competition in Italy was: 8.5 in the 1950s; 8.0 in the 1960s; 8.7 in the 1970s; and 10.0 in the 1980s (Gallagher et al. 1995, 232). During the 1990s the legislature had about 15 parties on average.
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Electoral rules have two types of effects on electoral outcomes7: a mechanical and a strategic effect (or psychological, as Duverger calls it). In principle, the new electoral rule should work toward the reduction of parties represented in the legislative. Political science literature tells us that PR electoral laws tend to produce more plural party systems than First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) laws, and this is now an empirically established fact. Lijphart is among those finding empirical evidence for this assertion. In his famous study, Democracies, he refines Durverger’s law and states that “the more permissive [i.e. more proportional] an electoral system is, the larger one can expect the number of parties to be (quoted in Taagepera and Shuggart 1989, 57).” Why, then, has not the adoption of a mixed majoritarian-PR system in Italy led to a reduction in the effective number of represented parties in parliament? In short, because the underlying societal factors that shape party systems remained much the same as they were a decade ago, bringing continuity. These are factors that have little to do with electoral systems. A system of moderate pluralism, as the one reformers hoped to introduce, is still yet to appear. This is perhaps the biggest disappointment since 1993. In fact, fragmentation has increased since then. After the 1996 elections, no less than 17 parties were represented in parliament, more than at the preceding elections in 1994 (when the figure was 14), and certainly more than in the typical postwar parliament. In 2001, no less than 13 parties snatched seats in the legislature. Gauging the results of the new law on the political fragmentation is not easy for two reasons. Firstly, it is well known that different methods exist of counting parties. Secondly, in the Italian case the mixed electoral system means that it is difficult to determine exactly what constitutes a party, the political unit to be counted. With these caveats in mind, this author calculates that the effective number of parties (that is, weighted by their parliamentary share of seats) is around 7 for the 1990s. Compare this to the 1987, a typical postwar election, in which the effective number of parties was 4.1 and the actual number of parties in parliament was 14 (Gallaguer 1995, 163). The effective number of parties has increased in Italy partly because more medium-sized parties have come onto the scene, whereas the voting share of the two largest parties today (Partito Democratico della Sinistra and Forza Italia, each with about 20-25 percent of the vote) is a far cry from that of the days of the Christian Democrats and Communists, when they accounted for about 60 to 70 percent of total votes. In 2001, Forza Italia reached 29.4 percentage share of votes, but the main left-center party, now called Democrats of the Left, came down to 16 percent. The two most voted parties in Italy today command the loyalty of no more than 40 to 50 percent of the electorate. The high number of party units partly reflects “the ongoing process of decomposition and recomposition of political forces” as Italy is undergoing a transition from the First Republic to a Second Republic of uncertain features. In short, it is clear that Italy is still far from a dual party system; that is, having an effective number of parties in parliament of approximately two. The relevant question is whether it is heading in that direction. It is at this point that Sartori’s ‘laws,’ as he sets them out in his Comparative Constitutional Engineering, are pertinent. The overall thrust of his argument with respect to plurality systems is clear: a plurality system cannot produce by itself a two-party format. His second rule states that a plurality system “will produce, in the long run, a two-party format... under two conditions: first, when the party
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system is structured and, second, if the electorate which is refractory to whatever pressure of the electoral system happens to be dispersed in below-plurality proportions throughout the constituencies (Sartori 1994, 40).” In other words, the attainment of a dual party system will be elusive if “racial, linguistic, ideologically alienated, single-issue, or otherwise incoercible minorities” are concentrated in enough numbers in particular geographical pockets. Thus, the question becomes: to what extent does this description fit present-day Italy? In fact, it fits it rather well. Umberto Bossi’s Lega Nord counts with above-plurality support in many constituencies in the north. A spatial analysis of the election reveals that Lega 96 obtained a whooping 25.2% of total votes in the north of the country; 5.8% in the center; and zero in the south (Bartolini and D’Alimonte 1998). Regionalism has been added to the traditional political cleavages of ideology and religion. The latter cleavages have attenuated with the end of the Cold War and the secularization of Italian society, but they certainly have not died--and they are also regionally-bound rather than dispersed evenly across the country. Moreover, the extreme right-wing party (AN), with close to 15 percent of seats in both the 1996 and 2001 elections, has doubled its traditional parliamentary presence from 1994. Supporters of Alleanza Nazionale are also (partly) regionally-bound. In sum, “concentrated incoercible minorities” seem to dot the Italian landscape, and as a consequence the new electoral law is not likely to have a