Michelangelo Vercesi

Introduction

On 18 June 2024, the Italian Senate (upper chamber) passed the constitutional bill N. 395 to reform the form of government and introduce the direct election of the prime minister (PM). This bill has been promoted by the executive, while the opposition(s) voted against. From a procedural viewpoint, both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies (lower chamber) have to approve the same text twice (the second vote must take place at least three months after the first) to make the reform entry into force. If at least two thirds of each chamber do not approve the reform in second reading, one fifth of any chamber’s members, 500,000 voters, or five regional parliaments can demand a referendum (art. 138 of Constitution).

The spirit of the reform is rooted in the electoral programs of the center-right cartel that won the 2022 general election. In their manifestoes, the future coalition partners proposed the direct election of the president, without clarifying further if they would prefer a presidential or a semi-presidential institutional setting. Once in power, they agreed on focusing on the PM, rather than on the president.

The Reform

Italy is a text-book case of parliamentary democracy. The parliament is made up of two directly elected chambers with equal powers. These two chambers (together with regional representatives) elect the head of state for a renewable seven-year term. This president has the formal power to appoint the PM (i.e., the head of government) and the ministers. The whole cabinet is accountable to the lower as well as to upper house and can enter office only after passing a vote of confidence in both chambers.

The main change that the reform would bring in this framework is threefold: (1) in the PM’s legitimation; (2) in the PM’s duration in office; (3) in the introduction of a tighter bond between the life of the cabinet and the life of the parliament, according to that simul stabunt vel simul cadent (‘they will either stand together, or fall together’) principle that has been defining – mutatis mutandis – regional politics in Italy since 1999.

Assuming that the reform is implemented, (1) the PM, from being the political agent of the parliament, will become voters’ agent, in that voters will elect her directly; the choice should occur in concomitance with general elections and the PM will have to run also as candidate to the parliament. The president of the republic will become a ‘rubber stamp’ of voters’ decision, who gives the task to form the cabinet to the elected PM. The PM, in turn, will be able to ask to the president to dismiss unwelcome ministers.

(2) Similarly to those of many elected presidents, prime ministerial terms in office will be confronted with time limits. More specifically, a five-year mandate will be possible, renewable once. The number of terms will increase up to three, if the PM has held the office for no more than seven and a half years (i.e., the duration of one and a half legislative term).

(3) The cabinet (as a whole) will remain dependent on the chambers’ investiture vote to take office (up to two attempts) and on parliamentary confidence to survive. Any no confidence motion will have to be ‘justified’ and it will imply that the president dissolves the chambers. If the PM herself resigns and does not demand the dissolution, the head of state will have to indicate a formateur. This person will be either the outgoing PM or another MP, who had been elected in one of the lists endorsing the candidacy of the resigning PM. To put it differently, no one who had been elected in a list not linked to this name will be allowed to become chief executive in that legislative term. The same applies to those who are not members of the parliament (MPs).

A Comparative Assessment

When it comes to assessing the Italian proposal, the first comparison that one can think of is the Israeli experience from 1992 to 2001. In that period, Israel – a parliamentary country – relied on the direct election of the PM. Its voters could choose the head of government and their parliamentary representatives on two ballots and vote splitting was possible. The rationale of this system was to reduce coalition fragmentation and give stability to the cabinet. However, reformers failed to reach their goals and Israel went back to ‘normal’ parliamentarism in the 2003 general elections. In 2021, PM Netanyahu tried to pass new legislation to restore prime ministerial election, this time with the provision that the Knesset would have dissolved if it had voted a successful no-confidence motion. This proposal has never been implemented.

Therefore, there are no existing similar cases to compare with the Italian one. In fact, the government has used a new term to describe the envisioned form of government: premierato, which literally means premiership, but can be roughly translated as ‘premieralism’. Premierato sources from presidentialism and parliamentarism and mixes their key features up.

The main similarity with presidentialism is, obviously, the direct election of the head of government and the double chain of delegation, which goes from voters to the parliament and to the chief executive. However, the chief executive office does not overlap with the presidency, which has a ceremonial role, parliamentary-style. In addition, a major difference is the lack of separation of powers between the executive and the legislature. As a matter of fact, the PM can prompt the dissolution of the assembly; at the same time, the PM is dependent of the confidence of the MPs, even if she enjoys the direct legitimation of voters. This means that the elected assembly could dismiss the elected PM, although they enjoy the same kind of democratic legitimation. To put it bluntly: the ‘people’ (represented in parliament) would hold itself (represented in the chief executive office) accountable!

Admittedly, the reform tries to ensure that no divided government emerges and no conflict between the executive and the legislative branches develops. In particular, art. 5 states that any future electoral law will have to grant a majority bonus to guarantee that the electoral lists endorsing the PM will enjoy the majority in both chambers (yet, an undefined principle of fair representation should apply, probably according to a well-known 2014 Constitutional Court’s sentence on that issue).

