GOVERNMENT. - The term does not have a univocal meaning, covering different, albeit related, concepts, which it will be appropriate to discuss separately.
From an objective or functional standpoint, government may generally be understood as the entire activity of the State, exercised through its constitutional organs, the active or primary functions of sovereignty. Having identified, within the dynamics of state life, the interests to be assumed as general and proper to the community considered as a unity, government creates the conditions and implements the means suitable for their realization. Therefore, as such, it must be considered not only the activity that directly implements these general interests (e.g., the conclusion of a treaty), but also, and perhaps to a greater extent, the activity that influences the formation of organs, determines the guiding lines according to which the powers operate, and impresses upon the varied and manifold activity of the state apparatus that unified direction which, indirectly, serves the realization of a program, of a policy—an activity that government precisely elaborates and implements. This teleological or substantive criterion, which is almost universally adopted to identify governmental activity, explains on the one hand why such activity cannot correctly be conceived as a juridical function, as a fourth function of sovereignty alongside and above the three traditional ones (legislative, executive, judicial), which are instead characterized by juridical-formal elements—namely, the structure, form, or efficacy of the acts through which they are exercised—and appear to be the irreducible forms of manifestation of the State’s will. Conversely, it explains why governmental activity must be found present in the manifestations of the supreme organs, whether of the executive or legislative power, thereby taking juridical form in acts belonging to different juridical functions.
From a subjective or institutional standpoint, government, in a broad sense, may be understood as the complex of institutions or organs of the State that, in a given constitutional order, constitute the centers from which emanates the activity just described as governmental. This broad conception thus embraces not only the organs, whether simple or collegial, that participate actively in the exercise of such activity, but also those that, through control and by conditioning the actions of the former, exert a substantial influence on the formation of political directives.
It is precisely with regard to this broad conception that the problem of classifying the various forms of government arises—a problem in the face of which, after an extensive literature on the subject and the most varied opinions advanced, more than one voice in scholarship has expressed an attitude of near skepticism regarding the possibility of arriving at scientifically reliable results. Nevertheless, since the utility of such a distinction is beyond doubt, it is worthwhile to seek II. Now, if the distinction is to serve the purposes of logical classification and avoid descriptive conflations of non-essential traits, it must on the one hand be grounded in a substantive juridical criterion, drawn both from the varying attribution of governmental functions to one or another organ and from the various relations established among the organs that participate in them; on the other hand, it must eliminate the complication that this problem often shares with the classification of forms of State—a logically inseparable problem, since government, even broadly conceived, constitutes only a part of the juridical organization, which in turn is but one of the elements composing the State. The distinction must therefore be drawn, echoing an authoritative opinion (Crosa), within the homogeneous sphere of those States that can be traced back to the prototype of a single form of State; specifically, focusing on that form which, in the Western world, may still today be considered prevalent—namely, the form of the modern-liberal State, characterized synthetically as a constitutional, representative State and as a State governed by the rule of law, with all the implications inherent in these characteristics (plurality of constitutional organs, separation of powers, guarantees of the principles of liberty and equality for all citizens, etc.).
Proceeding with such a distinction, traditional classifications are either transcended or, at the very least, relegated to secondary importance—such as (to say nothing of Aristotle’s tripartite division into monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy) Machiavelli’s distinction between monarchy and republic. Applied to the realities of modern constitutional orders, this latter distinction reduces to a description of the manner of organizing a single organ, the head of State, configured as representative in monarchies, while otherwise leaving entirely unexpressed the essential elements that define the form of government. Furthermore, by applying the principle outlined within the field of a single form of State, one avoids conflating forms of government that, though apparently similar, cover entirely heterogeneous phenomena, thus failing to achieve a valid conceptual unification. Finally, by delimiting the field of distinction as indicated above, any reference to forms of government found in modern authoritarian States is obviously excluded, since their constitutional order diverges, to a greater or lesser extent (through violations of the principle of separation of powers, infringements upon civil and political rights, etc.), from the structural canons of the modern liberal State.
