Mario Monti's Technocratic Government

5 Mario Monti’s technocratic GovernMent Daniela Giannetti The technocratic government of Mario Monti lasted 401 days. It took office on 16 November 2011 and was terminated on 21 December 2012, although it is staying on as a “caretaker” until the general elections of 24–25 February 2013. The Monti government was the sixty-first government in the history of the Italian Republic and one of the few non-partisan governments since the institutional transition that was initiated in 1993. After the collapse in November 2011 of Silvio Berlusconi’s government, which had been paralyzed by internal conflicts and was unable to guarantee the adoption of the policy measures sought by the Euro- pean Union (EU), the president of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, appointed Monti, a former EU commissioner and president of Boc- coni University, to head a new government.1 Composed entirely of non-partisan ministers, the new government was charged with imple- menting urgent reforms needed to navigate Italy out of a debt crisis that had endangered the whole Eurozone. In November 2011, Italy was close to a full-scale financial emergency after yields on 10-year bonds soared over 7.6 percent—levels that forced Ireland, Portugal, and Greece to seek an international bailout. The government formation process in early November raised a number of questions regarding the very nature of democratic representation in a parliamentary system. Do technocratic governments represent a breaking point in the democratic channel of delegation? Or, alternatively, Italian Politics: Technocrats in Office 28 (2013): 133–152 © Berghahn Books doi:10.3167/ip.2013.280108 134 Daniela Giannetti taking to an extreme the intuition of the late Peter Mair, is there any real difference between partisan and non-partisan governments in “hard times,” as they are both compelled to implement the same austerity policy measures dictated by supra-national institutions and markets?2 Finally, is a technocratic government like the Monti administration an indicator of the increasing influence of the head of state on government formation and dissolution in the Italian parliamentary system? Another theme frequently debated by political commentators was the capacity of the Monti government to implement effectively its policy agenda. While it was apparent that Monti could rely on unprecedented parliamentary support at the time of his investiture, many analysts felt that the lack of political cover left the government open to being undermined in Parliament. The Monti government was supported by a “strange majority” that included the three principal political groups in Parliament: the center-right People of Freedom (PdL), the center-left Democratic Party (PD), and the Union of the Center (UdC). However, given the non-partisan composition of the government, the ideological heterogeneity of the supporting coalition members, and the lack of party cohesion, the government appeared to work as a minority government. Eventually, on 6 December 2012, the PdL abstained from a confi- dence vote on a government decree in the Senate, signaling its intention to terminate the government and forcing Monti to resign four months before the natural end of the 16th Legislature. Monti’s resignation, following parliamentary approval of the 2013 budget law, set the stage for a turbulent election season in which the outgoing prime minister (who has become the prime ministerial candidate for a centrist coalition) and his government’s legacy will play a large role. In the first section that follows, there will be a brief account of the formation of the Monti government and the changes in government composition during 2012. The next section will describe the implemen- tation of the government’s policy agenda. The third section will deal with parliamentary support for the government, and in the following section there will be an overview of government satisfaction among the Italian public. The next section will discuss the termination of the Monti government, and some final analysis will conclude the chapter. The Formation of the Monti Cabinet: A Technocratic or Presidential Government? After Monti had been appointed as head of an emergency government, the headline that appeared in the Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica Mario Monti’s Technocratic Government 135 on 14 December 2011—“The Presidential Government”—summarizes best the ongoing debate about the peculiarities of Monti’s Cabinet. This was the third non-partisan government in the history of Italy’s “Second Republic.” Its predecessors were Ciampi I (the 11th Legisla- ture, 1993–1994) and Dini I (the 12th Legislature, 1995–1996). These governments, commonly referred to as technocratic governments, have the following features in common: they are inter-electoral governments that do not reflect the outcome of the popular vote in previous elections and are responsible to the elected Parliament; they are appointed by the head of state for a limited time horizon and with a restricted mandate to implement a number of measures in