What a day it was
by Lorenzo Piccoli
I must start by saying that my PhD research is on two important topics of politics: citizenship and federalism. Today was a day when the Italian Parliament did something quite important about both of these.
As for federalism, the Senate approved a drastic reduction in its own political leverage, cutting the number of senators from the current 320 directly elected to 95 representative members of the regions – majors (21) and regional council members (74) – and stripping the future senators from all the powers they currently have, leaving the Senate with a say on constitutional reforms only. This is a historic vote: my former supervisor seems to have been recorded saying that “this is Renzi’s biggest gamble so far: it’s rather rare that an established institution votes for its own suicide.” This was a necessary law: Italy’s bloated legislature was given extensive checks on executive power after World War II for essentially two reasons: (1) to prevent the return of a dictator like Benito Mussolini; (2) to give some shares of power to Italy’s second biggest party, the Italian Communist Party, in a system where it would systematically come out second after the Christian Democratic Party. The outcome of this compromise, though, has brought lawmakers slowing down the legislating process and toppling government after government whenever their interests were threatened, producing 63 different administrations since 1946. So these were the two main reasons to drastically downsize the Senate: its historical functions were outdated and it proved to be largely ineffective for lawmaking purposes. In the new system there will be only one chamber, the lower chamber, effectively deciding on legislation. Earlier this year, Renzi’s government approved a new electoral law for that chamber, so to have a clear majority coming out of it – the tension between clear majority and accurate representation of the people lies at the core of politics. Meanwhile, the new bill downsizing the senate will not become law until it is approved again, twice by the lower chamber of parliament, once by the Senate and then by citizens in a referendum next year that promises to be extremely contentious. In any case the new Senate won’t be operative before 2020.
The second update should interest all those following citizenship law. In the same day as the Upper Chamber was voting on its drastic downsizing, the Lower Chamber passed a new citizenship bill. The law gives the right to citizenship to (1) anyone who is born in Italy and has at least one parent legally residing in the EU (a soft version of ius soli) or, alternatively, (2) to those who are born or move to Italy before turning 12 and successfully complete five years in the Italian education system (ius culturae). Importantly, because the devil is in the details, the Italian EU long term permit seems to depend on especially strong “integration tests”, including income, accommodation and language tests. The effect would be that only a small fraction of long term resident parents qualify for this new ius soli procedure. More people would instead qualify for the ius culturae access track.
Lorenzo & his humble friends 
It’s worrying that this is your PhD research topic and that you examine aspects just looking at them single-handedly instead than from a perspective. It’s not necessary to have a critical stance about the reform – you could still be a supporter, but to do so would mean recognize what the full implications of the reform are. Something that is sorely missing in your analysis.
This is only the first problem here. The second is that even in the facts this analysis is lackluster. Take the Senate. You write “stripping the future senators from all the powers they currently have, leaving the Senate with a say on constitutional reforms only”; however this is not true: the Senate for instance contributes to the election of the President of the Republic, and the fact that a de-facto non-elected body does so is a point that surely deserves some mention. Moreover, the matters in which the senators will have a say are more than merely constitutional reforms, as you should know that the Senate is a federal institute, and thus it should have some say on matters that belong to the regional/federal level.
Then there is the hilarious take starting with your analysis of “Italy’s bloated legislature was given extensive checks on executive power”. This paragraph is so wrong on so many levels that it’s really disheartening to read a PhD student writing something that is essentially a mantra repeated mockingbirdly for years first by Berlusconi’s supporters and now by Renzi’s, but that bears no resemblance to truth. Since Berlusconi’s first government, Italy has seen a rise of power of the executive over the legislative, with “Decreti Legge”, “Deleghe in bianco” and confidence votes growing exponentially over time and handing over more and more power to governments that have managed to pass many bills in just a few days when there was a real political need for this, and the bicameral system have not really slowed down anything.
I suppose you would do well to use some of your research time to find out the average time to pass bills and compare it with those of other countries, and to compare the time needed to pass different bills in the Italian Parliament in the last years. Let me help you with a starting point:
http://www.polisblog.it/post/51227/il-rapporto-openpolis-e-la-velocita-con-cui-si-approvano-le-leggi
http://blog.openpolis.it/2015/02/13/tempi-di-approvazione-delle-leggi-il-governo-doppia-il-parlamento/
Spiros, thanks for your comment: it provides useful material in spite of its annoyingly confrontational undertone.
True: I should have mentioned that the Senate maintains its say on the election of the President of the Republic. It is however wrong to state that the new Senate will be a “de-facto non-elected body” as you write: senators will still be directly elected, just in a different kind of election.
I stand my ground when I wrote that “Italy’s bloated legislature was given extensive checks on executive power after World War II”. Whilst you curiously omitted the last part of this sentence in your comment, it is indisputable that in the Italian first republic the parliament had a crucial role in the law-making process. Now, the point I am making is that the Italian system has changed a lot since then- and your references to Berlusconi’s and Renzi’s governments are a case in point. In this context, the Italian Senate is a remnant of past requirements and has proven largely ineffective in coping with changes – as the articles you link show. This is the simple point I wanted to make.
Elsewhere I could write about the implications of its eliminations. But this is obviously something that would go far beyond the humble purposes of this blog entry.
Thank you for your reply and for your humble behaviour despite my rudeness.
I just mentioned the beginning of your paragraph since I disagreed with all of it, not simply with the first sentence. Anyway with your annotations I understand better what you meant and I can partly agree with you now.
Kalimera