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].

Public attitudes towards Rai

In my thesis, I claimed that "there is no available polling evidence on whether Italians believe Rai to be independent of the government". That's not quite right. There's no public polling data, but I've hit the jackpot through trawling through the catalogue of the Servizio Bibliotecario Nazionale: I've got Rai's own internal data.

Granted, it's from 1986. But still, it's tremendously useful. I don't know why the Fondazione Gramsci and the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi have copies, but I'm very glad they do.

They key data - on spontaneous and prompted responses to judgements on Rai - are as one might expect:

• Rai is "an instrument in the hands of the leading class" [unprompted response]: 9.3%, a marked increase over the past ten years
• Rai is "an organisation controlled by a few political parties" [prompted category]: 41.9%, five points down from ten years before;
• Rai is "an organisation of the government" [prompted category]: 24.6%, five points down from ten years before;
• Rai is "an organisation controlled by all the political parties": 20.4%, two and a half points up from 1979, or before the birth of RaiTre
• Rai is "an organisation outside of politics": 4.1%, a marginal increase over ten years previously

So, Italian citizens judged [quite correctly in my view], that Rai was a political organisation; that it was controlled by an agreement between some parties, and not per se by the government or the entire political class. Let's take "outside of politics" as being equivalent to "independent from politics". If that's the case, then the 4.1% of Italians who judge Rai to be politically independent is much less than the 22% of Britons who judge the BBC to be politically independent.

More on the independence of French journalists

Even better data from this 2003 CSA / Marianne poll on l'image des journalistes: 23% of French people think the media are independent of "political power", Patrick Poivre d'Arvor, Jean-Pierre Pernaud, and Claire Chazal are cited as particularly independent. Cross-tabs are included!

Journalistic independence in France

Via a long chain of googling too tedious to repeat, I find a wonderful poll on public attitudes towards French journalists. My interest was drawn to the question on public perceptions of journalistic independence. Two questions are asked, one on independence from political parties, and one on independence from economic concerns. Here's the time-series on independence from political parties. Only one third of French people believe journalists are independent.

	Rappel enquête SOFRES								Déc 2001
	nov 1993	déc 1994	déc 1995	déc 1996	déc 1997	déc 1998	déc 1999	déc 2000
From political parties and the powerful
Yes, they're independent No, they're not independent Wouldn't say	32 56 12	33 55 12	28 62 10	30 59 11	27 64 9	32 59 9	28 60 12	32 59 9	33 55 12

Unfortunately, the question wasn't asked for different channels, so there's no direct way of telling whether journalists from France Televisions are judged less independent, say, than journalists from TF1. (One could run cross-tabs on main channel watched and perceptions of independence, but the link would be tenuous).

In general, the news isn't good for France Televisions: whilst in 1989, 43% of respondents cited either France 2 or France 3 as their most trusted source of television information, compared to 33% who said the same of TF1, the gap has now swung in TF1's favour, with 41% citing it as their most trusted source, compared to the joint total of 35% for France 2 and 3, with the latter gaining impressively.

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.

Rai approves new service contract

Rai today agreed a new service contract with the Communications Minister Paolo Gentiloni. According to this write-up, the contract was extensively modified after parliamentary hearing. The one big word to take away from the process (or two words, for Ritchie-Bartlett watchers)? Unfunded mandate:

Il problema e' che secondo un conteggio 'interno' alla Rai, queste modifiche al contratto potrebbero arrivare a costare "oltre 100 milioni di euro all'anno", senza contare che alcune di queste clausole sarebbero di difficile applicazione per come sono state concepite in Vigilanza

[The problem, according to an 'internal' count, is that these modifications to the contract may cost over euro 100 million per year. Moreover, some of the amendments may be difficult to implement in the fashion required by the committee].