Abstract
In a previous paper (see [3]), we analyzed the procedures of the Italian Constitution, focussing on their strength correlating it with the strength of the government and of the Parliament, measured through two parameters, the governability and the fragmentation. Here, we extend the analysis to other European democracies: United Kingdom, France, and Spain.
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Notes
- 1.
Spain reached democratization in the period called third wave by Huntington [6] that began in 1974; UK and France democratized in the first wave, from 1828 to 1926, and Italy in the second wave, from 1943 to 1962.
- 2.
Until 2005, the president of the House of Lords was Lord Chancellor, and was the person to whom statutory instruments were communicated.
- 3.
With a view to carrying out its programme, the Government may seek the authorization of Parliament, for a limited period of time, to issue ordinances regulating matters normally falling within the field of law-making. (The) ordinances are made in the Council of Ministers after consultation with the Council of State. They come into force upon publication, but cease to be effective if the Bill ratifying them is not laid in front of Parliament by the date fixed by the enabling Act. At the expiration of the period mentioned in paragraph 1 of this article, (the) ordinances may be modified only by law, as regards matters falling within the field of law.
- 4.
This is a passive confidence, differently from the Italian one that may be viewed as an active confidence. More precisely, the difference refers to countries where the government needs to win an investiture vote, and countries in which the government just needs to be tolerated by Parliament. For further details see [14].
- 5.
The Cortes Generales may delegate to the Government the power to issue rules with the force of an act of the Parliament on specific matters not included in the foregoing section. Legislative delegation must be granted by means of act of basic principles when its purpose is to draw up texts in sections, or by an ordinary act when it is a matter of consolidating several legal statutes into one.
- 6.
In case of extraordinary and urgent need, the Government may issue temporary legislative provisions which shall take the form of decree laws and which may not affect the legal system of the basic State institutions, the rights, duties and freedoms of the citizens contained in Part 1, the system of Self-governing Communities, or the general electoral law. Decree laws must be inmediately submitted for debating and voting by the entire Congress, which must be summoned for this purpose if not already in session, within thirty days of their promulgation. The Congress shall adopt a specific decision on their ratification or repeal in the said period, for which purpose the Standing Orders shall provide a special summary procedure. During the period referred to in the foregoing subsection, the Cortes may process them as Government bills by means of the urgency procedure.
- 7.
For instance, the decree law n. 5 of 24 May 2002 was cancelled, as no necessity and urgency reasons hold.
- 8.
For instance, the decree laws were the 27% of the activity in the V legislature and the 28% in the V legislature.
- 9.
During 1986–1988, the cohabitation involved the socialist President François Mitterrand and the neo-Gaullist Premier Jacques Chirac; during 1993–1995, the cohabitation involved the socialist President François Mitterrand and the neo-Gaullist Premier Édouard Balladur; during 1997–2002, the cohabitation involved the neo-Gaullist President Jacques Chirac and the socialist Premier Lionel Jospin.
- 10.
In 2016 for the first time, the Spanish Parliament was dissolved due to the impossibility of forming a majority; according to the Constitution, the King dissolves the Parliament if the designated Premier does not obtain the confidence vote in two months.
- 11.
- 12.
There was an exception with the Callaghan government (1976–1979) during the XLVII legislature, when for most part of the term the government lacked a majority and had to rely on minor parties to govern.
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Acknowledgement
The authors gratefully acknowledge two anonymous referees for their useful comments and detailed remarks, and the participants to the workshop “Quantitative methods of group decision making” held at the Wroclaw School of Banking in November 2017 for useful discussions.
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De Micheli, C., Fragnelli, V. (2018). Robustness of the Government and the Parliament, and Legislative Procedures in Europe. In: Nguyen, N., Kowalczyk, R., Mercik, J., Motylska-Kuźma, A. (eds) Transactions on Computational Collective Intelligence XXXI. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11290. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-58464-4_9
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