The New Government and the Spoils System

THE NEW GOVERNMENT AND THE SPOILS SYSTEM

Annarita Criscitiello

On 17 May 2006, exactly 10 years after his first appointment as president of the Council of Ministers, Romano Prodi was sworn in at the Quirinale by the new president of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano. At 9 PM of the same day, during the first meeting of the Council of Minis- ters, Prodi appointed the undersecretary to the presidency, ministers without portfolio, and other undersecretaries. He then formally attributed the functions of council vice-president to Massimo D’Alema, president of the Democratici di Sinistra (DS, Left Democrats), and Francesco Rutelli, president of the Margherita (Daisy). The second Prodi government presented itself at the Senate for a confidence vote on Friday, 19 May, obtaining 165 votes in favor and 155 against. On the following Monday, in the Chamber of Deputies, it was approved by 344 votes in favor and 268 against.1 The government team, including the prime minister and his vice-presidents, comprised a total of 102 individuals, a record number in the history of the Italian Republic. This resulted in heated debate and protests conducted in the press and television, which were kept alive for several days, above all by representatives of the opposition. As we will see in the following pages, the formation of the new executive led to a great deal of discussion as regards the “unpackaging” of ministries, which resulted in an increase in their number, with public opinion inevitably conditioned by fears that this mode of sharing out new posts responded to the mere logic of coalition politics and possibly

Notes for this chapter begin on page 151. 138 Annarita Criscitiello

implied a return to the practices of the First Republic, a consequence determined by the new proportional electoral system. In reality, at least in the initial phase of the Prodi government, one could note a continuous—at times labored—search for a balance between a certainly substantial majoritarian and bipolar inheritance within the political system and a return to the old, typically consociational mechanisms. With regard to the time it took to form the new government, 29 days passed between the official declaration of the victory of the center-left in the general election of 9–10 April and the swearing in of the new government. Notwithstanding the difficulties created by the contestation of the electoral results2 and the internal dynamics of the political forces within the coalition, Prodi had been engaged in the formation of his cabinet for around a month—the same amount of time it took to put together his first government 10 years earlier, but also the time required for the formation of Silvio Berlusconi’s second government in June 2001.3 These were 30 days spent confronting, on the one hand, the institutional appointments scheduled in the post-election period4 and, on the other hand, the management of relations between the coalition partners in order to define the details of the incoming government. In fact, Prodi received the go-ahead to form his new government on 16 May, ending the transitional period the following day, and in this context he compiled his official list of ministers. This chapter will illustrate above all the characteristics of the formation of the second Prodi government, taking into consideration both the reorganization of the presidency of the council, with particular emphasis on the prime minister’s staff, and the allocation of ministries. A specific section of this chapter will describe how the appointment system was managed. The concluding section will offer a number of observations regarding the dynamics of the coalition and the characteristics of Romano Prodi’s leadership.

The Organization of the Presidency of the Council

Once the first Council of Ministers met, quickly after its swearing-in ceremony at the Quirinale, among the first measures undertaken by the new head of government was a decree law through which a number of the responsibilities of the presidency and the Council of Minis- ters were revised5 with the aim—as stated in the press release issued by Palazzo Chigi—of “reinforcing government action and rendering it more functional for the realization of its program.”6 With an interpretation of article 92 of the Constitution that was quasi-prime ministerial, the new head of the executive prepared himself to address the goals of The New Government and the Spoils System 139 a government in a legislature that featured at the outset, even in the eyes of its most optimistic observers, a path laden with obstacles. During the formation of his second cabinet, Prodi immediately used the wide margins of self-organization put at the disposal of the president of the council by the process of policy change that has retained a hold over Italian executives in the last 25 years, optimizing in this way the resources that the administrative apparatus of Palazzo Chigi was by now capable of offering. In fact, if, on the one hand, Prodi had acted in line with the custom that allows for the appointment of ministers without portfolio and the official appointment of the secretary-general to the presidency and the undersecretaries in the course of the first meeting of the Council of Ministers, on the other hand, using the instrument of decree law during the undertaking of the council’s first institutional appointment, the prime minister also introduced important changes to the organization of the executive through two important decisions. The first regarded the reorganization of ministries, which, as we will see below, overturned the Bassanini reform of 1999. The second concerned the presidency of the council more closely, in that the duties of the Inter- ministerial Committee for Economic Programs (CIPE) were transferred from the Ministry of Economy and Finance directly to Palazzo Chigi. Practically from the start, a possible solution was identified in central- izing the functions of coordination of political and economic planning within the council presidency. If the need for a coalition government to control the key economic policy themes from the nerve center of the executive through a kind of inner cabinet directorate was not surpris- ing,7 the assertive mode in which the new president of the council had enacted this transfer was rather unusual. This probably was due to the need to give an immediate indication of the policy direction that the government intended to follow and to register an initial response to the risk of fragmentation of policies between the Ministry of the Economy and Finance and the Ministry of Economic Development, especially as regards the process of public investment planning. As concerns the ministers without portfolio, rather than attempt- ing to understand how the attribution of these specific spoils was influenced simply in terms of the role played by office-seeking parties (that is, the simple recourse to counting their allocation of government positions), it is preferable to assess the extent to which the parties had managed in some way to take account of their expectations in terms of public policies. From the numerical point of view, the sums were easy: half of eight ministers without portfolio went to the largest party in government. The DS obtained four policy portfolios (relations with Parliament and institutional reform, equal opportunities, public administration innovation, and youth policy) that have 140 Annarita Criscitiello