strong reductionistic effect upon the fragmented nature of the Italian party system. While the electoral law pushes fragmentation in one direction with feeble force, the evolving dynamics of Italian society, with more single-issue cleavages than ever before, pushes it in the opposite direction with more force. One suggested way to reduce fragmentation somewhat would be to increase the national percentage at which parties can gain representation in parliament from the current 4 percent. Admittedly, this is not a selfevident formula, for parties can always field joint lists. In any case, a change along such lines can be expected to meet ferocious resistance from the small parties that would see their parliamentary existence threatened. At the end of the day, any definite assertion as to where the Italian party system is headed should be met with skepticism. Writing in the aftermath of the 1996 elections, scholar Alessandro Chiaramonte introduced a note of uncertainty: As far as can be seen at present, a bipolar system is not impossible to achieve. Much will depend on the way in which tension between the aggregating and centripetal logic of a unimonal system and the disaggregating and centrifugal logic of a proportional one are resolved (Chiaramonte 1997, 48).
But after 2001 one can now more confidently say that the centripetal logic is slowly proving more powerful, and that a bipolar system appears to be slowly forming.
Governmental Stability Italy has always been a case of a multiparty system that results in coalition cabinets that are short-lived. Postwar governing coalitions in Italy have not lasted more than eleven months on average. Back in 1989, broad agreement had been reached across a large sector of the political class that in order to strengthen Italian governments one also had to strengthen the Italian parliament and this implied a different electoral system. Perhaps on no other score have electoral law reformers been so disappointed:
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governmental stability remains elusive in Italy. This, despite the fact that the Prodi government was the second longest-lasting in the postwar period (almost two years in duration). In the case of the Romano Prodi’s Ulivo coalition it was the defection of Rifondazione Communista that brought the government down. Before that, Silvio Berlusconi’s government had been ousted from power after only eight months in office by the defection of the Northern League. Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema similarly struggled to keep his not-so-homogeneous government coalition together and was also brought down. While the Olive Tree coalition had come to power promising one Prime minister, one government, and one program, their five-year tenure yielded three Prime Ministers, four governments and a few unfulfilled programmatic agendas. Unfortunately, for as long as small parties are at the heart of Italian politics, governmental stability cannot be had. Their very existence will mean that they will continue to try to hold governments to ransom, for that is how they acquire political clout. At the end of the day, in order to attain more stable majorities the political behavior of parties will have to alter, and that can only come through a lengthy period of trial and error. Changes in coalitional alignments that are today seen as legitimate must one day come to be seen as the exception, suitable in only exceptional situations. Most scholars are agreed that blame for governmental instability in Italy owes much to the large number of parties. Just as he was founding his own Lega Norte Umberto Bossi did not refrain from declaring: “There are far too many parties in this country. No one can govern like this (quoted in Wilson 1999, 328).” It is quite intuitive that the larger the number of parties in a given parliamentary system, the more parties will be needed to form a government. This, in turn, increases the likelihood of coalitional instability, as small parties can easily bring coalition governments down. Such goes the conventional wisdom. But the overall link is not entirely self-evident because the larger the number of coalition partners the lower the likelihood that any one of them will singly be indispensable for the maintenance of the majority and thus the greater the chance of stability. The relationship between fragmentation and governmental instability, therefore, cannot be resolved a priori; it must be resolved empirically. Political scientists Rein Taagepera and Matthew Shugart have found an inverse square relationship between cabinet durability (C) and effective number of effective assembly parties (N),8 thus confirming the conventional wisdom linking high party fragmentation and short-lived governments. Today, the effective number of assembly parties in Italy is as high as it ever was. Meanwhile, the number of political issue dimensions is similarly high--some may have faded somewhat (religion), but others have burst into the political scene with a lot of force (regionalism)—ensuring the continuation of fragmentation absent further reform in electoral law. In any case, the effects of fragmentation upon governmental instability must not be exaggerated. In fact, many other established democracies are successful in creating stable governments with just as many parties as in Italy, if not more (Furlong 1994). One must look at other, important factors in explaining the Italian case: lack of internal party cohesion and discipline; ideological differences within coalitions, personality clashes among leaders from the same coalition and party; and the tactical use of government crisis as a means of solving even ordinary problems. Some of these elements are quite unique to Italy.
