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Explaining standing orderreforms in the Camera deiDeputati during the liberal agePaolo Ricci aa São Paulo University, Brazil

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To cite this article: Paolo Ricci (2012): Explaining standing order reforms in the Cameradei Deputati during the liberal age, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 17:1, 25-44

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Explaining standing order reforms in the Camera dei

Deputati during the liberal age

Paolo Ricci

Sao Paulo University, Brazil

Abstract

How might the continuous changes in the standing orders of the Camera dei Deputatibetween 1861 and 1922 be explained? To answer this question, the text investigatesthe political events associated with standing order reforms. Two results areemphasized. On the one hand, and contrary to common views, the study showsthat the reforms were not casual or episodic, but resulted from different sets ofpolitical pressure, internal or external to the parliamentary ambit. This fact, on theother hand, draws attention to the need to go deeper into the question of theinstitutional evolution of the liberal parliament, chiefly with regard to relationsamong institutional actors.

Keywords

Italian parliament, standing orders, parliamentary law, Camera dei Deputati, liberalage, internal rules.

Introduction

During the Kingdom of Italy, the standing orders of the Camera dei Deputati

were altered several times by means of wide-ranging reforms or of partial

interventions relating to certain articles. This process has been amply explored,

chiefly in the legal literature: not only has the time sequence of the changes

approved been identified, but also one has sought to extract information on

unsuccessful attempts.1 Even though this analytic effort is well grounded, one

must recognize the lack of a serious reflection regarding the reasons why

legislators saw fit to change their own standing orders so often. In my view,

there is a motive for this absence of interest on the part of the literature:

traditionally, scholars concerned themselves with putting more emphasis on the

decentralizing and uncertain character of the Camera’s standing orders. The

recurrent use of adjectives denouncing this aspect is easily observable in texts

devoted to dealing with the interna corporis of that representative institution.

There is mention of ‘rules written as guarantees for the opposition’ (Caretti

2001: 587), of exaltation of ‘atomized individualism’ (Aquarone 1981: 444) and

of rules that constitute ‘expressions of a kind of parliamentarianism based on as

Journal of Modern Italian Studies 17(1) 2012: 25–44

Journal of Modern Italian StudiesISSN 1354-571X print/ISSN 1469-9583 online ª 2012 Taylor & Francis

http://www.tandfonline.com http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1354571X.2012.628099

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atomistic and individualistic conception of the parliamentary mandate’

(Lippolis 2001: 617). This has contributed, perhaps, even if indirectly, to the

practice of leaving aside the study of the nature of the changes themselves. After

all, why study them if the content itself had largely not changed the structure of

the relationship between government and Camera dei Deputati or the format of

legislative proceedings?

My intent here consists in reflecting upon what caused legislators to alter the

standing orders of the Camera. In other words, instead of stressing the

‘individualistic’ character of the standing orders – an unquestionable fact,

certainly – I shift the analytic focus to understanding the events that led to

changes in the standing orders during the liberal age. I take up here jurist

Silvano Tosi’s (1962: 69) suggestive remark as to the ‘constant correlation

between political events and regulatory developments’. In essence, one must

recognize that, although the defense of minorities’ rights was the key trait of

standing orders at that time, the changes undertaken derived from different

political events, resulting from varying relations among institutional actors.

Inasmuch as it occurs, this fact evinces the complexity of the evolution of the

Camera dei Deputati’s organization in the liberal age, while at the same time

demanding closer attention on the part of historiography and, above all, of

political science. This would enable the observation of political events

associated with institutional changes, with a view to a better understanding of

the politico-parliamentary dynamic in liberal Italy.

The article is organized as follows. In the first section, I briefly set out the

most common reflections present in the literature about the causes of

procedural reforms in standing orders. Following the time sequence, beginning

with the creation of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861, next, I deal with the

successive interventions the changed the standing orders until 1922, the year of

the last reforms of the liberal age. On this point, the aim is to examine the

connection between reforms and political events. Lastly, in the conclusion,

I put forward an interpretative scheme for the reforms pursued during this

period, as well as providing some more general reflections on the Italian case.

Why change the standing orders? What the literature tells us

The period of Italian history between 1861 and 1922 is termed by scholars the

‘liberal age’. It began in 1861, with the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy

after the territorial unification of much of the Italian Peninsula, and ended in

1922, with Mussolini’s rise to power. From the institutional point of view, the

fundamental law of the new Kingdom was the Statuto Albertino (Albertine

Statute) conceded by Charles Albert of Savoy, King of Sardinia, in 1848.

According to the Statute, parliament was structured in two houses, one with

elected members (the Camera dei Deputati) and the other with members

appointed by the king (the Senate).2 This clearly suggests that the Senate’s

political connotation should be thought of in terms of tutelage of royal

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prerogatives, whilst it was mainly in the Camera that differences between

political forces and the counterposition of crown and parliament were fully

manifested. It was here, for instance, that the parliamentary majorities that

supported the governments of the time were formed (and undone). As regards

the legislative process, note that more than 90 per cent of legislative production

for the 1861–1922 period was introduced by the government in the Camera dei

Deputati itself. Owing to this, and given my interest in studying the political

events that may have contributed to changes in parliament’s organizational

structure, the Camera becomes almost naturally the more interesting institution

to be investigated.

The Albertine Statute of 1848 states that the Camera ‘determines by means

of standing orders the manner according to which it should exercise its

attributions’ (Article 61). As made explicit by the constitutional text, the

Camera had the autonomy to set the rules regarding its internal organization.

