Italian Elections and Politics 2018: Yellow Tide

[Nanwe]

One question, I checked through the legislative decree and did indeed see the constituencies but not the number of deputies per plurinominal constituency, are those yet to be assigned? Or was it decided in a different decree? 

[Nanwe]

I'm trying to understand this reform, but it seems to me very weird and confusing. So, the senate will be reduced, and the election for congress will have a second round between the two most voted parties in the first round, right?

The Senate will be reduced in terms of Senators and, more importantly, of powers.
It will not be able to kick out the government anymore, and will focus exclusively on local matters, concerning the regions.

Right now, instead, the House and the Senate both discuss the exact same topics, can both give votes of confidence to the government. The only thing differentiating them is the electorate (only those 25 or older can vote for the Senate).
Oh, and also, right now any law has to be approved by both chambers. If even a comma is changed in either chamber, the other one has to approve it from scratch. This really affects the legislative process.


As for the electoral law, yes, the current law has a second round between the two top parties. But a recent agreement between Renzi and part of PD's minority included changes to that.

Hmm.. I'm starting to get it. I approve the part where the senate has it's powers and size reduced. Also, i think this new system is somewhat similar to Spain's bicameral system.
On the other hand, the change in the electoral law i think is ludicrous. Why not use the system is Germany, where part of the seats are elected by FPTP and the other in a proportional vote. I think this system is very wise because it joins governability with proportionality.

Except it doesn't. In Germany's model, the list votes compensate for the unproportionality of the single-member seats, essentially returning a proportional chamber. What you're referring to is Additional Member Syatems like Scotland's or Japan's. And iirc MMP was already used in Italy since 1994 until 2006 and it didn't guarantee more stability. I suppose the biggest issues of Italian politics are the weakness of the executive, the perfect bicameralism of the Parliament and/or the lack of internal cohesion of the parties

[Nanwe]

I hope that they will soon get what the Constitutional Court is telling them and make a fair and lasting electoral system instead of (in vain) trying to get around the clear requirements set by the court. Make it full PR and completely open lists, something like a return to the 1946-1993 law.

In principle I agree with you, but in the current context of Italian politics, this would be a recipe for disaster.

Why not just keep the constituencies drawn for the Itallicum (in which the number of seats goes from 3 to 9) without a majority bonus? Using D'Hont as the quota, you get a heavily corrected form of PR. I did that myself with the results from the 2014 EP election, and only 4 parties managed to enter Parliament (PD, M5S, FI, LN, NCD-UCD) from the PR lists and then the SVP from the uninominal seats in Trentino-Alto Adige. And in reality only the major three had any significant number of seats.