Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 July 2018
Le radici della debolezza del governo collegiale nell'Italia repubblicana sono state individuate nel modello costituzionale formale così come fu ideato dai padri fondatori. Ma anche nel fatto che i governi italiani, tranne qualche eccezione, sono sempre stati governi di coalizione, una condizione che necessariamente rende il processo decisionale collegiale molto più complicato e controverso (Pappalardo 1978; Bogdanor 1983; Pridham 1986; Budge e Keman 1990; Laver e Schofield 1990).
This article examines the establishment – over the last 25 years –of an extra-governmental device of cabinet decision-making: the coalition parties' Majority Summits bringing together party leaders and governmental representatives. The analysis of their number, composition, content, seat and outcome shows how these informal arenas have become highly institutionalized and how the intra-governmental coordination and collegiality has been replaced by an extra-governmental party bargaining managed by Majority Summits.
Until the 7th Andreotti government (April 1991 - April 1992) Majority Summits continued to be a priviledged site of the core executive, but with the governments led by Amato and Ciampi political parties have lost many of the prerogatives which they had gained in the past years. They both made important decisions without consulting the party secretaries. In short, Amato and Ciampi never once resorted to Majority Summits.
This «institutional transition» was interrupted by new elections in March 1994 and, in particular, by a stronger resort to Majority Summits made by the new premier, Silvio Berlusconi. From this point of view, the so-called «Second Republic» does not seem very different from the First one. Once again, in fact, these summits have been used as the solution to face a very low level of collegiality among the coalition partners, but with an important change compared to the past: the high number of informal - and less institutionalized - meetings between the premier and the different coalition partners.