A PREMIER WITHOUT PARLIAMENT: THE LEGISLATIVE PROCESS IN THE ITALIAN SECOND REPUBLIC

Abstract

Italy is rightly considered as an ideal type case of the presidentialization process that is changing many parliamentary democracies, with the quasi-direct election of the Prime Minister and the strengthening of his hold on both the party and the government. Yet, a stronger, premier-centred government also means depriving Parliament of many of its long entrenched prerogatives. This article analyses how the executive has gained control of the legislative function, through the expansion of decree laws and delegated legislation. Executive predominance, however, has also alienated the loyalty of the Prime Minister's majority, thus resulting in a «divided Premier». As it is often the case with the American presidential system, strong leaders may become very weak if they lack parliamentary support. A lesson Silvio Berlusconi has had to learn at his own expenses. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

Headnote

Italy is rightly considered as an ideal type case of the presidentialization process that is changing many parliamentary democracies, with the quasi-direct election of the Prime Minister and the strengthening of his hold on both the party and the government. Yet, a stronger, premier-centred government also means depriving Parliament of many of its long entrenched prerogatives. This article analyses how the executive has gained control of the legislative function, through the expansion of decree laws and delegated legislation. Executive predominance, however, has also alienated the loyalty of the Prime Minister's majority, thus resulting in a «divided Premier». As it is often the case with the American presidential system, strong leaders may become very weak if they lack parliamentary support. A lesson Silvio Berlusconi has had to learn at his own expenses.

Key words: Italy, presidentialization, premier, parliament, legislative process.

i Introduction

On the 16th of November, the Italian Prime Minister walked up the stairs of the Quirinale to abruptly put an end to the cabinet he had been presiding over for the past three and a half years.2 Berlusconi's resignation came in the wake of a dramatic financial crisis, which had brought his popularity rate down to unprecedented lows. While already shaken by a sequel of scandals relating to the Cavaliere's turbulent sexual life, the government's credibility plummeted once it became clear that its leader had become the laughing stock of the international community. A disastrous public opinion rating was thus one of the key factors in the downfall of Berlusconi, quite an ironic exit for the man who had ruled Italy for almost twenty years also thanks to his skills as a «great communicator».

Another factor, which contributed to the Prime Minister's defeat, was the weakening of his control over his party. In the fall of 2007, in a bold effort to counteract the centre-left coalition's rising consensus, Berlusconi had disbanded his personal party, Forza Italia, only to found a larger party incorporating his former right wing allies. At first, this move seemed to be highly successful. Also thanks to the renewed appeal of Berlusconi's Popolo della liberté, the centre-right coalition managed to turn the spring 2006 national elections into a virtual tie. Prodi's government hardly lasted two years and, at the ensuing elections on 13-14 April of 2008, Berlusconi carried a landslide victory. However, it took only a few months to realize that the Prime Minister's hold on the new party was quite different than the one he had enjoyed over Forza Italia. After a bitter internal fight conducted from his influential institutional seat as the House Speaker, Gianfranco Fini left the party he had co-founded with Berlusconi and gave birth to a new political formation. The man who had deeply innovated Italian party politics by creating an organization he could control as a personal property, suddenly woke up to the ordinary nightmare of disruptive feuds among competing factions.

A third, decisive factor in the ousting of Berlusconi was his loss of a parliamentary majority. Again, this came as a tough blow for a leader who, at the 2010 elections, had scored the largest numerical majority in the Italian republican history. The Prime Minister who had been repeatedly accused of ruthlessly controlling MPs from his camp as well as from the opposition through all sorts of corrupted practices, was eventually put out of business by a handful of «traitors». That very Parliament which had been, for so many years, subdued and marginalized by the government's encompassing legislative activity at last turned into the theatre - and the actor - of Berlusconi's epilogue.

