1996 Italian General Elections
The 1996 Italian general election was held on 21 April 1996 to elect members of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate of the Republic. Romano Prodi, leader of the centre-left The Olive Tree, won the election, narrowly defeating Silvio Berlusconi, who led the centre-right Pole for Freedoms. For the election, the Northern League of Umberto Bossi ran alone after having left the Berlusconi I Cabinet in 1994, causing a crisis which drove President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro to appoint a technocratic cabinet led by Lamberto Dini, which in turn lost its parliamentary support in 1995, forcing Scalfaro to dissolve the Italian Parliament. The Communist Refoundation Party, led by Fausto Bertinotti, made a pre-electoral alliance with The Olive Tree, presenting its own candidates, supported by Prodi's coalition, mainly in some safe leftist constituencies, in exchange for supporting Olive Tree candidates on the other ones, and ensuring external support for a Prodi government. Electoral syste ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Chamber Of Deputies (Italy)
The Chamber of Deputies () is the lower house of the bicameral Italian Parliament, the upper house being the Senate of the Republic. The two houses together form a perfect bicameral system, meaning they perform identical functions, but do so separately. The Chamber of Deputies has 400 seats, of which 392 are elected from Italian constituencies, and 8 from Italian citizens living abroad. Deputies are styled ''The Honourable'' (Italian: ''Onorevole'') and meet at Palazzo Montecitorio. Location The seat of the Chamber of Deputies is the '' Palazzo Montecitorio'', where it has met since 1871, shortly after the capital of the Kingdom of Italy was moved to Rome at the successful conclusion of the Italian unification ''Risorgimento'' movement. Previously, the seat of the Chamber of Deputies of the Kingdom of Italy had been briefly at the '' Palazzo Carignano'' in Turin (1861–1865) and the '' Palazzo Vecchio'' in Florence (1865–1871). Under the Fascist regime of Benito Mussol ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lamberto Dini
Lamberto Dini (; born 1 March 1931) is an Italian politician and economist. He was the Director General of Bank of Italy from 1979 to 1994, Italian Minister of the Treasury, Minister of Treasury from 1994 to 1996, the 51st Prime Minister of Italy, prime minister of Italy from 1995 to 1996, and Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Minister from 1996 to 2001. At years old, he is the oldest living prime minister of Italy. Early life and career After studying Economics in his native city of Florence, Dini took up a post at the International Monetary Fund in 1959, where he worked his way up until he served as Executive Director for Italy, Greece, Portugal and Malta between 1976 and 1979. Then, in October 1979, he moved to the Banca d'Italia, where he served as an executive until May 1994. When the Governor of the Bank of Italy, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, with whom Dini had developed a rivalry, was called upon to serve as prime minister in April 1993, Dini was widely tipped to su ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Democratic Party Of The Left
The Democratic Party of the Left (, PDS) was a democratic-socialist and social-democratic political party in Italy. Founded in February 1991 as the post-communist evolution of the Italian Communist Party, the party was the largest in the Alliance of Progressives and The Olive Tree coalitions. In February 1998, the party merged with minor parties to form Democrats of the Left. At its peak in 1991, the party had a membership of 989,708; by 1998, it was reduced to 613,412. History The PDS evolved from the Italian Communist Party (PCI), the largest Communist party in the Western Bloc for most of the Cold War. Since 1948, it had been the second-largest party in Italian Parliament. The PCI moved away from Communist orthodoxy in the late 1960s, when it opposed the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. In the 1970s, it was one of the first parties to embrace Eurocommunism. By the late 1980s, the PCI had ties with social democratic and democratic socialist parties, and it was i ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Electoral Pact
An electoral alliance (also known as a bipartisan electoral agreement, electoral pact, electoral agreement, electoral coalition or electoral bloc) is an association of political parties or individuals that exists solely to stand in elections. Each of the parties within the alliance has its own policies but chooses temporarily to put aside differences in favour of common goals and ideology in order to pool their voters' support and get elected. On occasion, an electoral alliance may be formed by parties with very different policy goals, which agree to pool resources in order to stop a particular candidate or party from gaining power. Unlike a coalition formed after an election, the partners in an electoral alliance usually do not run candidates against one another but encourage their supporters to vote for candidates from the other members of the alliance. In some agreements with a larger party enjoying a higher degree of success at the polls, the smaller party fields candidates ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Proportional Representation
Proportional representation (PR) refers to any electoral system under which subgroups of an electorate are reflected proportionately in the elected body. The concept applies mainly to political divisions (Political party, political parties) among voters. The aim of such systems is that all votes cast contribute to the result so that each representative in an assembly is mandated by a roughly equal number of voters, and therefore all votes have equal weight. Under other election systems, a bare Plurality (voting), plurality or a scant majority in a district are all that are used to elect a member or group of members. PR systems provide balanced representation to different factions, usually defined by parties, reflecting how votes were cast. Where only a choice of parties is allowed, the seats are allocated to parties in proportion to the vote tally or ''vote share'' each party receives. Exact proportionality is never achieved under PR systems, except by chance. The use of elector ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Plurality Voting System