The fusion of powers between the executive and the legislature is the main trait in common with parliamentarism. However, the impossibility to nominate a new PM from a list that had not supported the outgoing premier undermines the core principle of the parliamentary form of government: i.e., the assembly is sovereign. Moreover, the reform cancels the presidential power to appoint (up to five) senators for life. This prohibition would prevent – inter alia – cases such as the one of Giorgio Napolitano in 2011: Napolitano appointed Mario Monti (an economist) senator for life to cajole the parties to support him as new PM, in a context of severe financial crisis. In that circumstance, Monti formed a technocratic cabinet and received wide parliamentary confidence, after PM Silvio Berlusconi had stepped down. This kind of changes have not been uncommon in Europe.

What Should One Expect?

One can speculate on, first, the actual entry into force of the reform and, second, the functionality (or dysfunctionality) of the reform – if implemented – in matching its goals.

With regard to the former point, the bill is likely to be approved in parliament. Safe for unexpected conflicts within the governing coalition, the executive should be able to take the bill to the end of the legislative process. At the same time, it is very improbable that two thirds of the parliamentary houses will endorse the constitutional reform. This means that there would be referendum, and this may be no good news for the reformers: indeed, Italian citizens vetoed several recent attempts to reform the Constitution in the ballot box.

As for the second point, does the reform define an institutional setting that delivers what it promises? In this regard, three goals stand out: (1) the strengthening of the chief executive and an easier attribution of responsibilities when it comes to assessing government performance; (2) higher government stability; (3) a tighter bond between voters’ preferences and governing majorities.

(1) The PM would benefit from a personal legitimation that no chief executive in Italy has ever had. The cases of PMs Berlusconi (1994; 2001-2005; 2008-2011) and Romano Prodi (1996-1998 and 2006-2008) came close to that level, having been appointed after running elections as Spitzenkandidaten of pre-electoral coalitions. However, the direct election would endow PMs with a surplus of political capital that they could spend in coalitional bargaining to overcome intra-cabinet disagreements. In particular, this capital would make the PM even stronger the leader of her party, should the two figures differ. The PM could always rely on the ‘going public’ strategy to claim that she is the ruler citizens voted for and to make legislation pass.

In theory, this ‘legitimation surplus’ could increase policy responsiveness towards voters, because it would be easier to assess performance in office against the electoral mandate. However, accountability mechanisms would not be so clear-cut, if the PM leads a coalition government. In coalition governments, the attribution of responsibilities is harder and the reform does not solve this issue. In this regard, it is worth noting, that the highest level of accountability emerges when a PM leads a single-party majority cabinet in a parliamentary system and the same PM is leader of her own (cohesive) party. This is the typical Westminster scenario, where the fusion of power between the executive and the legislature provides voters with a clear picture to assess PM’s actions: the head of government controls the party, the cabinet, and the parliamentary majority. Therefore, the ‘dignified’ facet of the form of government can little, if it is not supported by a coherent ‘efficient’ part.

(2) In the hypothetical new system, political parties would think twice before withdrawing their confidence to the cabinet, since this action would automatically lead to the early termination of the legislature. However, this rule as well as the prohibition to form new cabinets with opposition or outsider leaders will not guarantee, in themselves, cabinet stability. If coalitions are not internally cohesive, the risk is to generate short-lived legislatures, on top of unstable cabinets. At most, the reform would produce prime ministerial stability, in the (unlikely) scenario that the coalition breaks up and the elected PM musters the support of parties in parliament other than those who had been part of her pre-electoral cartel.

The implementation of a constructive vote of no confidence might instead increase cabinet stability, without depriving the parliament of its function of sovereignty locus for citizens’ representation. If, however, reformers aimed at a resolved presidential turn, the parliamentary power to remove the elected PM would be at odds with the principle of the direct monocratic legitimation.

(3) The reform promises to generate also governments with a robust electoral investiture. At the same time, it decouples the democratic chain of delegation (one towards the PM, one towards the parliament), but it conflates accountability into a single channel (from the PM through the parliament to the voters, via no confidence motions). This implies that the role of the parliament will be mostly negative, in that it will have the power to withdraw the confidence from the cabinet, but not to propose alternatives.

No other democratic system does so. One could argue that semi-presidentialism mixes presidentialism and parliamentarism as well. But in this mixed form of government the directly elected head of state cannot be dismissed and is accountable solely to voters. The PM – who coexists with the president – is accountable to the parliament (and, in a minority of cases, to the president too) and cabinet replacements are possible without formal limitations in terms of composition. In other words, there is a genuine dual executive, whereas the Italian proposal envisions a kind of monistic government, with an even weaker president and a PM who can be dismissed in spite of the direct election her legitimacy rests upon.

References

Goplerud, Max and Petra Schleiter (2016). ‘An Index of Assembly Dissolution Powers.’ Comparative Political Studies 49(4): 427-456.

Müller-Rommel, Ferdinand and Michelangelo Vercesi (2020). ‘Executive Power.’ In Dirk Berg-Schlosser, Bertrand Badie, and Leonardo Morlino (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Political Science. London: Sage, pp. 760-775.

Newell, James L. (2024). Italian Politics. Exploring the Dynamics of Political Change. Abingdon: Routledge.