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Italian coalitions and electoral promises: assessing the democratic performance of the Prodi I and Berlusconi II governments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 February 2016

Catherine Moury
Catherine Moury*
Affiliation:
CIES – Lisbon University Institute, Lisbon, Portugal
*
∗ Email: catherine.moury@iscte.pt
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Abstract

Italian party coalitions (from both the centre-left and the centre-right) have enacted an average of 57% of the pledges included in their common manifestos. In relative terms, Italian political parties keep their electoral promises much less than parties governing in single-party government, but slightly outperform those that form post-electoral coalitions. Although this finding contradicts the widespread pessimism about Italy's performance, it also illustrates that there is no significant advantage to bipolarism and the existence of a common programme as opposed to situations where coalitions are formed after the elections. This might explain Italians’ dissatisfaction with the way democracy works in their country.

Keywords

coalition governanceelectoral pledgesItalian political partiesinstitutions
Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , February 2011 , pp. 35 - 50
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

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