The first set of standing orders, of 1848, was modeled on the French (1839) and

the Belgian (1831). These expressed a liberal view that enshrined the

preeminent character of the representative system and, therefore, of parliament

in the constitutional realm, stressing the principles of balance, independence

and mutual respect among institutional bodies (Ungari 1971). In the liberal

view of the time – accepted by the Crown already on the occasion of the

adoption of the Albertine Statute (Pene Vidari 2001) – a notable political

centrality was attributed to the Camera owing above all to its legitimacy as a

representative body of the Italian people (Cammarano 1999; Carocci 1964;

Romanelli 1979; Soddu 2001). The idea of the Camera’s centrality and, in this

perspective, of its members’ performance, meant that internally the Camera was

structured as a representative body expressing an orientation that ensured

government by discussion. Therefore, it positioned itself as a guarantor of

minorities’ expression. When the Kingdom of Italy was formed in 1861,

legislators decided to adopt the earlier standing orders, dating back to 1848, in

force at the time of the Subalpine Parliament.3 In the first legislature, Camera

Speaker Sebastiano Tecchio appointed a committee charged with looking into

a reform of the standing orders. The first reform was approved in 1863, with

others following in 1868, 1873, 1887, 1888, 1890, April and July 1900, 1907,

1910, 1920 and 1922.4

In general, our knowledge of the reasons that motivated legislators to reform

the 1848 standing orders after 1861 is not very conclusive. We are basically left

with the idea that the reforms were pursued partially, in contradictory fashion.

Some interpretations suggest that reforms put in place until 1900 were

approved in a nonarticulated way, almost casually. For example, in the words of

Astraldi and Cosentino (1950: 21), the 1863 reform was a ‘mere adaptation to

the demands derived from the increase in the number of MPs’. The decision

made in 1886 to institute a permanent committee in each legislative session to

review the standing orders – called Giunta per il Regolamento – as well as the first

changes promoted by it in the 1880s, were for Giacomo Perticone (1960: 153)

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‘the definitive confirmation of the technical character already recognized by

general agreement with the whole procedural matter’. In general, following

Boccaccini (1980), the procedural changes that occurred between 1848 and

July 1900 were ‘merely episodic’ or even ‘contradictory’, therefore unable to

reveal a connection between the reform and a political event.

However, in some cases, one must recognize that political events that

marked changes in the Camera’s standing orders were convincingly investigated

by scholars. Explanations for innovations introduced with the standing order

reforms of April and July 1900 stand out, as do those for changes approved in

1920. It is claimed that the April 1900 changes resulted from direct action by

the government. The point was doing away with obstructionist practices on the

part of the Camera that thus opposed a series of legislative measures proposed by

the government (Levra 2001). For its part, the reform of July of the same year

reflected a process of ‘national pacification’, after the dramatic events of the end

of the century and, therefore, a return to dialogue between government and

parliament. The change made in 1920 was directly derived from an innovation

that occurred on the electoral plane (De Micheli and Verzichelli 2004). The

case in point was the adoption of an electoral law with proportional

representation. This had its effects in the parliamentary ambit, by creating

pressure for parliamentary procedures that followed the logic of organizational

division by political grouping.

It may be clearly observed that we have a limited perception of the

motivations that led to the reform of the 1848 standing orders, above all for

the period prior to 1900. Mainly, we do not know which particular spheres

promoted the reforms and to what extent, for instance, the government

intervened in the reform process. In the following sections, I present some

reflections that aim to fill this gap. The discussion I conduct is based on my

reading of several sources. I use not only historical/legal interpretations

present in the literature, but also bring some more systematic data, so as to

contribute to the discussion. My view is that an understanding of the political

events that produced the institutional change studied here cannot do without

empirical evidence that is more solid than mere references to secondary

sources.5

The first changes to the 1848 standing orders

Right at the start of the Camera’s life, in its first twelve years, the 1848 standing

orders underwent three important changes, in 1863, 1868 and 1873. The

literature has insisted on the view that these reforms were not ‘organic’

(Perticone 1960: 149), but ‘merely episodic or even contradictory’ (Boccaccini

1980), resulting in ‘provisional standing orders’ (Caretti 2001). However, in

my view, there is logic to the reform process, which revolves around actual

organizational elements relating to the rationalization of legislative work. Two

procedural questions allow me to frame this perspective better.

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The first relates to how bills were examined. At the time, the key

counterposition was between advocates of the committee system, of French

origin, and of the British ‘three readings’ system. In the first case, the bill was

examined by nine committees called uffici, created by monthly draw (twice a

month, from 1863). Once the bill was examined, each committee appointed an

MP to form a special committee called ufficio centrale. This committee examined

the bill once again, taking into account each ufficio’s deliberation and, lastly,

appointed a membership charged with presenting a report on the floor. The

second system took up the model used in the British House of Commons.

At the first reading, bills were announced in the Camera, printed, distributed

among MPs and discussed preliminarily. At the second reading, the comitato

privato was constituted. This was a committee made up of MPs that declared

themselves more interested in or competent on the matter under discussion.

The comitato would then examine the bill in detail and then be responsible for

presenting a final report, to be discussed and voted on by the plenary (at the

third reading). The counterposition between advocates of the two forms

marked the procedural reforms of 1868 and 1873. In 1868, the system of the

uffici was abolished, and the comitato privato system was adopted. However, in

1873, a motion signed by 143 MPs abrogating the recently established system

was carried. The system of the uffici was taken up again.6

According to the classic interpretation (Astraldi and Cosentino 1950;

Curreri 1995; Perticone 1960), it was a dispute over the method that made it

easiest to examine proposals. Those who defended the comitato system, for

example, argued that it accorded more agility to the examination of bills, as

well as allowing them to be examined only by a selected number of competent

MPs. The MP who presented the procedural review proposal of 1868 to

the plenary justified as follows the change from the committee system to the

comitato privato system: ‘This means [. . .] whilst not substantially changing the

current procedure as to the preliminary examination of laws and proposals [. . .]

makes it much easier to conduct the work, and will determine greater swiftness,

it cannot be denied.’7 In essence, from this point of view, the divergences

alluded to a merely organizational question. Recent research frames the

counterposition between the ‘three readings’ system and the uffici method based

on the evolution of the relationship between majority and opposition.

