“Ideology and the Strategic Use of Executive Action: Evidence from the Italian Case”
The paper analyses the role of government fragmentation as a predictor of the use of emergency decrees in parliamentary democracies. In particular, it focuses on the relationship between ideological divisiveness within cabinets and the choice by executives to issue emergency decrees rather than initiating ordinary legislative procedures. A Bayesian multilevel analysis conducted on the population of government-initiated legislation in Italy between 1996 and 2018 finds significant evidence that those legislative proposals which are further away from the ideological centre of gravity of the executive are around three times more likely to be issued as emergency decrees. Likewise, legislative projects regulating more contentious policy areas are significantly more likely to be issued by decree. However, for more contentious issues the importance of ideological distance as a predictor diminishes. This evidence suggests that cabinets prefer decrees to ordinary legislative procedures when they expect that the bargaining environment in Parliament is more hostile. These results persist regardless of the fluctuations of the political-economic cycle. Their robustness is also tested against a battery of controls and against fixed effects both at the government level and at the legislature level.
Draft
“Executive Decrees and the Public Opinion: Exploring the Demand-side of Unilateral Action”
This study examines the implications of executive decrees in Italy, focusing on their impact on legislative processes and public perception. Utilizing both a conjoint
and a single-blind survey experiment, we find that respondents evaluate legislative drafts conditionally on the legislative procedure employed, with executive action decreasing support by approximately 10%. Political affiliation and legislative content further influence public evaluations. While the use of decrees does not directly enhance satisfaction with the government’s performance, it does shape perceptions of governmental efficiency and responsiveness. To explain the puzzling gap between disapproval of unilateral procedures and stable cabinet evaluations, the study introduces a formal signaling game. The model shows that under realistic informational assumptions, voters may be unable to infer cabinet competence from procedure choice, resulting in pooling equilibria where all governments use decrees regardless of urgency. These findings shed new light on the strategic use of decrees and their potential to shift the balance of power within parliamentary democracies.
Draft
“Keep Your Friends Closer: The Interplay Between Executive Action and Majority Cohesion”
Parliamentary democracies commonly exhibit relatively high degrees of voting cohesion. Italy makes no exception despite having transitioned between different electoral regimens and part structures. Throughout these transitions, Italian executives have made extensive use of executive legislation. This paper tries to investigate whether cabinets make strategic use of executive action to manage consensus within the majority. Drawing from an extensive dataset of electronic votes in the Chamber of Deputies from 2001 to 2018, the findings reveal that while the Italian Chamber of Deputies is generally cohesive, cabinets capitalize on periods of cohesion to issue more executive decrees. In contrast, observing less cohesion than anticipated prompts them to moderate this practice. This behavior supports the "consensus riding hypothesis," suggesting that cabinets tend to exert more legislative control when overseeing a cohesive majority, offering a nuanced understanding of legislative behaviors and strategies in parliamentary democracies. In addition, the paper introduces a novel measure of cohesion, the STM, capturing the impact of dissenting votes on the likelihood of legislation's success.
Work in progress
“The Political Economy of Endogenous Crises”
“Violent Strikes and Political Representation: a study on the complementarities of political representation and labour strikes in the French Third Republic” (With Massimo Morelli, Andrea Ariu and Mara Squicciarrini)