Meloni’s dangerous constitutional change in Italy

Michael Meyer-Resende and Nino Tsereteli work for Democracy Reporting International, a Berlin-based NGO.

The optics are terrible: Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has made proposals for constitutional reform that are eerily reminiscent of another constitutional change made a century ago by Benito Mussolini.

Adopted in November 1923, Mussolini’s notorious Acerbo Law established that the party winning the largest share of the vote — even if only 25 percent — would get two-thirds of the seats in parliament. And after his party won the subsequent election — although intimidation and violence proved more important there than tampering with electoral law — the road to dictatorship was paved.

Meloni’s current proposal now echoes this Acerbo Law, as the Italian leader wants to automatically give the party with the highest percentage of votes a 55 percent share of the seats in parliament. In other words, as long as one party receives more votes than any other — even if that were, say, 20 percent of the national vote — it will be rewarded with outright parliamentary control.

If this sounds strange, that’s because it is. For example, if Poland had used this electoral system in its most recent election, the outgoing Law and Justice party would still control the Polish parliament, despite receiving only 35 percent of the national vote against the opposition’s 52 percent.

Thus, strange as it may be, Meloni’s calculation isn’t hard to understand. Her party, Brothers of Italy, may have a comfortable lead in the polls, but it is far from an overwhelming majority.

In essence, this proposal would treat the whole of Italy like a single constituency in a first-past-the-post election, with the party winning a relative majority, however small, claiming safe control of parliament. It would be an extreme form of winner-takes-all, with massive disproportionality built in.

And that’s not all. The proposal also requires each party to nominate a candidate for prime minister before the election, and the winning party’s candidate would automatically become prime minister — considered to be directly elected by the people.

The prime minister would rule supreme.

Meloni’s proposal combines the ideas of a presidential and parliamentary system of government in a way that allows for a massive concentration of power.

In a presidential system, the president is strong because they are directly elected, presenting a strong counterbalance to the legislative branch of government.

In a parliamentary system, the executive and legislative branches are less separated. The head of the executive (the prime minister, or the chancellor) represents the majority in the legislature. However, they also depend on this majority, providing some balance between these two branches of power.

Italian commentators have made many good proposals on how to adjust the system to make governments more stable | Filippo Monteforte/AFP via Getty Images

Meloni’s plan would thus combine the legitimacy and power of direct presidential elections (“The people voted for me!”) with the weak division of powers of a parliamentary system. It would see her command the executive as a directly elected prime minister, as well as the parliament through its 55 percent representation.

It is also greatly concerning that Meloni and her party tried to do this by stealth. The government’s press release announcing the plan called it a “minimalist” approach — it is anything but.

When it comes to constitutional changes, quality bears no relation to quantity. And although the reform only amends two articles of the constitution, it completely alters the power relations of the Italian republic.

So, how does Meloni justify this plan? Her main argument is that Italy needs more stable governments — which is a legitimate concern. Over the past three decades, Italian governments have lasted on average only two years.

And to be fair, the idea of bonus seats for a winning party has been part of constitutional discussions in Italy for a long time — it wasn’t just a Mussolini idea. Such bonuses currently play a role in local and regional elections.

However, even if this interest in government stability is legitimate, Meloni’s plan throws the baby out with the bathwater.

Italian commentators have made many good proposals on how to adjust the system to make governments more stable — cementing an artificially created majority headed by a directly elected prime minister isn’t one of them. Italy’s legal community is very critical of the plan as well.

It should also come as no surprise that there’s no comparable example of such a system. Very few countries have majority bonuses — those that do, have much smaller bonuses — and no country has a directly elected prime minister. 

Meanwhile, for the European Union, the proposal could not be less welcome. So far, Europe’s center right has accommodated Meloni, who isn’t anti-EU and remains supportive of Ukraine’s self-defense against Russia’s war. But it would be a mistake to look away.

The bloc is paying a steep price for ignoring developments in Hungary in the early 2010s, when the ruling Fidesz party overhauled the country’s constitution without even asking Hungarians — no referendum was held. The party then made endless legal changes to cement its power, including electoral arrangements to secure Fidesz a two-thirds majority in parliament.

The EU shouldn’t repeat its complacency. An unprecedented concentration of power in the executive violates the principle of democracy enshrined in the EU Treaty (Article 2, Article 10), and it is the hallmark of authoritarian systems. Accepting such a system in any member country would create a terrible precedent, making a further mockery of the idea of a community of democracies.

Europe has institutions in place to deal with constitutional matters — namely the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission — and it should review this proposed constitutional change. The Italian government could also officially ask for such a review. If this change went through without review, another undesirable conflict within the EU would may be inevitable.