According to the reconstruction recently carried out by Francesco Soddu

(2005a), the examination of proposals with the uffici system induced MPs to

cooperate, given the informal character of the meetings and the small number

of members that took part in the discussions.8 For its part, the comitato method

opened up room for ideological confrontation among different parties. This

was because the 1868 reform stipulated a minimum of thirty MPs for the

comitato’s deliberations to be valid, but did not define a maximum number.

Hence, a bill could be examined by a minimum number of MPs (thirty) or,

theoretically, by all the members of the house. In the latter case, therefore, the

comitato reproduced the divisions typical of the examination of proposals at the

Standing order reforms in the Camera dei Deputati

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plenary. While one waits for further research on this aspect, the important

thing to stress here is the intrinsic character of these reforms. If we do not wish

to pay the price associated with being drawn to generic and not very

convincing explanations – that the changes are episodic and provisional – we

cannot leave aside the organizational explanation. Future research must

investigate better to what extent the debate on the method of examining

proposals in committees goes beyond simple organizational questions and

reflects a specific dynamic referent to the way in which government–

opposition relations are made manifest.

Another key aspect of the debate at that time refers to the quorum necessary

to start meetings and for deliberations. It is worth remembering that the 1848

Albertine Statute left no room for doubt as to the legal number. Article 53

established that ‘the sessions and deliberations of the house are neither legal nor

valid if the absolute majority of its members are not present’. However, owing

to MPs’ chronic tendency to be absent (Martucci 1999; Soddu 1999), this

could easily result in adjourning the meeting to the next day appointed for a

sitting.9 Various proposals appeared to solve the problem and many dealt with

the reinterpretation of the term ‘present’ contained in Article 53 of the statute.

In 1863, Article 17 of the standing orders, which established the check of the

legal number by the Speaker at the start of the session, received the following

addition: ‘MPs on regular leave are not computed in the constitution of the

legal number.’ In 1868, this rule was extended to MPs on official missions and,

in 1873, it was determined that the quorum for discussion and deliberation in

the committees would no longer be one third of the members, as set out in the

1863 standing orders – amounting to some forty-five MPs – but would be

reduced to nine. In essence, the changes mirrored the demand to defend a

rational organization of parliamentary work, in which deliberations and

discussions in committees and the plenary could occur without hindrance or

obstacles. In the evaluation of Mancini and Galeotti (1887: 128), these reforms

allowed to ‘become less frequent the case in which sessions had to be closed

due to insufficient numbers’.

In the light of these considerations, it seems to me that the idea of

contradictory, episodic or provisional reforms should be discarded. It would be

possible to add other examples to bolster this point, such as the regulation of

interpellation procedure of ministers, in 1863, and the decision that a

permanent committee was granted the authority to certify MPs’ elections,

in 1868. The point is that future research should go deeper into this period’s

reforms, striving to understand, above all, how they affected the dynamic of

government–opposition relations.

In defense of parliamentary prerogatives: the ‘Bonghi reform’10

During the period 1887–90, the Camera passed several alterations to its standing

orders. According to some authors, these represented the ‘first really important

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format’ of the standing orders (Longi and Stramacci 1968: 40) and the first sign

of the rationalization of parliamentary procedure (De Micheli and Verzichelli

2004). All of them obviously maintained the line of defending wide-ranging

parliamentary authority. The reforms of 1887 and 1888 disciplined various

aspects of the legislative process that had remained unregulated until then,11

and others that were not clearly defined, such as the parliamentary enforcement

instruments to control government action; the latter were the object of further

review in 1890.

What might have led legislators to promote these reforms? Most authors

have in mind explanations linked to procedural aspects and methods of

discussion of proposals (Astraldi and Cosentino 1950; Longi and Stramacci

1968). They emphasize the rationalization of mechanisms to examine

proposals, chiefly the duration of discussions and debates. According to the

presentation made to the plenary by Ruggiero Bonghi, the rapporteur of the

proposed changes, parliamentary work was tending to be characterized by

‘discussions prolonged beyond the necessary’ by virtue of procedural

mechanisms that allowed MPs to ‘perturb the order of the discussions’, thus

acting ‘against the good course of parliamentary work’.12 In the classic opinion

of Giacomo Perticone, the incremental character of these reforms, like the

decision made in 1886 to institute a special committee (called Giunta del

Regolamento) with the remit of examining proposals for reforming the standing

orders, would confirm the technical character acquired by the procedural issue,

‘even when one is dealing with requests for information from the executive

or otherwise’ (Perticone 1960: 153). Thus put, the argument is clear in the

sense of not leaving room for possible explanations linked to specific political

events.

Recent historiography has a different reading of the phenomenon. It has put

greater emphasis on government–parliament relations and, more generally,

on the activity of parliament, based on studies of political actors themselves.

Arguing in general terms about the 1880s and 1890s, Fulvio Cammarano

(1999) suggested that part of parliament became active in defense of its own

prerogatives as a reaction to the growing authoritarianism of Prime Minister

Francesco Crispi. The Sicilian leader conceived of government as strong,

autonomous and ‘without parliamentary hindrances to [its] function’ (Rogari

1998: 88). This was very clear from the intense legislative activity of the

executive itself, according to the authors (Romanelli 1995). As Cammarano

(1990: 182) noted, ‘the tireless defense of traditional parliamentary procedures,

above all by Bonghi and Bonfandini, became an attempt to invalidate Crispi’s

‘‘hurried legislation’’, putting forward an image of institutional fairness’. And,

according to the same author,

the continuous disputes over the timings and modes of parliamentary work

express the demand for the recovery of the inquisitive and discussional

function of the house, the only one capable of ensuring, in the eyes of the

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heirs of the Destra Storica, the survival of the role of the opposition, but

above all of putting the brakes on the impatience of Crispi’s reform project.

