Provare a governare, cercando di sopravvivere. Esecutivi e attività legislativa nella seconda repubblica, di Francesco Marangoni (2013)

The major changes that occurred in Italy in the mid-1990s created new expectations about the functioning of the entire political system. The end of almost all the political parties that had been in government for the previous five decades; the adoption of a quasi-plurality electoral system; the formation of a bipolar party system; the emergence of clear majorities after elections; and the establishment of government alternation, all these were supposed to move Italy in a majoritarian direction. In other words, a fundamental shift was expected from a political system mainly devoted to giving representation to the political components existing in Italian society (an ‘input democracy’) to a political system more oriented towards taking policy decisions (an ‘output democracy’). With the end of the so-called First Republic, where the main political parties had been successful in surviving without governing, Italian executives were finally supposed to be able to produce and effectively implement public policies, with a stronger emphasis on governments’ accountability to the electorate. In this book, Francesco Marangoni assesses whether these expectations have actually been fulfilled by evaluating the lawmaking performance of Italian governments during the Second Republic.