Abstract
Italy, like Britain and Germany, has a parliamentary system. There has been some discussion in recent years about setting up a quasi-presidential system on the French model, but such institutional reform at the national level has thus far not generated much support. There are some additional similarities with Germany. First, Italy is a parliamentary republic with a weak, indirectly elected president. Also, Italy is far more decentralized than most parliamentary systems. It does not actually have a federal system like that of the German Federal Republic, but it has a form of regional devolution that differentiates it quite clearly from unitary systems such as Great Britain and France.
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Notes
On Italian cabinet formulas since 1946, see Alberto Marradi, “Italy: From ‘Centrism’ to Crisis of the Center-Left Coalitions,” in Government Coalitions in Western Democracies, ed. Eric C. Browne and John Dreijmanis (New York: Longman, 1982), chap. 2, esp. 48–56.
Sabino Cassese, “Is There a Government in Italy? Politics and Administration at the Top,” in Presidents and Prime Ministers, ed. Richard Rose and Ezra N. Suleiman (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1980), 171–202.
Giuseppe Di Palma, “The Available State: Problems of Reform,” in Italy in Transition: Conflict and Consensus, ed. Peter Lange and Sidney Tarrow (London: Frank Cass, 1980), 162–63; and Giuseppe Di Palma, “Risposte parlamentari alla crisi del regime,” in La Crisa Italiana, ed. Luigi Graziano and Sidney Tarrow (Torino: Einaudi, 1979), 2: 404, 410.
Giuseppe Di Palma, Surviving without Governing: The Italian Parties in Parliament (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 190.
Cassesse, “Is There a Government in Italy?” 179; and Carolo Donolo, “Social Change and Transformation of the State in Italy,” in The State in Western Europe, ed. Richard Scase (London: Croom Helm, 1980), 170.
“A Survey of Italy,” The Economist, 23 July 1983, 37.
Peter Curwen, “Privatization, the Italian State, and the State of Italy,” International Review of Administrative Sciences 59 (1993): 463–76, at 469.
Michael Brush, “Saving Italy’s Economy,” Europe: Magazine of the European Union, no. 337 (June 1994): 10–11, at 11.
Carlo Guarnieri, “The Italian Judiciary and the Crisis of the Political System,” Italian Journal 7, no. 1 (1993): 20–22; and Francesco Sidoti, “The Italian Political Class,” Government and Opposition 28 (Summer 1993): 339–52., at 344–48.
“Luck Runs Out for Berlusconi,” The Economist, 13 July 1994, 44–45.
Robert C. Fried, The Italian Prefects: A Study in Administrative Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963), 116–18, 249–95, 303–8.
Robert Leonardi, Raffaella Y. Nanetti, and Robert D. Putnam, “Devolution as a Political Process: The Case of Italy,” Publius 11 (Winter 1981): 95–117.
See “Editoriale,” Le Regioni 11 (January-April 1983): 1–4.
For the main highlights of recent legislation reforming local government in Italy, see Marco Cammelli, “Eletto dal popolo: il sindaco fra nuolo nuovo e vecchi poteri,” Il Mulino, no. 348 (July–August 1993): 1775–84; and R.E. Spence, “Institutional Reform in Italy: The Case of Local Government,” Local Government Studies 19 (Summer 1993): 226–41.
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© 1998 Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Hancock, M.D., Conradt, D.P., Peters, B.G., Safran, W., Zariski, R. (1998). Where Is the Power?. In: Politics in Western Europe. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-14555-3_17
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