(Cammarano 1990: 183)

Basically, this interpretation focuses on the counterposition between the

government and the parliamentary political current of moderatismo anticrispino.13

My understanding is that this reading of the facts may be adopted to explain

the changes of this period, but should be limited to the reform of 1890. Let us

remind ourselves that the alterations of 1890 are circumscribed to the part of

the standing orders that deals with parliamentary control of the executive

activity. As also emphasized by Cammarano, many of the contrasts over

parliamentary prerogative between moderate politicians – Bonghi among

them – and Crispi referred to the Prime Minister’s disregard for these

mechanisms of control such as interpellations or oral questions. Hence the

changes passed in December 1890 can be adequately interpreted as a defense of

parliamentary prerogative. However, the same argument must be discarded

with respect to the changes of 1888 and 1887.

The alterations adopted in 1888 were approved in the first part of the

second session of the sixteenth legislature (in February and April), that is,

when Crispi’s legislative activism had not yet acquired the exacerbated

dimension that was to characterize subsequent legislative sessions – at least if

one looks at legislative production as a whole.14 Between the day of the

opening of the sixteenth legislature until the first plenary discussion of the

proposed procedural changes, in 1888, 152 days passed and only sixty-eight

bills were introduced by the government, which corresponded to an average

of 0.45 proposals a day. I compared this figure with that for the first 152 days

of the third and fourth sessions of the same legislature, and the average was

0.77 and 0.9 daily government proposals respectively. In other words, at least

in terms of legislative initiative, Crispi’s activism comes after the 1888 reform.

It is worth noting that the average of 0.45 daily proposals was below even that

of the previous legislature, the fifteenth (1882–1886). For the same period, the

average number of government proposals was 0.55 per day. It might be

argued that the data hide divergences over some of the innovations

introduced by Crispi; put differently, the contrast allegedly was more about

certain legislative proposals made by the government and less about the

volume of the government legislative initiative as a whole.15 It must be said,

however, that at least in organizational terms, moderatismo anticrispino is born

organically in 1889 with Federazione Cavour (Cammarano 1990). And, above

all, during these years the Crispi government still enjoyed widespread support

in parliament. Hence, I do not believe it adequate to interpret the changes of

1888 in the light of a counterposition between the moderates and Crispi

himself.

For their part, the changes of 1887 were approved in May and June of that

year, that is when Crispi was Interior Minister, rather than Prime Minister.

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In this respect, it is interesting to note that until April 1887, Crispi chaired the

Giunta del regolamento, charged with studying and proposing possible changes to

the standing orders. For all these reasons, I find lacking in grounding the

hypothesis that restricts these reforms to the political dynamic that emerged

with Crispi’s policies.

How, then, to explain the changes approved in 1887 and 1888? There is no

room here to defend an alternative interpretation with unequivocal evidence.

However, I believe it is possible to advance a general argument that may be the

object of future reflection. The way I see it, one must draw attention to the

period prior to the Crispi era that coincides with the golden phase of Italian

transformism during the governments of Sinistra Storica, above all from the

fifteenth legislature on (1882–1886). In practice what happened was an

exacerbation during the Agostino Depretis governments of parliament’s

function as a place of constant mediation between the executive and

parliamentarians, in which ‘local and personal interests ended up replacing

more strictly political questions’ (Musella 2003: 48). As emphasized by several

authors, this was clearly reflected in the internal organization of the Camera’s

work. As Carlo Ghisalberti (2006 [1974]: 208) put it, ‘between 1882 and 1886

the Camera operated without interruption, conditioning and almost paralyzing

all legislative activity with the dominant transformism’. Considering that

Bonghi himself was a bitter critic of the degradation of the representative

institutions of the time when Depretis was Prime Minister, it is plausible to

think that the changes in the standing orders had been adopted in reaction to a

modus operandi in which the parliamentary role of discussion and debate had

become disordered and confused. Here, therefore, I take up again the first

explanation, which linked the reforms to the rationalization of the mechanisms

for examining proposals, but without conferring on it a merely technical

character, since its arguments imply a clear reaction to the transformist period

of the Depretis era.

The evidence to back up this hypothesis is lacking. To verify it, we would

need some indicators capable of capturing to what extent parliamentary work

in previous legislatures was disordered. Perhaps a study on the examination of

proposals in the uffici can further elucidate this aspect. Unfortunately, I do not

possess information of such a kind.16 Let us say – at least while we wait for

future research that provides clear evidence surrounding this interpretation –

that the ‘Bonghi reform’ is situated at a peculiar historical moment. If on the

one hand it is pursued by a group of MPs that reacts against the degradation of

parliament as a product of the transformist era, contemporaneously they affirm

their position in defense of parliamentary prerogative in the face of the

exuberance of an ‘authoritarian’ practice that begins, chiefly, with Crispi’s rise

to the office of Prime Minister. Regardless of which interpretation is more

correct, what matters is recognizing that the image of merely technical changes

with which part of the literature has classified the interventions in the standing

orders for this period must be discarded.

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Action and reaction: the case of changes approved in April and

July 1900

If the literature has reserved differential treatment for some standing order

reforms, then this is certainly the case for those approved in 1900. We begin

with the April reform. According to the conventional view, these

interventions can be explained based on a particular event: the government’s

reaction to the obstructionist practice of part of the house which prevented the

approval of certain measures presented by the government in February 1899

by means of bills meant to restrict freedom of the press, of association and of

assembly, as well as limiting certain labor rights.17 The proposals to review the

standing orders were initially presented in June 1899 and mainly sought to

restrict the power of MPs to prolong discussions indefinitely.18 Put in these

terms, the changes approved in April seem a mere consequence of the political

tension that originated from some government proposals starting at the

twentieth legislature (Astraldi and Cosentino 1950; Ghisalberti 2006 [1974];

Tanda 2001).

The fairness of this statement does not, however, provide one with the full

picture of the dynamic of the end-of-century reform. Some authors

(Cammarano 1999; Sagrestani 1976; Tanda 1996), more concerned with the

internal dynamics of representative institutions, have linked the presence of these

unsuccessful attempts with the rising tension between the Estrema and the

government majority that had manifested itself at least since 1894. To try to find

evidence along these lines, I have analyzed review proposals presented previously

and not approved. Between July 1894 and June 1896, five proposals were

presented requesting the adoption of disciplinary measures against MPs who

obstructed the order of business.19 When reporting on the first proposal in 1894,

MP Emilio Sineo openly recognized that the Giunta del Regolamento had admitted

since 1891 the need for an increase in the Speaker’s disciplinary powers.

