THE GLORY OF PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION
Wednesday, February 6, 2008 at 01:06PM Isn't ITALY a wonderful example of the merits of proportional representation?
Italian President Giorgio Napolitano has dissolved parliament, paving the way for snap elections. Again.
The move comes after the country's leaders held unsuccessful talks to form an interim government. The political crisis was triggered by last month's resignation of centre-left Prime Minister Romano Prodi who lost a confidence vote in the Senate. By law, President Napolitano has to call an election within 70 days of dissolving parliament. Mr Prodi - as a caretaker prime minister - is now expected to hold a cabinet meeting to decide the date for the election, widely expected to be held on 13-14 April.
This means that Italy has a general election virtually every year, which in turn means that government lacks any sort of sustained cohesion since everything is short-term and as chaotic as the traffic in Rome!
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Reader Comments (7)
If you want real stability do away with elections altogether.
Democracy is so messy and costly and full of despicable politicians.
There were no problems with PR in the good old USSR ...
The present PR system in Italy was engineered by right-wing crook Silvio Berlusconi in an attempt to keep himself in power, just in case his ownership of 50% of the newspapers and tv channels was not sufficient (it wasn't).
There is broad agreement that it is unworkable and it is likely to be changed whoever wins next time. The alternative extreme is the UK where the last election produced a result by which Labour got 55% of the seats on 35% of the vote.
For the last 60 years or so the Italian govt has been measured in... RPM's.
BBC World Service did a piece on this topic this morning. They said it was 60 governments in 60 years. Then they spoiled it by saying "and that's about one every 12 months"
SO Italy is without a government (lucky eyeties!) yet today the sun will shine, they'll go to work, raise their families and do what they do. Food is still good, wine hasn't gone sour and the colosseum still stands.
Politicians get in a flap at times like these in case the plebs make the astounding discovery that governments and politicians are not essential to civil society and we can get by just fine without them.
As Mussolini said: "It is not impossible to govern Italians. It is merely useless."
That's an interesting quote Tripper - never heard it before.