Since the entry into force of the 1948 Italian republican constitution, there have been several attempts to reform the provisions on state organization - especially the functioning of the parliament - and the electoral system. In the Italian political system, change is difficult due to the rigidity of the constitution, but both the decisions of the Constitutional Court and the abrogative referendum make it possible to amend the normative text. Despite many efforts, the bicameral nature of the legislature, its relations to the executive power remained unchanged, only the number of members in both houses was significantly reduced as a result of the 2020 constitutional referendum.
The operation of the two chambers is characterized by perfect bicameralism, as a result of which the law-making process is prolonged very often. In the Italian system of separations of power, the government does not have legislative powers, but it can contribute to increasing the speed of legislation by issuing a decree with the force of law within a specified period of time, in order to achieve specified goals, which is subject to a subsequent approval of the parliament within sixty days of its promulgation. In such cases, only one chamber has to conduct the procedure, the other chamber mostly merely ratifies the decision - thus, in practice, a unicameral tendency develops within the formal framework of bicameralism.
During the reforms of the electoral systems, the majority and proportional representation system has changed several times, and the electoral law of 2017, called Rosatellum, applies a mixed voting system/Grabenwahlsystem, but in a more complicated way than its predecessors. The representatives are elected in a party-list proportional and relative majority individual electoral district system, separately from each other. Due to the very high number of political parties, securing a parliamentary majority and establishing a stable government is difficult. In this regard, the results of the 2022 parliamentary elections may lead to change. Party alliances were formed in both the left and center-right camps, and the center-right won a greater proportion in both houses of the parliament. This creates an opportunity for stable governance, although the political balance of power within the coalitions is different. The political camp of the center-left is currently more fragmented compared to the alliance of the center-right parties, but several parties also won seats in the parliament as independent candidates.
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Keywords: Italy, electoral system, constitutional amendement, popular referendum, party system
Katalin Egresi, Associate professor, Széchenyi István University egresi.katalin@ga.sze.hu.
Zsolt Szabó, Associate professor, Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary szabo.zsolt@kre.hu.
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The literature dealing with special electoral rules for minorities typically groups the models of certain countries on the basis of the origin of the guaranteed mandate versus the preferential mandate, or highlights one specific electoral instrument (e.g. "preferential entry threshold") and makes a grouping based on this. This "well-known" grouping approaches the question from the point of view of the possibility and result of obtaining a mandate, i.e. the outcome of the election. According to our point of view, the grouping of the special electoral law regulations concerning minorities can also be done along a different logic, such as the guaranteed mandate acquisition, or on the basis of some specific electoral law solution. This study intends to present this different logic and to illustrate the main categories through some examples. There are basically two sides to suffrage. Active suffrage means the right to vote, while passive suffrage means the ability to be elected. The basis of our grouping is whether the special legal regulation appears in the regulation of active or passive suffrage, which serves the purpose of enabling minority representation in legislation. Based on this, in systems based on direct election, we have identified two main sets of preferential electoral regulations for minorities, the highlighting (active) and the integrative (passive) models. The main specialty of preferential systems is that minority voters can cast their votes separately from non-minority voters in a certain branch of the election, so the exercise of active suffrage is the most important specificity of these rules. In the case of integrative systems, there are no special regulations on the side of active suffrage, but on the passive side, i.e. on the side of those who can be elected, special electoral rules are applied by the legislator, such as a more favorable entry threshold or special rules for the composition of party lists. The preferential suffrage rule for minorities does not apply here to the definition of the community of active suffragists, but the passive side of suffrage, i.e. the nominating organizations that can be elected by minority voters (or some of them, which are of a minority nature) receive special electoral regulation.
Keywords: electoral law, electoral system, parliament, minority law, contstitunal law.
Tamás Farkas György, Senior lecturer, Faculty of Law of the Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary, Institute of Public Law, Department of Constitutional Law and Ecclesiastical Law, farkas.gyorgy.tamas@kre.hu.
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