Constitutional Fiddling
And it’s not us.
The Times - Immobilismo triumphs - yet again, by Rosemary Righter
Italians, in a fit of fear and loathing, have decided to ensure Italy remains ungovernable
One reason I’m linking to this is because it’s the first time I’ve ever found anything that made me feel like I had the slightest, tenuous grasp of what’s going on over there.
No matter how strong the majority — and in Italy, which has endured 61 shifting government coalitions since the War, strong majorities are rare — that is no guarantee that the government can carry out its programme. Italy’s “perfect bicameralism” gives the Senate and Chamber of Deputies equal powers, with the result that laws bounce back and forward between the two for months or years on end. …
These extreme checks and balances reflect the determination, in 1948, to ensure that no leader could abuse power as Mussolini had done. But they make Italy close to ungovernable. In essence, the Berlusconi reform would have given an Italian prime minister powers resembling those in Britain, changed the Senate into a regional body resembling the German Bundesrat, and clarified the relationship between the centre and the regions. Not exactly draconian; yet six out of ten voters gave it the thumbs down.
Why did they do it? No one has a good word for the way Italy is run, or rather not run. Everyone, from toddler to pensioner, shopkeeper to tycoon, pays a price for the near-impossibility of getting laws on to, or off, the statute books,–
They still managed to ban smoking, note.
– for the constant tussles between the centre and Italy’s power-hungry regions, and for the Byzantine complexity of a system designed to keep governments weak and unstable. Everyone pays, most people would add, except the amply remunerated politicians at the apex of a pyramid of patronage so vast that it pays the salaries of an unbelievable 450,000 Italians. The one universally popular item in the Berlusconi reform was the commitment to trim the exorbitant political bill by cutting membership in the lower house from 630 to 518 and removing 53 of the Senate’s 315 seats.
June 28th, 2006 at 9:39 am
All of which is why they take football so seriously. It’s much healthier for a country to have John Howard in charge, regular “colourful” exchanges in Parliament and pretty honest government all round. That way you can handle minor disappointments like losing a football match on a dodgy penalty. Italians don’t have that option.
June 29th, 2006 at 5:18 am
I wonder also whether the Italians invented “the dive”. They are awfully good at it. I don’t think we could ever compete at that level.
June 29th, 2006 at 8:16 am
Yeah, there’s a bunch of male singers named after it, “Il Divo”. Goes back at least to Inter Milan/Juvenntus of the 60s and “catenaccio”. Only way you could get a shot, some matches.