Compromesso astorico: the role of the Senate after the Italian constitutional reform

Abstract

The article examines the content of the constitutional amendments with respect to the Senate. While symmetric bicameralism would be abolished with respect to policymaking, it would be preserved and even exacerbated with respect to constitutional revisions. The consequences of the first would be a reduction of the number of institutional veto players, which would lead to the facilitation of policy change, and an increase in the power of the government (who is the agenda setter). The content of the new policies remains unknown, as are the economic consequences of the proposed changes. Constitutional revisions would become more difficult, because the ideological distance between the Chamber of Deputies and Senate would be likely to increase (because of the mode of selection of Senators), while article 138, which specifies the requirements for amendment to the constitution, would remain the same. As a result, the role of the Italian Constitutional Court would also likely increase.

The time inconsistency of long constitutions: Evidence from the world

“…As a result, the core (the set of points that cannot be modified) is the intersection of the two cores. The figure demonstrates that if the ideological distance of the two chambers increases (the legislatures A and B move away from each other), the constitutional core expands (in agreement with the argument in Tsebelis’ () argument) while the difference of opinions of the two legislators will decrease the size of the core (Negretto's () argument).…”

“…First, doing so addresses arguments that the ideological distance between chambers affects the size of the core. Indeed, as Tsebelis () shows in the Italian context, changing the mode of election of the senate is likely to increase its ideological distance from the house, and make future constitutional revisions more difficult. The second reason for generalizing is to address arguments made by Negretto () that ideological diversity within parties may facilitate constitutional revisions, since necessary votes may be found by different legislators.…”

“…In case the political system (people, elected representatives) disagree with the current constitutional equilibrium, they can move out of it and amend the constitution. This was the case, for example, in the ‘fair trial’ constitutional act introduced in Italy in 1999 (Tsebelis ).…”

Was Mattarella worth the trouble? Explaining the failure of the 2016 Italian constitutional referendum

“…On the contrary, opposition parties were much more divided in the 2001 constitutional reform, which was proposed by the center-left coalition and was finally adopted through a popular referendum (Keating and Wilson, 2010). 3 According to Tsebelis (2002Tsebelis ( , 2017, it is impossible to establish a priori which strategy (i.e. consensual strategy vs. popular vote strategy) is more likely to succeed in changing the status quo (i.e.…”

Partial Constitutional Codes

“…First, doing so addresses arguments that the ideological distance between chambers affects the size of the core. Indeed, as Tsebelis (2016) shows in the Italian context, changing the mode of election of the senate is likely to increase its ideological distance from the house, and make future constitutional revisions more difficult. The second reason for generalizing is to address arguments made by Negretto (2012) that ideological diversity within parties may facilitate constitutional revisions, since necessary votes may be found by different legislators.…”