Italy

A

Executive

The executive branch of Italy’s government is composed of the president, the council of ministers, and the civil service. The president of Italy is elected for a seven-year term by a joint session of parliament augmented by 58 regional representatives. The president must be at least 50 years old. Although head of the government, the president usually has little to do with the actual running of it. These duties are in the hands of the prime minister—who is chosen by the president and must have the confidence of parliament—and the Council of Ministers. The prime minister (sometimes called the premier, or, in Italy, president of the Council of Ministers) generally is the leader of the party that has the largest representation in the Chamber of Deputies.

B

Legislature

The Italian parliament consists of the Senate (upper house) and the Chamber of Deputies (lower house). Although both houses are legally equal, the Chamber of Deputies is politically more influential, and most leading politicians in Italy are members of it. In both houses, members are elected by popular suffrage (vote) to serve five-year terms of office. The Chamber of Deputies has 630 seats. The Senate has 315 seats for elected members, plus 10 seats reserved for “life members,” who include past presidents and their honorary nominees. Citizens must be 25 years of age or older to vote for senators; in all other elections, all citizens over age 18 are eligible to vote. Members of the Senate must be at least 40 years old; members of the Chamber of Deputies, at least 25.

For many years, Italian citizens voted for political parties, and individual representatives were named by party leaders in a proportional manner. But as a result of corruption scandals in the early 1990s, a number of public referendums were passed in 1993 that mandated a more direct electoral system. Under that system, 75 percent of all seats were filled by direct candidate ballot, and the remaining 25 percent were distributed among qualifying parties according to a system of proportional representation.

However, in December 2005 the parliament voted to reform the electoral law to reinstate full proportional representation. The revised election system introduced three separate thresholds for parties and coalitions to qualify for seats in parliament: Smaller parties that belong to a coalition must obtain at least 2 percent of the national vote, stand-alone parties must obtain at least 4 percent, and coalitions as a whole must obtain at least 10 percent.

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C

Judiciary

Italy has a Supreme Court of Cassation (Corte Supreme di Cassazione), which is the highest court of appeal in all cases except those concerning the constitution. There is also a constitutional court, which is analogous in function to the Supreme Court of the United States, and is composed of 15 judges. Five of the judges are appointed by the president of the republic, five by the Senate and Chamber of Deputies jointly, and five by the supreme law courts. The criminal justice system includes district courts, tribunals, and courts of appeal.

D

Local Government

Italy is divided into 20 regions, which are subdivided into a total of 94 provinces. Each region is governed by an executive responsible to a popularly elected council. The regional governments have considerable authority. The chief executive of each of the provinces, the prefect, is appointed by, and answerable to, the central government and in fact has little power. An elected council and a provincial executive committee administer each province. Every part of Italy forms a portion of a commune, the basic unit of local government, which may range in size from a small village to a large city such as Naples. Each commune is governed by a communal council elected for a four-year term by universal suffrage. Each council elects a mayor.

E

Political Parties

During the first half of the 1990s, in the face of widespread political scandal, Italy moved from a coalition system of politics that had long been dominated by a single party to a more splintered system of powerful new parties and alliances. The centrist Christian Democratic Party, which had been part of 52 consecutive coalitions that had ruled Italy since 1948, dissolved in January 1994. Its members formed two separate parties, the Popular Party and the Christian Democratic Center Party.

A new party called Forza Italia (“Go, Italy”), led by media magnate Silvio Berlusconi, emerged as the leading party of center-right coalitions that won national elections in 1994 and 2001. It allied with parties such as the far-right National Alliance, a successor of the neo-Fascist Italian Social Movement, and the Northern League, which advocated increased regional autonomy. The major left-wing party became the Democratic Party of the Left, the new name adopted in 1991 by the Italian Communists, one of the largest Communist parties in Western Europe. The party renounced its Communist past and adopted more moderate policies, but a smaller splinter group, the Communist Refoundation, continued to espouse Marxist principles. The Democratic Party of the Left led center-left coalitions that won national elections in 1996 and 2006. Berlusconi’s new center-right People of Freedom Party (PDL), formed in 2007 as a merger between Forza Italia and the National Alliance, won national elections that were held three years early, in 2008.

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