traditionally played an important role in the party’s platform and had already seen the involvement in the relevant decisional sectors of many of the same actors in the 13th Legislature. Of the other four, two (regional affairs and policies for the family) went to the Margherita;8 the mandate for European Union policy was entrusted to Emma Bonino,9 who was also given the Ministry (with portfolio) of International Commerce; and, finally, the recently established portfolio for “achievement of the government program” was entrusted to Giulio Santagata. As economic adviser to Prodi, Santagata had been at his side in the earlier government formed in 1996 and, following that, at the European Commission. He had been present at the found- ing phase of the Ulivo in 1995 right through to the 2006 election. In February 2005, he founded and directed the Fabbrica del Programma (Program Factory), a political communications laboratory in Bolo- gna. He became involved directly in Prodi’s election campaign for the primaries and then for the 2006 general election.10 The choice of Santagata could almost be defined as strategic—a communications expert was placed at the head of a ministry that, in the previous legislature under Berlusconi, had acquired a strong symbolic value, above all, in relation to the media. It thus became the official source of the continuous verification of the correspondence between government actions and election platform promises. Alongside the appointment of ministers without portfolio, there were those of a fiduciary type, which the norms, through a process of incremental reform and political practice, have attributed to the president of the council in the internal organization of Palazzo Chigi. Among the first to be nominated was the undersecretary in the council, acting as secretary to the presidency, a role bestowed upon Enrico Letta, ex-minister, member of the European Parliament, expert in EU affairs, and a committed Europhile like Prodi. Letta is tied to the president of the council in a close relationship of personal, political, and professional experience, as well as through a relevant government expertise that has allowed direct involvement and participation in the management of the external relations and communications of the government—an approach that is decidedly innovative compared to that of his predecessors. The other three undersecretaries nominated by Prodi within the presidency also share the same relationship of personal trust with the prime minister and the same depth of political- administrative background. Above all, Enrico Micheli, Prodi’s long- time colleague at the Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale (IRI, Institute for Industrial Reconstruction, where Prodi had been director-general from 1993 to 1996), was again named undersecretary, a role he had played in the first Prodi government (he had later become The New Government and the Spoils System 141 minister in the first D’Alema government before then returning to the post of undersecretary at Palazzo Chigi in the following two center-left governments). Ricardo Franco Levi, a journalist and ex-spokesperson for Prodi during his first executive and director of his group of political advisers at the European Commission, was appointed undersecretary with responsibility for press and publishing, that is, the political adviser concerned directly with institutional communication. Finally, Fabio Gobbo, an economist trained in the political-cultural environment of Prodi, was entrusted with the coordination of the CIPE, the interministerial structure of economic planning for which, as we have seen, Prodi had engineered the transfer from the Ministry of the Economy to Palazzo Chigi during the first meeting of his Council of Ministers. At the same time, the prime minister also nominated Carlo Malinconico to the position of secretary-general of Palazzo Chigi. The grand commis of the council presidency, Malinconico had been the head of the sector dealing with legislative affairs for all center-left governments of the 13th Legislature. From the point of view of the skill profiles involved, therefore, a presidential staff based on this fiduciary rapport of political-economic- juridical counsel has—at least on paper—the potential to be a policy unit on the British executive model.11 In terms of the professional and political skills put in place in the reorganization of presidency resources, Prodi would seem to have therefore all the assets—both normative and based on organizational practice—to make the council presidency the real inner directorate of governing policy. If the future of the presidency truly depends (among other things) on its capacity to transform institutional personnel, the new prime minister appeared to be heading in the right direction. However, the first few months of the government suggest caution. None of the Palazzo Chigi personnel, except Undersecretary Letta, has so far undertaken a front-line role in the executive’s policy choices, and the only time that reference has been made to one of Prodi’s advisors has been in relation to the Telecom affair.12 In the meantime, following a typical Italian logic of presidency-build- ing, the reorganization of certain structures and tasks of the presidency and the modification of certain rules that govern the spoils system were decided through the only instrument that seems free of the coalitional blackmail dynamic: the normative powers of the executive. With a decree linked to the financial framework law,13 a collegial body was created comprising 10 members14 under the authority of the Ministry for the Achievement of the Government Program, which is tasked with monitoring the implementation and costs of the organizational transformation introduced by the first Council of Ministers meeting. 142 Annarita Criscitiello