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While post-1993 Italian governments barely lasted more than the post-war elevenmonth average, there are reasons to think the Berlusconi government may well come to the end of its constitutionally mandated four-year term. The outcome of the 2001 increased the likelihood of stability for at least three reasons. First, the prime-ministerial candidate of the winning coalition has been directly endorsed by voters and thus his authority strengthened within the coalition. The election acquired the contours of a presidential election built around the personalities and accomplishments of two individuals: Francesco Rutelli and Silvio Berlusconi. Second, in order to maintain the majority in parliament, Berlusconi’s Forza Italia only needs the support of one other party, numerically speaking. Finally, Berlusconi has included many of the party leaders in government or close to government, strengthening the hand of the executive vis-à-vis party “backbenchers.” This points out to the scope prime ministers have in taking decisions that strengthen their hold on a governing coalition. Insofar as political learning takes place, governmental stability may increase in the future. In general, though, the effect of on the stability of Italian governments has been decidedly ambiguous, not least because many other intervening variables confound systematic analysis. More elections need to take place in order to reach a more definite assessment.
Party Polarization The postwar Italian party system has traditionally been characterized by very high levels of polarization. Polarization can roughly be defined as the distance (ideological or other) between the most distant relevant parties. A relevant party is here defined in the Sartorian sense of one with coalition and blackmail potential. The prominent place occupied by the Partito Comunista Italiano, the most popular Communist party in the West, contributed to high polarization indexes in Italy.9 At the right end of the political spectrum stood a neo-fascist party, with a wide array of parties between these two poles catering to almost every conceivable voter in the ideological spectrum. Indeed, Italy can traditionally be conceived of as a case of polarized multipartism. Although there is no straightforward relationship between electoral systems and polarization indexes, polarization is, nonetheless, reasonably related to fragmentation. Thus, insofar as majoritarian systems reduce fragmentation, the new law was also meant to reduce the highly polarized nature of the Italian party system. Although hard numbers are not yet available, as each party needs to be classified in a left-right spectrum according to their party programs, a cursory study of the new parties on the political scene indicates that the system is more polarized during the Second Republic (post-1993) than it was during the First Republic. First, there are more parties now than was the case before. Second, extremist parties have not disappeared from the landscape. On the left, the Rifondazione Comunista remains committed to Marxist-Leninist tenets. The Partito Democratico della Sinistra, a more moderate successor to the old Communists, is a strong electoral force. Third, new parties have appeared to cater to new (and not-so-new) societal cleavages. If in 1996 the system veered towards increased polarization, it was mostly because of developments on the right side of the ideological spectrum. The Allianza Nationale, under moderate leader Gianfranco Fini, gained tremendous popularity as an anti-system party. Another anti-system party, Bossi’s Lega Nord, is the third largest party in the current Berlusconi government. A proliferation of smaller parties has
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survived because of the 25 percent of Chamber members that are still elected on the basis of PR. This naturally does not help the cause of reduced polarization. In short, Italy’s spread of parties from one end of the spectrum to the other continues. In a polarized polity voters and parties are aliens among themselves; they are distant from each other. This implies that it is both difficult and electorally unrewarding for them to agree on just about anything. Under these conditions, as Sartori has pointed out, coalitions are heterogeneous, “and by the same token uncooperative, litigious, and stalemate prone.” By contrast, in a non-polarized polity, voters and parties are unprincipled, relatively close to each other, and can therefore easily strike bargains and agree on compromises. Coalitions are homogeneous. But Italy has had to live with heterogeneous coalitions, in which coalition partners have often played a veto game against each other. Polarization continues to curse Italian politics, rendering governing coalitions unstable because cooperation often times brings electoral penalties. But while the post1993 system is more polarized than the previous one, there is a recent but perceptible trend towards depolarization. 