Italy: a new government?

Franco Marini is a white haired, sprightly 74, a former trade unionist turned centre-left politician. He has belonged to four different political parties, as is the way in Italy, and held a variety of senior posts in the turbulent 1990s. He was made Speaker of the Upper House by Prodi, which in turn carries with it the position of Deputy President.

It seems odd at first that President Napolitano should ask this man to try to form a government when, following the failure of the previous one under Romano Prodi, a second, Berlusconi’s Casa delle Libertà coalition, is waiting in the wings, with opinion polls saying it would win handsomely.

I have written before that the answer lies in electoral reform (in Britain this usually means proportional representation but in Italy it means moving away from it: Prodi has said that PR has made Italy ungovernable) but the constitutional background is interesting. This could happen in very few other countries.

The Italian Constitution, just 60 years old this month, deliberately, following the excesses of the 30s and 40s, weakened the power of central government and therefore made provision for what would happen if it failed. It foresaw the possibility of repeated election of weak governments and provided a series of options of government in the national interest, (what was in the national interest to be decided by the president). These are

Institutional Government, where the President appoints someone whose principal purpose, above party politics, is the maintenance of the institutions of State.

Technical Government: a non party government, full of technocrats

Fixed Term government: a temporary government, an example being the ‘swimming governments’ of 1963 an ’68, just to tide things over the summer holidays when everyone was at the beach and no one wanted an election

Government of National Unity where everyone is encouraged to put principal before politics

At present Marini’s mandate appears to be an explorative one, where he finds out the intentions of the parties and works towards some sort of solution, in this case nominally to get an electoral law passed. Yet it may come to look as if Marini’s real task might be to keep the centre left in power, organise a rimpasto of the parties, literally kneading the dough again. There’s a lot more to come in this story. We tend to forget that in a Republic, the President is a politician, too.