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The Italian prime minister’s calculation isn’t hard to understand — her party has a comfortable lead in the polls, but it’s far from an overwhelming majority.
The optics are terrible: Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has made proposals for constitutional reform that are eerily reminiscent of another constitutional change made a century ago by Benito Mussolini.
Adopted in November 1923, Mussolini’s notorious Acerbo Law established that the party winning the largest share of the vote — even if only 25 percent — would get two-thirds of the seats in parliament. And after his party won the subsequent election — although intimidation and violence proved more important there than tampering with electoral law — the road to dictatorship was paved.
Meloni’s current proposal now echoes this Acerbo Law, as the Italian leader wants to automatically give the party with the highest percentage of votes a 55 percent share of the seats in parliament. In other words, as long as one party receives more votes than any other — even if that were, say, 20 percent of the national vote — it will be rewarded with outright parliamentary control.
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Well that is scary.
It basically means Italy would move to a two party system. Because in a winner-take-all system, any third party would join one of the bigger two in order to become the biggest, and thus avoid being completely left out.
Thanks for this breakdown. As an American I was confused as to why I found this concerning.
Yeah, sounds eerily similar to the mess the USA is in now. Worse, Italy was my retirement plan… I just can’t fathom this country going back to fascism.
Weird that the fascists in the birthplace of fascism are trying to do the things that worked for them last time.
I’m not understanding this:
If this sounds strange, that’s because it is. For example, if Poland had used this electoral system in its most recent election, the outgoing Law and Justice party would still control the Polish parliament, despite receiving only 35 percent of the national vote against the opposition’s 52 percent.
If the law and justice party received 35% of the votes and the opposition received 52%, then wouldn’t “the opposition” receive the 55% control of Poland’s parliament?
No, because the opposition is not a single party, but made up of 3 parties. Law and justice was still the biggest party, despite losing the election overall.
Ooooookay, that’s making a lot more sense now. Kind of an apples to apple pie comparison. Thank you.
The opposition received 55% of votes all combined, while Law and Justice was the single party receiving the most votes. So effectively, unless all other parties would get together in a single big party (making a very different election), Law and Order would now be ruling Poland and instead the opposition parties formed a coalition.
I’m starting to see where I went wrong here. I should have taken a closer look at the breakdown of the election they were using as an example. I just kind of assumed that “the opposition” was the (perhaps imperfectly translated) name of a single party or coalition of some kind.
It’s poorly worded, but look at their link which shows Poland’s election. It will make more sense. The party only received 35% of the votes (the rest of the votes going to opposing parties), but they’d suddenly own 55% of the seats due to this system.
Similarly, if the Netherlands had the same system, the far-right Party for Freedom would have 55% of the seats despite only winning 24% of the vote. A scary thought.
I’m on board now. Law and Justice had the largest single share at 35% and would thus receive 55% control of parliament under Italy’s proposed system, but with 52% of the population preferring a different mix of leadership.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Adopted in November 1923, Mussolini’s notorious Acerbo Law established that the party winning the largest share of the vote — even if only 25 percent — would get two-thirds of the seats in parliament.
Meloni’s current proposal now echoes this Acerbo Law, as the Italian leader wants to automatically give the party with the highest percentage of votes a 55 percent share of the seats in parliament.
In essence, this proposal would treat the whole of Italy like a single constituency in a first-past-the-post election, with the party winning a relative majority, however small, claiming safe control of parliament.
Italian commentators have made many good proposals on how to adjust the system to make governments more stable — cementing an artificially created majority headed by a directly elected prime minister isn’t one of them.
The bloc is paying a steep price for ignoring developments in Hungary in the early 2010s, when the ruling Fidesz party overhauled the country’s constitution without even asking Hungarians — no referendum was held.
The party then made endless legal changes to cement its power, including electoral arrangements to secure Fidesz a two-thirds majority in parliament.
The original article contains 948 words, the summary contains 190 words. Saved 80%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Fewer parties might mean less chaos in Italian politics.
