Politics of Italy
The politics of Italy are conducted through a parliamentary republic with a multi-party system. Italy has been a democratic republic since 2 June 1946, when the monarchy was abolished by popular referendum and a constituent assembly, formed by the representatives of all the anti-fascist forces that contributed to the defeat of Nazi and Fascist forces during the liberation of Italy, was elected to draft a constitution, which was promulgated on 1 January 1948.
Executive power is exercised by the Council of Ministers, which is led by the Prime Minister, officially referred to as "President of the Council". Legislative power is vested primarily in the two houses of Parliament and secondarily in the Council of Ministers, which can introduce bills and holds the majority in both houses. The judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislative branches. It is headed by the High Council of the Judiciary, a body presided over by the President, who is the head of state, though this position is separate from all branches. The current president is Sergio Mattarella, and the current prime minister is Giorgia Meloni.
The Economist Intelligence Unit rated Italy as a "flawed democracy" in 2024.:16 According to the 2025 V-Dem Democracy indices Italy was the 30th most liberal democratic country in the world. A high degree of fragmentation and instability, leading to often short-lived coalition governments, is characteristic of Italian politics. Since the end of World War II in 1945, Italy has had 69 governments, at an average of one every 1.11 years.
Government
The Italian constitution is the result of the work of the Constituent Assembly, which was formed by the representatives of all the anti-fascist forces that contributed to the defeat of Nazi and Fascist forces during the liberation of Italy. Article 1 of the Italian constitution states:By stating that Italy is a democratic republic, the article solemnly declares the results of the constitutional referendum which took place on 1 June 1946. The State is not a hereditary property of the ruling monarch, but it is instead a Res Publica, belonging to everyone.
The people who are called to temporarily administer the republic are not owners, but servants; and the governed are not subjects, but citizens. And the sovereignty, that is the power to make choices that involve the entire community, belongs to the people, in accordance with the concept of a democracy, from the Greek demos and kratìa. However, this power is not to be exercised arbitrarily, but in the forms and within the limits established by the rule of law.
Head of state
As the head of state, the President of Italy, officially denoted as President of the Italian Republic, represents national unity, and guarantees that Italian politics comply with the Constitution. The president serves as a point of connection between the three branches of the government, but has got considerably less powers than those previously given to the King of Italy. The President of Italy is the commander-in-chief of the Italian Armed Forces and chairs the High Council of the Judiciary. A president's term of office lasts for seven years.The President of Italy is elected by an electoral college of minimum 658 members. It comprises both chambers of the Italian Parliament—the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate of the Republic—meeting in joint session, combined with 58 special electors appointed by the regional councils of the 20 regions of Italy. Three representatives come from each region, so as to guarantee representation for localities and minorities.
Legislative branch
With article 48 of the Constitution, which guarantees the right to vote, the people exercise their power through their elected representatives in the Parliament. The Parliament has a bicameral system, and consists of the Chamber of deputies and the Senate, elected every five years. The two houses together form a perfect bicameral system, meaning they perform identical functions, but do so separately.The Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the bicameral Italian Parliament, has 400 members, of which 392 are elected from Italian constituencies and 8 from Italian citizens living abroad. Members of the Chamber of Deputies are styled The Honourable and meet at Palazzo Montecitorio in Rome.
The Senate of the Republic, the upper house of the bicameral Italian Parliament, has 200 members, of which 196 are elected from Italian constituencies and 4 from Italian citizens living abroad. In addition, there is a variable number of senators for life, either appointed by the President of the Republic or rightfully so as former Presidents of the Republic. Members of the Senate are styled Senator or The Honourable Senator and meet at Palazzo Madama in Rome.
Executive branch
The Constitution establishes the Government of Italy as composed of the president of the council and ministers. The President of Italy appoints the prime minister and, on their proposal, the ministers that form its cabinet.The Prime Minister of Italy, officially the President of the Council of Ministers of the Italian Republic, is the head of government of the Italian Republic. The Prime Minister of Italy must have the confidence of the Italian Parliament to stay in office. The Prime Minister of Italy is the president of the Council of Ministers which holds executive power and the position is similar to those in most other parliamentary systems. The formal Italian order of precedence lists the office as being, ceremonially, the fourth-highest Italian state office after the president and the heads of the legislative chambers.
