Lieutenant Chiti

The 'Bonsai' column in Repubblica has, over the past few months, been painting a wonderful picture of Vannino Chiti - Minister in charge of relationships with Parliament - as a type of electoral Lieutenant Columbo. From Wikipedia:

Columbo's signature technique was to exit the scene of an interview, invariably stopping in the doorway or returning a moment later to ask "just one more thing" of a suspect. The "one more thing" always brought to light the key inconsistency.

In like fashion, Chiti has been interviewing representatives from all the parties represented in Parliament, ever willing to come back and ask them just one more question about their ideal electoral reform outcome.

Unlike Columbo, Chiti has not been able to come up with a particularly screen-worthy denouement. Chiti was heard yesterday by the Parliamentary Commission on Constitutional Affairs. Here's the account of the meeting, again from Repubblica:

"Chiti explains that the process starts with the proportional [system]. Without preferences. But, as sought by the referendum promoters, without multiple candidacies. The minister spoke of different hypotheses regarding the threshold, and the effort to introduce a threshold of 5% - starting in 2016. The majoritarian bonus remains in Chiti's scheme, associated with a reduction in the number of parliamentarians... elected in smaller regional constituencies or single member districts on a proportional basis. The bonus will be assigned to the coalition or list which wins over 40% of seats. It will decrease in size, permitting a maximum of 54% of seats to the winders. The bonus will be assigned only if the Senate and Camera have the same majority"

This explanation leaves so many questions unanswered as to be of very little use. Chiti claims to have a text ready to present to Parliament, should they wish it; but it must perforce be a very skeletal one.

Those interested in reading Chiti's presentation to the Committee can find it on the Chamber of Deputies website [shortly].

Costs of Italian democracy

From Today's Repubblica (Vladimiro Polchi, "I costi dello stato", p. 9):

"How much does a parliamentarian earn? The calculation is not easy given the number of different headings to add. Senators and deputie take home euro 14,000 per month net of taxes. To the exemption of 5,486 euros (reduced by 10% with the 2006 budget) one adds: 4,003 euros "for the reimbursement of costs incurred staying in Rome", and 4,190 euros (4,687 for senators) for "reimbursement of costs incurred in the relationship between elected and electors". But that's not all. The MP need not worry about his travels, enjoying a "ticket for free movement on tollways, trains, naval, and air travel within the country". If s/he needs to go abroad, there are annuals expenses of up to 3,100 euros. The telephone bill is not a prolem: for his chatting, the deputy enjoys an annual sum of 3,098 euros; 4,150 for senators. Other reimbursements are made for taxis (3,233 every three months)."

The 'bozza Chiti' and the effective threshold

From repubblica.it comes information on the size of constituencies in the new electoral system proposed in the 'bozza Chiti'. They will be 'sub-provinciale', at most, 'provinciale'.

Let's assume conservatively that the constituencies will be equal to the number of provinces.

Let's also assume, as a simplifying measure, that the constituencies will all be given the same number of members of parliament to elect.

So, dividing the number of parliamentarians in the bozza Chiti - 400 - by 103, we get 3.88 MPs to be elected per constituency.

The effective threshold per constituency is therefore: 75% / (3.88 + 1) = 15.36%.

Now, the effective threshold at the constituency level is not a good estimate of the effective threshold at national level. Rein Taagepeera, in a 2002 Electoral Studies article, suggests that the nationwide threshold is equal to:

• effective constituency threshold / (square root of number of districts), or
• 15.36 / 1o3 ^ 0.5 = 15.36 / 10.15 = 1.51%

So, if anything, the proposed system is going to present a less formidable barrier to parties than the previous system, which had a legal threshold of 2% (plus largest coalition loser). Admittedly, these are back of the envelope calculations, and the distribution of seats between constituencies may (significantly) affect the results. But, if a (more) reductive electoral system is a good thing for Italy, then we'd better hope that the constituencies are more numerous than the one hundred and three provinces.

Agreement on electoral reform in Italy?

Repubblica and the Corriere both report that the centre-left majority has reached agreement on electoral reform. The reform will replace the current law with a system similar to that used for regional elections. The text therefore is close to joint position of the centre-right, which augurs well for its chances of quick passage. By including constitutional reforms in the reform package, however, the centre-left ups the stakes.