According to him, ‘experience has demonstrated that it is of little convenience

for an assembly to aspire to the privilege of not using the [disciplinary and

repressive] powers that wish to block the vivacity of orators and to tutor the

order of the discussions [. . .]’ (qtd in Tanda 1996: 274). Upon auguring a

strengthening of the Speaker’s disciplinary authority, the main artificer of the

reforms of the 1880s, MP Bonghi, thus manifested himself in 1891:

it is a fact that for some years the Italian Camera has witnessed an excess of

injury, of struggle, of disorder, of confusion on the part of more than one

MP, and the Speaker, not through fault of his nature or authority, but for

lack of means, is often prevented from blocking them. (Bonghi 1891: 150)

Another weighty testimony comes from the then Speaker of the Senate,

Domenico Farini. On 24 February 1894, he expressed his disappointment with

the situation of the lower house in a diary entry:

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I meet Biancheri [Speaker of the Camera] in the street [. . .]. He says the

Camera is undisciplined, impossible to be governed. I reply that on another

occasion I told him that nobody could govern it without stricter standing

orders. He replied that the presidency of the Camera would be against [. . .].

So I concluded that instead of an assembly, there will be an indecent tavern.

(Farini 1961, vol. 1: 423)

As an attentive observer of the time noted, until 1899 ‘proposals for partial

amendments became more frequent, particularly when the necessity of

toughening up parliamentary discipline had manifested itself, although few

were presented at the plenary and approved by it’ (Galeotti 1902: 5). In sum, it

is possible to affirm the importance of the political evolution of the last decade

of the century so as to frame fully the landscape of tension that ended up

polarizing the political forces of the twentieth legislature in the house, and,

ultimately, to explain the April reforms.

The changes approved in April did not find practical application. Right after

their approval, the elections were proclaimed. The results showed major

advances by the opposition forces. The groups that had supported the

government maintained a majority with 296 seats, but the opposition grew

significantly in relation to the previous election (1897), going from 181 to 212

seats (Ballini 1988). Therefore, the hard line pursued by the government was

defeated. It was necessary to restore the traditional parliamentary dynamic,

based on negotiation and cooperation between political forces and MPs against

the threat of the tutelage of minorities, and therefore against those procedural

changes passed in April. In this spirit, the new government, upon the initiative

of Camera Speaker Tommaso Villa, created a committee charged with drafting

new standing orders. As he stated, everyone felt ‘the need to purify the

atmosphere of the memories of those facts that had weakened our

parliamentary energies’.20 On 2 July 1900, the new standing orders were

approved. Speaker Villa declared that ‘without any worry as to the past’, the

new standing orders ensured ‘to all, majority and minority, all those guarantees

necessary for the freedom of the discussions and for the seriousness and freedom

of the vote’.21 Most scholars confer on them a certain importance in

comparison with the previous standing orders. In this respect, they speak in

terms of a crucial moment of parliament’s institutionalization (Longi and

Stramacci 1968), of a ‘truly organic reform’ (Boccaccini 1980), of a ‘milestone’

(Curreri 1995), of the ‘first definitive standing orders’ (Caretti 2001: 586), etc.

It is my understanding that the literature has exacerbated the innovative

character of these standing orders.22 To find evidence in this direction, suffice it

to compare the changes of July 1900 with the 1891 standing orders – the last

ones in force, a mere coordination of the Bonghi reform. Two remarks are

enough to resize the relevance of the July standing orders. First, it was found

that 126 out of the 154 articles in the July standing orders are identical in the

1891 standing orders. Of the remaining articles, only four are entirely new, and

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the rest are partial alterations of the 1891 standing orders. In other words, there

is no doubt that the July standing orders are structured so as to take up the

normative guidelines of 1891. The second remark flows from this. The twenty-

four partly altered articles are of two kinds. Some incorporate the

antiobstruction measures introduced in April 1900. Of the twenty-two

changes approved in April, just five were eliminated by the committee charged

with rewriting the July standing orders, seven were adopted with changes and

the remainder were fully adopted.23 As recently noted by Silvano Montaldo

(2001), the April limitations meant to rationalize parliamentary time and avoid

obstructionism were kept in the new standing orders.24 The other articles that

partly modified the previous standing orders (1891) did not directly affect the

legislative process.

The point worth emphasizing, I believe, is that we are faced with standing

orders inaccurately valued by the literature. We are not at all dealing with an

organic reform, merely with yet another stage in the procedural evolution of

liberal Italy, which, with the July reform, confirms its character of incremental

change. In fact, the founding principles of the dynamic between executive and

legislative, grounded in government by discussion from the beginning, are

maintained and strengthened with the July standing orders, whose origin

clearly harks back to the Bonghi reform. It was with the set of incremental

changes of the 1880s that the standing orders acquired a formal structure that

was to constitute, in the section relating to the discussion of matters, ‘the

fundamental pillar’ (Longi and Stramacci 1968: 140) of the 1948 republican

standing orders. Thus, the attention that the July 1900 standing orders aroused

in the literature is justifiable only in historical terms; on the one hand, the

reiteration of parliament’s central role after the late-nineteenth-century crisis

and, on the other, the realization that these are the standing orders that

governed the inner workings of the house until the 1971 reform.

Among minor changes and the 1920 ‘revolution’

As one starts to analyze events subsequent to the late-nineteenth-century crisis,

one’s attention is drawn when examining academic texts to how suddenly

discussion of procedural issues shifts to the 1920 reform, whose chief feature is

the creation in the Camera of parliamentary groups. The conventional view

about changes in the 1900–1920 period is that they are ‘minor modifications’

(Di Muccio 1987a), mere adaptations by parliament to modern times

(Boccaccini 1980). In fact, the prevailing posture among legislators was to

favor small revisions, among which those of 1907 and 1910 are worth

mentioning. These regulated the activities of parliamentary control.25 One

must not underestimate these changes, but I believe it is more interesting to

advance a reflection around the lack of a broad intervention in the standing

orders by legislators, in comparison with the 1861–1900 period. I pose the

following question: why were ‘secondary’ reforms approved that did not

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interfere in mechanisms relating to rules inherent to the process of examination

and discussion of legislative proposals, for example?