The Allocation of Ministries

The initial presentation of the list of new ministers in a press confer- ence immediately highlighted the overturning of the 1999 Bassanini reform, which provided for the unification of selected ministries and the reduction to 12 of the total number of ministers with portfolio.15 In reality, the previous executive, led by Berlusconi, had already sanc- tioned exceptions, the Ministry of Health (which had previously been combined with the Ministry of Welfare) and the Ministry of Communi- cations (which was supposed to be part of the Ministry of Productive Activities). The truly novel aspect here—which, according to many commentators, constituted a unique case in the history of the Repub- lic—was that the formation of the new cabinet involved ministries that were not yet in existence at the time of appointment. Indeed, the political and academic debates that followed the naming of ministers underscored the exceptional procedure employed by Prodi. Most of the front-bench members of the opposition would speak not only of the multiplication of government positions, referring to the “unpackaging” of some ministries, but also of “phantom ministries,” criticiz- ing precisely the nomination of ministers not envisaged by the norms on government organization. In fact, by using the power of the council president’s self-organization, Prodi was able to proceed with his appointments by presenting the ministers as heading departments without portfolio, later formal- izing this innovation with the approval of the decree law. Certainly, if one looks exclusively at the question of method, one could ascribe to the new prime minister a kind of “decision-making” turn. In one of his first statements following the electoral victory, Prodi had in fact indicated that he would enjoy the prerogatives that the Constitu- tion gives to the president of the council in forming a government by taking account of the political composition of the majority, but with the strong imprint of the prime minister. However, with regard to the organization of ministries, above all in relation to the future management of the respective policy sectors, the overturning of the Bassa- nini reform left open many questions. Alongside the eight ministries allowed by the 1999 reform (foreign affairs, interior, justice, economy and finance, defense, agricultural and forestry policy, environment and territory, and cultural heritage) and the two “inherited” from the previous government (health and communications), three ministries were formed by detaching pieces from pre-existing ministries (research was separated from education, infrastructure from transport, work from social solidarity). In addition, the responsibilities of the Ministry of Productive Activities were transferred to the Ministry The New Government and the Spoils System 143 of Economic Development, from which was detached the brief for international trade, which became a ministry of its own. This was a total reorganization that, in the immediate context, responded to the logic of coalition in spoils allocation but also foreshadowed a difficult future in terms of government policy management. This was already evident in light of the processes of intersectorialization and interna- tionalization in the sphere of policy-making. It would be complicated to manage infrastructure by separating it from transport, to make decisions on overseas trade independently of economic or development policy, or to distinguish social policy from the entirety of employment policy. Indeed, there was no lack, from the first days of government, of contrasting statements by ministers proposing different solutions to common problems, reflecting a de facto sharing of the decisional sphere in important policy sectors. Thus, the executive emerged as comprised of 18 ministers with portfolio, 8 ministers without portfolio, 10 deputy ministers, and 66 undersecretaries.16 As for the identity of the ministers, the government team that was presented 10 years after the victory of the Ulivo in 1996 included a number of names that could be taken for granted, but also a number of novelties. The press did not miss the opportunity to underline that the same old faces tend to reappear in Italian governments. In fact, the specter of the new proportional electoral system and the opportunity for political blackmail provided by the slender Senate majority had created fears from the start as regards the phase of government formation and the role of the various coalition partners, the time taken, and the choices made by the prime minister. As already mentioned, the time taken was, in substance, in line with the previous governments, and practically the same as the second Berlusconi government. What occurred during the process of allocating ministerial roles will now be explored further. First of all, all the parties of the coalition—apart from the Partito dei Comunisti Italiani (PdCI, Party of Italian Communists), which expresses a preference toward a so-called tecnico d’area (sympathetic technocrat with specialized knowledge)—had at least one minister in the government. In terms of the votes obtained, the Ulivo, which comprised Prodi’s own list (the DS) and the Margherita and which gathered a third of the center-left’s votes, was the most represented inside the executive. Moreover, to cement the pre-electoral accord, as had occurred with the new coalitional logic that had emerged after the 2001 vote,17 it nominated the president of the DS, Massimo D’Alema, and the president of the Margherita, Francesco Rutelli, to the council vice-presidency. From this point of view, we thus also return to an old rule in the formation of the Italian executive that sees in the figure 144 Annarita Criscitiello