Widespread popular discontent, lack of party discipline and parliamentary revolt, while the main factors for the Premier's dismissal, also constitute a reversal in all major trends of Italy's presidentialized regime. In fact, Italy has been considered as an ideal type case for the theoretical framework, which defines presidentialization as a de facto transformation of modern parliamentary democracy into a premier-centred political system. According to Poguntke and Webb,3 presidentialization refers to the emerging of the Prime Minister as a quasi-presidential leader through three distinct and converging arenas: direct access to the electoral constituency through various forms of media populism, a monocratic as well as charismatic grip upon the party organization, and - last not least - the strengthening of governmental control over the legislative process, thus transforming the cabinet office in the true centre of policy-making power. In all of these three arenas, Berlusconi had emerged as an indisputable winner, largely contributing to turning Italy's long established «integral parliamentarism» into a front-runner toward the age of presidentialization.4 However, on the other hand, Berlusconi's downfall demonstrates that those very factors, which contributed to his irresistible ascent, also nurtured the seeds for his demise.

In more general terms many elements of Italian politics have seemed to lead to a more presidentialized form of government. A long march of administrative reforms reinforced the executive since the eighties, accompanying the transformations of the role and functions of prime minister.5 No less relevant are changes affecting the electoral system, where party system bipolarization, the formation of pre-electoral instead of postelectoral coalitions, and the indication of the names of leaders within the symbols shown in each ballot, brought about a kind of informal direct election of the prime minister.6 As far as the legislative process is concerned, many scholars have noted a relevant shift of prerogatives from the parliament to governmental branch in the last three decades: emergency bills have become more and more numerous, thus representing a predominant part of the total legislative bills, while delegated legislation has largely expanded, especially to respond to necessities imposed by EU regulatory activities and other important structural reforms. This trend seems to remind a wider trend of deparlamentarization in contemporary old and new democracies, identified by some political scientists as the decline of the legislative assemblies.8

In this article, I shall analyse the evolution of the legislative process during the Berlusconi era through a number of indicators testifying to the emerging of the Prime-ministerial executive as the dominant actor, gradually expropriating both chambers of their original law-making leverage. I shall argue that, by concentrating most powers in the hands of his cabinet, the Premier ended up alienating the loyalty of his own parliamentary majority. This, in turn, fed a spiral of mutual distrust, resulting in the government's all the more frequent attempts to force parliamentary approval of its own legislation through the extreme means of a confidence vote. The cabinet could thus further strengthen its predominance, yet only at the cost of weakening its parliamentary roots.9

One should not be surprised that, when the Premier lost his populist appeal as well as the full control of his party, the Parliament would fight back to vindicate it's foremost prerogative: sending the Prime minister home.

2 The GOVERNMENT LEGISLATOR: a decree-laws analysis

Legislation by means of a decree has represented the principal field of legislative expansion of the Italian government.10 In fact, as has been noted in comparative analysis, 'probably in no other advanced industrialized democracy has government use of decree legislation processes been as marked as it has in Italy since the mid 1970s.11 A sort of «permanent use of decrees» seems to be a common feature in the Italian republican history, due the necessity to find a political solution to the difficult executive/legislative relations.12

The decrees escalation has been the object of widespread and repeated criticism on various grounds. The committee for the legislation of the XVI legislatures, an internal body of the Italian Parliament, has classified 24 out of 31 decree-conversion laws produced during the first year of the IV Berlusconi government as 'heterogeneous'.13 Furthermore, emergency decrees have often been promulgated with no good reasons of 'necessity and urgency', though such principles should constitute the very premise for their existence: 'in practice, the governments often used decree laws simply because they were not capable of getting their bills approved in Parliament quickly enough and without too many amendments'.14

Looking at the decree law procedure, the executive takes advantage of emergency bills as they become law immediately and remain in effect for sixty days before parliamentary approval, 'allowing the government to lay down temporarily its priorities on the crowded legislative parliamentary agenda'.15 Originally, executive emergency decrees proliferated also thanks to the common practice of 'reiterating' them after their limited period of validity. Whenever the decrees were not converted into laws within the terms provided by the Constitution, they were issued again and were therefore maintained as a law for another two months, consequently overloading parliamentary activities through a continuous 'mechanism of decayreiteration'.16 Since the VI legislature (1972-1976), the number of emergency bills has been increasing constantly: 'from 26 decrees proposed during the first legislature, which lasted five years (1948-1953), we notice more than one hundred decrees in the VI legislature, almost five hundred in the XI legislature, and almost six hundred in the XII legislature, which both lasted only two years (1992-1994 and 1994-1996)'.17

The practice of reiterating decrees was shortly interrupted when a sentence promulgated in 1996 by the Italian Supreme Court stated that the practice of decree reiteration had altered the basic features of the Italian form of government, by removing the attribution of ordinary legislation from the Parliament. However, the main focus of the Court's intervention were reiterated bills, as the Court ruled that the reissue of decree laws reproducing the content of a lapsed decree law was unconstitutional unless there were new or unexpected circumstances to consider.

