212

[Italy] Meloni’s dangerous constitutional change in Italy (www.politico.eu)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/politics@lemmy.world

15 comments fedilink hide all child comments

[Note: trying out /c/politics’ new international politics focus]

The Italian prime minister’s calculation isn’t hard to understand — her party has a comfortable lead in the polls, but it’s far from an overwhelming majority.

The optics are terrible: Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has made proposals for constitutional reform that are eerily reminiscent of another constitutional change made a century ago by Benito Mussolini.

Adopted in November 1923, Mussolini’s notorious Acerbo Law established that the party winning the largest share of the vote — even if only 25 percent — would get two-thirds of the seats in parliament. And after his party won the subsequent election — although intimidation and violence proved more important there than tampering with electoral law — the road to dictatorship was paved.

Meloni’s current proposal now echoes this Acerbo Law, as the Italian leader wants to automatically give the party with the highest percentage of votes a 55 percent share of the seats in parliament. In other words, as long as one party receives more votes than any other — even if that were, say, 20 percent of the national vote — it will be rewarded with outright parliamentary control.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] autotldr@lemmings.world 8 points 10 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Meloni’s current proposal now echoes this Acerbo Law, as the Italian leader wants to automatically give the party with the highest percentage of votes a 55 percent share of the seats in parliament.

In essence, this proposal would treat the whole of Italy like a single constituency in a first-past-the-post election, with the party winning a relative majority, however small, claiming safe control of parliament.

Italian commentators have made many good proposals on how to adjust the system to make governments more stable — cementing an artificially created majority headed by a directly elected prime minister isn’t one of them.

The bloc is paying a steep price for ignoring developments in Hungary in the early 2010s, when the ruling Fidesz party overhauled the country’s constitution without even asking Hungarians — no referendum was held.

The party then made endless legal changes to cement its power, including electoral arrangements to secure Fidesz a two-thirds majority in parliament.

The original article contains 948 words, the summary contains 190 words. Saved 80%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[-] 52fighters@sopuli.xyz 1 points 10 months ago

Fewer parties might mean less chaos in Italian politics.

this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2023

212 points (100.0% liked)

politics

19097 readers

1972 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

• Register To Vote

• Citizenship Resource Center

• Congressional Awards Program

• Federal Government Agencies

• Library of Congress Legislative Resources

• The White House

• U.S. House of Representatives

• U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

• News