From the Porcellum to the Rosatellum: ‘political elite-judicial interaction’ in the Italian laboratory of electoral reforms

The period from 2013 to 2018 saw Parliament experiment with a number of different electoral systems, with several potential reforms being formally discussed and two of them being fully approved: the so-called Italicum in 2015 and the Rosatellum in 2017. These reforms were triggered by interventions of the Constitutional Court that have no precedent in established democracies. As these interventions resulted in (constrained) responses by the political elites, we argue that Italy has entered a cycle characterised by a new mode of electoral reform involving the interaction of political elites and judges. The article examines the processes that led to the adoption of the Italicum and the Rosatellum, analysing the interaction amongst the actors involved in a rather fluid political context, where the government/opposition divide was fuzzy, shifting and opaque. The article also highlights how the inadequacy both of the reasons given for these reforms, and of their content and the processes by which they were arrived at, prevented them from fully repairing the damage inflicted on electoral integrity by the pre-existing 2005 electoral law (the Porcellum), and concludes that the issue of the electoral system in Italy is far from being settled. However, we remain agnostic on whether the new political elite that emerged after the 2018 election will regain control of the process or whether the interaction between political elites and judges will continue with further judicial interventions.