2001 has shaken many assumptions. Recent research by Pappalardo (2001) shows the Italian electorate to be more mobile than usually assumed— especially the centrist one. He shows that the residual polarization assumed by the previous literature is empirically false. First, the polar extremes lost political terrain. Secondly, the Northern League lost a lot of electoral support which, coupled with other structural trends, induces Pappalardo to speak of an “evaporating center-periphery cleavage.” The elections of 2001 did represent a movement towards lesser polarization. If and when electoral politics becomes crystallized around two big electoral cartels, polarization will continue to slowly come down.
Conclusion The 1993 electoral law has had important effects on Italian politics, if not as profound as electoral reformers may have hoped for. The standard majoritarian system used by Italian reformist politicians as a benchmark continues to be one of moderate (rather than high) pluralism and bipolar competition between alternative coalitions (each of which stands a reasonable chance of winning the elections). To be sure, it is unfair and unwarranted to measure the effects of a hybrid electoral law against the standards of a pure system. But perhaps the time is now ripe, after three general elections since the law has been in place, to gauge the extent to which electoral reform has or has not moved Italy away from the pre-1993 political system. Let us first recall what the new law has so far failed to bring about. Italy is still far from resembling a full bipolar system. Political learning on the part of parties and voters shall, in principle, strengthen the trend towards bipolarity. 2001 reinforced the steady movement towards bipolarism, as parties sought alliances and voters demonstrated a high level of pragmatism by punishing go-alone parties. Fragmentation has not been effectively reduced since 1994 and remains perhaps the Achiles’ heel of the Italian political system. The large number of political parties undermines the cohesion of the coalitions formed for the majority vote in the elections. The inability of the mixed electoral law to reduce the number of parties in parliament remains the biggest disappointment and unfulfilled hope. As a consequence, governmental stability has continued to elude Italy throughout the 1990s. Common wisdom says that until the
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effective number of parties comes down, governmental stability cannot be had. This assertion contains a great deal of truth but it is not carved in stone. Berlusconi faces better prospects than his predecessors to complete his constitutionally mandated term in office, for instance. To be sure, fragmentation cannot only be solely ascribed to electoral law, for political, social and cultural cleavages in Italian society are at play here. Old societal cleavages are fading in Italy but new ones have burst onto the political arena. Another important variable analyzed here has been the level of polarization, for ideological distance has often been synonymous with coalitional in-fighting. Whereas in the latest regional and national elections polarization has come down somewhat, governing cabinets are often more heterogeneous in ideological makeup than they need to be in order to be stable. Enough Prime Ministers have been named since the new electoral law took effect in 1994 so as not to alter the average postwar figure of eleven months in office. Whether the depolarization trend is long-term or not, it is too early to say. On the other hand, the important positive changes ushered in by the new electoral system are undeniable. The main positive development is this: the three elections conducted under the present electoral system demonstrate that governmental alternation, absent for so long from Italian politics, is now a possibility--and indeed, a reality. It must be remembered, however, that the achievement of alternation