of the council vice-president an agent who rebalances the internal equilibrium within the majority. In this way, the three leaders of the Ulivo found themselves in power—on a journey that was not always serene—and acting as a common bulwark against the executive’s more extreme (if not extremist) wings. The logic of partition of roles was tied to the broad electoral consensus granted to the coalition and to the principle of proportionality that had imposed the need for the nomination of at least one minister for all the other parties of the coalition. Prodi did not forsake completely the goal of giving a personal flavor to the executive, calling on persons close to him over the years and strengthening the council presidency staff. As regards his governing team, Arturo Parisi, political adviser to Prodi from the first days of the foundation of the Ulivo, was appointed to the Ministry of Defense. He was undersecretary to the presidency in Prodi’s first executive 10 years previously and was among the main promoters of the October 2005 primaries. The other minister who was very close to Prodi was Paolo De Castro, to whom the Ministry of Agriculture was entrusted. Deeply knowledgeable about the policy that he found himself directing, De Castro had been economic adviser to the prime minister in his previous executive and had directed the same ministry in the two D’Alema governments. From 2001 until May 2004, he presided over Nomisma, an institute for economic studies, which had been founded 25 years previously by Prodi. The team of so-called prodiani also includes the minister without portfolio, Giulio Santagata, as discussed above. With regard to the DS, the largest governing party was assigned nine ministries, of which five were with portfolio (foreign affairs, health, economic development, work and social welfare, universities and research) and four without portfolio (relations with Parliament, equal opportunities, reform and innovation, youth policy). The Margherita was granted six ministries, of which four were with portfolio (defense, education, communications, culture) and two without (regional affairs and family policy). Excluding the Ministry of Economy and Finance, entrusted by the prime minister to a technocrat of high prestige, Tom- maso Padoa Schioppa, the group of ministries usually described in the literature on coalitions as comprising the inner circle of cabinet government was practically reserved for the forces that make up the Ulivo. Beyond the numbers game, however, nearly all the parties of the coalition seemed to be focused on acquiring ministerial roles that permitted them to manage the policies for which they had expressed a marked preference during the elaboration of the election platform. This was the case for the Margherita in relation to education policy, family policy, and communications policy; for the Greens in relation to environmental policy; and for the DS in relation to health, work, The New Government and the Spoils System 145 and institutional affairs. In a closer reading of the attribution of the ministerial spoils, therefore, with regard to the relationship between the logic of parties’ office-seeking and that of policy-seeking,18 we can identify factors that in some ways mitigate the exclusively proportional nature of this executive’s allocation of posts. To judge the distribution of ministerial roles, it seems that one can also take into consideration, at least in some cases, the impact of policies on coalitional behavior and evaluate it as an autonomous factor in condition- ing party choices. Such choices were oriented not solely toward the goal of obtaining ministerial positions at any cost, but also toward an attempt to make possible a government capable of surviving on the basis of an agreement on policies. Finally, remaining within the domain of party interests in determin- ing public policies, information on the existing relationship between policy issues and ministerial competences is not unimportant, given that out of a total of 25 ministers, at least 20 could benefit from a strong association between their political-professional expertise and the policies that they will be required to manage. This fact is exceptional if one considers the nature of governing coalitions during the so-called First Republic and especially the previous experience under Berlusconi, during which the leader of Forza Italia, reflecting the anti- politics that has always characterized his political career, attributed the high level of his ministers’ competence to the number of techno- crats that he had nominated.19 In the Prodi executive however, apart from two technical ministers, the greater part of expertise had been acquired in the course of previous political experience: in government, at the European, national, or local level, or through a position of sec- torial responsibility within a party. There are therefore very few cases (for example, that of Giuseppe Fioroni, a doctor and expert in health management, who was put at the head of the Ministry of Education, given his role in the Margherita’s executive committee, or Clemente Mastella at the Ministry of Justice) that can be attributed exclusively to the principle of coalition proportionality.

