Italian Elections and Politics 2018: Yellow Tide

[Antonio the Sixth]

The key date is Monday, when he will announce his government's program and ask for the Senate's confidence. Normally it should pass, but you never know...

[Antonio the Sixth]

Renzi speaking before the Senate right now. Confidence vote to follow.

[Antonio the Sixth]

PASOK 2015

Oh, wrong thread...

UDC 2018!

[Antonio the Sixth]

Renzi gets 169 votes in his confidence vote.

So now it begins for good.


Changed the title for accuracy.

[Antonio the Sixth]

So Renzi got the confidence in the House as well yesterday. Now time to see what he is really capable of.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Haha, there might be some deal of truth in the ironic title I just put on for this thread!

Renzi visited a school yesterday, and the children greeted him with a made-for song, a sort of kiddie anthem (with lyrics such as "we clap our hands to greet you, President!" and "Matteo! Matteo!"). Opponents have already drawn parallels with fascism...

[Antonio the Sixth]

Electoral reform has passed in the House, and should soon be taken up by the Senate.

Also, Renzi unveiled a pretty major economic stimulus plan, which would cut the income tax on lower incomes by about 1000€ per year. There's also a 10% cut to the production tax, measures to speed up the payment of debts owed by the government, and later a blueprint for labor reform that would include universal unemployment benefits. Pretty big stuff all around.

All this apparently would be paid for by cuts to "unproductive" spending (the salaries of top ranking public administrators, etc), a raise in taxation on capital gains, and savings that will come from lowered interest rates. It's not fully clear whether it would be enough, but the government seems to believe it is.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Anything about the Senate in there? Either abolition or reducing its power?

The constitutional amendment abolishing the elective chamber and replacing it with a Bundesrat-like thing with a merely consultative role is due to be introduced in the upcoming days. However, the procedure for constitutional reform is very long in Italy, and will be even longer this time considering the opposition that it will inevitably steer. I don't think that will get passed within this year, tbh.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Lib Dem MEP Andrew Duff on Italy's new poor electoral law:

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http://andrewduff.blogactiv.eu/2014/03/13/out-of-the-pigsty-andrew-duff-questions-italys-new-electoral-law/

Yeah, the law is objectively pretty terrible, and I fault Renzi for not fighting more over gender parity and the runoff threshold. Still, we need an electoral system that works and actually provides us with a stable majority. A sh*tty electoral system is better than status quo.

[Antonio the Sixth]

This system is unbelievably awful. Just retaining the status quo for the Camera and reducing the power of the Senate would be preferable.

You do realize that if elections were held today under the current system, the parliament that would emerge would make Berlusconi indispensable for coalition building (and by Berlusconi, I mean that even PD + Alfano wouldn't work anymore)?

[Antonio the Sixth]

This system is unbelievably awful. Just retaining the status quo for the Camera and reducing the power of the Senate would be preferable.

You do realize that if elections were held today under the current system, the parliament that would emerge would make Berlusconi indispensable for coalition building (and by Berlusconi, I mean that even PD + Alfano wouldn't work anymore)?

I'm tempted to argue that that's an inherent problem with Berlusconi's continued existence as a political figure, not with the electoral system, but instead I'd just ask how you figure, because at least in the case of the Camera--by 'reducing the power of the Senate' I do mean making it so that it's no longer necessary for confidence and supply, among other things--I actually didn't realize that, no.

Last December, the Constitutional Court struck down the majority bonus that was allotted under the previous electoral law. This effectively turned the electoral system in both houses into fullscale PR. While stripping the Senate of its confidence and supply powers would indeed have been sufficient under the previous system, now that alone would achieve little.

[Antonio the Sixth]

It's not possible to legislate away the fact that a very large portion of the Italian electorate wants Berlusconi.

It's definitely worth a try. I'd really like to take principled stances like you guys, but Italy just can't afford our principles right now.

[Antonio the Sixth]

It's not possible to legislate away the fact that a very large portion of the Italian electorate wants Berlusconi.

It's definitely worth a try. I'd really like to take principled stances like you guys, but Italy just can't afford our principles right now.

But shouldn't they at least try to make something that does not contain the two things that the constitutional court has just struck down? This seems like the German EP system spectacle all over again. I really hope the court strikes down the new law before the election as well.

The difference between the previous system and Renzi's is that the majority bonus would be assigned only if a coalition wins over 37% of the votes.* Otherwise, a runoff is held between the two most voted coalitions. What the Court did not want is to have a coalition win less than 30% and still get 55% of seats, which was considered an excessive distorsion. I'm not sure if the 37% threshold will be considered enough, but it might well be.

*Yes, I know that's still too low. There's been extensive bargain with Berlusconi to raise it, this is the best he could get.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Yeah, this is definitely a possibility - and I agree it's very questionable. I still hope the law will be improved a bit in the Senate, and that Berlusconi will be forced to accept a higher runoff threshold and lower representation thresholds. Still, if it's up or down, I take this horrible law over the intrinsically better but unworkable current one.

[Antonio the Sixth]

It's not possible to legislate away the fact that a very large portion of the Italian electorate wants Berlusconi.

It's definitely worth a try. I'd really like to take principled stances like you guys, but Italy just can't afford our principles right now.

Why even hold elections, then? If it's so important that the electorate vote a particular way you might as well not have an electorate.

I wouldn't mind a benevolent dictatorship in Italy right now, to be fully honest.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Last December, the Constitutional Court struck down the majority bonus that was allotted under the previous electoral law. This effectively turned the electoral system in both houses into fullscale PR. While stripping the Senate of its confidence and supply powers would indeed have been sufficient under the previous system, now that alone would achieve little.

