[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.
15 Comments
ApostleO@startrek.website · 87 pts · 2y
Well that is scary.
FlowVoid@lemmy.world · 64 pts · 2y
It basically means Italy would move to a two party system. Because in a winner-take-all system, any third party would join one of the bigger two in order to become the biggest, and thus avoid being completely left out.
orbit@lemmy.world · 19 pts · 2y
Thanks for this breakdown. As an American I was confused as to why I found this concerning.
Stupidmanager@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2y
Yeah, sounds eerily similar to the mess the USA is in now. Worse, Italy was my retirement plan… I just can’t fathom this country going back to fascism.
DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe · 26 pts · 2y
Weird that the fascists in the birthplace of fascism are trying to do the things that worked for them last time.
sramder@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 2y
I’m not understanding this:
If the law and justice party received 35% of the votes and the opposition received 52%, then wouldn’t “the opposition” receive the 55% control of Poland’s parliament?
PonyOfWar@pawb.social · 53 pts · 2y
No, because the opposition is not a single party, but made up of 3 parties. Law and justice was still the biggest party, despite losing the election overall.
sramder@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2y
Ooooookay, that’s making a lot more sense now. Kind of an apples to apple pie comparison. Thank you.
TheWonderfool@lemmy.world · 20 pts · 2y
The opposition received 55% of votes all combined, while Law and Justice was the single party receiving the most votes. So effectively, unless all other parties would get together in a single big party (making a very different election), Law and Order would now be ruling Poland and instead the opposition parties formed a coalition.
sramder@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2y
I’m starting to see where I went wrong here. I should have taken a closer look at the breakdown of the election they were using as an example. I just kind of assumed that “the opposition” was the (perhaps imperfectly translated) name of a single party or coalition of some kind.
acupofcoffee@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 2y
It’s poorly worded, but look at their link which shows Poland’s election. It will make more sense. The party only received 35% of the votes (the rest of the votes going to opposing parties), but they’d suddenly own 55% of the seats due to this system.
vividspecter@lemm.ee · 2 pts · 2y
Similarly, if the Netherlands had the same system, the far-right Party for Freedom would have 55% of the seats despite only winning 24% of the vote. A scary thought.
sramder@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2y
I’m on board now. Law and Justice had the largest single share at 35% and would thus receive 55% control of parliament under Italy’s proposed system, but with 52% of the population preferring a different mix of leadership.
autotldr@lemmings.world · 8 pts · 2y
This is the best summary I could come up with:
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.
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 pts · 2y
Fewer parties might mean less chaos in Italian politics.