While then it may have at first appeared that the Court had removed 'one of the main tools that the government had previously used to gain leverage in legislative bargaining',18 the strong quantitative reduction in the use of emergency bills after 1996 (Table 1) - the so-called passage from the flood to the dropper19 - only concerns a decrease in reiterated bills, whereas the number of promulgated decrees appears to have remained constant over the years. Moreover, when considering the number of ordinary laws in relation to other normative sources, we can observe a significant growth in decree-laws during the years 1996-2011 (Table 1), as they constitute more than 16 % of the overall legislation.

When we combine the number of decree laws with that of delegated legislation, the other main source of governmental law making, primary legislation is 57 % of the overall normative production.

While quantitative evidence is impressive, an even more telling picture comes from the relevance of the arenas where emergency measures are applied. Executive decrees are used to implement the most visible commitments made during the electoral campaigns by the winning coalition, as well as major policy decisions on financial grounds or wide-ranging reforms.20 It is what occurred, for example, in the case of the so-called "manovra d'estate", a decree that anticipated the financial law for 2009, or in the case of the reform of public administration launched by the Minister Brunetta. Critical issues regarding individual rights are not excluded, as was shown by the emergency decree regarding the 'Case Englaro',21 enacted in order to prevent the death of a woman who had been in a vegetative state for sixteen years. This was indeed such an extreme case that the President of the Republic Giorgio Napolitano refused to sign it on the grounds that such a sensitive issue had to be first fully debated by Parliament.22

Whatever the nature of their object, emergency decrees prove to be particularly problematic with respect to the relation between the executive and the parliamentary body as it reduces the opportunities for discussion and compromise to a minimum.

This is all the more the case when the government chooses to avoid whatever form of parliamentary intervention by seeking approval of a bill through a vote of confidence, the shortest way to 'overcome dissension inside the majority as well as the opposition's obstructionism',23 forcing the Parliament to pass a totally pre-defined document.24 During the XVI legislature, the IV Berlusconi government went as far as calling for a vote of confidence for about a third of the procedures of decree conversion (22 out of 74). As can be noted in Table 2, the number of votes of confidence associated with the approval of decree laws is significantly higher in the first two years of the XVI legislature.25

This may at first look as a paradox, as the number of decree laws approved through a confidence vote grows in spite of the sharp numerical rise of the government's majority in Parliament. The use of decree laws thus appears as a way to reinforce the government against its own majority.26

3 Delegated legislation

The analysis of government decrees needs to cover another established instrument of law making: legislative decrees. As regulated by article 76 of the Italian Constitution, the Parliament grants the Government the power to legislate for a limited time and on a specific policy issue, on the basis of a parliamentary directive establishing the subject, principles, and time of such delegation. From a procedural perspective, the legislative decree represents an act produced by the government because of the complexity of the issue and is executed on the basis of principles and time restrictions indicated by the Parliament. However, such a scheme has been contradicted in practice. In fact, the use of legislative decrees has been generalized with no reference to any standard of technical complexity. With the complicity of the Supreme Court, parliamentary guidelines have also become increasingly imprecise, thereby resulting in no effective constraints on government action.27 As far as temporal limits are concerned, such directives have been so vague that the government could also correct its own legislative decrees, without the need for another law for delegation.