in 1996 cannot be attributed per force to the new electoral system. In fact, the outcome was largely “majoritarian by chance” as it was pointed out. But it is clear that the electoral system has been conducive to producing alternation. The contest of 2001 produced a clear winner and a reasonably strong mandate. Further, what has been learned from the last three elections is that victory cannot be achieved without parties establishing rather a disciplined and (geographically) encompassing electoral alliance. A prediction is that the more elections are held under the new law, the more coalitional discipline will be achieved. The purpose of majoritarian systems is to serve as a ‘black box’ that magnify slight variations in political support (votes) in order to bring about clear winners in parliament (seats) and thus governability. But Italy’s political system transition to a Second Republic of clearly defined, stable characteristics is still incomplete. Sartori’s general dictum (plurality systems cannot by themselves produce two-party formats) is supported by the Italian case. However, we must be more subtle; Italy, after all, does not yet have a pure majoritarian electoral law. Reformers would defend the deficient effects engendered by electoral change so far by saying that the transition is incomplete (by the standards of a British-style model) because the change is incomplete. Therefore, they contend, Italy must strive towards a pure plurality system where all seats in both chambers are allocated by first-past-the-post. This thesis has much to commend it. Professor Sartori himself gives credence to this view by dismissing hybrid systems in general: I believe these plurality-PR couplings to be a miscarriage, a very unsound and counterproductive arrangement... The principle is that electoral systems should have one logic which conforms to their purpose... Perhaps the advocates of plurality-PR hybrids believe that they are bringing together the best of both worlds; but they are likely to obtain, instead, a bastard-producing hybrid which combines their defects (Sartori 1994, 74-75).
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His judgment is impeccable in that electoral systems should have a single logic. Insofar as proportional representation calls for sincere voting (first preference choices) and firstpast-the-post calls for strategic voting (second best and calculated choices), voters cannot be asked to make, all in one, majoritarian and sincere kinds of choices. Thus, the question arises: are further institutional changes enough to complete a transition to a Westmister model of sorts, as reformers would have it, or is something else required? What reformers have not told the Italian public is that even with a pure plurality electoral system, the quest for a majoritarian system on the British model may well prove elusive. Duverger was correct in arguing that plurality voting in single ballot system does tend to frustrate the development of multipartism. But once multipartism is part of the political landscape, does simple-majority law favor a two-party system? This is much more controversial, for the reform approved nine years ago did not take place in a political vacuum. Parties are well entrenched in Italy. Even if their names have changed, their roots are well planted in Italian society. These parties are largely mirrors of Italian social, territorial and ideological cleavages permeating society. In other words, electoral laws will not radically change the nature of party systems unless we proceed from tabula rasa. Clearly, after almost fifty years of highly stable postwar party politics, the 1993 changes took effect within a well entrenched societal, political and cultural environment. If Britain and the United States have long succeeded in establishing an almost perfectly bipolar party system, it is not the least because their majoritarian electoral systems were implanted at the founding of their political party systems.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bardi, Luciano. 1996. “Anti-party sentiment and party system change in Italy” European Journal of Political Research 29: 345-363, April 1996. Bardi, Luciano and Martin Rhodes (eds.) Italian Politics: Mapping the Future Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998. Bartolini, S. and D’Alimonte R. “Plurality competition and party realignment in Italy: The 1994 parliamentary elections” European Journal of Political Research 29: 105-142, January 1996.
