Lists are being registered for Italy’s election, taking place about a month from now. There will be some interesting symbols on the ballot, Reuters reports, complete with slideshow:
From the “No Garbage” party, to the “Don’t row against the tide” party, to “Dr. Cirillo’s party of existentialist impotents”, there will be something for everyone in Italy’s general election in April.
Nearly 180 symbols of political parties, movements, lists, sub-lists, sub-parties and a myriad of other groupings were presented to the Interior Ministry by Sunday’s deadline.
Amid the usual forest of symbols with shields and crosses, flags, hammers and sickles, doves, suns, trees and seas, there are some symbols that raise eyebrows more than normal.
The symbol of the “No Monnezza” list takes its name from the Neapolitan slang for “no garbage,” and is a sub list of an “animal rights” party of the southern Campania region.
The region has been in the news for all the wrong reasons lately. Its governor will stand trial in May in connection with the garbage crisis around the city of Naples, where tens of thousands of tonnes of rubbish have piled up in the streets.
There is the “Holy Roman Empire” list, which describes itself as “Liberal-Catholic”. The symbol sports the picture of its founder, Mirella Cece, who started the group 21 years ago.
Meanwhile, there is a controversy about a “proud lifelong Fascist” on the list headed by the former and likely future Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi.
Prof. Shugart, I don’t know, from Italy, if our electoral law isn’t a proportional system (I think it is, becuase who study electoral laws is obliged to study also the consequences of them; and in this case they are extremely proportional). But, if you keep thinking that we are talking about a sort of a mixed electoral system, this is the case to explain why “the better of both worlds†isn’t working in Italy…
Seed planted by Leonardo — 11 March 2008 @ 22:32
Italy’s current system does not meet the definitions of either “proportional” or “mixed-member.” It a majoritarian list system: an alliance of lists that combine for a plurality of votes wins a guaranteed majority (55%) of seats. It is then proportional within each of these alliances. That is not a “proportional” system as I understand it, and in fact some lists are significantly over-represented while others are under-represented (depending on whether or not they affiliated with the winning alliance).
I have discussed this extensively in the past in the “Italy” block. (Just click on the country name and scroll!)
The system put in place in the 1990s and scrapped before the 2006 election was certainly a mixed-member majoritarian system (albeit with a partial compensatory mechanism). By allowing electorally based turnover among governing formulas alongside broad representation of parties it certainly met the “best of both worlds” criteria. Maybe the current law does as well, but it looks more like a worst of both worlds to me!
Seed planted by MSS — 12 March 2008 @ 13:32