Plurality voting refers to electoral systems in which the candidates in an electoral district who poll more than any other (that is, receive a plurality) are elected. Under single-winner plurality voting, and in systems based on single-member districts, plurality voting is called single member istrictplurality (SMP), which is widely known as " first-past-the-post". In SMP/FPTP the leading candidate, whether or not they have a majority of votes, is elected. There are several versions of plurality voting for multi-member district. The system that elects multiple winners at once with the plurality rule and where each voter casts as many X votes as the number of seats in a multi-seat district is referred to as plurality block voting. A semi-proportional system that elects multiple winners elected at once with the plurality rule and where each voter casts more than one vote but fewer than the number of seats to fill in a multi-seat district is known as limited voting. A semi-prop ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sergio Mattarella
Sergio Mattarella (; born 23 July 1941) is an Italian politician and jurist who has served as the president of Italy since 2015. He is the longest-serving president in the history of the Italian Republic. Since Giorgio Napolitano's death in 2023, Mattarella has also been the only living Italian president. A Catholic leftist politician, Mattarella was a leading member of the Christian Democracy (Italy), Christian Democracy (CD) party from the early 1980s until its dissolution. He served as Italian Minister for Parliamentary Relations, Minister for Parliamentary Relations from 1987 to 1989, and Italian Minister of Education, Minister of Education from 1989 to 1990. In 1994, Mattarella was among the founders of the Italian People's Party (1994), Italian People's Party (PPI), serving as Deputy Prime Minister of Italy from 1998 to 1999, and Italian Minister of Defence, Minister of Defence from 1999 to 2001. He joined Democracy is Freedom – The Daisy, The Daisy in 2002 and was one ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mattarellum
The Italian electoral law of 1993 (better known as Mattarellum) was a reform of the electoral laws of Italy, passed on 4 August 1993. The nickname, conceived by Giovanni Sartori, derived from its author Sergio Mattarella. The law was also nicknamed Minotaur (from the mythical creature of Greek Mythology), for being a combination of two different parts (majority and proportional system). The law replaced the proportional representation used in Italy since 1946, just after the end of the Second World War. It was replaced in 2005 by Italian electoral law of 2005, another law named ''Porcellum'' in reference to a comment by Roberto Calderoli. History Background The Mattarella law was technically the accidental result of the combination of different historic events. After World War II, proportional representation (PR) was restored for the election of the Chamber of Deputies (Italy), Chamber of Deputies as it was before the Fascist era. The Senate of the Republic (Italy), Senate of the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Leftist
Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy either as a whole or of certain social hierarchies. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in society whom its adherents perceive as disadvantaged relative to others as well as a belief that there are unjustified inequalities that need to be reduced or abolished, through radical means that change the nature of the society they are implemented in. According to emeritus professor of economics Barry Clark, supporters of left-wing politics "claim that human development flourishes when individuals engage in cooperative, mutually respectful relations that can thrive only when excessive differences in status, power, and wealth are eliminated." Within the left–right political spectrum, ''Left'' and ''Right'' were coined during the French Revolution, referring to the seating arrangement in the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Electoral Alliance
An electoral alliance (also known as a bipartisan electoral agreement, electoral pact, electoral agreement, electoral coalition or electoral bloc) is an association of political parties or individuals that exists solely to stand in elections. Each of the parties within the alliance has its own policies but chooses temporarily to put aside differences in favour of common goals and ideology in order to pool their voters' support and get elected. On occasion, an electoral alliance may be formed by parties with very different policy goals, which agree to pool resources in order to stop a particular candidate or party from gaining power. Unlike a coalition formed after an election, the partners in an electoral alliance usually do not run candidates against one another but encourage their supporters to vote for candidates from the other members of the alliance. In some agreements with a larger party enjoying a higher degree of success at the polls, the smaller party fields candidates ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Italian Parliament
The Italian Parliament () is the national parliament of the Italy, Italian Republic. It is the representative body of Italian citizens and is the successor to the Parliament of the Kingdom of Sardinia (1848–1861), the Parliament of the Kingdom of Italy (1861–1943), the transitional National Council (Italy), National Council (1945–1946) and the Constituent Assembly of Italy, Constituent Assembly (1946–1948). It is a Bicameralism, bicameral legislature with 600 elected members and a small number of unelected members (''senatori a vita''). The Italian Parliament is composed of the Chamber of Deputies (Italy), Chamber of Deputies (with 400 members or ''deputati'' elected on a national basis), as well as the Senate of the Republic (Italy), Senate of the Republic (with 200 members or ''senatori'' elected on a regional basis, plus a small number of Senators for life in Italy, senators for life or ''senatori a vita'', either appointed by the President of the Republic or former P ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Technocracy
Technocracy is a form of government in which decision-makers appoint knowledge experts in specific domains to provide them with advice and guidance in various areas of their policy-making responsibilities. Technocracy follows largely in the tradition of other meritocracy, meritocratic theories and works best when the state exerts strong control over social and economic issues. This system is sometimes presented as explicitly contrasting with Representative Democracy, representative democracy, the notion that elected representatives should be the primary decision-makers in government, despite the fact that technocracy does not imply eliminating elected representatives. In a technocracy, decision-makers rely on individuals and institutions possessing specialized knowledge and data-based evidence rather than advisors with political affiliations or loyalty. The term ''technocracy'' was initially used to signify the application of the scientific method to solving social problems. In ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |