This chapter explains the rationale behind the investigation of government instability in Italy and abroad, why we should care about this topic, and the scientific debate around this issue. The chapter continues by explaining the objectives of the book and the strategies envisaged to properly examine government instability.
1 Government instability as a democratic problem
Modern democracies are getting harder and harder to govern. In many countries, the proportion of administrations that fall short of their constitutionally mandated term limits is rising (Improta, 2023). Regardless of the type of government or democratic model (Lijphart, 1999), this phenomenon has impacted many national settings. For instance, in Israel’s recent political developments – a consensus democracy – government instability has been a defining feature. This has led to a political impasse in which three government heads – Netanyahu, Bennett, and Lapid – were sworn in and served for an average of just over a year (Rahat& Hazan, 2022). In just under four years, Israeli citizens were asked to cast ballots five times (Shamir& Rahat, 2022).
Consensus democracies have not been the only ones to experience problems with government instability. In fact, the recent, frenetic turnover of governments in the United Kingdom – the quintessential majoritarian democratic model (“Westminster”) – has sparked unprecedented government crises, such as those resulting from the resignation of Boris Johnson and the formation of the Truss cabinet during the interelection period. But after just 44 days in power, Truss was compelled to step down due to growing unrest in the political and financial arenas, making her the British prime minister with the shortest tenure ever. Following the termination of this administration, Rishi Sunak, another Conservative Party member, took the oath of office as prime minister (Improta& Mannoni, 2024).
Italy has historically been thought of as a country with frequent cabinet changes and high levels of political instability (Mershon, 1996;Cotta& Marangoni, 2015). The importance of the instability issue in Italy has been further reaffirmed by recent political events: three distinct cabinets (Conte I, Conte II, and Draghi) were formed within the 2018–2022 parliamentary period. Italy has had three political crises since 2019. In particular, League and Italy Alive – junior partners with important blackmail potential (Sartori, 1976) – withdrew their support from Conte I and Conte II, respect