The majority explanation present in the literature would reside in the very

logic of the workings of the political system in force until 1912. The main

political leader that conditioned political life at this time, Giovanni Giolitti,

attributed to the Camera a central mediating role among political forces

(Aquarone 1981; Soddu 2001).26 The very parties that traditionally opposed

the pro-government majority, such as the radicals and the socialists, were

often co-opted by Giolitti in his quest for broad-based support to implement

his political program (Cotta 1992). In particular, it was the moderate socialist

position that prevailed inside the party until 1912 that allowed this

approximation with the liberal forces in government. As recently pointed

out by Montaldo (2001: 218), there was the affirmation of ‘a relationship

between parliament and government based more on governability and on

cooperation of the former with the latter, than on control and counter-

position’. Parliamentary custom was, like always, to ‘resort to instruments

similar to those used almost thirty years before by his predecessor [Depretis]

to maintain cohesion and political coherence in the conduct of his sponsors

in parliament’ (Ghisalberti 2006 [1974]: 284). Hence, procedural instruments

strongly centered on valuing the model of government by discussion were

the guarantee of a good relationship between parliament and government.

This makes the low level of activism on legislators’ part with respect to

strictly procedural matters understandable, above all regarding rules inherent

to the examination of bills. In this sense, the absence of an intervention in the

standing orders may be derived from the nature of the functioning of

relations between government and Camera, fundamentally of the collabora-

tive sort.

Lastly, the 1920 reform has a distinctive trait in relation to the others. It is

the natural consequence of the 1919 electoral system reform (Ambrosini 1921;

Astraldi and Cosentino 1950; De Micheli and Verzichelli 2004; Longi and

Stramacci 1968; Ungari 1971). As stated by the socialist Pio Donati during the

discussion on procedural changes on 24 July 1920: ‘this reform is the inevitable

and expected consequence of the reform of the electoral law that gave us

proportional representation’ (qtd in Di Muccio 1987b: 74). By making it

possible for MPs to organize in parliamentary groups, in practice the reform

was about the institutionalization of the party model in counterposition to the

liberal model, which exalted the individual component (Orsina 1996). In this

sense, the great innovation worthy of note in this period is the organization of

parliamentary business by means of permanent committees. Thus became

formalized the principle of specialization, inasmuch as now MPs could choose

the committees where they would work, in accordance with the orientation of

their group. As well put by Perticone (1960: 249), the institution of committees

profoundly altered relations between executive and legislative: ‘legislative

power is partly transferred to the committees they represent, and these are the

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true parliament that makes the laws, cooperates or opposes the government,

and is representative of party leaderships’.

There is no way of diverging from these considerations. However, the

following is noteworthy: upon the introduction of formal tutelage for party

groups, there was no action taken to rationalize the rules inherent to the

legislative process. In other words, the ten articles that in the 1920 reform

institutionalized parties in parliament did not even lead to the adoption of ‘strong

rules that acted as a counterweight to internal fragmentation, mechanisms to

strengthen the executive in case of parliamentary stalemate, institutionalization of

a Speaker with clear and defined agenda-setting powers’ (De Micheli and

Verzichelli 2004: 69). Later, in the early fascist era (1924), when reporting on the

abolition of the 1920 reforms, MP Cesare Tumidei stated that at that occasion,

‘there was no attempt to perfect the law-making system: one sought to apply the

proportionalist postulate also to preparatory legislative work’.27 Therefore, if it is

correct to talk about ‘parliamentary revolution’ (Di Muccio 1987b), ‘constitu-

tional revolution’ (Montaldo 2001: 231) or ‘radical reform of the standing orders’

(Orsina 1996: 397), we need to circumscribe such emphasis only to the

organizational format of the house, which now admitted the presence of

organized groups. The reform introduced parties into the standing orders in

isolated fashion, but had nothing to say regarding the dynamic of parliamentary

work, which in effect carried on being centered on the rules of the July 1900

standing orders, which in turn, as we have seen, were anchored largely on the

changes approved at the time of Bonghi.

In a way this explains legislators’ intervention shortly thereafter, in 1922.

According to most scholars, these were reforms suggested by ‘experience’

(Astraldi and Cosentino 1950; Di Muccio 1987b; Longi & Stramacci 1968;

Ungari 1971).28 These changes, if compared with the 1920 reform, are given

little credit by the literature and even considered secondary (Di Muccio

1987b). One might certainly say that their limited period in force contributed

to the only slight attention they received. Two years later, already with

Mussolini as Prime Minister, the Camera abrogated the changes approved in

1920 and the successive modifications of 1922.

Conclusion

By way of conclusion, I wish to advance at least three final considerations. The

examination of the procedural evolution of the Camera dei Deputati allows one

to differentiate between five reformist periods, each one a product of a series of

different political events.29 Between 1861 and 1873, we saw what might be

termed a ‘period of organizational adaptation’. What mattered was establishing

rules to ensure a minimum of organization for parliamentary work. Future

research ought to investigate this period in greater depth, mainly to reflect

upon the government–opposition relationship. Perhaps an examination of the

paths taken by proposals when making their way through the uffici will add to

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the organizational explanation, in case an attempt by the government to adopt

certain procedural rules to control better the deliberative process is perceived.

The second period – that of the Bonghi reform (1887–1890) – must be seen

within a broader perspective (i.e. not a merely organizational one. Here one

observes what might be termed a ‘period of parliamentary reaction’. The

reforms configure an action in defense of parliamentary prerogatives starting,

on the one hand, with the degradation of the parliamentary institution

produced by the transformist logic of previous legislatures and, on the other,

but to a lesser extent, with Prime Minister Crispi’s ‘Caesarist’ tendency, which

affirmed more and more the government’s autonomy vis-a-vis parliament’s.

