Andrea Pedrazzani

Horses and hippos: Why Italian government bills change in the legislative arena, 1987-2006

Scholars interested in legislative processes pay relatively little attention to the changes made to bills in parliamentary democracies. On the one hand, comparative research has often described parliamentary institutions as ineffectual vis-a-vis cabinets throughout the lawmaking process; on the other hand, for a long time the rational choice literature has focused more on the formal rules regulating amendatory activity than on amendatory activity itself. Hence, very few studies have tried to explain how much government bills are altered in parliament and why. This article investigates the changes made to governmental legislation in Italy. Taking the modifications occurring during the legislative process as the dependent variable, a number of explanatory hypotheses derived from both existing scholarship and original arguments are discussed and tested. This also allows the identification of some usually unobserved aspects of the decision-making process within the cabinet. The findings can also be relevant for comparative research since Italy has been characterised during the period under scrutiny (1987–2006) by two distinct electoral systems, two extremely different party systems (pivotal and alternational), governments with various ideological orientations and range, and both partisan and technical ministers.

Setting Parliamentary Calendars: How Parties Allocate Time for Plenary Debates on Bills

Compared to other aspects of agenda control, the organisation of legislative calendars has received scarce scholarly attention. However, setting the floor timetable affects parliament’s decisions and may therefore become crucial for understanding the policy-making process better. This article examines the allocation of speaking time for plenary debates on bills by combining an interparty perspective with a focus on the agenda-setting powers of collective directing bodies in the parliament. It shows that, due to time pressures, parties have to make explicit trade-offs among bill proposals. Using an original dataset including information about 472 bill proposals scheduled for floor debates in three Italian legislative terms in the period 2001–13, the article provides evidence that parties agree to schedule longer debates for divisive and salient issues, while they decide to move more quickly on less divisive proposals.

Economic crisis and lawmaking. The impact of crisis on legislative agenda in Italy

ABSTRACT Major economic crises are focal events that often drive changes in various aspects of political systems. Although extensive work has been done to investigate the effect of exogenous shocks on political phenomena such as government termination, public opinion and policy outcomes, the impact of major crises on the process of policymaking has so far received scarce attention. Building on existing literature on policy agendas and legislative organization, this paper explores how the Eurozone crisis has affected the legislative agenda of the Italian parliament. The data used include information on the 1,110 bills submitted to parliament during Legislature XVI (2008–2013). Our analysis shows that, with the worsening of the crisis, bill proposals related to macroeconomic issues become increasingly more likely to enter the legislative agenda, displacing legislation dealing with other topics. Our argument is corroborated by a comparison between Legislature XVI and a pre-crisis legislature (2001–2006), as in the latter term the legislative agenda follows different patterns.

Italian candidates under the Rosato mixed electoral system. In search of personal votes in the plurality tier

ABSTRACT The Rosato law has established a new electoral system featuring single-member districts (S.M.Ds) along with a prevailing proportional tier. S.M.Ds are typically associated with individual incentives to cultivate a personal vote and with a more direct link between representatives and their local constituency. This article investigates patterns of personalized votes in the Italian elections of March 2018 by analysing voting data about candidates for the Chamber of Deputies who ran in the plurality tier. Results reveal that only a minor – although not negligible – portion of Italian voters cast their ballot for an individual candidate only, and that these votes had almost no impact on the outcomes of competition in S.M.Ds. Moreover, some interesting differences across geographical areas, parties and coalitions emerge in the use of personalized vote.