This article was downloaded by: [paolo ricci]On: 05 December 2011, At: 08:26Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK
Journal of Modern Italian StudiesPublication details, including instructions for authorsand subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rmis20
Explaining standing orderreforms in the Camera deiDeputati during the liberal agePaolo Ricci aa São Paulo University, Brazil
Available online: 01 Dec 2011
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
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1354571X.2012.628099
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expresslyforbidden.
The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make anyrepresentation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up todate. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should beindependently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liablefor any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damageswhatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connectionwith or arising out of the use of this material.
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
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
paol
o ri
cci]
at 0
8:26
05
Dec
embe
r 20
11
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
Paolo Ricci
26
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
paol
o ri
cci]
at 0
8:26
05
Dec
embe
r 20
11
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)
Standing order reforms in the Camera dei Deputati
27
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
paol
o ri
cci]
at 0
8:26
05
Dec
embe
r 20
11
‘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.
Paolo Ricci
28
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
paol
o ri
cci]
at 0
8:26
05
Dec
embe
r 20
11
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
29
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
paol
o ri
cci]
at 0
8:26
05
Dec
embe
r 20
11
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
Paolo Ricci
30
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
paol
o ri
cci]
at 0
8:26
05
Dec
embe
r 20
11
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
Standing order reforms in the Camera dei Deputati
31
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
paol
o ri
cci]
at 0
8:26
05
Dec
embe
r 20
11
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.
Paolo Ricci
32
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
paol
o ri
cci]
at 0
8:26
05
Dec
embe
r 20
11
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.
Standing order reforms in the Camera dei Deputati
33
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
paol
o ri
cci]
at 0
8:26
05
Dec
embe
r 20
11
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:
Paolo Ricci
34
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
paol
o ri
cci]
at 0
8:26
05
Dec
embe
r 20
11
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
Standing order reforms in the Camera dei Deputati
35
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
paol
o ri
cci]
at 0
8:26
05
Dec
embe
r 20
11
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
Paolo Ricci
36
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
paol
o ri
cci]
at 0
8:26
05
Dec
embe
r 20
11
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
Standing order reforms in the Camera dei Deputati
37
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
paol
o ri
cci]
at 0
8:26
05
Dec
embe
r 20
11
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
Paolo Ricci
38
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
paol
o ri
cci]
at 0
8:26
05
Dec
embe
r 20
11
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
Standing order reforms in the Camera dei Deputati
39
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
paol
o ri
cci]
at 0
8:26
05
Dec
embe
r 20
11
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
Paolo Ricci
40
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
paol
o ri
cci]
at 0
8:26
05
Dec
embe
r 20
11
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
Standing order reforms in the Camera dei Deputati
41
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
paol
o ri
cci]
at 0
8:26
05
Dec
embe
r 20
11
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).
Paolo Ricci
42
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
paol
o ri
cci]
at 0
8:26
05
Dec
embe
r 20
11
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).
References
Aquarone, A. (1981) L’Italia giolittiana, Bologna: Il Mulino.Ambrosini, G. (1921) Partiti politici e gruppi parlamentari dopo la proporzionale, Florence:
La Voce.Astraldi, R. and Cosentino, F. (1950) I nuovi regolamenti del Parlamento italiano, Rome:
Colombo Editore.Ballini, P. L. (1988) Le elezioni nella storia d’Italia dall’Unita al fascismo. Profilo storico-
statistico, Bologna: Il Mulino.Boccaccini, G. (1980) Sistema politico e regolamenti parlamentari, Milan: Giuffre.Bonghi, Ruggiero (1891) ‘L’autorita disciplinare del presidente’, Nuova Antologia 25(34):
145–60.Cammarano, Fulvio (1990) Il progresso moderato. Un’opposizione liberale nella svolta
dell’Italia crispina (1887–1892), Bologna: Il Mulino.——— (1999) Storia politica dell’Italia liberale. 1861–1901, Bari: Laterza.Caretti, P. (2001) ‘Le svolte della politica italiana nelle riforme dei regolamenti
parlamentari’, in Luciano Violante (ed.) Storia d’Italia. Il Parlamento, Turin: Einaudi,pp. 583–611.
Carocci, G. (1964) Il parlamento nella storia d’italia: antologia storica della classe politica, Bari:Laterza.
Cotta, M. (1992) ‘Elite unification and democratic consolidation in Italy: a historicaloverview’, in John Higley and Richard Gunther (eds) Elites and DemocraticConsolidation in Latin America and Southern Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, pp. 146–77.
Curreri, S. (1995) Le procedure di revisione dei regolamenti parlamentari, Padua: Cedam.De Micheli, C. and Verzichelli, L. (2004) Il Parlamento, Bologna: Il Mulino.Di Muccio, P. (1987a) ‘Il Regolamento della Camera dei Deputati dal 1900 al 1922.
Una cronaca parlamentare’, Bollettino di Informazioni Costituzionali e Parlamentari 1(1):21–116.
——— (1987b) ‘Il Regolamento della Camera dei Deputati dal 1900 al 1922.Una cronaca parlamentare’, Bollettino di Informazioni Costituzionali e Parlamentari 1(2):67–130.
