Italy has spent almost an entire week trying to elect a new president. After eight rounds of voting, hundreds of blank ballots, failed compromises between political parties and an increasingly obvious inability to agree on a successor, parliament finally found someone capable of commanding an overwhelming majority.
The president Italy already had.
Yesterday, Sergio Mattarella was re-elected for another seven-year term with 759 votes. The result itself looks remarkably decisive. The process that produced it was anything but. Mattarella is 80 years old and had made it clear that he expected to retire when his first term ended. Italy’s political parties nevertheless became so deadlocked over his replacement that leaders eventually returned to him and asked him to remain. Mattarella accepted, saying that the country’s serious health, economic and social challenges required a sense of responsibility to prevail over his personal plans.
There is something both reassuring and slightly worrying about that outcome.
It is reassuring because Italy has resolved a potentially destabilising political confrontation through its constitutional institutions. Nobody stormed a presidential palace. Nobody questioned whether parliament had the authority to choose the president. Political parties spent days disagreeing and eventually assembled a very large majority around a candidate capable of maintaining continuity. After writing about coups, democratic breakdown and military intervention repeatedly over the last year, there is something almost refreshing about a political crisis whose most dramatic consequence is several days of politicians casting unsuccessful ballots.
But the result is also worrying because Italy’s political parties were apparently unable to produce a viable alternative to a president who had already told them he wanted to leave.
That raises a question about the difference between institutional resilience and dependence on individuals. Italy’s institutions successfully navigated the crisis, but they did so partly by relying on one particular individual whose personal credibility appears considerably stronger than the credibility of the political parties trying to replace him.
Mattarella occupies an unusual position in Italy’s political system. The Italian presidency is not equivalent to the American or French presidency. Day-to-day government is led by the prime minister, currently Mario Draghi, while the president is formally head of state. Yet describing the office as merely ceremonial would underestimate its importance. The president appoints prime ministers, can play an important role during government formation, possesses powers concerning parliament and legislation, and can become particularly influential when Italy’s fragmented party system struggles to produce stable governments.
That fragmentation matters because Italian governments have historically changed frequently. Coalition politics means parties can withdraw support, parliamentary majorities can collapse and presidents sometimes become important referees during periods of instability. The office therefore derives some of its influence precisely from the weakness or fragmentation of the institutions surrounding it.
Mattarella has accumulated considerable credibility in that role. During his first term, Italy experienced repeated political crises, the rise of populist parties, confrontation with European institutions, the pandemic and eventually the formation of Mario Draghi’s broad coalition government. Mattarella came to represent continuity while the governments beneath him changed.
That makes his re-election understandable.
It also creates an institutional paradox. The better Mattarella performs as a stabilising figure, the more attractive it becomes to rely on Mattarella whenever the political system becomes unstable. The more Italy relies on him, the less pressure political parties face to develop alternatives capable of commanding similar trust.
Success can therefore create dependence.
This is not unique to Italy. Organisations frequently become dependent on unusually competent individuals. A company relies on one chief executive. A political party organises itself around one electorally successful leader. A government repeatedly turns to one respected technocrat. The individual solves immediate problems so effectively that the institution postpones developing the capacity to solve those problems without them.
Then eventually the individual leaves.
The underlying weakness becomes visible.
This is very different from a dictatorship built around one leader. Mattarella has not attempted to concentrate personal power and apparently did not even want another term. The dependence is being created by the political system around him rather than imposed by him.
That may actually make it more interesting.
Personalisation of politics does not always occur because leaders demand more authority. Sometimes institutions voluntarily transfer responsibility towards individuals they trust because institutional solutions are harder.
Mario Draghi presents a similar problem. Draghi became prime minister last year after another political crisis, leading a broad coalition spanning parties that normally compete fiercely against one another. He arrived with extraordinary international credibility after previously serving as president of the European Central Bank and is widely associated with the effort to stabilise Italy’s economy and implement reforms connected to enormous European recovery funding.
For months, Draghi himself was considered a possible candidate for the presidency.
But moving him to the presidency could have destabilised the government he currently leads.
Italy therefore faced a strange problem: two of its most trusted political figures occupied different institutions, and moving one threatened the stability of the other.
Eventually the system chose continuity in both.
Mattarella remains president.
Draghi remains prime minister.
Financial markets will probably find that reassuring. European governments will probably find it reassuring too. Italy needs to implement major reforms and investments connected to roughly €200 billion in EU pandemic recovery funds, and political continuity reduces uncertainty around that programme.
But stability should not be confused automatically with political health.
Sometimes stability results because institutions are functioning well.
Sometimes it results because everyone is too frightened of what happens if anything changes.
Those situations look similar from the outside.
Their long-term implications are very different.
This is one reason I think political analysis places too much emphasis on whether a government is “stable”. Stability is an intermediate outcome, not necessarily a final objective. A government can be stable and terrible. An authoritarian regime can remain stable for decades. A democratic coalition can be unstable because voters genuinely disagree about policy.
The more useful question is what produces the stability and whether the political system remains capable of adapting.
Italy’s presidential election exposes this tension clearly. Re-electing Mattarella probably reduces immediate political risk. It does not resolve the fragmentation that made agreeing on a successor so difficult.
