4 Presidentialization, Italian Style

Abstract

Italy represents, in most respects, an ideal-type for the presidentialization of the political system: the role of individual leaders has been greatly enhanced vis-à-vis their parties, while they have simultaneously gained a stronger hold over the executive branch of the state through the growing autonomy of the Prime Minister’s office and the exercise of an increasingly monocratic form of rule. Presidentialization has also deeply affected the electoral process: campaign style, media focus, and voting behaviour have all come to reflect an increasingly personalized form of leadership. Among the major causes of presidentialization, two—the internationalization of politics and the growth of the state—refer to general trends common to most industrial democracies. Thus, the presidentialization of the Italian political system must be seen, at least in part, as a response to the growing demands laid upon the political executive by the changing role of the state, both domestically and internationally. However, in order to account for the momentous and rapid nature of change in Italy, one needs to focus primarily upon the critical role played by the other two factors: the erosion of traditional social cleavage politics and the mediatization of politics.

Recent debates and advances in the scholarly examination of presidential institutions

“…In addition, charisma did not play a role during the initial phase of the parties' formation (with some exception for the Christian Democratic Union of Germany), and we can observe only small changes in the organizational construction of and power distribution within the parties (Lee, 2015). The same applies for another parliamentary system, namely, that of Italy, for which Massari (2015, p. 232) even identifies a party resistance against presidentialization, which is completely contrary to other assessments (Calise, 2005;Poguntke and Webb, 2015).…”

The Presidentialization of Political Parties

“…If, then, it can be said that Berlusconi falls within the paradigm of presidentialization as political and party leader, as the head of government he certainly falls back out of that same paradigm (Table 12.1). (Calise, 2005), given that from the 1996 elections onwards the two electoral coalitions had adopted the habit of politically indicating the heads of their respective coalitions as the candidates for premier. The 2001 elections also saw the formal introduction of the possibility to indicate on the electoral ballot the head of the coalition as candidate for President of the Council, which was intended as a sort of direct election of the prime minister (Donovan, 1998).…”

Leadership and Uncertainty Management in Politics

“…If, in France, the expansion of the President's powers at the expense of those of the Prime Minster (by the introduction in 2002 of the five-year presidential term) has altered the balance of power at the heart of the executive, it has not really threatened the integrity of the system -and one can add in passing that Sarkozy's successor at the Elysée, François Hollande, despite promises made during the election to return to a more conventional style of presidency, behaves in his turn like a 'super-president'. In Italy, on the other hand, the consolidation of the Prime Minister's powers turned the parliamentary system of government into a thinly disguised de facto presidential system (Calise, 2005). Having declared himself in favor of the semi-presidentialism of France's Fifth Republic, Berlusconi sought to turn Italy into a populist democracy.…”