The changes of 1900 resulted from the apogee of the ‘reactionary period’ (April

reform) and its close (July standing orders). With the July standing orders,

procedures return to the practices and decisions of the past, according to which

the government’s agenda-setting powers are amply shared with the

parliamentary prerogatives held by MPs. The rare interventions in the standing

orders during the first decade of the new century must be seen in the context of

a ‘period of minimum rationalization’ of the rules, focusing on procedures for

controlling government action. The last period, which could be called the

‘period of parties’ institutionalization’, opens the way for a reform of the rules

that seeks to place political parties at the center of the legislative dynamic, but is

rapidly wound down by the start of the fascist period.30

The second consideration is more general in character. This article did not

wish to evoke an alternative view to that which considers the Camera’s standing

orders as highly decentralized. This certainly is the dominant feature of the

reforms adopted in Italy from 1861 to 1922. However, the article questioned

the sparse attention paid by academia to understanding the underlying political

moment that formed the backdrop to standing order reforms. The study found

that the pressures for the adoption of reforms are of a different and complex

nature. Various elements can explain the decision to reform the standing

orders: need to organize the discussion of deliberations; need to provide

adequate instruments so that an increase in the workload could yield a good

performance for the house; or mere reaction to obstructionist moments. By

focusing on the political aspects of the reforms, we find that procedural reform

has a rather complex modus operandi. From a more general point of view, I think

it may be suggested that the explanation for the reforms in Italy gravitates

around the problem of how relations between government and parliament

developed. Contrary to the general view present in the literature, this points

toward the fact that changes in standing orders are not merely episodic or

contradictory, but must be understood within an analytic perspective that

stresses the political context in which they are made.

Finally, I present a methodological reflection. I believe it is essential to stress

that those interested in studying the Italian Parliament during the liberal

period should make more frequent and systematic use of primary sources

beyond mere citations of politicians selected from period manuscripts, journals

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or biographies. Indeed, historiography and political science from the nineties

have demonstrated a strong inclination to present findings based on more

appropriate sources. The works of Soddu (1999, 2005) and Cammarano

(1990), among others, are clear examples that research concerning the

Parliament is more conclusive when the researcher bases his or her work on

primary sources to make inferences regarding the Parliament’s functioning – as

was the case with these authors, for example, when they extrapolated analyses

of MPs’ nominal voting or participation in debates. Nevertheless and rather

unfortunately, this approach is still applied infrequently. In a recent review of

studies concerning the Kingdom of Italy’s Parliament, Stefano Tabacchi (2008)

stressed the lack of a critical reconstruction of the role of the two houses vis-a-

vis their legislative activity, control and internal departments and bureaus. I

limited this article to a reflection on the development of the House’s standing

order. I believe that we will come to an ever more conclusive understanding

of the Parliament during the liberal period to the extent that we pursue a more

systematic examination of the information contained in the House’s files. On

the contrary, our reflections will continue to drift between mere descriptions of

events and personal interpretations of the liberal period.

Acknowledgements

I thank the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development

(CNPq) of Brazil for supporting this research.

Notes

1 See Astraldi and Cosentino (1950) for details on the content of the proposals toreview the standing orders.

2 On how the Senate evolved in the Kingdom of Italy and took on greater politicalweight over the course of successive decades, see Soddu (2005b), among recentworks.

3 The question of legal continuity in the transition to the Kingdom of Italy is widelyexplored in the literature (see the classic text by Ghisalberti 2006 [1974]). Not onlywas the Albertine Statute maintained, but an actual legislative and administrativeunification was carried out, covering Codes, electoral and administrative laws. Itrested on the idea that in the eyes of the government, unification was only theterritorial extension of the Kingdom of Sardinia.

4 The year of reference considered here is that of the reforms’ approval. As attentivereaders may have noticed, not every intervention has been considered. It is notpossible to discuss them all within the limits of this article. I have opted to exclude‘minor’ changes that refer to secondary aspects of legislative work, as well as isolatedinterventions (i.e. not part of a more general reform of the standing orders).

5 This article defends a position that is restricted to a consideration of the dynamics ofthe relationship between the government and the parliament as an explanatory factorfor the change in the standing order. Alternatively, one could claim that the reformswere a result of the pressure of public opinion and of the debate regarding thestrengthening of political institutions. Luigi Lacche (2008: 36) defends this position,claiming that, as early as 1898, the standing orders entered into a new phase on

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account of social complexity that ‘affect[ed] Parliament’s being and functioning’.Though I do not deny the influence that the debate concerning the institutionalcrisis played on some parliamentarians (such as Ruggiero Bonghi and SidneySonnino, for example), I believe this claim adds little in terms of strict justification.As I see it, any explanation of the reforms of the standing orders cannot eschew thestudy of relations between the executive and the legislative branches. The pressuresfor change may be exogenous, but they alone are inadequate to explain thoseinstitutional changes that, as shown throughout this article, are created and evolvefrom the nature of relations between the Parliament and the Government.

6 After 1873, other proposals were presented regarding reform of the committeesystem organization. In 1888, the three readings system was brought in withoutabolishing the one in force, thus establishing a mixed system. In practice, insubsequent parliaments the system derived from the British model was hardly everapplied, with the uffici setup prevailing.

7 Presented by Giuseppe Massari on 24 July 1868; now contained in Documenti per lastoria del regolamento della camera dei deputati (1993: 59).

8 In a more recent text, Soddu (2005b) sets out some data regarding this point. Theinteresting fact is that, for important bills, the members of the ufficio centrale were infact the MPs with the most prestige. This would signal to a dynamic internal to theufficio, which can be explained more on the basis of political questions (relating to thecounterposition between government and opposition or to divergences internal tothe majority itself) than by virtue of merely organizational elements.