On the basis of the coverage in Repubblica, we can say the following:

• The reform is a type of bonus-adjusted proportional representation system


• Candidates will be elected in constituencies (at least greater than 26)


• There will be a national bonus in both the Senate and Camera on a national level

The precise details of the bonus, and details on the threshold, are unclear. Repubblica claims that "la soglia deve essere tanto minore quanto maggiore e` il premio di maggioranza" [the threshold will be smaller the greater the majority premium]. I don't understand why these two aspects of the system need to be linked. In any event, if the size of the constituencies is substantially reduced, the effective threshold based on constituency size may be more significant than the legal threshold. Again, though, details of the constituencies are not clear.

Additional constitutional reforms are included in the agreement:

• Reduction from 630 to 400 deputies, and from 315 to 200 senators
• end of perfect bicameralism
• formal recognition of the Prime Minister's right to nominate and fire ministers
adoption of constructive vote of no-confidence

The agreement comes a day after the two main parties - DS and Margherita - agreed on a Spanish style electoral system as the only possible model. Members of the Udeur were apparently opposed to such a reform. According to a recent poll, the UDC's vote-share hovers around 2%, making it vulnerable to the higher effective thresholds of small constituencies in the Spanish style.

• There are two stimuli for the reform:
  
• the wish to avoid the possibility of conflicting majorities in the Camera and Senate, as almost happened last year; and
• the wish to avoid a referendum promoted by Giovanni Guzzetta and Minister of Defence Arturo Parisi, which, in giving the majority premium to the largest single list (instead of the largest coalition of lists), would accelerate the formation of large single forces on left and right.
  

The reform text seems to be the smallest step capable of avoiding both of these possibilities. Given the effective veto power of all members of the coalition, who have vastly different electoral profiles, this is not surprising.

Twin fallacies of Italian institutional reform

Recently, the debate about electoral reform in Italy has begun to move quite quickly. A number of parties - including the pivotal UDC - seem to favour the German mixed-member system. Rocco Buttiglione, in yesterday's Repubblica, claimed that such an electoral system would leave Italy with four parties - radical left, centre-left, centre, and respectable right.

Buttiglione's comment - and support for the German system in general - demonstrate one of two fallacies of institutional reform commonly seen in Italy.

The fallacy of composition is where one takes two institutional features, which are believed to have certain independent effects, and where one seeks to reach a half-way point between these two effects. Instead, the two institutional features, when put together, interact and cause unforeseen outcomes.

An example of this is the combination of single member districts (SMDs) and a proportional tier in the Italian electoral reform of 1993. Giovanni Sartori criticised the choice as leading to a vogue for 'bastard hybrids'. If the intent was to reduce the effective number of parties (ENP) through introducing SMDs, the reform failed; the ENP increased after 1993.

The fallacy of abstraction is where one takes a particular institutional artefact, which is believed to have a particular effect within a wider context; and replicates it without that wider context.

If Italy adopted the German electoral system because it has historically produced stable and alternating governments, legislators will have succumbed to the fallacy of abstraction. The stability and alternation of German government was due first to the gradual instauration of the electoral system, and also to the cleavage structure. The more complex cleavage structure in Italy - including clerical/anti-clerical and communist/socialist left cleavages - will most likely make any reductive effect of the electoral system much less likely.

State funding of Italian newspapers

Following a tip [thanks Costanza], I found a wonderful transcript of an episode of Report on the state funding of Italian newspapers. The state spends 667 million euros a year to subsidize newspapers; the intention behind the subsidies was originally to help struggling 'newspapers of ideas'. Instead, with a 1987 law permitting two deputies to certify that such-and-such a newspaper is the in-house newspaper for a political movement, the subsidies blossomed. The transcript does a wonderful review of some of the less credible newspapers:

NEWSPAPER VENDOR
What, 'L’opinione'?

INTERVIEWER
You've never heard of it?

NEWSPAPER VENDOR
No, if it's a newspaper it doesn't arrive here

INTERVIEW [to EDITOR of L'Opinione]
How many copies do you sell?

ARTURO DIACONALE-EDITOR L’OPINIONE
Our circulation is... limited, let's say. We're at about three, four thousand copies.

INTERVIEWER [off-screen]
Three, four thousand copies, and you receive two million euro

State funding of Italian parties

Recently, I've been looking at the system of state funding of Italian political parties. I'm interested in the subject because of the incentives it may create to form new parliamentary groups (since they qualify for funding), and the way funding systems interact with the new electoral system.

The history of state funding is pretty shabby. In 1993, an abrogative referendum repealed parts of the law on party funding, banning direct subventions, but allowing compensation for electoral expenses. These electoral expenses gradually grew; new laws were passed in 1999 and 2002, lowering the qualification threshold from 4% of vote-share to 1% of vote share (or electing at least one candidate), with funds divided according to the parties' vote-shares.

