Italy's coalition woes stem not from proportional voting
Mr Prodi wants to rid Italy of the system of proportional representation that was forced through parliament just before last April's general election by his predecessor, Silvio Berlusconi.Although Mr Prodi won the election, the result was the closest in modern Italian history. The voting system in use denied Mr Prodi's nine-party coalition a guaranteed majority in the Senate, the upper house.
That boosted the bargaining power of small parties in his coalition, allowing them to hold the government to ransom. Mutual mistrust has taken root in the cabinet, obstructing the execution of economic and foreign policy.
Name-dropping "Italy" is a common way to convict proportional voting of any variant.
Matt Shugart at Fruits and Votes argues that Italy's system is not a form of PR. This is because the pre-election coalition winning a plurality of nationwide votes is guaranteed 55% of total seats - the idea being to foster party aggregation in a country with historically weak governing coalitions. There is some level of PR within each coalition, however.
Whether or not Italy's electoral system can be called proportional voting, it is unlikely, at least in the short to medium term, that switching to winner-take-all (as was done in 1993 for the same reasons) will knock deal-breaker parties into line. Even with single-member plurality districts, which electoral engineers expect to generate two-party systems, Italy's hard left performed well enough to tank Prodi's government in 1998.
The cause of Italy's instability is not proportional voting. It's regionalism. Regardless of the electoral system in place, that regionalism is likely to persist for a long time.
Comments currently closed for Italy's coalition woes stem not from proportional voting
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Posted by mshugart, 2007-03-15 19:36:01 (6 years ago)
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I did gloss over the 25% PR tier used in the 90s. Apologies for that. If not regionalism, what factor would you say is the ultimate cause of instability (short of straight-up agency, i.e. the decision by some person to make a coalition unstable)?
Posted by Jack, 2007-03-15 13:31:23 (6 years ago) -
One more thing. That MSNBC story you quote shows almost total ignorance of electoral systems. Not only does it claim that the current system in Italy is PR, but it then says it failed to guarantee a majority in the Senate. Well, of course, if it was PR, it would not guarantee a majority for parties that did not win a majority of votes. On the other hand, because it was not PR, but regionalized plurality-bonus, Prodi's alliance won a majority of the elected seats. The Italian Senate has lifetime senators, too. And the right did better in the senate than in the chamber because of the regional allocation in the senate (compared to national in the lower house).
Posted by mshugart, 2007-03-15 12:45:40 (6 years ago) -
In the 2006 Italian system there was complete PR (with very low threshold) within each alliance. The reason the system as a whole was not PR is (as you indicate) that the first step in seat allocation was to give the alliance with a plurality of the vote a minimum of 55% of seats. So there was a very large plurality bonus and therefore a very strong incentive for every party to run as part of one of the two big blocs. The root of instability is not all regionalism, though that's certainly a factor. The Italian system was never fully single-member districts. From 1993 to 2001 it was 75% single member, the rest PR (partially compensatory). (I like the new format of this blog.)
Posted by mshugart, 2007-03-15 12:42:05 (6 years ago)
Italy is a very fragmented society and has been throughout the postwar period (and longer). Regionalism is part of that picture, for sure. I was only pointing out that it is not the whole picture.