Autore: Fabio

Riforma costituzionale e poteri del governo: perché giuristi e politologi differiscono, ma hanno ragione entrambi

Le valutazioni di costituzionalisti e scienziati politici sulla riforma costituzionale sono differenti per quanto concernono i poteri del governo. In effetti, hanno entrambi ragione.

Affermare che la riforma costituzionale alteri l’equilibrio dei poteri a favore del governo “è una pura sciocchezza”, anzi i “poteri normativi del governo vengono riequilibrati” – è l’opinione di  numerosi costituzionalisti e dei sostenitori della riforma (ma anche, curiosamente, di molti detrattori).

George Tsebelis, scienziato politico che ha contribuito in modo significativo allo studio comparato del bicameralismo (e.g. Bicameralism, scritto con Jeannette Money e pubblicato dalla Cambridge University Press), invece sostiene che l’abolizione del bicameralismo simmetrico (o paritario) “rafforzerebbe il potere del governo (come attore che stabilisce l’agenda politica)”.

In effetti, hanno entrambi ragione. Il motivo? Usano gli stessi termini attribuendone significati differenti.

Costituzionalisti e poteri normativi

Nel diritto, per potere si intende la possibilità di un soggetto (in questo caso il governo) di produrre degli effetti giuridici attraverso un atto come una legge. Il potere è infatti una capacità conferita tramite  leggi ordinarie o costituzionali.

Secondo questa accezione, la riforma costituzionale tocca solo marginalmente i poteri del governo e non necessariamente in senso rafforzativo: alla possibilità di chiedere alla Camera di deliberare entro settanta giorni su un disegno di legge considerato essenziale (nuovo articolo 72) si frappongono limiti più stringenti imposti alla decretazione d’urgenza (nuovo articolo 77).

Nulla da obiettare.

Scienziati politici e potere

Non è questa però l’accezione di potere usata da molti scienziati politici, i quali partono dal presupposto che gli attori sociali abbiamo degli obiettivi. Il governo ad esempio vuole attuare il proprio programma.

Si parla di potere qualora tali attori non possano raggiungere i propri obiettivi senza influenzare il comportamento degli altri o  sottrarsi dalla loro influenza. Con la riforma, il governo potrà sottrarsi dall’influenza dei senatori per attuare il programma, ne risulterà quindi rafforzato.

I poteri normativi nell’accezione dei costituzionalisti sono delle “regole del gioco” politico per gli scienziati politici. La riforma elimina un ostacolo che si può frapporre al raggiungimento degli obiettivi di governo: l’approvazione del Senato. Dà quindi al governo maggiore potere anche se i suoi poteri normativi rimangono inalterati.

Tsebelis sostiene che la riforma rafforzerà probabilmente anche la Corte Costituzionale, sebbene il testo apporti modifiche minime alla Consulta. Del perchè di questo, ne parleremo in un’altra occasione.

Riferimenti

European Union can afford to be more transparent

Transparency improves the relationship between citizens and politicians, but it could lead to posturing or pandering to public opinion. Politicians may therefore fail to adopt policies and reach valuable compromises. In a recent research,  Sara Hagemann and Fabio Franchino show that the drawbacks of increased transparency in the EU Council of Ministers have not materialized. The European Union can afford to be more transparent.

Recent studies suggest there is a direct trade-off between transparency and efficiency in legislative politics. We challenge this conclusion and present a bargaining model where one particular kind of transparency – the publication of legislative records – works to overcome problems of incomplete information.

We also present empirical findings from legislative activities in the Council of the European Union from 1999 to 2014 and from 23 interviews with senior officials in Brussels. Our results show that increased transparency, in the form of publication of legislative records, does not lead to gridlock or prolonged negotiations.

On the contrary, recordings of governments’ positions help facilitate decision-making as they increase credibility of policy positions. This, in turn, lowers risk of negotiation failure and screens out marginal amendments.

The article is available here

Hagemann, Sara, and Fabio Franchino. “Transparency vs Efficiency? A Study of Negotiations in the Council of the European Union.” European Union Politics, (February 8, 2016)  OnlineEarly. doi:10.1177/1465116515627017.

