Today’s FT publishes a letter written by David Hine, Alan Renwick and me, on the issue of the Italian electoral system, recently the object of much debate:
Sir, Alexander Stille’s analysis of Italy’s current troubles focuses on the electoral reform rushed in by Silvio Berlusconi ahead of last spring’s election (”Prodi and the problem of Italy’s [...]
Legal uncertainty about procedure for replacing PSB boss. So much for the quality of the draftsmanship of media legislation, the object of much comment from EU ‘experts’. (Of course, the idea of eliminating interpretative uncertainty is chimeric).
Following a tip [thanks Costanza], I found a wonderful transcript of an episode of Report on the state funding of Italian newspapers. The state spends 667 million euros a year to subsidize newspapers; the intention behind the subsidies was originally to help struggling ‘newspapers of ideas’. Instead, with a 1987 law permitting two deputies to [...]
Interesting story last week about Alain Duhamel, respected French television journalist who was sacked for revealing who he would vote for in the upcoming presidential election. Here’s the story, as recounted by someone more familiar with the case than I [thanks Ben!]:
Duhamel writes editorials for newspaper, he is a journalist and a political interviewer on [...]
Recently, I’ve been looking at the system of state funding of Italian political parties. I’m interested in the subject because of the incentives it may create to form new parliamentary groups (since they qualify for funding), and the way funding systems interact with the new electoral system.
The history of state funding is pretty shabby. In [...]