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The role of the Italian Constitutional Court in the policy agenda: persistence and change between the First and Second Republic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 July 2018

Elisa Rebessi  and
Francesco Zucchini
Elisa Rebessi*
Affiliation:
Department of Social and Political Sciences, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milano, Italy
Francesco Zucchini
Affiliation:
Department of Social and Political Sciences, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milano, Italy
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

If we examine the current literature, no study on policy agenda has so far addressed the agenda of a Constitutional Court in a country that has recently experienced crucial changes in its political system. The present contribution on the Italian Constitutional Court seeks to bridge this gap. We aim at assessing the role the Italian Court plays in the policy process in both the First and the Second Republic by answering two research questions: (1) in its decisions does the Court accommodate themes that are neglected in the parliamentary legislative process? (2) Does the Court (and if so, how often) represent interests and values in opposition to the interests and values supporting the current legislative majorities? By employing an original data set that puts together all decisions of constitutional illegitimacy under incidental review between the years 1983 and 2013, we found that in both Republics Court’s agenda is significantly more concentrated than Parliament’s agenda, and it does not broadly offer an alternative access point to the policy-making for new or neglected issues. However, at the same time, the alternational system of the Second Republic seems to trigger more immediate and ‘salient’ reactions from the Constitutional Court, which in that period becomes more prone to sanction recent legislation.

Keywords

ItalyConstitutional CourtParliamentpolicy agenda
Type
Research Article
Information
Italian Political Science Review / Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica , Volume 48 , Special Issue 3: Policy Agendas in Italy , November 2018 , pp. 289 - 305
Copyright
© Società Italiana di Scienza Politica 2018 

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