Personal websites: Fabio Franchino, Sara Hagemann

 

Your prejudices about law observance are (sometimes) wrong

Italy more law observant than Denmark and Finland? Spain more compliant than Germany? You hardly hear this in the news, but these are the surprising patterns of noncompliance with the regulation on state aid in the European Union between 2000 and 2012. We report the results from a research conducted by Fabio Franchino and Marco Mainenti that explains how electoral institutions shape the incentives of governments to comply with international obligations.

Check out this figure.

figure_1

It illustrates the proportion of unlawful measures out of the total number of state aid measures adopted by the countries of the European Union (EU) (measures are unlawful if they do not comply with the EU provisions on state aid). Existing explanations of compliance and implementation in the European Union cannot satisfactorily describe these patterns.

These data not only display surprising patterns across countries but the simple fact that a government decides in the first place to avoid these rules is puzzling since the likelihood of being detected is high and the costs associated with noncompliance are not trivial (an unlawful aid must be recovered, including the accrued payable interests). Notice that certain state aid measures are compatible with EU law.

To explain why countries are willing to take these risks, we use the recent literature on how compliance with international obligations is affected by the types of electoral institutions employed in a country. These institutions can shape the incentives of governments to comply because of the misalignment they may engender between the collective objectives of a government party and the individual objectives of its members in the legislature.

We find that an increase of district magnitude improves compliance (district magnitude is the number of seats available in an electoral district). The higher the magnitude the less politicians are pressured to cater to constituency-specific interests and the less likely they will press their government to circumvent the EU provisions on state aid.

However, where either party leaders have no control over the ballot rank or other electoral rules strengthen the incentives to search for a personal vote, compliance decreases with higher magnitude. These electoral rules  increase competition among candidates in a multi-member district.  The higher the number of candidates, the toughest the competition and the need for politicians to distinguish themselves from copartisans, the higher the pressure to evade the rules.

Our work also provides evidence for the effects of electoral reforms on compliance.

The article is available here

Franchino, Fabio, and Marco Mainenti. “The Electoral Foundations to Noncompliance: Addressing the Puzzle of Unlawful State Aid in the European Union.” Journal of Public Policy 36, no. 3 (September 2016): 407–436. doi:10.1017/S0143814X15000343.

Data download (coming soon)

Personal websites: Fabio Franchino, Marco Mainenti

Mistrust in the Greek government undermines support for a fiscal union

In May 2015, we conducted an online survey, employing the Italian National Election Studies online panel, where more than three thousand Italian participants have been asked to choose in pairwise comparisons between fiscal unions with different characteristics.

Although more than sixty percent of the participants declared their support for a fiscal union, even when made aware of its distributive implications, they systematically preferred unions with the lowest possible tax rate (Figure 1 – click on the figure to enlarge), note: a positive (negative) value means that a union with that characteristics is supported (opposed).

Figure 1: Attitudes toward fiscal unions with different characteristics

fiscal_union_fig1

Among several other factors, it seems that attitudes toward the Greek government undermine support for a fiscal union. Trust in the Greek government is not high (Figure 2) and – importantly – attitudes toward fiscal unions vary between participants having low and high trust, at least with regard to the very important issue of the tax rate (Figure 3)

Figure 2: Trust in the Greek government

fiscal_union_fig2

 

Figure 3: Trust in the Greek government and attitudes toward fiscal unions

fiscal_union_fig3

Trust in the Italian government is only marginally higher (Figure 4), but – importantly – attitudes toward fiscal unions do not vary significantly between participants having low and high trust (Figure 5)

Figure 4: Trust in the Italian government

fiscal_union_fig4

Figure 5: Trust in the Italian government and attitudes toward fiscal unions

fiscal_union_fig5

Trust in the German government is even higher (Figure 6), but – similarly – attitudes do not vary much between participants having low and high trust, with the possible exception of the spending priorities (Figure 7)

Figure 6: Trust in the German government

fiscal_union_fig6

Figure 7: Trust in the German government and attitudes toward fiscal unions

fiscal_union_fig7

 

In sum, participants are unwilling to pay for a fiscal union and these attitudes can be at least partially explained by the lack of trust in the Greek government.

