1,720,978 research outputs found
A long way to tipperary: time in the Italian legislative process 1987-2008
No full textThe Italian legislature does not enjoy widespread trust. At least one of the reasons has to be the perception of its inefficiency. Comparatively, the Italian law-making process is slow and most policy-makers complain about the difficulties experienced in trying to speed up the process. In spite of the political relevance of the topic, the issue has not attracted much scientific attention. This study tries to cover that void, focusing explicitly on the temporal dimension of law-making and analysing the duration of more than 3,000 laws approved during the period of 1987-2008: 21 years of intense Italian political history. Our exploratory analysis finds that successful proposals spend most of their time in those stages preceding the discussion in parliament, waiting to find room on the agenda. Concentrating on ordinary laws, we realise that the factors that expedite a legislative process are its sponsorship, the procedure adopted, the policy sector, and the timing of introduction, whereas the level of consensus is not associated with the duration of the process
Complying with the Transposition Deadlines of EU Directives : Evidence from Italy
No full textThis article assesses the causes of the timing of transposition of 2179 EU directives, using an original dataset of 3183 measures adopted by the Italian authorities. We show that amending Commission directives are transposed sooner. Additionally, EU laws with longer time for adaptation present a lower risk of delay beyond the deadline. More intense supranational monitoring speeds up transposition and lowers the risk of delay. Interestingly, as the volume of EU laws to be incorporated increases, transposition accelerates and, since 1984, delay is less likely to occur. As expected, administrative and legal reforms undertaken at the national level have lowered the risk of delay and increased the likelihood of transposition. Finally, those legal instruments that offer the opportunity to potential veto players to voice their concerns and delay transposition do not appear to corroborate entirely our predictions. As expected, legislative and local authority measures increase the risk of delay, while ministerial acts both lower this risk and expedite transposition. But, contrary to our predictions, legislative and cabinet acts accelerate transposition and cabinet measures increase rather than reduce the likelihood of delay
The impact of party priorities on Italian law-making from the First to the Second Republic
No full textThis paper analyses the correlation between the policy content of party manifestos issued during election campaigns and that of the laws produced after parties gained parliamentary majority. During the period covered by the research (1987-2006), the Italian political system experienced major institutional change, with the passage from the First to the Second Republic whose consequences are epitomised by the introduction of alternation in government. Hence the Italian case provides an opportunity to investigate whether and how the correlation between party and legislative agendas is affected by major institutional change. In the paper we test two expectations. Based on the party mandate theory, our first expectation is that the correlation between party and legislative agendas is higher in the Second Republic than in the First Republic. Following agenda-setting and information-processing theories, our second expectation is that the correlation will decrease throughout the cycle of single legislative terms. While empirical evidence supports the first claim, it seems to contrast with the second expectation
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