Political and Legal System of Italy
Political system
Italy represents a parliamentary republic with strong Parliament, strict separation of branches of power, titular President and the Government which is very dependent on the parliamentary support. All the above mentioned in fact allows us to consider Italy to be a classical parliamentary republic with all its benefits and disadvantages.
Now let's try to describe every key element of political system of Italy.
The Italian Parliament is elected once per 5 years and consists of two chambers: the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies having 315 and 630 seats correspondingly. The elections system changed several times, it has different mathematic formulas for each chamber and is quite complicated. The main point is that the coalition of parties which has won the elections automatically receives minimum 55% of seats (Manuel Alvarez-Rivera, 2010) allowing it to work effectively not being dependent on permanent absolute presence of all the members of the coalition while voting. Also, a threshold system makes the task of getting into Parliament more complicated for small parties not having strong support higher than 2% of voters.
Two key features mentioned above lead Italy to the traditional for Western democracies in fact bi-partisanship within which the right-centre big party (or a coalition of small ones) competes every elections with the left-centre one and the winner receives the full power in the country until the next elections. It represent two important outcomes for us.
The first one is stability. Whatever party takes the power, it will keep it until the next elections, leaving in such a way the business legislation unchanged for at least several years. Solid rules of game always help, especially if you want to make investments from the opposite side of the planet, as in case of Coles Supermarkets.
Another one is predictability. Having in mind the power of the opposite camp and no guarantees that the opposition will not transform into the power on the
Italy represents a parliamentary republic with strong Parliament, strict separation of branches of power, titular President and the Government which is very dependent on the parliamentary support. All the above mentioned in fact allows us to consider Italy to be a classical parliamentary republic with all its benefits and disadvantages.
Now let's try to describe every key element of political system of Italy.
The Italian Parliament is elected once per 5 years and consists of two chambers: the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies having 315 and 630 seats correspondingly. The elections system changed several times, it has different mathematic formulas for each chamber and is quite complicated. The main point is that the coalition of parties which has won the elections automatically receives minimum 55% of seats (Manuel Alvarez-Rivera, 2010) allowing it to work effectively not being dependent on permanent absolute presence of all the members of the coalition while voting. Also, a threshold system makes the task of getting into Parliament more complicated for small parties not having strong support higher than 2% of voters.
Two key features mentioned above lead Italy to the traditional for Western democracies in fact bi-partisanship within which the right-centre big party (or a coalition of small ones) competes every elections with the left-centre one and the winner receives the full power in the country until the next elections. It represent two important outcomes for us.
The first one is stability. Whatever party takes the power, it will keep it until the next elections, leaving in such a way the business legislation unchanged for at least several years. Solid rules of game always help, especially if you want to make investments from the opposite side of the planet, as in case of Coles Supermarkets.
Another one is predictability. Having in mind the power of the opposite camp and no guarantees that the opposition will not transform into the power on the
References: Alvarez-Rivera, M., 2010. Electronic Resources on the Internet: Elections to the Italian Parliament. [online] Available at: [Accessed 14 May 2011]. European Judicial Network, 2007. European Commission - European Judicial Network - Legal order - Italy. [online] Available at: [Accessed 14 May 2011] Fameli, E. and Socci, F., 2005. Guide to Italian Legal Research and Resources on the Web. [online] Available at: [Accessed 14 May 2011]. Gerber, Louis, 2000. Italy 's governments since World War II. [online] Available at: [Accessed 14 May 2011]. Official web-site of the Government of Italy, n.d. Governo Italiano. [online] Available at: [Accessed 14 May 2011] Official web-site of the Senate of Italy, n.d. Constitution of the Italian Republic. [online] Available at: [Accessed 14 May 2011]. The Economist, 2010. Foreign direct Investment. [online] Available at: [Accessed 14 May 2011]