On the basis of the discriminating criterion and the limit thus assumed, the following forms of government may be distinguished:
1) Pure constitutional government, which, with the disappearance in 1918 of the German Empire and the monarchies that formed part of it—where it was commonly exemplified—now appears only in its republican form, also termed presidential government. The most notable example is provided by the United States of America. In this form, the function of government is centered in the head of State, who is also head of government; he determines the political direction autonomously and independently of parliamentary control, appoints and dismisses ministers on the basis of his own judgment, and the ministers, taken together, do not constitute a collegial body or cabinet but are subordinate collaborators responsible solely to the president, not to the Chambers. The president, elected by the people, incurs only an indirect political responsibility before the electorate, not before the Chambers.
2) Parliamentary government, which in its various historical manifestations, whether monarchical or republican, is characterized by the concentration of the function of government predominantly or exclusively in Parliament or, at least, in its elected branch. This form, which arose mainly in practice (as, for instance, in the English system and in the Italian system itself up to the advent of Fascism) and was later incorporated into recent constitutional history even at the normative level, requires that the action of the collegial body (the cabinet), to which the activity of government is normally entrusted in its executive phase, be constantly aligned with the will of the parliamentary majority. This relationship of dependence and political responsibility of the cabinet toward the Chambers is expressed by saying that it constantly needs the confidence of Parliament, and its loss obliges it to resign. This relationship of confidence, which in the early stages of parliamentary government was governed by the fluid norms of constitutional custom, was minutely regulated by law in recent and very recent constitutions, which established the forms and conditions for its granting and revocation.
The head of State is the other pivot on which this form of government has usually been structured; in the early historical forms, which evolved from constitutional monarchy, it constituted a body that could substantially contribute to the functioning of the system; in fact, since the cabinet was normally appointed and dismissed by the head of State, albeit on the basis of indications from the parliamentary majority, there could subsist, at least exceptionally, a further political responsibility of the ministers toward him. However, as political power consolidated in Parliament, the head of State gradually lost any substantial power to influence political direction, so that it was either entirely abolished or, at least, stripped of its institutional autonomy as an organ, as happened in some ultra-parliamentary constitutions of the post-war period (Bavaria, Prussia, Estonia, Austria 1920), where even the formal power to appoint and dismiss the cabinet was assigned to parliamentary assemblies; or, in any case, it was decisively transformed, becoming a constitutional mechanism essentially extraneous to the function of political direction. Instead, it was invested with a different role, whether as guardian of constitutional normality in the exercise of government, or more specifically as the restorer of such normality when it was disturbed, in moments of governmental crisis. In such cases, its intervention could operate either by designating a figure capable of rallying around himself the support of the majority of the Chambers, forming a new government; or, when Parliament proved absolutely incapable of reconstituting a majority, by dissolving the Chambers, on the proposal of the outgoing government.
3) A final form, which, although usually absorbed into the preceding one, deserves to be distinguished from it on the basis of the distinguishing principle adopted, is that which, due to the very prominent role played in it by the electorate, might be termed popular government. This form, which now seems firmly established in the English system and toward which the parliamentary systems of continental systems might in turn evolve, presents the active organ of government, namely the cabinet—and even more so its head, the Prime Minister—as deriving their investiture directly from the people in general elections. The role played by the Chamber in the form described as parliamentary here appears to be fulfilled by the electorate, before which the government presents itself whenever issues of political direction are of such magnitude as to engage its platform and stability; here, therefore, the election acquires the value of approving the government’s political line or rejecting it, with the simultaneous indication, through the prevalence of the opposing political current, of the figure who, as its head, is to be chosen by the monarch as the new Prime Minister. This form of government relies essentially on the so-called “two-party system,” that is, a distribution of political forces and an electoral system that, far from fragmenting the voters’ will into a colorful array of forces, each of which is powerless to form an effective government (as often happens with the adoption of proportional representation), instead ensures the polarization of votes around two alternatives, the majority of which secures the power of government, while the other forms the opposition.