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Bartolini, Stefano and Roberto D’Alimonte. “Majoritarian miracles and the question of party system change” European Journal of Political Research 34: 151-169, 1998. Caciagli, Mario and David Kertzer (eds.) Italian Politics: The Stalled Transition Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996. Calise, Mauro. “Remaking the Italian Party System: How Lijphard Got It Wrong by Saying it Right” West European Politics, Vol. 16, No.4, October 1993. Cartocci, D. “Omens of an early winter: the proportional vote and the changing Italian party system” European Journal of Poltical Research 34: 35-61, 1998. Chiaramonte, A. 1997. “L’effeto mancato della riforma maggioritaria: il voto strategico” in D’Alimonte and S. Bartoli (eds.) Maggioritario Per Caso Bologna: Il Mulino. D’Alimonte , Roberto and David Nelken (eds.) 1997 Italian Politics: The Center-Left in Power Colorado: Westview Press. D’Alimonte, Roberto. 1998 “Introduction: The Italian Parliamentary election of 1996-Competition and transition.” European Journal of Political Research 34: 1-4, 1998. Donovan, Mark. 1994. “The 1994 Election in Italy: Normalization or Continuing Exceptionalism?” West European Politics, Vol. 17 No.4, October. Donovan, Mark. 1996. “A Turning Point that Turned? The April 1996 General Election in Italy” West European Politics, Vol. 19, No. 4, October 1996. Donovan, Mark. 1995. “The Politics of Electoral Reform in Italy” International Political Science Review 16 (January). Donovan, Mark. 2001. Election Report: A New Republic in Italy? The May 2001 Election West European Politics, Vol. 24, No. 4 (October). Di Virgilio, Aldo. “Electoral alliances: Party identities and coalition games” European Journal of Political Research 34: 5-33, 1998. The Economist
“Italy’s Reformers Thwarted” April 24th, 1999.
Fabrini, Sergio. 2001. Has Italy Rejected the Referendum Path to Change? The Failed Referenda of May 2000 Journal of Modern Italian Studies 6 (1): 38-56
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Fabrini, Sergio and Mark Gilbert. 2001. The Italian General Election of 13 May 2001: Democratic Alternation or False Step? Government and Opposition, October 2001. Financial Times “Italy attempts to salvage reforms” April 20th, 1999. Furlong, Paul. Modern Italy: Representation and Reform London: Routledge, 1994. Gallagher, Michael; Michael Laver and Peter Mair. Representative Government in Modern Europe New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995. Gilbert, Mark. The Italian Revolution: The End of Politics, Italian Style? Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995. Katz, Richard S and Piero Ignazi. Italian Politics: The year of the Tycoon Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996. Katz, Richard S. “Electoral Reform and the Transformation of Party Politics in Italy” Party Politics 2, No. 1, 1996. Leonardi, Robert and Douglas Wertman Italian Christian Democracy: The Politics of Dominance New York: St.Martin’s Press, 1989. Lijphart, Arend. Electoral Systems and Party Systems: A study of twenty-seven Democracies 1945-90 Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. McCarthy, Patrick and Gianfranco Pasquino (eds.) 1993 The End of Post-War Politics in Italy: The Landmark 1992 Elections Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Mair, Peter (ed.) The West European Party Systems New York: OUP, 1990. Mershon, Carol and Gianfranco Pasquino(eds.) Italian Politics: Ending the First Republic Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995. Mignone, Mario B. Italy Today: A Country in Transition New York: Peter Land, 1995. Newell, James and Martin Bull. “The Italian Referenda of April 1993: Real Change at Last?” West European Politics, Vol. 16, No. 4, October 1993. Pappalardo, Adriano. “The Italian Party SYtem Between Bipolarism and Destructuration” Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica, XXXI, No. 3, Dicembre 2001.
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Pasquino, Gianfranco. 1989 “That Obscure Object of Desire: A new electoral law for Italy” West European Politics, October. Pasquino, Gianfranco. 1994a “Italy: The Twilight of the Parties” Journal of Democracy, Vol. 5, No. 1, January. Pasquino, Gianfranco. 1994b “The Birth of the ‘Second Republic” Journal of Democracy, Vol 5, No 3., July. Pasquino, Gianfranco. 2001a. Berlusconi’s Victory: The Italian General Elections of 2001 South European Politics and Society, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Summer). Pasquino, Gianfranco. 2001b. The Italian National Elections of 13 May 2001 Journal of Modern Italian Studies 6(3): 371-387. Pasquino, Gianfranco. 2001c. Un’Elezione Non Come le Altre Rivista Italiana Di Scienza Politica, XXXI, No. 3, December Reeve, Andrew and Alan Ware. Electoral Systems: A comparative and Theoretica Introduction London: Routledge, 1992. Sartori, Giovanni. Comparative Constitutional Engineering: An inquiry into Structures, Incentives and Outcomes New York: NY University Press, 1994. Sartori, Giovanni. 2001. Is Sistema Elettorale Resta Cattivo Rivista Italiana Di Scienza Politica, XXXI, No. 3 (December). Sundquist, James L. Constitutional Reform and Effective Government Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1992. Taagepera, Rein and Matthew Shugart. Seats and Votes: the effects and determinants of Electoral Systems New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989. Verzichelli, L. “The Parliamentary elite in transition” European Journal of Political Research 34: 121-150, 1998. Wilson, Frank L. European Politics Today: The Democratic Experience New Jersey: Simon and Schuster, 1999.
