Regional electoral legislation in Italy: A short essay on the rise and fall of the myth of territorial differentiation

• Autores: Enrico Grosso
• Localización: Perspectives on Federalism, ISSN-e 2036-5438, Vol. 4, Nº. 1, 2012
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Up to 15 years ago the Constitution entrusted State law with the task of regulating the election system of regional councillors. Since the nineties there have been radical changes in the provisions (constitutional and later sub-constitutional) regarding elections of regional Councils, and the Regions have been given concurring or residual legislative competences, thus authorizing them to autonomously adopt rules concerning their own elections. The electoral laws approved by the Councils of Regions from 2001 up to now are nevertheless substantially uniform in contents. Such substantial uniformity was not required. The single Councils could have made far more differentiated electoral choices. We can say that there has been a sort of institutional conformism. The local political classes handling the institutional change were not able (or did not want) to introduce substantial differentiations and innovations and they have only created systems almost identical to one another. Such a conclusion is only seemingly surprising. We notice in fact how difficult it is for party systems to “regionalise themselves”, even when political interests of regional bodies are at stake. Every single regional electoral appointment is seen as the opportunity to once again measure general political consent, not as the time to consolidate territorial consent. We realize how weak the regional party systems still are, in spite of the widespread use of federalist rhetoric, and how scantily independent they appear to be. The effect is that the actual uniformity of electoral systems will cause a further step towards uniformity of party systems.