Are they removing the confidence and supply powers from the Senate?  And if not, what's the proposed electoral system for the Senate?

Yes, it's part of Renzi's plan. Basically, the idea is to turn the Senate into a Bundesrat-like unelected chamber of regions with merely consultative powers. However, this requires a constitutional amendment, which requires a veeery long procedures and potentially a referendum if things go wrong.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I never thought I would say this, but maybe they should just use FPTP.

Has anyone actually tried modelling what Italian elections might look like using FPTP (or AV, or the French system)?  Would M5S get squeezed out?

Well, it's hard to model since it implies drawing uninominal electoral districts, which Italy currently doesn't have. The closest thing we have are Provincie, local government units based on cities and their surroundings. M5S won 21 of them, against 40 for the left and 49 for the right (these tallies might be misleading because there's huge variations in population). So yeah, geography probably works somewhat in favor of the established coalitions.

[Antonio the Sixth]

The Italian Left is going to get horribly, horribly, horribly crushed at some point in the comparatively near future. This stuff is delusional and stupid.

"is going to"? The left is getting continuously humiliated since 2008 at least.

Anyway, the idea that the left is going to lose the next election because of an electoral reform they enacted (and which Berlusconi also supports) is... rather bizarre. That's not the way politics work.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I'm sorry if this comes across as at all rude, but why the fyck do you think so many Italians voted for a joke party last time round?

The reasons are multiple, complex, and rather well-known by now. I don't know where you get the idea that I'm defending the Italian political establishment, especially since I'm pretty sure you have read some of my posts that weren't extremely kind toward them. The point remains that the joke party in question has only made things worse since it got into the parliament - and by making things worse I mean actively preventing good legislation from passing. So, excuse me if I don't really care for moral principles at this point. I want Italy to get out of the mess it is in right now, and the only way for this to happen is to have a strong, stable left-wing government. It might not be morally right to craft an electoral system based on this need, but it is the only possibility to avoid total disaster. I'm sincerely sorry this is the way thing are, but it is.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Yeah but rigging the system in an undemocratic manner isn't really going to solve the problem.This system might as well create another Berlosconi undeserved majority, and even if it resulted in the out-come you wish for, no PD-lead government with its current establishment is going to be that stable left-wing government that brings Italy out of its crisis.

First of all, you can't say the proposed system is "rigged" or "undemocratic". This just isn't true. It's certainly deeply flawed and criticizable on many different respects, but you can't say it's undemocratic, unless you think British FPP is even undemocratic. The system assigns a majority bonus on a fairly rational basis, and in order to get it a coalition needs to garner a significant amount of support (about 3/8th of the vote) or win a 2-way runoff. It might not be entirely fair, but the same could be said of many systems.

And yes, I acknowledged before that there was a risk Berlusconi could win. I think that's a risk worth running. I guess that says a lot about how desperate I am, but yeah, at this point I'd rather flip a coin and have half a chance of saving Italy and half of dooming it, rather than staying in the situation we are right now.

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The left is doing exactly that with Renzi right now. Probably not in a way Al would approve of (neither do I really, though I acknowledge the improvement in relative term), but still. If Renzi had been the candidate in 2013, he'd have won handily and by now a good deal of problems would be behind us. But even then, it's not like it would reach 50%. Let's face it, it's pretty hard for an established political coalition to win over 50% of votes in any European country nowadays. Everywhere you have an anti-establishment populist force that messes up with the bipolarized system - even in Sweden, as you know! Thus there are basically three ways to deal with that situation: either you find ways to integrate the populist parties into the established system, like in Denmark (but that obviously can't work with M5S), or you accept the idea of having a quasi-permanent grand coalition in power (and we see how well it worked in Italy...), or you establish an electoral system that makes it possible for a majority to emerge. Most countries have opted for this solution in some way or another: France, the UK, and even Spain in a milder form. I don't see what's wrong with Italy doing the same thing. Again, we can discuss the technicalities of this system, but the general idea behind it isn't something particularly new or controversial.

[Antonio the Sixth]

It's certainly deeply flawed and criticizable on many different respects, but you can't say it's undemocratic, unless you think British FPP is even undemocratic.

I do think FPTP is undemocratic.

And I would tend to agree with that.

Still, I'd argue that this system is still less undemocratic than FPP thanks to the runoff provision.

[Antonio the Sixth]

PD candidates for EU elections

www.partitodemocratico.it/doc/267035/i-candidati-alle-elezioni-europee-2014.htm

All the list leaders are women. That's a pretty refreshing sign.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Antonio, what if anything do you know about these people as individuals?

Not much, tbh. Moretti and Bonafè are mid-level political figures who are sometimes mentioned in the news, but I can't remember which currents they hail from. The other three I hadn't heard about before.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Marcello Dell'Utri, a longtime friend of Berlusconi's and founding member of the original Forza Italia, fled the country yesterday while the Cassation Court was expected to deliver the final verdict on charges of association with the mafia. He was just caught in Lebanon and is expected to soon be extradited.

[Antonio the Sixth]

The Renzi effect: still have to pop the M5S bubble.

I'm not so sure it's really a bubble, at this point. Theoretically, this would be the ideal time for M5S to collapse, considering Renzi's dynamism and their own internal strifes. Yet their polling numbers have barely budged since 2013. It's pretty clear they now have a floor of about 15-20%, that even Renzi can't really crack.