The Spoils System

The Italian version of the spoils system was introduced in 1998 with a legislative decree, according to which the new government could replace secretaries-general and the heads of ministerial departments (around 40 persons) with other general managers of appropriate level. This involved, furthermore, the introduction of temporary contracts for high-level functionaries (from two to five years, on the basis of 146 Annarita Criscitiello their respective contracts). The Frattini law in 2002 then introduced a kind of generalized spoils system. For high-level managers (secretaries-general of ministries, heads of departments, and equivalent-level managers) it envisaged the cessation of the position 90 days after the vote of confidence in a new government, even when the contract assigned by the previous executive had not expired. Moreover, the decree provided for a greater possibility of conferring new manage- rial positions upon individuals of elevated professional standing who were external to the administration. This also involved a transitory clause whereby contracts for positions at the highest level already in progress—in large measure arising out of the previous administration—would cease 60 days after the entry into force of the law. The length of contracts was also changed again in 2005, with a law estab- lishing a minimum term of three years and a maximum of five. Evidently, however, these more recent reforms—even though many felt that they were a way of getting around the distinction between political and administrative responsibilities, putting the latter in service to the former—were not sufficient to guarantee to the incoming Prodi executive a meaningful turnover in high-level administration. In fact, six months after taking office there had not been a significant substitu- tion of top ministry officials. By the end of the 90-day period following the inauguration of the government, of the 18 ministries with portfolio of the Prodi government only seven new heads of department and only one new secretary-general20 had been appointed in the face of a widespread reconfirmation of the previous government’s top ministry officials, some positions being conferred ad interim or, more simply, being swapped among top officials belonging to the same departments. Presented by some parts of the press as reflecting a new government line against the spoils system,21 this approach seemed to be more the result of a mix between the normal period of acclimatization of the new ministers—and in fact in many cases, thanks to the use of the instrument of decree law, the possibility of reorganizing ministerial offices had only been delayed—and a predilection for the skills acquired over the years by top officials in the state administration. In fact, many ministers, even when they proceeded to new appointments for their own cabinet offices, turned to personalities with experience acquired in the high offices of the administration, independently of the political color of the majority that guided the executive. Among the many excellent reconfirmations of the second Prodi government, one of the emblematic cases regarded the grand commis of Palazzo Chigi, Mauro Masi, who was called upon by D’Alema to cover the role of head of cabinet to the vice-presidency of the council. After having worked for many years at the Bank of Italy, Masi had The New Government and the Spoils System 147 entered the first executive led by Berlusconi in 1994 as spokesman to Lamberto Dini at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a role later confirmed when Dini became president of the council in January 1995. He then covered a number of different posts within the following three governments of the center-left. In 2001, under Berlusconi once again, he took over the direction of the Department of Information and Press and the role of extraordinary commissioner of the Italian Society of Authors and Editors (SIAE). Finally, in March 2005 he took over from Antonio Catricalà in the role of secretary-general of Palazzo Chigi. Also at the Ministry of Economy and Finance, where the director-general and the state paymaster-general were reconfirmed, the minister named as his new cabinet head Paolo De Joanna, previously cabinet head to Carlo Azeglio Ciampi within the same ministry and then secretary-general of the presidency of the council for D’Alema in 1998. De Joanna took over the post from Vincenzo Fortunato, who in the Berlusconi government covered the role of cabinet head to the minister of economy and finance, Giulio Tremonti, and who, in the previous government of the center-left, had been head of the legislative office at the Min- istry of Economy and Finance. After the 2006 election, Antonio Di Pietro sought him as his head of cabinet. In the cabinet offices of the ministries of communications, public administration, and agricultural policy, top officials were appointed who had undertaken similar roles during the previous government. Beginning with the process of organizational reform of the previous years in relation to which they had responded in a limited and non-homogeneous manner,22 the top-level administrative structures of the ministries had thus proved to be a difficult terrain to conquer, at least in the short term. However, to complete the overview of the first six months of the government, there is a need to look at another sector of the public administration and a usual terrain of the spoils system, that is, the non-economic public agencies. This involves all of the structures delegated by the state to manage services without non-profit objec- tives, which in public law regimes are subject to government control, including its power to appoint their leadership. Currently, these orga- nizations number around 160 and constitute a central component of the administration. They also represent the sector that has been the least involved in the reform process that has affected the country over the last 20 years.23 Yet six months after taking office, of the 15 most relevant and renowned public agencies, which involve important policy sectors such as social security and research, the top officials con- tinued to be related to the previous government. The only exceptions were the Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI, Italian Space Agency), which had been put under direct control by the minister of universities and 148 Annarita Criscitiello