In spite of constitutional constraints, delegated laws have thus followed a route similar to decree laws, as they have often regarded 'subjects not sufficiently defined or not defined, or have been based on vague and fleeting principles'.28 All the more frequently, delegated legislation has ended up representing a blank cheque in favour of the executive.29

In particular, the number of delegated decrees has been 'blown-up' during the eleventh legislature, when, after Tangentopoli, the government becomes the actor promoting political innovation, stimulating reforms in many fields of the Italian political system.30 As we can see in Table 3, the massive utilization of legislative decrees began in the nineties as a response, on one hand, to the necessity to ratify a large amount of European directives and, on the other hand, to pursue a vast number of major reform policies within the Italian political system. Therefore, it can be said that Italian transition governments have used delegated legislation to provide the most relevant elements of 'discontinuity' with respect to the First Republic,31 as well as a way to skip the parliamentary traps of ordinary law-making32 and realize 'the principal programmatic lines of the various governments'.33

Table 3 shows the rise in number of legislative decrees during the Second Republic. With regard to the contents of legislative decrees, the most numerous category is represented by decrees that implement European Union acts: 502 of the 1,080 decrees produced during the period from 1996 to 2011 (45 % of the total amount) belong to such category (Table 4). This is all the more important when considering the crucial role that European legislation has achieved in all matters of policy making, from financial decisions to a vast array of regulatory policies. While a residual class of legislative decrees is devoted to the implementation of the Statutes promulgated by the Special Italian Regions, the most significant group is constituted by those decrees that are based on a regular delegation from the Parliament, without any external or constitutional input, as it is the case with European legislation or regional statutes. They add up to 452 decrees, demonstrating how delegated legislation has been used for a large array of political ends, including some of the most critical political issues, as it was the case with new provisions for tax regulation in 2003 or the reform of the radio and television broadcasting system in 2004.

4 Regulating parliament

In light of so sharp a rise in direct governmental legislation, in the forms of decree-laws and delegated legislation, one should not be surprised that a main battlefield between government and Parliament, over the past twenty years, is represented by the attempts by the executive to curb procedural rules giving both chambers the upper hand in setting the legislative agenda as well as through committee and floor deliberation. All of these parliamentary prerogatives have been the object of a far-reaching process of regulatory reforms starting in 1988 and culminating in the sweeping changes enacted in 1998. Key turning points are represented by new procedures of law-making tending to construct a fast lane for legislative proposals initiated by the cabinet,34 and the abolition of the secret ballot, an instrument used by dissident members of Parliament to blackmail the executive. On the whole, the government's agenda setting power has been greatly increased, at least with respect to the First Republic's «integral parliamentarism», when assembly work was mainly under the control of the conference of party whips.35

The changes brought about in the early years of the Second Republic, however, seem not to have been sufficient to offer the government control over its own majority. The debate on further reform of parliamentary regulation has remained one of the hot topics in the overall political confrontation, with several proposals put forward aiming to render executive action faster and more effective. At the end of the XIV legislature, the President of the Senate Marcello Pera produced a document entitled 'Main Lines for the Reform of the Regulation of the Senate of Republic',36 wherein he proposed the definition of a sort of 'Statute of Government in Parliament'. In particular, new rules were suggested that would introduce relevant advantages for bills initiated by the executive. More recently, a large number of proposals were presented with the aim of strengthening the executive in the definition of the parliamentary agenda and in the deliberative process, thereby assuring its right to determine 'most of the issues dealt with in Parliament as well as to impose fixed times for the exam and the definitive approval of law proposals which take priority'.37

The proposals from the Popolo delle Liberté gave particular attention to the necessity of restructuring the legislative process. For example, the objective of the proposal Gasparri-Quagliariello is to attribute a special position to executive bills so that they would be examined and concluded necessarily within sixty days from the allocation to the competent commission. It is significant to note that the duration of sixty days is the same time provided to convert emergency decrees into laws. In this manner, all governmental legislation would in fact be assimilated to a de facto emergency decree. Moreover, it was proposed to attribute a central role in defining the parliamentary agenda to the government, so that 'from a formal point of view, it is assured more time for the executive in the ordinary law-making if compared with minority groups or single members'.38

Berlusconi himself has expressly called for a drastic change in parliamentary rules in the direction of 'providing the majority with adequate procedures for the approval of its proposals'. In declaring his impatience with Parliamentary procedures, Berlusconi went so far as suggesting that individual members' votes should be abolished and party leaders be able to vote for their entire group. Such an extreme request aroused strong criticism, and the opposition of Gianfranco Fini, Berlusconi's ally and the President of the Chamber of Deputies, forced Berlusconi to backtrack.39