In fact, the week of voting exposed serious divisions inside both the centre-right and the broader governing coalition. Party leaders repeatedly proposed candidates only to discover they could not deliver enough votes. Attempts to coordinate collapsed. Secret ballots made party discipline difficult to enforce.
That looks chaotic.
But secret ballots also reveal information.
A party leader can announce that their MPs support a candidate. The ballot can reveal whether they actually do.
This is another feature of democratic systems that can make them appear weaker than they are. Authoritarian systems often display impressive public unity because disagreement occurs privately or is suppressed. Democracies reveal disagreement because political actors are allowed to express it.
Visible fragmentation is not automatically institutional failure.
The problem comes when fragmentation prevents institutions from performing their basic functions.
Italy eventually performed this one.
It elected a president.
The fact that it required eight ballots is not necessarily scandalous. The constitutional procedure explicitly allows repeated rounds because the system is designed to encourage broad agreement. During the first three ballots, a two-thirds majority is required; from the fourth onwards, an absolute majority is sufficient. The architecture therefore deliberately makes immediate partisan capture of the presidency difficult.
That is institutional design doing something intentional: forcing negotiation.
Efficiency is sacrificed for consensus.
This is similar to the coalition politics I wrote about after Germany’s election. A system in which one party rarely controls everything can look frustratingly slow, but slowness can be the mechanism through which more political interests are incorporated into decisions.
The relevant comparison is not between Italy’s messy bargaining and an imaginary political system where everybody agrees immediately. It is between different mechanisms for resolving genuine disagreement.
A strong president directly elected by voters might produce a clear result quickly.
It would also concentrate considerably more political authority in one individual.
Italy’s indirect presidency instead requires parliament and regional representatives to assemble a broad coalition around a head of state who is supposed to stand somewhat above ordinary partisan competition.
That produces deadlock occasionally because deadlock is partly the cost of requiring consensus.
The danger is when politicians respond to that difficulty by repeatedly searching for personalities rather than strengthening institutions.
This is why Mattarella’s reluctance matters. He did not campaign for another seven years. Italy’s political class effectively concluded that it needed him.
There is something admirable about an 80-year-old president accepting a role he apparently wanted to leave because the political system could not agree on an alternative.
There is something less admirable about the political system placing him in that position.
Political responsibility should not depend on unusually conscientious individuals repeatedly agreeing to rescue institutions from the consequences of other politicians’ failures.
Good institutions should work with ordinary politicians too.
That may be an unfairly high standard. Every political system depends partly on individual judgement. Constitutions cannot anticipate every crisis. Norms are sustained by people choosing restraint. Germany’s peaceful transition away from Angela Merkel depended partly on Merkel willingly leaving office. America’s constitutional transfer of power depends on presidents accepting electoral defeat.
Individuals matter.
But the purpose of institutions is to reduce how much everything depends on finding the right individual at the right moment.
That is why I think Italy’s outcome can simultaneously be a success and a warning.
The success is immediate. A potentially destabilising presidential election has ended with an overwhelming parliamentary majority. Mattarella possesses substantial institutional credibility. Draghi remains prime minister. Italy avoids creating another government crisis while still recovering from COVID-19 and implementing major economic reforms.
The warning is longer-term. Mattarella cannot remain president indefinitely. Draghi cannot remain the answer to every Italian political problem either. Eventually the political system has to produce new leaders and stable coalitions without relying on a small number of figures whose personal credibility compensates for weak party trust.
Italy’s political parties therefore have seven years before the constitutional calendar asks the question again.
They should probably not spend those seven years assuming another Sergio Mattarella will conveniently appear.
There is also a democratic accountability problem with technocratic or presidential stabilisation. When politics becomes dysfunctional, voters can become attracted to people presented as being “above politics”: central bankers, judges, technocrats or respected non-partisan figures.
That can be useful. Expertise matters, particularly during crises.
But no important economic decision is genuinely above politics.
How quickly should Italy reduce debt? Where should European recovery funds be invested? Which taxes should change? How should pensions be reformed? Who bears the costs of economic adjustment?
Experts can estimate consequences.
They cannot determine the socially correct distribution of costs and benefits without making value judgements.
Those decisions require democratic legitimacy.
A technocratic government can therefore stabilise a crisis, but it cannot permanently replace political competition without weakening accountability.
The same principle applies to presidents acting as referees. Mattarella can help ensure institutions function. He cannot resolve the underlying ideological disagreements that created fragmentation in the first place.
Only politics can do that.
And perhaps that is the broader lesson from this week’s strangely anticlimactic election.
Political systems often look strongest when one decisive leader solves a problem.
But institutional strength may actually look much less impressive.
It looks like procedures continuing through eight unsuccessful ballots.
It looks like parties negotiating.
It looks like compromise nobody originally wanted.
It looks like an elderly president reluctantly agreeing to stay because constitutional actors eventually converged around him.
Messy, slow and imperfect.
Yet nobody needed soldiers.
Nobody suspended parliament.
Nobody declared the constitution irrelevant.
After following politics for the last year, I am beginning to think that distinction deserves more attention than it gets.
Democracy does not prove its strength by avoiding political crises.
It proves its strength by making crises boring.
Italy spent six days unable to agree on a president and ended exactly where it started.
That sounds almost absurd.
It may also be evidence that the institutions worked.
The harder question is whether they worked because they were strong enough to solve the problem—or because Sergio Mattarella was willing to solve it for them one more time.
