Much ado about something? Parliamentary politics in Italy amid the rhetoric of majority rule and an uncertain party system1

Abstract

This article deals with the transformation of parliamentary politics in Italy, between 1985 and 2001. An unsatisfactory performance in democratic terms and the bottom-up pressures towards a majoritarian democracy during the first part of this period created strong expectations of a new model of parliamentary representation. In spite of this, a quasi-majoritarian form of electoral rule and a totally renewed party system led to increased fragmentation within the legislature and to very uncertain relationships between single representatives, parties and coalitions. Focusing basically on the characters of political representatives and the relationships between parties and parliamentary groups, the paper tries to explain the reasons behind such a difficult process of change within parliamentary politics. The final part discusses the consolidation of parliamentary politics in Italy, and illustrates the conditions required if the risk of a permanent state of parliamentary fluidity is to be avoided. The author is grateful to giliberto capano, marco giuliani and cristina leston-bandeira for their comments. data analysed in this paper are the property of the centre for the study of political change at the university of siena.