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1
Besides refashioning itself along social-democratic lines, the party changed its name to Partito
Democratico della Sinistra (Democratic Party of the Left) and adopted a new logo. The unreconstructed Communists formed a much smaller splinter party, the Rifondazione Comunista. 2
To be sure, our number of observations (or data points) since the electoral law of 1993 is
limited. So far, only the elections of 1994, 1996 and 2001 can be used to derive conclusions about the so-called Second Republic. However, these three electoral contests can already shed light on incipient trends and unfulfilled hopes. 3
In the aftermath of the results The Economist was quick to point out that “most Italians who
care about their system of government want a new electoral law... But most Italians do not seem to care about their system of government (Economist, 52).” This opinion contradicts claims made by many scholars that Italian society has recently become more demanding of the political establishment and have higher expectations of their institutions. More likely, apathy and the distraction of events in Kosovo combined to dish the reformers. Massimo Cacciari, Venice’s mayor, was typical of reform-minded politicians in describing the referendum’s outcome as a “hard and heavy heart-attack.” Romano Prodi, a committed reformer himself, lamented the results but found some consolation in the ‘yes’ percentage of votes: “A page has not been turned but there were millions and millions and millions that wanted change. That isn’t just nothing (Financial Times, 3).” Many similar assessments were echoed by electoral reformers. 4
Many governing cabinets exercised power in a high-handed manner, and the quality and frequency of legislative deliberation of issues declined. Further, long spells in government contributed to corrupt practices. Political corruption came to public light in all three countries.
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5
Italy was the only American ally where the Communists (albeit of a different sort) enjoyed such
permanent electoral strength, so as to make it the second strongest party. The “unwritten” Italian constitution made clear the imperative of excluding the Communists from governing coalitions as part of the Cold War East-West struggle. 6
Italy was the only American ally where the Communists (albeit of a different sort) enjoyed such
permanent electoral strength, so as to make it the second strongest party. The “unwritten” Italian constitution made clear the imperative of excluding the Communists from governing coalitions as part of the Cold War East-West struggle. 7
Under formulas of proportional representation (D’Hondt, largest remainders, modified Sainte-
Lague, or single transferable vote) the voter knows that his/her single vote will be fairly adequately represented in parliament. In Italy, the formula adopted for transforming votes into seats up to 1993 was very proportional. The Italian voter therefore had an incentive to truly vote for his/her favorite (i.e. top) candidate, knowing that the system would adequately translate that single vote into parliamentary representation. In short, honest voting takes place under PR systems. Plurality systems, on the other hand, encourage strategic voting, with voters often voting for their second (or third) most prefered candidate in order to provoke the overall defeat of their least prefered ‘big’ party. A vote for small parties is often a vote wasted, as in the case of Great Britain. With 75% of the Italian lower chamber elected on the basis of a majoritarian system, it was to be expected that the Italian voter would have an incentive to come to terms with the idea of “useful voting”, that is, favoring either of two big electoral coalitions to the detriment of smaller parties.
8
The formula they arrive at reads as follows: C(months) = 400/ N2 . Similarly, they have found
a similar inverse relationship between C and the number of issue dimensions that characterize a given society: C(months)= (I + 1)2
These relationships can help us understand the Italian case. 24
9
The Comunist party regularly won anywhere between 20 and 30 percent of votes in Italy.
25
