Since the birth of the Republic in 1946, Italy has lived with a remarkable degree of instability in its electoral rules. In less than eighty years, the country has adopted five different national electoral systems, with a possible sixth on the horizon should current reform proposals become law.
The first was the pure proportional system of the First Republic, which shaped Italian politics for more than four decades. In 1993, it was replaced by the Mattarellum, named after Sergio Mattarella, which introduced a mixed system: 75 percent of seats were allocated through single-member majority districts, while the remaining 25 percent were distributed proportionally. The reform encouraged the formation of pre-electoral coalitions and strengthened the role of locally rooted candidates.
In 2005 came the Porcellum, a proportional system with a majority bonus and closed lists, denying voters the ability to choose individual candidates. The law’s nickname—coined by its own sponsor, Roberto Calderoli—reflected the fierce criticism it attracted, criticism that ultimately led to a partial ruling of unconstitutionality.
The Italicum followed: designed only for the Chamber of Deputies and never fully implemented, it introduced a majority bonus that could be assigned through a runoff between the two leading lists, in an effort to ensure governability. Since 2017, Italy has operated under the Rosatellum, another mixed system combining roughly one third of seats elected by majority vote and two thirds by proportional representation, with closed lists in the proportional tier.
In a European comparison, Italy is not entirely alone. Greece has repeatedly altered its electoral system in recent decades, while France- across its different republics - has changed its rules at least six times. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the United Kingdom has kept its first-past-the-post system essentially unchanged since 1918, and Germany has used a mixed proportional model since 1949, adjusting it only through limited technical revisions.