Electoral system

For almost half a century afterWorld War II, Italy’selectoral system was based onproportional representation, a system in which seats in an elected body are awarded to political parties according to the proportion of the total vote that they receive. Between 1993 and 1995, several changes were made by national legislation and popular referenda. Following these changes, on the national level theChamber of Deputies and theSenate were elected by a combination of proportionality and plurality. Seventy-five percent of the seats in these two chambers were filled from single-member districts by individual candidates who won the largest number of votes in each district. The other 25 percent of the seats were awarded to candidates from party lists on a proportional basis. The number of votes obtained by the winner in single-member districts was fully (for senators) or partially (for deputies) subtracted beforeallocating proportional seats, thus introducing a further element of proportionality. A new electoral law passed in late 2005 overturned this system by restoring full proportional representation. However, the law alsoallocated a number of bonus seats in the Chamber of Deputies to the winning coalition—thus guaranteeing a majority for the victors.

In regional elections, voters cast two ballots. The first is cast in a contest for 80 percent of the seats in theregional council, which are awarded on a proportional basis. The second ballot is employed in a plurality vote; the regional coalition that wins a plurality is awarded all the remaining seats as well as the presidency of the regional government. Split voting is allowed.

In provincial elections, only one vote is cast. If a single provincial list wins more than 50 percent of the votes, seats are divided among all the lists according to their proportion of the vote, and the presidency goes to the head of the winning list. Otherwise, arunoff election must take place between the two most successful lists, with the winner taking 60 percent of the seats.

A similar system is employed in municipal elections in cities with more than 15,000 inhabitants. In this case, however, two ballots are cast, one for mayor and one for the council. Split voting is permitted. In smaller cities only one ballot is cast; the winning list is awarded two-thirds of the seats as well as the mayoralty.

Political parties

From the end of World War II until the 1990s, Italy had a multiparty system with two dominant parties, theChristian Democratic Party (Partito della Democrazia Cristiana; DC) and theItalian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano; PCI), and a number of small yet influential parties. The smaller parties ranged from the neofascistItalian Social Movement (Movimento Sociale Italiano; MSI) on the right to theItalian Socialist Party (Partito Socialista Italiano; PSI) on the left; a number of smallsecular parties occupied the center. The DC, in various alliances with smaller parties of the center and left, was the dominant governing party, and the principal opposition parties were the PCI and the MSI.

The postwar party system described above was radically altered by the fall of communism in theSoviet bloc in 1991, by a wave of judicial prosecutions of corrupt officials that involved most Italian political parties, and finally by the electoral reforms of the 1990s. The DC, riven by scandal, was replaced by a much smaller organization, theItalian Popular Party (PartitoPopolare Italiano; PPI), which played adiminished role after elections in 1994. By that time three new parties had arisen to dominate the political right and center-right:Forza Italia (FI; loosely translatable as “Go Italy”), an alliance created in 1994 by the media tycoonSilvio Berlusconi and dedicated to the principles of the market economy; theNorthern League (Lega Nord; LN), formed in 1991, a federalist and fiscal-reform movement with large support in the northern regions; and theNational Alliance (Alleanza Nazionale; AN), which succeeded the MSI in 1994 but whose political platform renounced its fascist past. Meanwhile, the PCI remained an important electoral force under a new name, theDemocratic Party of the Left (Partito Democratico della Sinistra; PDS), later shortened to the Democrats of the Left (Democratici di Sinistra; DS). Thus, the Italianpolitical spectrum, which had previously been dominated by parties of the center, becamepolarized between parties of the right and left. The political center was left to be divided by various short-lived multiparty alliances—for example, at the turn of the 21st century, the center-right House of Freedoms and the center-left Olive Tree. In 2007 a new center-left party, known simply as theDemocratic Party (Partito Democratico), emerged when the DS merged with the centristDaisy (Margherita) party. Soon afterward the FI joined with the AN to create the new center-rightPeople of Freedom (Popolo della Libertà; PdL) party. AN leader Gianfranco Fini withdrew from the alliance in 2010 to form the rival center-right Future and Freedom for Italy (Futuro e libertà per l’Italia; FLI) party.

The participation of the citizen

All citizens 18 years and older may vote. Theturnout for elections in Italy is high, often reaching well over 80 percent of the electorate for parliamentary elections. Citizens may also subscribe to national referenda or petitions designed toabrogate a law or an executive order; such a petition must be signed by 500,000 members of the electorate or sponsored by five regional councils. Abrogative referenda have been used extensively since the 1970s to make possible a wide range of institutional and civic reforms. Abrogative referenda are provided for with regard to all regional legislation, and some regions have a provision for holding ordinary referenda. The constitution also provides that 50,000 members of the electorate may jointly present adraft bill to parliament.