research, Fabio Mussi, after the resignation of its president, and the Ente per le Nuove tecnologie, l’Energia e l’Ambiente (ENEA, National Agency for New Technologies, Energy, and the Environment), the board of directors of which had been renewed at the end of Decem- ber, although Luigi Paganetto, the former special commissioner of the body who had been nominated by Berlusconi, was confirmed as president.24 Thus, except for selected cases that had made the news—such as the change, in September, of the head of the state railways, the contested appointment of the director of the Rome Tumor Institute by the health minister, and the umpteenth wave of rumors regarding nominations to the public television agency RAI—the center-left has not in fact taken advantage of the spoils available to the victors with regard to the appointments of outgoing governments. All this is not to say, however, that the government has renounced a sphere that is so important to the management of the executive. Mak- ing use of decree laws and linking this use to the urgent needs of the budget law, the government had introduced modifications concerning the criteria for the confirmation and nomination of top administration officials, by way of allowing ministers to have more time to choose top officials with respect to the existing deadlines determined by the law. In particular, with the normative powers that it has at its disposal, the executive has sought to acquire some leeway for the future, aiming above all at all the other areas of management by fiduciary nominees. In article 42 of the budget law, Minister Padoa Schioppa proposed the suppression of the presidency and the administrative council of the non-economic public agencies, which would pass to management by directors-general (or special commissioners, if the changes relevant to the statute and rules were not in place within 30 days). In addition to these modifications, in the decree law no. 262 of 3 October 2006 that accompanied the budget law, article 41 then provided for the expiry of management positions that had not been confirmed within 60 days of the entry into force of the decree, calling back into question a part of the top appointments, which, if not modified within 90 days of the confidence vote in the new government, were interpreted as having been confirmed. This measure referred also to agency directors, including those relating to taxation.25 This reflects, as one can see, an attempt to modify the organizational model of some administrative structures through a type of solution that is typical of the Italian spoils system.26 With the practically unlimited power that the organs of political direction have to reorganize the administrative structure—helped by a substantial lack of legislation in this area—agencies, central or territorial ministerial offices, and public authorities may be subject to changes in their own organization and thus in the composition of The New Government and the Spoils System 149 their chief management structures. If one also considers the reinforcement of the power of nomination of top officials to such structures introduced by the Frattini law and the recourse to the power to take direct control of state agencies (of which much use was made in the previous legislature), one clearly sees that the executive led by Prodi seems to have prepared the way to move in the direction of greater political control of the administration.

Conclusion: Between Prime Ministership and Coalition Dynamics

At this point there is a need to provide a general assessment of the prime ministership of Romano Prodi and his new executive’s coalition strategy. In the first few months of Prodi’s government, how much can be explained by the return to the logic of consensus? And to what extent did the majoritarian and bipolar inheritance of the previous decade constitute a safeguard for the process of institutional empowerment of the prime minister’s role, as emerged during the previous legislature? As we have seen, all the parties of the coalition, except the PdCI, are represented within the government team by one of their own high- ranking figures. Besides the two main parties of the coalition, who are represented by their respective presidents (D’Alema for the DS and Rutelli for the Margherita), the leaders of three of the other political formations head a ministry: Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio for the Greens, Antonio Di Pietro for Italia dei Valori (Italy of Values), and Clemente Mastella for the Unione Democratici per l’Europa (UDEUR, Union of Democrats for Europe). For the Rosa nel Pugno (Rose in the Fist, an alliance of radicals and socialists), Emma Bonino, one of the founders of this new political formation and a member of its executive board, was appointed minister. Those that remained outside the government were the secretary of the DS, Piero Fassino, the new secretary of Rifon- dazione Comunista (RC, Communist Refoundation), Franco Giordano, and the secretary of the PdCI, Oliviero Diliberto. These three important exceptions are potential threats to the executive, although in relation to the first two, there are factors we may define as “mitigating.” As regards the first case, if on the one hand the separation between president and secretary of the DS in the government denotes an internal division within the party, on the other hand it is important to under- score the strong pre-electoral effort in relation to Prodi as witnessed by the unitary list of the Ulivo. In the case of RC, however, one must remember that the former secretary of the party, Fausto Bertinotti, now holds the role of president of the Chamber of Deputies. Just as 150 Annarita Criscitiello