order to respond to some kind of emergency; they are partially or entirely composed of ministers who have been selected on the basis of their technical expertise. According to some commentators, the most important respect in which the Monti government differed from its predecessors has to do with the pro-active role played by the head of state in the process of government formation. In a press release on 9 November 2011, Presi- dent Napolitano ratified Berlusconi’s resignation announcement in an unequivocal way, even though the prime minister, despite having lost his majority in the Chamber of Deputies, still retained control of the Senate. On the same day, Napolitano appointed Monti as a Senator-for- Life just a week before asking him to form a new government. Such moves were seen by many political experts as a step toward a de facto semi-presidential republic.3 Other differences between Monti’s government and the previous technocratic governments relate to their timing within the life cycle of the legislature, their policy agenda, and their composition. Lamberto Dini was appointed prime minister shortly after the beginning of the 12th Legislature, following the fall of the first Berlusconi government, in the expectation of new elections, which were eventually held 18 months later.4 Monti was asked to form a government when the 16th Legislature was for the most part over. However, he refused to set a definite time horizon for his administration and declared that he was willing to work until the natural end of this legislative term. Speaking after his appointment, Monti promised to act “with urgency” to ensure budgetary consolidation and to work jointly with Parliament in order to “rescue Italy” from financial disaster and return the country to its former status as “an element of strength, not of weakness, in Europe.” President Napolitano echoed these words by declaring that his nomination of Monti as prime minister of a non- partisan government should not be seen as overturning the results of the elections in 2008: the financial situation was too critical to wait for elections to be held. Italy needed a government that “could unite 136 Daniela Giannetti the diverse political forces in an extraordinary effort warranted by the current financial and economic emergency.”5 The composition of Monti’s government was similar to Dini’s in that both Cabinets were composed entirely of non-partisan ministers (in Ciampi’s 11th Legislature, the percentage of non-partisan ministers was about 40 percent). The Monti government was composed of 16 ministers and 2 vice-ministers, one of Economic Development and one of Welfare. In addition, there were 28 undersecretaries. Monti initially sought to include individuals from the major parties in his Cabinet in an effort to share the political costs of his government’s program. But while the major parties were prepared to back his government, none was willing to join it. The new Cabinet consisted entirely of technical experts rather than politicians: eight ministers were academics, eight were semi-public or public managers, and two ministers were private sector managers.6 However, the appointment of undersecretaries reveals that beneath the surface of a purely technocratic government there was a com- promise between partisan and non-partisan considerations.7 After a bargaining process that lasted two weeks, mainstream parties agreed on an allocation of junior ministers, according to which, leaving aside the five junior ministers and two vice-ministers (18 percent) selected by Monti, a third went to the PdL, another third was given to the PD, and 10 percent was allocated to centrist parliamentary party groups.8 This allocation of portfolios, as shown in table 1, is consistent with an empirical generalization known as Gamson’s law, according to which portfolio pay-offs are roughly proportional to party size. An examination of the allocation of junior ministers (not reported) shows that for each minister, the junior ministers most often belonged to dif- ferent parties. The allocation of junior ministers in this manner reveals that parties played a significant monitoring role, notwithstanding their refusal to share ministerial posts. The composition of the government remained quite stable. On 30 April 2012, Monti appointed three “super technicians” to implement the spending review in order to improve the efficiency of his government’s activity. First, Enrico Bondi, an administrator with considerable experi- ence in restructuring Italian companies with financial problems (e.g., Parmalat), was put in charge of identifying cuts of 4.2 billion euros in public expenditure. Second, the former socialist prime minister, Giuliano Amato, was asked to draft reform proposals for the public funding of political parties and trade unions that would implement the goals of Arti- cle 49 of the Italian Constitution. Third, Francesco Giavazzi, a respected economist and a professor at Bocconi University, was tasked with for- mulating proposals for reducing public subsidies to private enterprises.

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