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Post by Old Badger on Feb 27, 2018 0:18:15 GMT -5
On Sunday, March 4, Italy will hold its national election. Currently, the government is a Center-Left coalition with a majority of 351 of the 630 seats; it includes these parties/alliances: Democratic Party (PD) - 283 Democratic and Progressive Movement (MDP) - 43 Popular Alternative (AP) - 23 Solidary Democracy (DemoS) and Democratic Center (CD) - 12 Others - 20 Oposition parties hold 249 seats, as follows: Five-star Movement (M5S) - 88 Forza Italia (FI) - 55 Northern League (LN) - 19 Italian Left (SI) and Possible (P) - 17 Civic Choice (SC) and Liberal Popular Alliance (ALA) - 15 Brothers of Italy (FdL) - 12 Others - 42 For this election there are three main contenders: Center-Left: Democratic Party, More Europe, Together, Popular Civic List, and three regional parties representing the German- and French-speaking regions of the Tyrol and Val d'Aosta. Center-Right: Forza Italia, Northern League, Brothers of Italy, and Us with Italy Five-Star Movement Basically, the Democratic Party is the old Socialist Party headed by current Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, Forza Italia is Silvio Berlusconi's personal party, and Five-Star is the party started by a comedian whose leader now is a 31 year-old relatively new politician, Luigi Di Maio. At this point, Five-Star is running slightly ahead of the Democrats in public opinion polls, roughly 28 percent to 23 percent. Forza Italia is getting around 17 percent, the Northern League 13 percent. The other parties are at 2-7 percent each. Five-Star's ideology, such as it is, runs the gamut from far left to far right, depending on the issues; really its appeal is not based on ideology so much as frustration with the existing major parties. It's unlikely to be part of the next government, but could continue its role as leading opposition party. The Center-Right coalition looks set to become the big winner, but whether they will be able to put together a governing majority is uncertain. Oddly, the very Trumpian Berlusconi (who also happens to be a close friend of Putin's) is positioning himself as a sort of sober elder statesman, playing against type. The Italian election system is very complex. For the Chamber of Deputies, there are 232 members from single districts, elected on a first-past-the-post plurality basis, as in our own House. However, 386 members are elected in multi-member constituencies, based on each party's share of the national vote (proportional representation). So, while each voter gets one vote, they count for multiple members. And then there are 12 members elected from overseas constituencies, based on proportional representation in those constituencies. (There are similar rules for elections to the 315-member Senate.) All of this means that it's hard to know how poll results will translate into seats, especially when there are at least 21 parties plus many independents running. But there's a nice summary here. |
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Post by Old Badger on Mar 5, 2018 16:44:21 GMT -5
Well, the Italian elections have resulted in what looks like the worst of all possible worlds: a clear rejection of the traditional parties, but nothing like a governing majority. In fact, it's hard to see how any group will reach 40 percent of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies, the minimum needed to form a minority government. Expect new elections sooner rather than later, unless some weird coalition is cobbled together--and even that would be unstable. In short: the party leading the current government, the Democrats (one remnant of the old Communist Party) got only 19 percent of the vote, its Center-Left coalition carrying only Tuscany and the Trentino/South Tyrol. Meanwhile, the populist Five-Star Movement got the most votes of any single party with 33 percent, and the Center-Right coalition led overall with 37 percent, though in a surprise it was La Liga (the League, formerly the Northern League, which used to favor secession of that region, but this time ran on a strongly nationalist platform) that came in first with 17 percent, compared with 14 percent for Berlusconi's Forza Italia. Five-Star insists it will not join any other party in a coalition, and other than the main parties there just aren't a lot of possible partners for the Liga, now that Italy requires a party to get 3 percent of the vote to gain representation. Effectively, there are only three blocs, and none of them is going to wind up with more that about 35 percent of the seats. In theory one could imagine a "grand coalition" of the Center-Right and Center-Left parties, as in Germany, but that seems implausible. For one thing, the Liga leader is an outright racist, and in any case the ideological divides in Italy seem much wider than those in Germany. One English-language opinion writer for the Italian daily La