In a final, narrower sense, the term government refers to the body, whether simple or collegial, which, constituting the central organ of the executive power, carries out the activity of government in its active and propulsive moment, even though its permanence in office and its functioning are subject to the control of Parliament or the people, when, as we have seen, the political gravitation of the system is centered in them. While government, in this technical sense, appears as a simple organ only in the presidential form, where it is identified with the person of the President of the Republic, in parliamentary forms of government it appears as a collegial body, since normally the competence to shape political direction lies with the body that brings together the ministers (the cabinet). The exigencies of a more efficient and unified exercise of government have, however, in recent times led to a balancing of the collegial principle in the organization of this body with the monocratic principle, so that in some systems a position of preeminence over the other ministers has come to be acquired by its head. Thus, for example, in the English system, where the Prime Minister has gained a very prominent role among his cabinet colleagues, also by virtue of the fact that, as we have said, his investiture derives almost directly from the popular will. This preeminence, which is sanctioned, as usually happens in the English system, in the elastic norms of the “constitutional conventions,” may, however, vary greatly depending on the prestige and personal qualities of the Prime Minister. A similarly prominent position was formally established for the Reichskanzler (Chancellor of the Reich) in the German Weimar Constitution (1919), where he was empowered to set the guidelines of policy, propose the appointment of ministers to the head of State, and preside over the council with a casting vote in case of a tie. The structure given to government by the new Italian Constitution seems to be partially inspired by these principles as well.
Government, as such, was not contemplated in the Statute.
The Albertine Statute contained only a few provisions (arts. 6, 67) relating to the appointment, removal, and responsibility of ministers. However, in Italian constitutional life, the collegial body grouping ministers—through whom the royal prerogative necessarily had to be exercised, as they were required to countersign the sovereign’s acts—quickly took on an autonomous form as a cabinet, giving rise to the parliamentary system, which developed without interruption until the advent of Fascism. The organization and internal structure of the Council of Ministers were instead regulated several times by positive law, which, in the pre-Fascist period, implemented (Royal Decree of 14 Nov. 1901, no. 466) a ministry organized essentially on the principle of collegiality, with the President of the Council remaining merely a *primus inter pares*.
The Fascist law of 24 Dec. 1925, no. 2263, on the powers and prerogatives of the head of government, by making the latter the sole organ competent to determine political direction and freeing it from any parliamentary control, marked in Italy the end of the parliamentary form of government and decisively set in motion the process of establishing an authoritarian state.
In the new Italian Constitution, the regulation of government has aimed first and foremost to enshrine, even at the normative level, the parliamentary form of government. This is achieved, however, with certain essential innovations: the political responsibility of the government now lies exclusively with the Chambers and no longer with the head of state, from whom the power of removal—previously held by the king over ministers—has been withdrawn; this power had allowed the sovereign, albeit exceptionally, to intervene deeply in the functioning of government. Today, the President of the Republic appears entirely excluded from this sphere, assuming primarily the role of guarantor of the Constitution, a tendency already identified as the most significant in the evolution of the parliamentary form of government.
Secondly, the confidence relationship no longer presents itself as the fluid bond that could be presumed to exist under the Statute system in normal circumstances, until broken by a hostile vote of the Chambers against the government. Now, the government, which enters office upon the swearing-in of ministers before the President of the Republic, cannot proceed with the execution of its program unless it secures explicit confidence from both Chambers (Art. 94). It is therefore provided that the government, within ten days of its formation, must appear before the Chambers to obtain it; that confidence be granted or withdrawn by a reasoned motion subject to nominal vote. And to enhance governmental stability, a distinction has been appropriately drawn between a vote of dissent and a motion of no confidence, stipulating that only the latter (submitted by at least one-tenth of the members of the Chambers and not debated before three days after its submission) entails the obligation for the government to resign; an obligation that is tempered by the government’s alternative power to request the dissolution of the Chambers from the President of the Republic.
In the new Constitution, the government has been given a clearly distinct and autonomous configuration in relation to the head of state; it is structured around the President of the Council, the ministers, and their meeting in the Council of Ministers. The President of the Council has been granted a distinct position, no longer merely formal in relation to the other ministers; appointed directly by the President of the Republic, the President’s powers include proposing the appointment of the other ministers to the head of state; directing the general policy of the government, for which the President is responsible; and promoting and coordinating the activities of the ministers to ensure unity of political and administrative direction. The collegial principle nonetheless remains in force, since ministers bear, alongside individual responsibility for acts of their respective departments, a collective responsibility for the decisions of the Council of Ministers. Which of the two organizational principles will prevail will be determined by future organizational laws, to which the Constitution entrusts the task of fixing the number and powers of ministers, as well as the organization of the Presidency of the Council. Accusations against the President of the Council and ministers for crimes committed in the exercise of their functions may be brought by Parliament in joint session; the Constitutional Court, with a specially enlarged composition, is competent to adjudicate these accusations (Art. 136, 6th para., Constitution).