New proposals to change parliamentary regulations derive from the difficult control of parliamentary majority by the government. Indeed, formal changes have not been sufficient to strengthen the role of the executive in the ordinary legislative process. Table 6 shows quite a low success rate both for the proposals coming from the executive and Mps. In a context marked by parties in crisis and the personalisation of politics, it is no surprise that there is growing competition between individual members of parliament that leads to a further increase in proposals of law. Between the XIII and XVI legislature, MPs were responsible for more than 90 % of the proposals put forward with a peak at 95.7 % during the 4th Berlusconi government. As we have seen, most of these proposals are destined to never become law, serving a more propagandistic or symbolic function. In fact, the monthly average of draft proposals has increased, doubling in number from the eighties to the nineties and reaching over 250 per month in the last ten years.40 After Tangentopoli, however, only a small percentage of MPs' proposals actually passed, the figure remaining below one per cent for some legislatures.41 At the same time, the probabilities of governmental bills being translated into law reduce. For example, in the XIII legislature less than half of the proposals coming from the executive become law, while in the XV legislature only a third of the bills presented by the government was successful. During the period 1996-2010, approximately fifty per cent of the proposals were rejected (Table 6).

The failure to bring about more substantial reforms in the rules governing the relationship between the executive and the assembly is certainly among the main reason for the eventual collapse of the majoritarian experiment in the Second Republic. As can be read in a proposal from the Pdl, the reform of parliamentary rules aimed at 'changing the concrete configuration of the form of government in a more subtle and incisive way than the definition of new constitutional dispositions'.42 Such an aim could not, in fact, be fulfilled, while the outright pressure for new rules to subdue Parliament certainly contributed to a growing discontent within the rank and files of the government's own majority. Unable to steer its legislative agenda in Parliament with the overt and cohesive support from its majority, the government ended up relying all the more on its own direct normative power, through emergency decrees and delegated legislation. A process, which could only further alienates the Prime Minister and his cabinet circle from his parliamentary base.

5 A DIVIDED PREMIER

During the Great Depression, as a consequence of a deep economic crisis which called for renewed leadership and also thanks to the early diffusion of the radio as a revolutionary means of communication, the American government became fully «presidentialized».43 That is, the presidency was reorganized, with new powers being delegated from Congress to the White House, while the President developed a personal and direct relationship with the citizens.44 The personal president, however, also had his own Achille's heel. A stronger president inevitably meant weaker parties and this, in turn, led to further severing the connection with the legislative branch, a function which had long been the prerogative of political parties.46 Things became all the more complicated whenever the House and/or the Senate were ruled by a different party than the one which had carried the presidential election. The other face of a stronger president often turned to be a divided government.

A similar situation seems to apply to the process of presidentialization impacting on many parliamentary democracies. Particularly in the Italian case, the transfer of power from the assembly to more and more personalized government is one of the most evident trends in the Second Republic. The use of emergency decrees and delegated legislation is peculiar for its frequency and heterogeneity: any anchorage to the principle of necessity and urgency has been lost and the government intervenes in a number of subjects through disputable techniques of law making.46 Yet if the Premier acquires new independent instruments of action, this represents also a response to the difficult control of his majority in parliament. Due to coalition fragmentation, legislative proposals coming from the executive shows a low success rate so that one bill on two does not reach final approval. And this happens in a framework of substantial devaluation of parliamentary legislation that limited the percentage of ordinary legislation on the overall law production. So while the Premier begins to appear as an interpreter of the country majority, thanks to the creation of a direct circuit of consensus between the leader and the electorate, he seems to lose the parliamentary support to realize his political program.

As leaders become more powerful, there is also a tendency to see this as a consequence of a direct electoral mandate, stressing personal responsibility and autonomy versus other institutional actors. Nevertheless «this sense of autonomy cuts both ways: while the leader is more independent of party, the party in the legislature might also feel more independent of the leader, and therefore be prepared to rebel. And while the leader can be very powerful at times of electoral and political advantage, s/he can also be very vulnerable at times of disadvantage».47 A tough lesson Berlusconi has had to learn at his own expenses.

