Government under Berlusconi: The Functioning of the Core Institutions in Italy

The functioning of the core institutions (legislature, cabinet and bureaucracy) has undergone change since the mid-1990s. Party system change, in conjunction with external pressures, mainly related to the process of European economic integration, have produced changes in parliamentary regulations and practices, in the use of decree powers, in coordination mechanisms within the executive, and in the modes of political control of the bureaucracy. These changes, most of which were introduced by the centreleft governments during the 13th Legislature (1996–2001), have principally benefited the Berlusconi Government, which used them to its own advantage during the subsequent legislature (2001–06). Yet, in the absence of any corresponding change in the Constitution, and in the presence of an electoral law that fails to produce uniform majorities in the two parliamentary chambers, these changes are reversible and may prove to be ephemeral.