WHAT if Italy were the most stable country in Europe? The notion would once have seemed absurd. But after the Senate’s approval on October 13th of a sweeping constitutional reform, it is less so. The bill, which should have little difficulty passing the lower Chamber of Deputies, removes a feature of the Italian political system that has had reformers gnawing their knuckles in frustration for decades: the two houses of parliament have equal powers. That is why bills so often end up circulating between the chambers until they are neutered or liquidated.
The reform would turn the Senate into a 100-member house of regional and municipal representatives with the power to question, but not veto, legislation. Combined with an electoral law that guarantees a majority to the winning party in the lower house, the reform should mean future Italian governments get five crisis-free years to implement their programmes.
“For us, it is a Copernican revolution,” says Maria Elena Boschi, minister for reform in Matteo Renzi’s left-right coalition. Just as revolutionary as the bill itself is the fact that Mr Renzi entrusted the task of steering it through parliament to Ms…
