Somewhere over the Rainbow: Italy and the Regulation of Same-Sex Unions

While almost all European democracies beginning in the 1980s started to accord legal recognition to same-sex couples, Italy was the last West European country to adopt a regulation in 2016, after a tortuous path. Why was Italy such a latecomer country? What kind of barriers encountered the legislative process? What were the explaining factors behind the policy change? To answer these questions, this article first discusses the state of the art on morality policymaking, with specific attention on the literature dealing with same-sex partnerships. Second, it provides a reconstruction of the Italian policy trajectory, from the entrance of the issue into political debate until the enactment of the civil unions law, by considering both partisan and societal actors for and against the legislative initiative. The article argues that the Italian progress towards the regulation of same-sex unions depended on the balance of power between change and blocking coalitions and their degree of congruence during the policymaking process. In 2016 the government formed a broad consensus and the parliament passed a law on civil unions. However, the new law represented a small departure from the status quo due to the low congruence between actors within the change coalition.