Rai to become a public foundation

Minister for Communications Paolo Gentiloni today unveiled a blueprint for the future of Italian public service broadcaster Rai. Rai is to become a public foundation which shall nominate the executives of the company and decide on the value of the licence fee in conjunction with the government. Public service and commercial broadcasting will be entrusted to distinct divisions; these two, and a third network division, will be overseen by the foundation.
The creation of the foundation is welcome. A number of positive aspects:

• political appointees will now have an oversight role, not an executive one. The Foundation shall appoint the consiglio di amministrazione (managing board), which, if the name means anything, will have executive responsibility. This is a great improvement over the current system, where the consiglio di amministrazione is nominated by the Parliament, but shares executive power (and cedes executive initiative) with the Director-General.
• foundation members' time in office will allow for strategic thinking. Foundation members will be appointed for six year terms; one-third of the membership may be replaced every two years. The six year term should allow for members to plan ahead without being shackled by a biennial appointments circus. Partial renewal should ensure that the Foundation's collective intelligence isn't destroyed after each term.
• division between public- and advertising-financed content will help Rai's image. At the moment, the quality of Rai's programming - of Italian television in general - is low. Consequently, Rai is often hostage to licence-fee strikes, as irate consumers renege on their licence fees in protest at low quality. If the (popular, sometimes entertaining) lowest-denominator crap moves to the advertising financed channel, then it should reduce the grounds for licence fee strikes. There is a risk that public service content will rapidly become a cultural ghetto - but some parts of Rai - i.e., Rai 3 - have become quite good at winning ratings with public service content.

At the same time, there are some unclear aspects:

• the appointment mechanism has yet to be decided. There are two options: the Spanish and the German. In the first model, six members are nominated by the regions, and appointed by the Parliament with a two-thirds majority; the President is nominated by the Presidents of the two Chambers, and appointed by the Parliament with a two-thirds majority. In the German model, the board is larger, and is drawn from civil society groups.
• the financing mechanism is unclear. According to the guidelines, the value of the licence fee will be set every three years by the Government on the basis of a proposal by the Foundation, which will reflect the cost of producing Rai's public service content. It would be nice to see some mention of automatic inflation-uprating there; I don't put it past future right-wing governments to starve Rai of funds by freezing the value of the licence fee in real and nominal terms.

If you ask me for my recommendations, then:

• appointments should not be made by civil society groups. Although it sounds desirable to free such an exquisitely political body from political appointments entirely, that's to ignore the fact that much of Italian civil society is also exquisitely political. Who can imagine a nominee from CGIL (the leftist trade union) acting as anything other than a left-wing activist? This model - the German - failed pretty badly when exported to Hungary; I have no reason to suspect that Italian civil society is markedly more independent from parties than Hungarian civil society.
  
• the licence fee settlement should be made for six years, and uprated in line with inflation: if the contract between the Ministry and Rai for public service programming is to last six years, why shouldn't the licence fee? This would aid planning, and put the issue beyond the range of any single legislature.

Invented story leads to real investigation

About two weeks ago, Enrico Deaglio alleged that the centre-right had attempted to steal the 2006 election by counting blank and invalid ballots as votes for the centre-right. Deaglio's argument didn't add up: the centre-right only had control over the projections at the Ministry of the Interior; the real votes were summed from the sub-totals of the several regional electoral commissions. Indeed, Deaglio was prosecuted for, in effect, a breach of the peace.

Yet as a consequence of Deaglio's arguments - which seem unconvincing and have been found to be so by the judicial system - the Italian Senate Committee for Elections has moved to recount the blank, wasted, and spoilt votes in seven regions.

It's not clear why these particular regions were chosen. They include regions won by the left and by the right, by narrow margins and by huge margins:

• Campania - 0.5% gap in favour of the left
• Calabria - 14.2% gap in favour of the left
• Lazio - 1.1% gap in favour of the right
• Lombardia - 14.3% gap in favour of the right
• Puglia - 4% in favour of the right
• Sicilia - 17.3% in favour of the right
• Toscana - 22.6% gap in favour of the left

Would be interesting to get a breakdown of the number of blank and spoiled ballots by region, and see whether the number of contested ballots in Campania and Lazio could result in a re-allocation of seats. Unfortunately, the Interior Ministry doesn't seem to have this data.