Parliament of Italy
From Freepedia
The Parliament of Italy (Italian: Parlamento Italiano) is the national parliament of Italy. It is a bicameral legislature with 945 elected members (parlamentari). The Chamber of Deputies, with 630 members (deputati) is the lower house. The Senate is the upper house and has 315 members (senatori).
Since 1993, an Additional Member System has been used in both houses. Three-quarters of the seats are filled by single member plurality, and remaining quarter by proportional representation. This has allowed the bigger parties to gain much national power with comparatively smalls shares of the national vote. The big parties used decoy lists to the extent that the Forza Italia could not even fill all seats which it has won because it did not expect such success after the change of the system and did not have enough candidates to fill all the seats.
Overseas Constituency
The Italian Parliament is one of the few legislatures in the world to reserve seats for citizens residing abroad. There are twelve such seats in the Chamber of Deputies and six in the Senate.
The Overseas Constituency consists of four electoral zones, each of which elect one Deputy and one Senator:
- Europe (including Russia and Turkey)
- South America
- North and Central America
- Africa, Asia, Oceania and Antarctica
The remaining seats are distributed between the same overseas electoral zones in proportion to the number of Italian citizens resident in each.
See also
External links
- Official website (in Italian)
- Election resources for the Parliament
Categories: Government of Italy | National legislatures | Italy-related stubs | Parliaments by country