Sidebar

Italija pogosto upraviceno velja za idealni primer procesa predsednistva, ki spreminja mnoge parlamentarne demokracije, s kvazi neposredno izvoljenim predsednikom vlade in njegovim vedno mocnejsim vplivom tako na vlado kot tudi na Parlament. Vendar pa mocnejsa, okoli predsednika osredotocena viada hkrati pomeni tudi prikrajsanje mnogih dolgo zakoreninjenih pravic parlamenta. Pricujoci prispevek analizira procese, v katerih je izvrsilna oblast pridobila nadzor nad zakonodajno funkcijo skozi razsiritve delegirane zakonodaje in uporabe odlokov. Dominanca izvrsne veje oblasti je hkrati odtujila lojalnost premierove vecine, kar povzroca t. i. »razdeljenega predsednika vlade«. Ameriski predsedniski sistem je pogost primer, da lahko mocni voditelji hitro postanejo zelo sibki, ce nimajo parlamentarne podpore. To pa je lekcija, ki se jo je Silvio Berlusconi naucil na lastne stroske.

Kljucne besede: Italija, predsednistvo, premier, Parlament, zakonodajni postopek.

Footnote

2 An early version of this article has been presented at the XVII Annual Conference of the Hungarian Political Science Association, Central European University, Budapest, May 20-21,2011.

Footnote

3 For a theoretical framework of the process of presidentialization of politics and a collection of case studies, see Thomas Poguntke and Paul D. Webb (eds.), The presidentialization of politics: a comparative study of modem democracies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

4 It is only after the rise of Silvio Berlusconi that the role of 'leader elected by people' was consolidated: "soon after the victory of centre-right coalition in 1994, Berlusconi outspokenly referred to himself as an elected Premier, a stance shared by a majority of the press. The centre-left coalition (...) was soon compelled to adjust to new rules of the game". See Mauro Calise, "Presidentialization, Italian Style" in The presidentialization of politics. A comparative study of modem democracies, eds. Thomas Poguntke and Paul D. Webb (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 91.

Footnote

5 Alessandro Pajno and Luisa Torchia, La riforma del governo (Bologna: II Mulino, 2000); Annarita Criscitiello, II cuore dei governi. Le politiche di riforma degli esecutivi in prospettiva comparata (Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 2004).

6 On the electoral rules introduced in the Second Republic see Roberto D'Alimonte and Stefano Bartolinl, Maggioritario finalmente? La transizione elettorale 1994-2001 (Bologna: II Mulino, 2002); Carlo Fusaro, Party System Developments and Electoral Legislation in Italy (1948-2009), Bulletin of Italian Politics, 1 (2009), 49-68.

7 It is the case of some post-communist countries in the last years. See the special issue on "Post Communist Parliaments: Change and Stability in the Second Decade", The Journal of Legislative Studies, 17, 2 (2011), and in particular the introductory article by David M. Olson and Gabriella llonszki.

8 Baldwin, D. J. Nicholas, "Concluding observations: legislative weakness, scrutinising strength?," The Journal of Legislative Studies, 10, 2-3 (2004), 295-302; Robert Elgie and John Stapleton, 'Testing the Decline of Parliament Thesis: Ireland 1923-2002," Political Studies, 54, 3 (2006), 482.

9 In Italy the Premier seems 'divided', suspended between the process that assures him of a sort of direct popular legitimacy and more decree powers, and an uncertain control of his parliamentary majority. See Fortunato Musella, II Premier diviso. Italia tra presidenzialismo e parlamentarismo (Milano: Université Bocconi - Egea, 2012).

Footnote

10 For an analysis of the explosion of the decree laws in Italy from the seventies see Franco Cazzola and Massimo Morisi, L'alluvione dei decreti. II processo legislativo tra settima e ottava legislatura (Miaño: Giuffrè, 1981); Paolo Caretti, "Il rafforzamento dell'esecutivo e la sua incidenza sulla forma di govemo parlamentare," in Le forme di govemo nei moderni ordinamenti policentrici, ed. Giancarlo Rolla (Milano: Giuffrè, 1991); Mauro Calise, "II governo," in Storia dell'ltalia repubblicana, ed. Francesco Barbagallo (Torino: Einaudi, 1997); Fortunato Musella, "Govemare senza il Parlamento? L'uso dei decreti legge nella lunga transizione italiana (1996-2012)," Rivista Italiana di Sclenza Política, 3 (2012), 457.