Repubblica makes these astute observations: "Make no mistake, this is an earthquake in Italian politics, analogous to the so-called end of the First Republic. When the corruption scandal known as Tangentopoli swept away the old political guard that had ruled Italy since the beginning of the Republic, destroying the Christian Democrat party and sending the Socialist leader Bettino Craxi into exile, it left a political vacuum which was filled with amazing alacrity by Berlusconi and his Forza Italia political machine. Since then, FI and the increasingly centrist heirs to Italy’s Communist Party have ruled the 'Second Republic'. Sunday’s election marks the end of their era. PD leader Matteo Renzi has resigned... "Italy now seems to face a choice between a right-wing coalition led by Salvini and the Five Star populists. The growth of populism and the right is a general trend in Europe, largely fuelled by two issues, austerity and immigration, both of which have hit Italians particularly hard. Both the parties that have gained most in this election are anti-immigration and Eurosceptic." linkI think she's exactly right. For years after the Great Recession struck, European (by which I mean German) financial policy was to make things worse by tightening the monetary screws through high interest rates precisely when what was needed was counter-cyclical expansionary policies. such as those carried out in the US by the Fed. And leaving countries such as Italy and Greece to deal with the flood of refugees from wars to the south was short-sighted and counter-productive. The consequences of these poor policy choices are visible across Europe, from Brexit to the revival of quasi-authoritarianism in the former Eastern Bloc. |
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Post by Old Badger on Mar 5, 2018 23:26:32 GMT -5
The Italian elections on Sunday ( discussed here) may have implications for post-Trump America. At least, David Brooks thinks so: "The best indicator we have so far is the example of Italy since the reign of Silvio Berlusconi. And the main lesson there is that once the norms of acceptable behavior are violated and once the institutions of government are weakened, it is very hard to re-establish them. Instead, you get this cycle of ever more extreme behavior, as politicians compete to be the most radical outsider. The political center collapses, the normal left/right political categories cease to apply and you see the rise of strange new political groups that are crazier than anything you could have imagined before. "Silvio Berlusconi first came to power for the same reasons Trump and other populists have been coming to power around the world: Voters were disgusted by a governing elite that seemed corrupt and out of touch. They felt swamped by waves of immigrants, frustrated by economic stagnation and disgusted by the cultural values of the cosmopolitan urbanites. In office, Berlusconi did nothing to address Italy’s core problems, but he did degrade public discourse with his speech, weaken the structures of government with his corruption and offend basic decency with his Bunga Bunga sex parties and his general priapic lewdness... "Italy is now a poster child for the three big trends that are undermining democracies around the world: First, the erasure of the informal norms of behavior...You treat your opponents like legitimate adversaries, not illegitimate enemies. You tell the truth as best you can. You don’t make naked appeals to bigotry...Second, the loss of faith in the democratic system...Seventy-one percent of Europeans and North Americans born in the 1930s think it’s essential to live in a democracy, but only 29 percent of people born in the 1980s think that...Third, the deterioration of debate caused by social media...polarization, alternative information universes and the rise of autocracy." Yeah, in other words a dystopia. Candidates vying to out-Trump Trump. The triumph of Know-Nothingism, as the uninformed, incurious, and uninterested take control and loot the system while destroying civil society. This is how democracy withers and dies, and autocracy emerges from the resulting chaos. China already is promoting itself as an "alternative role model" for other countries. People who thought the end of the USSR represented the final triumph of democracy were deluding themselves. Establishing a democratic regime is hard; maintaining one harder. For 70 years after World War II democracy thrived under the leadership of the United States. Today, a wealthy elite, raising the banner of "Populism" while actually consolidating power behind the scenes, has democracy in retreat. And the US is part of that downward spiral, alas. |
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Post by Jenniedrear on Nov 7, 2020 10:07:08 GMT -5
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Post by Jenniedrear on Nov 7, 2020 10:10:13 GMT -5
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