The unfinished story of electoral reforms in Italy

Abstract

Over the course of past twenty years during Italy’s Second Republic, three electoral reforms have taken place and a fourth one is underway. The first reform occurred in 1993, providing for the abandonment of the First Republic’s long-established proportional representation (PR) system and the introduction of a mixed electoral system. The second reform was approved in 2005, when the previous mixed electoral system was replaced with a new, mixed electoral system. The third electoral reform was introduced at the beginning of 2014, when the Constitutional Court ruled out the constitutionality of a number of provisions of the 2005 electoral system (while leaving others intact) and introduced de facto a PR system. A fourth electoral reform is now making its way through Parliament, and if approved, will reinstate a mixed electoral system similar to the one of 2005, but (hopefully) in a constitutionally compatible form. In this article, I analyse the reasons why, and under what circumstances, these electoral reforms have taken place and account for their relevant features and effects. The main goal is to assess the extent to which each of them has contributed, or has the potential to contribute, to reshaping the party system and the process of government formation into a more majoritarian ‘pattern’ or ‘vision’ of democracy.