11 Amie Kreppei and Vincent Della Sala, "Dancing Without a Lead: Legislative Decrees in Italy," in Executive Decree Authority, eds. Matthew Shugart and John Carey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 175.

12 Fortunato Musella, "Governare senza il Parlamento? L'uso dei decreti legge nella lunga transizione italiana (1996-2012)," Rivista Italiana di Scienza Política, 3 (2012b), 466.

13 Camera dei Deputati, XVI Legislatura, Rapporto sull'attività svolta dal Comitato per la legislazione. Primo turno di Presidenza (26 maggio 2008-25 marzo 2009), 29. On this point see also Roberto Zaccaria and Enrico Albanesi, "II decreto-legge tra teoría e prassi," Forum di Quaderni Costituzionali, 2009, available at www.forumcostituzionale.it (10 October 2011).

1' Salvatore Vassallo, "Government under Berlusconi: The functioning of the core institution in Italy," West European Politics, 30, 4 (2007), 698.

15 See Francesco Zucchini, "Government alternation and legislative agenda setting. Lessons from Italian Politics,"American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, 31 August-3 September, 2006, 11.

16 Andrea Simoncini (ed.), L'emergenza infinita. La decretazione d'urgenza in Italia (Macerata: Eum, 2006), 21.

17 Marco Lazzarin and Gustavo Pizzetti "II decreto legge fra previsione costituzionale e prassi: la sentenza 360/1996." Available atwww.jus.unitn.it (1 October 2011).

Footnote

18 Gary W. Cox, William Heller, and Matthew D. McCubbins, "Agenda power in the Italian Chamber of Deputies, 1988-2000," Legislative Studies Quarterly, 33, 2 (2008), 181.

19 Salvatore Vassallo, "Le leggi del govemo. Come gli esecutivi della transizione hanno superato i veti incrociati," in Parlamento e processo legislativo in Italia, eds. Giliberto Capano and Marco Giuliani. (Bologna: II Mulino, 2001).

20 Francesco Marangoni, "Un uomo solo al comando? I primi otto mesi del govemo Berlusconi IV," in Política in Italia, eds. Gianfranco Baldini and Anna Cento Bull (Bologna: II Mulino, 2009), 159.

Footnote

2 Massimo Luciani, "L'emanazione presidenziale dei decreti-legge (spunti a partiré dal caso E.)," Politica del diritto, 3 (2009), 410.

22 Tania Groppi, "II caso Englaro: Un viaggio alie origini dello stato di diritto e ritomo." Politica del diritto, 15 (2009), 483-504; Federico Giustavo Pizzetti, "In margine ai profili costituzionali degli Ultimi sviluppi del caso Englaro: limiti della legge e «progetto di vita»." Politica del diritto, 15 (2009): 445-482.

23 Valerio Onida, "II mito delle riforme costituzionali", Il Mulino, 1 (2004), 23.

24 Nicola Lupo, "Emendamenti, maxi-emendamenti e questione di fiducia nelle legislature del maggioritario," in Le rególe del diritto parlamentare nella dialettica tra maggioranza e opposizione. Atti del convegno (Roma, 17 marzo 2006), eds. Eduardo Gianfrancesco and Nicola Lupo (Roma: Luiss University Press, 2007).

25 Although this paper concentrates attention on the Berlusconi era, it is relevant to underline that the last Italian technocratic governments show the same connection between frequent use of executive decrees and votes of confidence. See Fortunato Musella, "Governare senza il Parlamento? L'uso dei decreti legge nella lunga transizione italiana (1996-2012), Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica, 3 (2012), 471; Francesco Marangoni, 'From Fragile Majoritarianism to the 'technocratic Addendum': Some Data on the Legislative Activity of the Governments of the Sixteenth Legislature,' Contemporary Italian Politics, 5, 1 (2013), 71-81; Mattia Zulianiello, "When political parties decide not to govern: party strategies and the winners and losers of the Monti technocratic government," Contemporary Italian Politics, 5, 3 (2013), tba.

26 Giovanni Pitruzzella, (2006), "Decreto-legge e forma di govemo," in L'emergenza infinita. La decretazione d'urgenza in Italia, ed. Andrea Simoncini (Macerata: Eum, 2006), 71.

