Italian Vs. U.S. Constitutional System
In its broadest meaning, constitution refers to any codified document, consisting of rules and principles that govern any kind of organization, starting from small companies up to big players. But on the scale of countries this term refers to a national constitution, which specifically defines powers and duties of the government; relationships between the executive, legislative and judiciary systems. In some cases it may also contain human rights. In a sense, constitution is “Basic Law” from which all the other laws and regulations are derived from (In few countries like Germany and Israel, constitution is in fact called “Basic Law”). Core idea behind every constitution, in every country, is separation of power. Obviously it’s not a good idea to place too much power into the hands of one group or even a person, so this is when system of “checks and balances” comes into play – distributing and balancing power between executive, legislative and judiciary systems. To put it into simpler words, this system makes sure that groups, mentioned above, monitor and check the behavior of each other, so that there are no entities with too much authority.
Amount of power distributed to one group within a state, varies from country to country – indeed, this discrepancy determines if country runs a presidential or parliamentary system of government. And this is where we come close to the main topic of this essay.
Italy and United states have different forms of government. One operates parliamentary system (Italy) and the other one presidential (U.S.) - Accordingly separation of power is different, along with the system of checks and balances.
As the main part of the political life, elections are one of the most important balancing features present in U.S. system. Articles of constitution provide more than a brief guideline on how to run elections of Senate, House and the president. Main balancing trait of the scheme is the scattered schedule of the elections. This helps to ensure that one political party isn’t heading all three branches of the government. This kind of separation of power, among different parties with different interests, is meant to guarantee control, cooperation and as a result lead to sensible political advancements. But sometimes this may not be the case; it could be that one party wins all elections, taking control of every single branch of government, but even in this case constitution ensures that branches remain independent.
Italian constitution is different, in the sense that it doesn’t separate executive and legislative powers. On the contrary, due to its parliamentary system, prime minister and the cabinet exercise immense powers. So controlling both legislative and executive powers by one party, means that presented bills are not much discussed and are enacted without any debate. Government presents its policies to the parliament, and without any hassle, parliament usually accepts those policies.
While difference is obvious, there is no evidence that one system prevails over the other one. At first sight, it may seem that Italian version has a tendency towards instability due to concentration of power in single hand – But world experience shows that it’s not quite true. For example in parliamentary systems such as the United Kingdom, which is quite similar to that of Italian, the three powers are not separated. However, this has never caused any trouble. In contrast to this, countries that copied U.S. system with too much separation of powers resulted in civil wars and dictatorship (Latin America for example).
Problem with delegation of power among various parties is that in some cases confrontation may become too severe, resulting in total failure of communication and cooperation between systems. What I’m trying to say is that there is no single rule, method of balance that could help avoid political extremism – every country finds its own unique way of balancing power. And the fact that most of the constitutions are custom tailored to the special needs of the nation, well blended with culture, guarantees its effectiveness.
Another important system of balance in the U.S. constitution is President’s Veto power. U.S. head can veto acts of congress, every bill should be presented to him and within ten days he has to sign or veto it. If no action is done within ten days, bill automatically becomes a law even without president’s signature. But even in this case full power isn’t delegated to the head of the state, for it is balanced out by the members of chamber. For example bill can become a law even without president’s approval if two-thirds of members of each chamber vote against president’s decision. Another limitation is that certain parts of the bill cannot be vetoed - In other words, either the whole project is canceled or they have to cope it with all its imperfections.
In Italian system, we have different picture. President doesn’t have power to veto any decision of parliament, he can only give suggestion to reflect over it again – and procedure of this suggestion is extremely complicated since president has to give reasoning behind his proposal, etc. So Italian system doesn’t provide the head of the state any means of checking and controlling parliament’s decisions. Which I believe isn’t as flexible as in U.S. system, where president effectively checks all the activities of the congress eliminating any potential misconception.
The very last difference I want to talk about is delegation of legislative power to the government for limited period of time. This can happen in the framework of Italian constitution only; U.S. system doesn’t provide any similar mechanism. Italian system can be quite useful in case of extreme situations like war for example, but even with this thought in mind Americans don’t allow anything of this sort.