Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni
Presidentialism in Italy, the Meloni government tightens on the qualifying points of its program
Having turned the buoy of the first six months, the centre-right government is beginning to narrow down, with clear planning, the qualifying points of its programme. One of these, structural, is presidentialism even in the broader design of institutional reforms. Italy is a country substantially blocked at the executive level because the Prime Minister has few powers compared to similar figures of his international peers. Hence the immoderate use that any government is forced to make of decree laws which should be the exception and instead are unfortunately the norm despite the continuous reminders of the President of the Republic.
Presidentialism, Italy and Germany… absent
All the large Western countries similar to Italy have presidential or semi-presidential forms of government. The only two exceptions are Italy and Germany which – coincidentally – are the two great nations defeated in the Second World War and in which there was fascism and Nazism. It is clear that these two experiences then induced democratic parliaments after the Second World War to adopt a very cautious attitude towards forms of government that granted too much power to a single person. Having said this, however, it must also be said that almost 80 years have passed since the end of those experiences and – speaking of Italy – this burden has cost us a lot in terms of institutional mobility and the ability to give quick and complete answers to the problems of a modern society.
In Italy there are two practically identical chambers that double the legislative times and Matteo Renzi knows something about it, who tried to abolish the Senate by touching the wires and lost everything. The systems that work are the presidential bipolar ones, ie on the model of the USA. In Italy, some effort has been made, in the sense of bipolarity, but when one tries to truly give power to the prime minister, formidable resistance of all kinds arises, but above all ideological.
It is clear that presidentialism must pass through some form of direct election of the prime minister or the president of the republic. The centre-right, on the other hand, has always been in favor of some form of presidentialism and now that it is in power and has the numbers, it is rightly trying to advance this instance that characterizes its voters.
Giorgia Meloni and the consultation phase: Schlein and Giuseppe Conte…
Tomorrow Giorgia Meloni will begin a phase of consultation with the minority parliamentarian to discuss institutional reforms with the main dish being presidentialism. The Democratic Party will be there with Schlein who for the first time will confront Meloni directly while it is probable that Giuseppe Conte is absent profit, as usual, on the opportunity to design an oppositional space that could pay him electorally, provided that the voters don’t finally realize his quick-change trick. Everyone remembers how, instead, in 2019, he dreamed of a “constituent legislature” on presidentialism.
The Democratic Party has already made it known that with the reform “the checks and balances that have guaranteed the correct functioning of our democratic system could jump”. Of course, Italy effectively freezing and blocking it with the excuse of fear of the “strong man” or, in this case, the “strong woman”. But if the left niches the Third Pole and above all Italia Viva it could instead support the reform project.
The terms of constitutional reform, as is known, require large majorities and Meloni is moving along this path. If not now, when?
Subscribe to the newsletter