9 To corroborate the information regarding parliamentary absenteeism, I checked thenumber of MPs present for plenary votes on government-sponsored bills, fromthe opening of the eighth legislature on 18 February 1861, to the day before theapproval of the 1863 reform, 28 February 1863. The average number of MPs presentwas 216.75, for 185 bills, below the legal quorum of 222 MPs.

10 The Bonghi reform is thus termed by virtue of the name of the chair of the Giuntaper il regolamento, who drafted the proposals for procedural change adopted in the1880s. These reforms were voted on three occasions: June 1887, February and April1888 and, lastly, December 1890.

11 A series of procedural questions were regulated better, such as the approval ofmotions, the introduction of amendments, requests for the suspension orinterdiction of a given discussion and use of the floor in general. Among mattersregulated for the first time, norms on urgency procedures for bills are worthy ofnote.

12 The official lists presented by Bonghi may be found in Tanda (1996).13 There is no space here to detail the complexity of the party picture of the time.

Suffice it to remind ourselves of the classic differentiation between Destra Storica andSinistra Storica. Until at least the fifteenth legislature, the division in the house wasbetween these two political groupings, heterogeneous internally but having similarpolitical characteristics. Later, side by side with these two forces, the Estrema asserteditself. The last five years of the nineteenth century witnessed the growing presenceof socialist, republican and radical MPs; Catholics only at the start of the newcentury. For more on electoral results and the complex configurations of thedifferent political currents, see Ballini (1988). For a reflection on the currents thatopposed Crispi, I recommend the important contribution by Cammarano (1990).I refer the interested reader to the work of Paolo Pombeni (2010) for more generalconsideration on executive–legislative relations and the role of parliament.

14 Legislatures were divided in sessions but it was not a fixed rule. For example, wehave four sessions during the sixteenth legislature but just one for the fifteenth.

15 Above all, I consider some legal regulations, such as the Communal GovernmentReform, the Social Security Law, the New Criminal Code (Zanardelli Code), the

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Crispi Law on Emigration, the Law on Public Institutions of Assistance and Charityand the Justice Department. For a more in-depth discussion regarding the legislationapproved under the Crispi Law, see studies by Ghisalberti (2006) and Cammarano(1999). For a detailed reconstruction of Crispi’s life and political vicissitudes as PrimeMinister, see Duggan (2002).

16 The only consolidated information I obtained were the data on the time taken forgovernment bills to make their way through the committees, that is between the daywhen the bill was introduced and its first discussion at the plenary. Clearly, one isdealing with a very rough indicator of committees’ internal dynamics, since it fails toconsider the level of the debate and the difficulties involved in reaching anagreement on the final text. In any case, the data relating to the time taken forgovernment bills to overcome the committee stage do not show significant variationbetween one legislative session and another.

17 These measures had been advocated to remedy the action of groups, unions andpolitical forces branded as provocative and subversive, and responsible, among otherthings, for the riots of the Sspring and summer of 1898 in various towns of theKingdom of Italy by virtue, above all, of the critical social conditions experienced bythe population. For a detailed reconstruction, see Levra (2001).

18 The reform had remained limited to seventeen changes in articles of the standingorders and the introduction of five new ones. The most-contested measure was thatwhich conferred strong agenda-setting powers on the Speaker, so as to represspotential obstructionist manifestations. For a reconstruction of the debates at thestanding orders review committee, see Tanda (1996). For an overview of thepolitico-parliamentary moment, see Sagrestani (1976).

19 Other measures were proposed to increase control over debates and deliberations. In1893, MP Ulderico Levi presented a proposal that withdrew the right to adeclaration of vote in subsequent sessions from MPs absent from nominal votes. Alsoin 1893, MP Nicola Vischi proposed that the introduction of a new agenda for theday should not allow the proponent to present his arguments if the discussion on thatmatter had already been closed. The same Giunta del Regolamento, in 1894, presenteda proposal to suppress the general discussion on the budget.

20 Quote extracted from Tanda (1996: 33).21 Intervention by Villa on 1 July 1900. Atti parlamentari, XXI Legislatura, I sessione,

p. 42.22 Along the same lines of interpretation, see Montaldo (2001) and Soddu (1999).23 The measures approved in April and not included in the July standing orders were,

obviously, those considered more restrictive of MPs’ freedoms. Among them, it isworth highlighting Article 89bis, which gave the Speaker the power to propose timelimits for MPs’ speeches, to limit nominal and secret votes, and to set a day and atime for discussions to be concluded.

24 These were measures that gave the Speaker more disciplinary power and providedfor punishment of undisciplined MPs, or norms that limited the duration of MPs’interventions in discussions.

25 The principal reason that led legislators to change the standing orders was the needto define better these activities’ rules of discussion. It was common practice, forinstance, that a parliamentary question would not originate a debate at all. Accordingto Soddu (1999), in the twenty-second legislature, this occurred about 40 per cent ofthe time.

26 Giolitti was Prime Minister three times from 1900 to 1914: between November1903 and March 1905, between May 1906 and December 1909, and betweenMarch 1911 and March 1914. For more detail on the ‘Giolittian age’, see Gentile(2003).

27 Quoted in Documenti per la storia del regolamento della camera dei deputati (1993: 204).

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28 It is worth reminding ourselves of some of them. A two-month ceiling was set forcommittees to present reports on proposals. Prior authorization for the reading of abill by the proponent at the plenary was abolished, and the proponent couldintervene at the committee stage. The maximum duration of the discussion on theday’s business was limited to twenty minutes. To avoid surprises in the decision-making process, the norm leaving for the next day the discussion of new articles oramendments was introduced. It was also established that to calculate the legalnumber, abstentions would be computed, and non-voting MPs present would beincluded among the abstainers.

29 See the work of Pombeni (2010) for a periodization of parliamentary life withfocused on differences of interpretation of the Constitution.

30 For an attempt at similar periodization, but of broader scope since it encompassesparliamentary life vis-a-vis the numerous interpretations of the Constitution, seePombeni (2010).

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