Ex-Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte: spent less than 15 months in office
When the government of Giuseppe Conte collapsed last week, it was 11 days short of its 15th month in power. That means it actually increased the average duration of a post-World War II government in Italy.
When a new government is named – most likely this week – it means Italy will have its 69th government since the end of World War II a little more than 74 years ago, an average of just less than 13 months per government.That is a revolving door like no other in Europe.
But according to most commentators, the biggest problems are baked into the country’s political DNA. The authors of Italy’s 1946 constitution were wary of a system that could put too much power into the hands of a single figure, like Benito Mussolini, who ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943, and who led Italy’s into World War II. That resulted in a parliamentary system with a relatively weak prime minister’s office, forcing heads of governments to use risky confidence votes to pass reforms. If a leader loses a confidence vote, he and his entire government are required to step down.
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The wide array of political identities has also created a wide array of political parties. In last year’s general election, seven parties earned representation in parliament. No fewer than 16 parties earned at least 100,000 votes nationally, and a dozen more appeared on ballots in at least half of Italy’s 20 regions. That means governments often include support from a patchwork of political groups. In some cases, the departure of just one or two can bring a government down.
“Italy has too many political parties, too many conflicting interests,” Arianna Montanari, a sociologist and political scientist at Rome’s La Sapienza University, told Xinhua. “The more interest there are the more difficult it is for them to work together.”
According to researcher and historian Claudio Vercelli from the Gaetano Salvemini Institute for Historical Studies, the rise of the populist Five-Star Movement a decade ago further complicates things.
Traditionally, Italy has had a large centre-right political party and a large centre-left political party. The rise of the Five-Star Movement, Vercelli said, creates three large blocks of voters with very limited overlap between them.
“There are many factors contributing to Italy’s political fragility, but the latest is based on having three major political poles,” Vercelli said in an interview.
“It’s hard to form a government with just one and joining any two makes for a weak coalition.”
That is the case with the Conte government that just collapsed, which was built on an uneasy coalition featuring the Five-Star Movement with the rightwing League. Odds are the next government will be based on a coalition between the Five-Star Movement and the centre-left Democratic Party.
Conte is likely to head that government as well.