Documenti per la storia del regolamento della Camera dei deputati, 1848–1949 (1993) Dossierdi Documentazione Storica, Rome: Camera dei Deputati.
Duggan, C. (2002) Francesco Crispi, 1918–1901: From Nation to Nationalism, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.
Farini, Domenico (1961) Diario de fine secolo, Rome: Bardi Editore.
Standing order reforms in the Camera dei Deputati
43
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
paol
o ri
cci]
at 0
8:26
05
Dec
embe
r 20
11
Galeotti, Ugo (1902) Il Regolamento della Camera dei Deputati commentato, Rome: Cameradei Deputati.
Gentile, E. (2003) Le origini dell’Italia contemporanea. L’Eta giolittiana, Bari: Laterza.Ghisalberti, Carlo (2006) [1974] Storia costituzionale d’Italia. 1848–1994, Bari: Laterza;.Lacche, Luigi (2008) ‘La lotta per il regolamento: liberta politiche, forma di governo e
ostruzionismo parlamentare. Dalle riforme Bonghi al Regolamento Villa del 1900’,Giornale di Storia Costituzionale 15(1): 33–52.
Levra, U. (2001) ‘Il parlamento nella crisi di fine secolo’, in Luciano Violante (ed.) Storiad’Italia. Il Parlamento, Turin: Einaudi, pp. 163–95.
Lippolis, V. (2001) ‘Maggioranza, opposizione e governo nei regolamenti e nelleprassi parlamentari dell’eta repubblicana’, in Luciano Violante (ed.) Storia d’Italia.Il Parlamento, Turin: Einaudi, pp. 613–58.
Longi, V. and Stramacci, M. (1968) Il regolamento della Camera dei Deputati illustrato con ilavori preparatori, Milan: Giuffre.
Mancini, M. and Galeotti, U. (1887) Norme e usi del Parlamento Italiano, Rome: Cameradei Deputati.
Martucci, R. (1999) L’invenzione dell’Italia unita, Milan: Sansoni.Montaldo, Silvano (2001) ‘Il parlamento e la societa di massa (1900–19)’, in Luciano
Violante (ed.) Storia d’Italia. Il Parlamento, Turin: Einaudi, pp. 197–251.Musella, L. (2003) Il trasformismo, Bologna: Il Mulino.Orsina, Giovanni (1996) ‘L’organizzazione politica nelle Camere della proporzionale’,
in F. Grassi Orsini and Gaetano Quagliariello, Il partito politico dalla Grande Guerra alfascismo, Bologna: Il Mulino, pp. 397–489.
Pene Vidari, G. S. (2001) ‘Parlamenti preunitari e parlamento subalpino’, in LucianoViolante (ed.) Storia d’Italia. Il Parlamento, Turin: Einaudi, pp. 39–65.
Perticone, Giacomo (1960) Il Regime parlamentare nella storia dello statuto albertino, Rome:Edizioni dell’Ateneo.
Pombeni, Paolo (2010) ‘Parlamento e partiti nell’Italia liberale (1860–1922), in PaoloPombeni La ragione e la passione. Le forme della politica nell’Europa contemporanea,Bologna: Il Mulino, pp. 359–409.
Rogari, S. (1998) Alle origini del trasformismo. Partiti e sistema politico nell’italia liberale, Bari:Laterza.
Romanelli, R. (1979) L’Italia liberale (1861–1900), Bologna: Il Mulino.——— (1995) Il comando impossibile. Stato e societa nell’italia liberale, Bologna: Il Mulino.Sagrestani, M. (1976) Italia di fine secolo. La lotta politico-parlamentare dal 1892 al 1900,
Correggio Emilia: Arnoldo Forni Editore.Soddu, Francesco (1999) Il Parlamento di Giolitti. Camera e Senato nella XII legislatura
(1904–1909), Sassari: Unidata.——— (2001) ‘Il ruolo del Parlamento nella costruzione dell’unita politica e
amministrativa’, in Luciano Violante (ed.) Storia d’Italia. Il Parlamento, Turin:Einaudi, pp. 91–123.
——— (2005a) In Parlamento. Deputati e senatori nell’eta della Destra, Sassari: EditriceDemocratica Sarda.
——— (2005b) ‘The Italian parliament at work, 1861–1876’, Parliaments, Estates andRepresentation 25(1): 135–48.
Tabacchi, Stefano (2008) ‘Il Parlamento del Regno d’Italia: rinnovamento storiograficoe percorsi di ricerca’, Memoria e Ricerca 16(27): 145–68.
Tanda, A. P. (1996) Le riforme Regolamentari di Fine Secolo (1886–1900), Rome: Cameradei Deputati.
——— (2001) ‘Lineamenti di storia dell’ostruzionismo italiano’, in Luciano Violante(ed.) Storia d’Italia. Il Parlamento, Turin: Einaudi, pp. 697–726.
Tosi, S. (1962) Lezioni di diritto parlamentare, Florence: Univesita degli studi di Firenze.Ungari, P. (1971) Profilo storico del diritto parlamentare in Italia, Rome: Carucci Editore.
Paolo Ricci
44
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
paol
o ri
cci]
at 0
8:26
05
Dec
embe
r 20
11