Footnote

27 Massimo Rubechi, "Gli atti 'equiparati' alia legge ordinaria." In La costruzione giurisprudenziale delle fonti del diritto ed. Lucia Califano (Fano: Aras edizioni, 2010).

28 Nicola Lupo, Dalla legge ai regolamenti. Lo sviluppo della potestà normativa del Governo nella disciplina delle pubbliche amministrazioni (Bologna: II Mulino, 2003), 346.

29 Paolo Caretti (ed.), Osservatorio sulle fonti 2006. Le fonti statali: gli sviluppi di un decennio (Torino: Giappichelli, 2007).

30 Claudio De Fiores, Trasformazioni della delega legislativa e crisi delle catégorie normative (Padova: Cedam, 2001).

31 Giovanni Tarli Barbieri, "La delega legislativa nei suoi più recenti sviluppi," in Corte Costituzionale, La delega legislativa. Atti del Seminario svoltosi a Roma, Palazzo della Consulta, 24 ottobre 2008 (Milano: Giuffrè, 2009).

32 Giliberto Capano and Marco Giuliani (eds.), Parlamento e processo legislativo in Italia (Bologna: II Mulino, 2001); Francesco Zucchini, "Government alternation and legislative agenda setting. Lessons from Italian Politics," American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, 31 August-3 September, 2006.

33 Pietro Milazzo, "Uno sguardo sulle prassi e le tendenze della delega legislativa nel decennio. 19962007," in Osservatorio sulle fonti 2006. Le fonti statali: gli sviluppi di un decennio, ed. Paolo Caretti (Torino: Giappichelli, 2007), 87.

Footnote

34 Massimo Luciani, "II Parlamento negli anni Novanta," in S tori a d'ltalia. Annali 17: II Parlamento, ed. Luciano Violante (Torino: Einaudi, 2001); see also Chiara De Micheli and Luca Verzichelli, II Parlamento (Bologna: II Mulino, 2004).

35 Raffaella Leonardi, Robert Nanetti and Gianfranco Pasquino, "Institutionalization of Parliament and Parliamentarization of Parties in Italy," Legislative Studies Quarterly, 3,1 (1978), 167.

36 See the parliamentary document entitled "Linee direttrici per una Riforma del Regolamento del Senato della Repubblica", 10 October 2002, available at www.senato.it (10 November 2013).

37 Antonio Saitta, "Sulle proposte di modifica dei regolamenti pariamentari ad inizio di XVI legislatura", Associazione dei Costituzionalisti, 2008. Available at www.associazionedeicostituzionalisti.it (10 October 2011).

38 Camera dei deputati, Doc. II, n. 3,1 Luglio 2008.

Footnote

39 See Nuove rególe in Parlamento, alt di Fini alle proposte di Berlusconi, in Corriere della Sera, 10 March 2009.

40 Chiara De Micheli and Luca Verzichelli, II Parlamento (Bologna: II Mulino, 2004).

41 These data appear very significant, especially if one considers the process of reduction in the number of ordinary laws from the eleventh legislature until now. In fact many laws derive from the ratification of European acts or conversion of decree laws.

Footnote

42 Camera dei deputati, Doc. II, n. 3.

43 Thomas Poguntke and Paul Webb (eds.), The presidentialization of politics: a comparative study of modern democracies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 6.

44 On the presidential foundation of the American political system, see cfr. R. E. Neustadt, Presidential power: The politics of leadership, New York, John Wiley, 1963; A. M. Schlesinger, The Imperial Presidency, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1973; R. Pious, The American Presidency, New York, Basic Books, 1979; T. J. Lowi, The Personal President. Power Invested, Promise Unfulfilled, Ithaca-New York, Cornell University Press, 1985; J. K. Tulis, The Rethorical Presidency, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1987.

45 Bruce Ackerman, "New Separation of Powers," Harvard Law Review, 113 (2000), 633-725.

46 Vincenzo Lippolis, "Regolamenti parlamentan, forma di governo, innovazione istituzionale," in Quaderni costituzionali, 29,1 (2009), 115-119.

Footnote

47 Thomas Poguntke, Paul Webb, and Robin Kolodny, "The Presidentialization of Party Leadership? Evaluating Party Leadership and Party Government in the Democratic World," American Political Science Association, Seattle, 1-4 September, 2011.

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