Making Laws Fit for the Present Day: The Government of Change and the precariousness of choices during Italy’s Long Transition

Abstract

This article retraces the events of the first Conte government from its difficult birth by contract through to its foreseen death and seeks to establish a connection between the political-institutional aspects of this unprecedented government alliance and the use of legislative instruments, as well as between the devaluation of Parliament and the successes of legislative parliamentary initiatives. This reconstruc-tion also compares the first months of the 18th legislature with the first months of the preceding legis-latures of the so-called ‘Second Republic’. The conclusion will be that this legislature distinguishes itself from certain preceding long-term legislatures (the 13th, 14th, 16th and 17th) by an approach orien-tated exclusively to the present and to constitutional reforms that are very small in dimension but huge in impact (such as reducing the number of parliamentarians). Like the other legislatures, it will end with a government and a majority which are different from the original ones, but perhaps with the same prime minister. When that will happen is obviously unclear.