occurred in the previous legislature, the two positions of president of the Chamber and president of the Senate were included in the calcula- tions for distributing roles among the parties. The PdCI, constituting the most extreme wing of the coalition, is the party that seems to remain outside the context of bargaining described above. On the whole, therefore, the work of coordination and leadership of the prime minister clashes daily with the difficulty of managing a plurality of actors, which has strong echoes of his experience of 10 years ago.27 Only a week after the new government took office, Prodi was forced to call upon his ministers to avoid making individual statements and taking individual positions. A few weeks later, he was moved to convoke a meeting among ministers behind closed doors, in the form of a two-day seminar, away from the Rome government buildings, as a kind of conclave in which he re-emphasized the strategic points of the government program. One of the decisions made in this meeting regarded, not by chance, the reinforcement of the activities of the “pre-council,” that is, the meeting that takes place 48 hours before the Council of Ministers. These meetings, presided over by Undersecretary Letta, involve the cabinet heads of the various ministers and the heads of the legislative offices with the aim of assess- ing the items on the agenda and identifying—as happens with other governments and with the European Commission—the decisions on which unanimity approval is possible. These items would then be brought to the Council of Ministers solely for ratification, thus freeing up time to explore more contentious issues. Certainly, the return to the proportional electoral law, after a decade of transition toward a majoritarian and bipolar logic, had provoked— above all, immediately after the election—strong fears that the mode of formation of the government would represent a dangerous return to the past. In fact, as some have observed,28 from the viewpoint of the pre-electoral coalition, the blocked lists and the majority bonus did not modify the situation a great deal. However, the first six months of the government reveal a continuous battle of wills over the level of reform- ism that the government should express through its various ministries and, above all, over the balance of forces within the left. After a very difficult phase, marked by a chaotic and complex discussion in Parlia- ment over the budget (which was approved in both the Chamber and the Senate with recourse to confidence votes), the background of this competition is one within which a number of complex issues—such as the creation of the Partito Democratico (PD, Democratic Party), foreign policy, and relations with the economic world and with the Catholic hierarchy—need to be managed. The difficult process of bargaining within the majority is putting strongly at risk the tendency of the last 15 The New Government and the Spoils System 151 years, which had seemed to be institutionalized at least in terms of two aspects of the management of the executive: first, the prime minister’s power of self-organization of the political-administrative apparatus and, second, the procedure of allocating ministry posts. But precisely on these, however, Prodi has not started from scratch. Following for a while an incremental course toward a reinforcement of the structure of the core executive, on the one hand,29 and institutional empowerment in the phase of cabinet formation, on the other,30 the new prime minister can—and must—put in place every possible effort to manage the complex relationships between parties and the president of the council. This represents the real challenge of this legislature.

— Translated by Stefano Fella

Notes

1. In the Chamber of Deputies, thanks to the majority bonus triggered by 24,755 votes, the center-left has 67 more seats (348 to 281 for the center-right, not considering the independents elected overseas), whereas in the Senate it enjoys but a slender advantage (158 seats to 156, including an independent elected in South America and Senators-for-Life). 2. The tiny difference between the number of seats obtained by the two coalitions led to a recount of the ballot papers that had been declared non-valid. This dispute was resolved nine days after the vote with a communication from the Central Electoral Office of the Court of Cassation, which declared the official victory of the Unione, led by Prodi. 3. On this, see D. Campus, “La formazione del governo Berlusconi,” in Dall’Ulivo al governo Berlusconi, ed. G. Pasquino (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2002), 275–294. 4. This refers, first of all, to the time technically provided by the Constitution following an election and, therefore, to the first seating of Parliament and the nomination of the presidents of the two chambers, which took place on 28–29 April. In the case of this legislature, there was also to consider the other important institutional appointment, that is, the end of the seven-year mandate for president of the Republic, which resulted in the election of Gior- gio Napolitano on 13 May. On this matter, see the chapter by Marie-Claire Ponthoreau and Hervé Rayner in this volume. 5. Decree law no. 181 of 18 May 2006, which provided for the reordering of the attributions of the presidency of the Council of Ministers and ministers in relation to the new organization of the government. 6. The whole text is available on the official Web site of the government (http:// www.governo.it) in the section dedicated to legislative measures. 7. During the second Berlusconi government, in the summer of 2003, for example, it had been the then deputy prime minister, Gianfranco Fini, who had 152 Annarita Criscitiello

