Abstract
This chapter considers the weight of populist arguments in the season of constitutional reform in Italy since the early 1990s. The understanding of populism is based on a dualistic perspective, in which democracies are subject to a fundamental tension between constitutionalism and populism. Two failed reform projects—respectively undertaken by the Berlusconi government in 2004–06 and the Renzi government in 2014–16—are considered in light of three typical aspects of the interplay of populism and public law: majoritarianism, instrumentalism, and legal resentment. Those attempts at constitutional reform were unsuccessful; however, a populist attitude seems to have become the prevalent flavour in Italian constitutional politics debates.
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- 1.
I have more extensively elaborated these dimensions—with an additional dimension of justification in the form of popular sovereignty—in Blokker (2019a).
- 2.
The term ‘instrumentalism’ is used here in a (pejorative) sense akin to the one expressed by the Venice Commission, in its opinion on the fourth amendment of the Hungarian Fundamental Law, see Opinion on the Fourth Amendment to the Fundamental Law of Hungary, CDLAD(2013)012, Strasbourg, Council of Europe, 17 June 2013, www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/?pdf=CDL-AD%282013%29012-e. The Commission argued that ‘[f]requent constitutional amendments are a worrying sign of an instrumental attitude towards the constitution as is the resort to the exceptional two-thirds majority in constitution-making without a genuine effort to form a wide political consensus and without proper public debates’ (2013: 30). The Commission decries the frequent and in-transparent nature of reforms and the abuse of the majority position of the government.
- 3.
That this approach is not merely evident with regard to constitutional reform, but is equally visible in ordinary legislation is convincingly argued by Nicola Lupo (2019). In Lupo’s discussion, a populist approach is identified as one in which the law becomes ‘too close to the popular will’, while the ‘law of the state’ and ‘constitutional rights’ tend to be marginalized (Lupo 2019: 253).
- 4.
The analysis of the two reforms can be found in an earlier version in Blokker (2019b).
- 5.
In 2001, two groups of senators requested the referendum, from the centre-right, but also those belonging to the government majority, from the centre-left.
- 6.
Admittedly, I wrongly attributed this governmental usage of the article 138 procedure merely to the Berlusconi government in an earlier discussion (Blokker 2019b).
- 7.
Four other requests had been presented by oppositional forces. Calderoli claimed in the Senate that this logic had already been used by the centre-left in 2001: ‘We have been criticized for having used article 138 in an anomalous way, one does not understand, however, why that article may be valid for your reforms and cannot be valid for the changes that we want to bring about nor does the breadth of the reform count, because it is not true that an instrument is valid if I use it for a pound… but not [when I use it for a kilo]: an instrument is valid or not’ (Calderoli, Senato, n. 899, 16/11/2005).
- 8.
Despite its claim to represent the ‘ordinary people’, the position of the political majority, and its search for popular legitimacy, was compromised by the fact, as frequently argued by the parliamentary and societal opposition, that the majority behind the reform could be understood as an ‘illegitimate’ one. This was due to the fact that the electoral law in vigour (the so-called Porcellum) created an artificial majority by means of an electoral premium (identified as unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court in January 2014). What is clear is that the majority behind the reform was relatively small and fragile (Volpi 2016: 121). As Ferrajoli argues, the majority of the government consisted in 25% of the votes, which corresponds to 15% of the electorate, which was however transformed in an absolute majority by means of the electoral law and its majority premium (Ferrajoli 2016: 18).
- 9.
A further, highly significant part of the reforms, even if formally not part of the Constitution, was electoral reform. In 2014, the Constitutional Court had struck down two parts of the (then) existing electoral law (referred to as the Porcellum): closed-list voting and the majority premium. The new law adopted in May 2015—the Italicum—did not, however, fully eliminate doubts concerning constitutionality, as raised by the Court.
- 10.
The reform was significantly criticized, also by opponents within the Democratic Party (PD), inter alia for compromising the democratic and representative quality of the Italian Parliament by eliminating the direct election of senators. For extensive discussions of the substance of the reform, see, for example, Ceccanti (2016), Fusaro (2015, 2016), Pasquino (2015), and Ragazzoni and Urbinati (2016).
- 11.
The term ‘instrumentalism’ is used here in a (pejorative) sense akin to the one expressed by the Venice Commission, in a recent opinion; see Opinion on the Fourth Amendment to the Fundamental Law of Hungary, CDLAD(2013)012, Strasbourg, Council of Europe, 17 June 2013, www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/?pdf=CDL-AD%282013%29012-e. The Commission argued that ‘[f]requent constitutional amendments are a worrying sign of an instrumental attitude towards the constitution as is the resort to the exceptional two-thirds majority in constitution-making without a genuine effort to form a wide political consensus and without proper public debates’ (at page 30). The Commission decried the frequent and non-transparent nature of reforms and the abuse of the majority position of the government.
- 12.
See for this distinction, Ackerman (1991).
- 13.
This was exactly the critique of the centre-left opposition: ‘Simply for electoral convenience and for reasons of survival of the majority, you are changing the constitutional Charter in a partisan Constitution, the result not of a noble aspiration or a noble compromise, as was that of 1948, but of a confused, watered-down deal between yourselves’ (Senator Paolo Giaretta, n. 899, Senato, 16/11/2005).
- 14.
The main reform proposals relate to the reduction of the ‘costs of politics’ (reducing the number of parliamentarians) and instruments of direct democracy.
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Blokker, P. (2020). Populism and Constitutional Reform. The Case of Italy. In: Delledonne, G., Martinico, G., Monti, M., Pacini, F. (eds) Italian Populism and Constitutional Law. Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37401-3_2
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