The Council of Ministers is the principal executive organ of the Government of Italy. It comprises the President of the council, all the ministers, and the undersecretary to the President of the council. Deputy ministers and junior ministers are part of the government, but are not members of the Council of Ministers.
Judicial branch
The law of Italy has a plurality of sources of production. These are arranged in a hierarchical scale, under which the rule of a lower source cannot conflict with the rule of an upper source. The Constitution of 1948 is the main source.The Constitution states that justice is administered in the name of the people and that judges are subject only to the law. So the judiciary is a branch that is completely autonomous and independent of all other branches of power, even though the Minister of Justice is responsible for the organization and functioning of those services involved with justice and has the power to originate disciplinary actions against judges, which are then administered by the High Council of the Judiciary, presided over by the President.
The judiciary of Italy is based on Roman law, the Napoleonic Code and later statutes. It is based on a mix of the adversarial and inquisitorial civil law systems, although the adversarial system was adopted in the Appeal Courts in 1988. Appeals are treated almost as new trials, and three degrees of trial are present. The third is a legitimating trial.
In November 2014, Italy accepted the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice.
Political parties and elections
Before 2021, the minimum voting age for all elections was 18 years old, aside for Senate elections, where the minimum voting age was 25 years old. Following the approval of Constitutional Law No. 1/2021, the minimum voting age for the Senate of the Republic became the same as for the Chamber of Deputies. The 2022 Italian general election was the first one in which both chambers had identical electoral bodies.Chamber of Deputies
Senate of the Republic
Political parties
Italy's dramatic self-renewal transformed the political landscape between 1992 and 1997. Scandal investigations touched thousands of politicians, administrators and businessmen; the shift from a proportional to the scorporo system also altered the political landscape. Party changes were sweeping. The Christian Democratic party dissolved; the Italian People's Party and the Christian Democratic Center emerged. Other major parties, such as the Socialists, saw support plummet. A new liberal movement, Forza Italia, gained wide support among moderate voters. The National Alliance broke from the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement. A trend toward two large coalitions emerged from the April 1995 regional elections. For the 1996 national elections, the center-left parties created the Olive Tree coalition while the center-right united again under the House of Freedoms. These coalitions continued into the 2001 and 2007 national elections.This emerging bipolarity represents a major break from the fragmented, multi-party political landscape of the postwar era, although it appears to have reached a plateau since efforts via referendums to further curtail the influence of small parties were defeated in 1999, 2000 and 2009.
Regional governments
Five regions have special charters granting them varying degrees of autonomy. The raisons d'être of these charters is in most cases the presence of significant linguistic and cultural minorities, but in the case of Sicily it was to calm down separatist movements. The other 15 regions were in practice established in 1970, even if their ideation had been a much earlier idea.History of the post-war political landscape
First Republic: 1946–1994
There have been frequent government turnovers since 1945, indeed there have been 66 governments in this time. The dominance of the Christian Democratic party during much of the post-war period lent continuity and comparative stability to Italy's political situation, mainly dominated by the attempt of keeping the Italian Communist Party out of power in order to maintain Cold War equilibrium in the region.The Italian Communists were in the government only in the national unity governments before 1948, in which their party's secretary Palmiro Togliatti was minister of Justice. After the first democratic elections with universal suffrage in 1948 in which the Christian Democracy and their allies won against the popular front of the Italian Communist and Socialist parties, the Italian Communist Party never returned in the government.
The system had been nicknamed the "imperfect bipolarism", referring to more proper bipolarism in other Western countries where right-wing and left-wing parties alternated in government. Meanwhile, rising post-war tensions between right-wing and left-wing parties in Italy brought to the radicalization and proliferation of numerous far-left and far-right terrorist organizations throughout the country.