German Electoral Law, Lessons for Us Italians

With his usual acumen, Antonio Floridia analyzed the results of the German elections in the manifesto, underlining that the rationalized proportional system in force there benefits voter turnout and the solidity of the party system. While I generally share his positive opinion of the German electoral law – I have been hoping for a similar discipline for our country for some time now – I would like to make a reservation and a clarification.

As for the reservation, I do not think that a univocal relationship can be discerned between the type of electoral system and turnout. Abstentionism is an endemic evil of contemporary democracies but it is not an irreversible phenomenon. There are circumstances in which the popular perception of being faced with particularly serious threats causes the turnout to soar.

This was seen, for example, in the German elections on Sunday (82.5% turnout, 6 points more than in 2021, almost 20 points more than in the Italian elections of 2022!) and in the French elections last summer, when there was a 20-point drop in abstention, with a turnout of 66%, the same, incidentally, as in the 2019 and 2023 political elections in Spain, where, like in Germany, they vote with proportional representation (in Portugal, which also votes with proportional representation, in the last three political elections the turnout was 49, 51 and 60% respectively: the leap coincided with the need of a segment of the democratic electorate to "respond" to the advance of Chega's far-right).

In Germany there is a selective proportional electoral system. In France a totally majoritarian system. Different systems have seen similar participatory outcomes in the presence of a danger of a breakthrough by the extreme right (Le Pen in France, AfD in Germany) that has given a wake-up call to millions of anti-fascist voters in hibernation: perceived high stakes, high turnout.

I come to the clarification: Floridia asserts that there must be a threshold (pure proportional representation can cause unhealthy crumbling of parliamentary representation), but implies that 5% is perhaps too much. Maybe. However, even considering possible transplants of German rules to Italy, it must be considered that in Germany the threshold is not subject to opportunistic circumvention. In Germany they are rigorous: they do not form convenient multi-party electoral lists. A list must correspond to only one party. It is not permitted for two or more parties to join together in time to overcome the threshold in the elections while remaining two distinct legal and political entities.

For this reason, I believe that a debate on what the right level of the threshold is, if and when a real discussion on the reform of the Italian electoral law will open, will have to take place in relation to the provision or not of serious anti-evasion provisions. Another decisive issue is the need, in my opinion now unavoidable, to restore the preferential vote. But this will be discussed on another occasion.