Some of these findings have been presented in a paper written with Paolo Segatti (Università degli Studi di Milano) and presented at the Panel on Austerity Politics at the Crossroads, 5th Annual Conference of the European Political Science Association, Vienna, June 25 – 27, 2015

Al-Ma’arri

By fearing whom I trust I find my way to truth; by trusting wholly I betray the trust of wisdom; better far is doubt which brings the false into the light of day – Abu ‘L-ala Ahmad b. Abdallah al-Ma’arri (973-1057)

How we value honest and competent politicians (so long as they share our views)

How we value competence, honesty and other valuable traits depends on how close politicians are to our ideas. If they are distant, we tend to dismiss those qualities. We may even prefer unsavory politicians if the alternative is someone supporting policies we deeply dislike. We report the results from an experiment conducted by Fabio Franchino and Francesco Zucchini with the research assistance of Alessandra Caserini of the Laboratorio Indagini Demoscopiche, Università degli Studi di Milano.

 Un brigante onesto è un mio ideale. Giuseppe Garibaldi

Competence, like truth, beauty and contact lenses, is in the eye of the beholder. Laurence J. Peter

‘Honesty is the best policy’.  How can we disagree with Benjamin Franklin? Right? But how do we actually value honesty and other universally cherished traits, such as competence and dedication, when we choose politicians?

In 2012–13, we have conducted experiments in which participants were asked to choose between candidates who vary along three character-based valence (education, income and honesty) and two ideological (attitudes toward taxation and spending and the rights of same-sex couples) attributes.

Our results indicate that education and integrity, but not income (unsurprisingly), indeed behave like valence issues in which voters prefer more to less. More interestingly, the degree to which a valence attribute like education, which is a proxy for competence, influences the propensity to choose a given candidate depends on the proximity between the political views of the respondent and the political views of the candidate.

Honest_Leadership

In other words, we do value competent politicians, so long as they share our views. If they do not, we tend to dismiss these traits.

In awkward situations where participants have to choose between one politician with whom they share the political views, but there are issues concerning his integrity, and a second politician who is clean but supports disliked policies, they tend to prefer the  (at least integrity-wise) unsavory candidate.

Honesty is the best policy, if you support the best policies.

The article is available here

Franchino, Fabio, and Francesco Zucchini (2014) ‘Voting in a Multi-Dimensional Space: A Conjoint Analysis Employing Valence and Ideology Attributes of Candidates‘, Political Science Research and Methods, 3,2: 221-241

Data download
Links to websites: Fabio Franchino, Francesco Zucchini, Alessandra Caserini , Laboratorio Indagini Demoscopiche

Italians, European Economic Policies and the Euro

Support for the European Union has significantly dropped over the past seven years.

In June 2014, we conducted an online survey experiment, through ITANES and SWG, where 3026 participants have been asked to choose between economic programs in pairwise comparisons.

The key results are:
a) Reducing unemployment is perceived as a key priority, even if it leads to somewhat higher inflation
b) Italians are happy about the current size of public spending and taxation
c) Policies advocating dropping the euro are strongly rejected
d) Italians prefer less intrusive budgetary controls from the EU
e) There is no support for EU-wide welfare state policies, either in addition to or replacing national policies

The presentation of the research report can be downloaded here .

Negli ultimi sette anni, l’opinione pubblica nei confronti dell’Unione Europea è notevolmente peggiorata.

Nel mese di giugno 2014, abbiamo condotto un esperimento online, in collaborazione con ITANES e SWG, dove è stato chiesto a 3026 partecipanti di scegliere tra coppie di programmi economici.

I risultati principali sono i seguenti:
a) La riduzione della disoccupazione è percepita come una priorità fondamentale, anche al costo di una inflazione leggermente più elevata
b) Gli italiani sono soddisfatti dei livelli correnti di tassazione e spesa pubblica
c) L’uscita dall’euro è fortemente osteggiata
d) Gli italiani preferiscono controlli di bilancio meno intrusivi da parte dell’Unione Europea
e) Non c’è sostegno per politiche di welfare a livello di Unione Europea, in aggiunta o in sostituzione alle politiche nazionali

La presentazione del rapporto di ricerca è disponibile qui .