posited as a condition of the government verification a cabinet directorate for economic policy within Palazzo Chigi, which would have allowed him to counter the threat of the so-called axis between the then minister of the economy and finance, Giulio Tremonti, and the Lega Nord. 8. It can be noted here that in relation to the discussion of parties’ policy-seeking functions , these concern two policies of great significance in the manifesto of the Margherita: first, relations with the regions and, more generally, federal- ism, and, second, policies for the family, which are very dear to the strong, Catholic ex-Popolari component, including the minister for family affairs her- self, Rosy Bindi. 9. In this case, entrusting European policy to a department without portfolio within the council presidency confirmed a trend of institutional empowerment in this policy sector, beginning with the government led by Massimo D’Alema. Before D’Alema’s government, in fact, these powers had been shared with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, denoting a weak interest of the executive in European policy. On this aspect, see M. Giuliani, La politica europea (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2006). In the second Prodi government, the allocation of European policy to a strong Europhile seemed to indicate the desire to continue strong engagement on this front. 10. On the genesis and the principal points of this experience drawn from 10 years with the Ulivo, see G. Santagata, La Fabbrica del programma (Roma: Donzelli, 2006). 11. The policy unit, one of the more interesting organs of political consultation within the core executive of the UK government, constitutes a de facto think tank for the British prime minister. Its members follow closely the implementation of various political decisions, bringing to the attention of the prime minister the questions that it considers to be most relevant for the government and performing an autonomous research activity. In sum, the policy unit functions as a kind of governmental suggestion box. See D. Willets, “The Role of the Prime Minister’s Policy Unit,” Public Administration, no. 65 (1990): 443–452. 12. In relation to this, see the chapter by Massimo Florio in this volume. 13. In particular, article 40 of decree no. 262, dated 3 October 2006 and later approved by the Chamber and the Senate, which set outs the financial and tributary urgency. 14. The cited text refers precisely to “an interdisciplinary structure of high professional, juridical, economic-financial, and administrative qualification.” 15. Decree no. 300 of 31 July 1999, approved by the first D’Alema government, which together with decree no. 303 proposed—in application of law no. 59 of 1997—to reorganize the ministries and the council presidency. On these aspects of organizational restructuring, see A. Pajno and L. Torchia, eds., La riforma del governo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2000). 16. Among the undersecretaries, four were nominated to Palazzo Chigi, with Enrico Letta as secretary to the Council of Ministers, while three would be appointed, respectively, to the Ministry of Economy and Finance, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Forestry, and the Ministry of Transport a few weeks later (9 June). For this data, see the documentary appendix in this volume. 17. G. Pasquino, ed., Dall’Ulivo al governo Berlusconi (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2002). 18. M. Laver and N. Schofield, Multiparty Government: The Politics of Coalition in Western Europe (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1998). The New Government and the Spoils System 153

19. G. Pasquino, Il sistema politico italiano (Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2002). 20. The ministers of the interior, of justice, of education, of agricultural policy (in two cases), and of infrastructure had proceeded to nominate new heads of department, while the minister of communications had been the only one to replace the secretary-general. 21. P. Baroni, “Spoils system al contrario: Il centrosinistra si tiene i grand commis della CdL,” La Stampa, 29 May 2006. 22. For all the stages of this process, see A. Natalini, Il tempo delle riforme ammini- strative (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2006). 23. E. Gualmini, “Gli enti pubblici non economici,” in La pubblica amministrazione in Italia, ed. G. Capano and E. Gualmini (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2006). 24. The non-economic public bodies, of whom the presidency has been verified through consultation of their respective Web sites and via telephone checks, are ACI, ASI, CONI, CNR, CRI, ENEA, INAIL, INEA, INPS, ISTAT, IPSZ, ISS, INPDAP, IPSEMA, and SIAE. 25. This article of the decree in particular has been interpreted on the part of the press and the opposition as an aggressive form of the spoils system, forcing the minister for reform and innovation in public administration, Luigi Nicolais, and the minister for the economy and finance, Tommaso Padoa Schioppa, to issue an official communication in which they outlined that “the dispositions contained in article 41 of decree law no. 262/2006 regarding management positions, which provided for the possibility of removing the managers who had not been reconfirmed within 60 days from the entry into force of the norm, regarded exclusively persons who came from outside the public administration or from administrations different than the state. The norm in question does not apply, however, to heads of department and secretaries-general, for whom clause 8 of article 19 of legislative decree no. 165/2001 does apply, according to which the positions in question cease 90 days after the vote of confidence in the government, a period which expired on 18 August.” 26. See F. Merloni, Dirigenza pubblica e amministrazione imparziale (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2006), esp. 177–194. 27. For an analysis of the first Prodi government, see S. Fabbrini, Tra pressioni e veti: Il cambiamento politico in Italia (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2000), 123–150. 28. As Bardi suggests in his most recent analysis on the transformation of the Italian party system, even with the new proportional electoral system, the electoral coalitions survive after the vote and cannot be considered simply as alliances. L. Bardi, ed., Partiti e sistemi di partito (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2006), esp. 265–286. On this theme, see also A. di Virgilio, “Dal cambiamento dei partiti all’evoluzione del sistema partitico,” in Partiti e caso italiano, ed. L. Morlino and M. Tarchi (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2006). 29. For a history of the organizational transformation of the presidency of the council in terms of an incremental reinforcement of the figure of the prime minister, see A. Criscitiello, Il cuore dei governi (Napoli: Esi, 2004). 30. For a discussion on the elements that allow for an interpretation in this way of the mutation in the formation of the Italian government in recent years, see L. Verzichelli, “La formazione del governo: Vincoli antichi e potenziamento istituzionale,” in Il governo e i suoi apparati, ed. C. Barbieri and L. Verzichelli (Genova: Name, 2003).