Governments in Italy: Average Length of Office and Why They Change So Often

In just over eighty years of the Republic, Italy has changed government 68 times , with the average duration of each executive remaining around 14 months . No other major European parliamentary democracy comes close to matching this record: in the same period, Germany has changed government around 25 times and the United Kingdom 19. Yet the country continues to function, electing its parliamentarians and respecting its international commitments. It is precisely this paradox—chronic instability at the top but underlying continuity of the system—that makes the subject of Italian governments so fascinating and so little understood.

To understand why Italian governments change so frequently, we need to look not just at names and dates, but at the rules of the game: a Constitution that leaves ample room for practice, an electoral system that for fifty years has produced fragile coalitions, parties that prefer to negotiate outside of Parliament, and a President of the Republic who, in crises, becomes the true arbiter of national politics. In this in-depth study, we reconstruct the numbers, history, and mechanisms, cross-referencing the official government lists published by the Prime Minister's Office and the Quirinale archives with political science literature, from Giovanni Sartori to Gianfranco Pasquino.

How many governments has Italy had since 1946?

The official count is precise: from the first government of the Republic, the De Gasperi II government sworn in on July 14, 1946 , to the current executive, Italy has had 68 governments headed by 31 prime ministers . The Meloni government, in office since October 22, 2022, is in fact the sixty-eighth executive in the history of the Republic, as both the historical archive of the Quirinale and the official chronologies of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers recall.

Contextual numbers help to frame the scale of the phenomenon. Over these eighty years , 19 legislatures have succeeded one another, approximately one every four years, as provided for by the Constitution: the legislature lasts five years, unless dissolved early. There have been 12 Presidents of the Republic , from Enrico De Nicola, provisional Head of State from 1946, to Sergio Mattarella, and all have had to manage at least one government crisis, often many more. The Republican Constitution, which came into force on January 1, 1948, dedicates Articles 92-96 to the government: the Prime Minister is appointed by the Head of State, the ministers upon his proposal, and the executive must obtain the confidence of both chambers within ten days of its formation.

History is divided into two major periods. In the so-called First Republic , from 1946 to 1994, 52 governments alternated in 48 years: an average of just under a year per executive. Since the turning point of 1994, the beginning of the so-called Second Republic, there have been 16 governments in just over thirty years , with an average duration more than double. The absolute record for longevity, however, belongs to the dawn of the Republic: Alcide De Gasperi led eight consecutive governments , from December 1945 to August 1953, for a total of almost eight years, a unique case in the history of the Republic and comparable only to the great leaders of post-war Europe.

How long does an Italian government last on average?

The question that gives the title to this in-depth analysis has a precise answer: calculating the actual duration of the 67 concluded republican governments, the average duration is 416 days , just under 14 months . The figure is even more surprising if we look at the distribution: 31 out of 67 governments, almost one in two, do not last more than a year . Only six concluded executives have lasted more than two years, and just five in the history of the republic have lasted more than a thousand days.

The longest-lived governments in the history of the Republic are all recent or from the second half of the 1980s. At the top is the Berlusconi II government , in office from 11 June 2001 to 23 April 2005, with 1.412 days . They are followed by the Berlusconi IV government (8 May 2008-16 November 2011, 1.287 days), the Craxi I government (4 August 1983-1 August 1986, 1.093 days), the Renzi government (22 February 2014-12 December 2016, 1.024 days) and the Prodi I government (18 May 1996-21 October 1998, 886 days). The Meloni government, still in office, has already exceeded 1.390 days and is the second longest-lived government in the history of the Republic.

Conversely, the shortest governments have also been those most emblematic of a certain idea of ​​political crisis. The negative record belongs to the Fanfani I government , which lasted 22 days in January-February 1954, and never received a vote of confidence from Parliament. Immediately following was the De Gasperi VIII government , which lasted 32 days in the summer of 1953, also never received a vote of confidence. They were followed by the Spadolini II government (100 days in 1982), the Fanfani VI government (102 days in 1987), and the famous Tambroni government (123 days in 1960). The difference between the First and Second Republics is clear: in the former, the average was 11,5 months , while in the latter, it rose to approximately 21 months for completed governments.

Why Governments Fall: The Anatomy of Crises

A government crisis is the breakdown of trust between the executive and Parliament. On paper, the Constitution envisions a precise mechanism: the government lasts as long as it holds the confidence of both Houses of Parliament, and if it loses it, it resigns. In republican practice, however, things have almost always gone differently, and this gap between written rules and practice is the primary key to understanding Italian instability.

Doctrine distinguishes between two types of crisis. A parliamentary crisis arises from a vote: a passed motion of no confidence, a rejected confidence motion, or a vote against a key measure. An extra-parliamentary crisis , on the other hand, arises when the majority parties withdraw their political support, often after a summit or a statement, and the government resigns without a vote in Parliament. In everyday language, a government crisis also refers to the simple difficulty forming a majority at the beginning of a legislative session, as has happened several times, but technically these are different situations.

The numbers speak for themselves: in the history of the Republic, all government crises have been extraparliamentary, except two , both linked to Romano Prodi. The Prodi I government fell in October 1998 after a negative vote in the Chamber of Deputies, and the Prodi II government in January 2008 after a vote in the Senate. The 2008 motion also remains the only motion of no confidence approved in the history of the Republic . All other crises, from those of the 1950s to the most recent, have developed outside the parliamentary chamber: in party summits, in leaders' statements, in negotiations over positions and measures.

This practice is made possible by the vote of confidence , the instrument with which the government ties its survival to the approval of a measure. Used with increasing frequency, it serves to discipline a fractious majority: if the measure is rejected, the government falls. It is a double-edged sword, strengthening the executive in the short term but exposing its fragility even more when the majority fractures.

Some crises have gone down in history as symbols of this fragility. The Tambroni government , formed in March 1960 with the decisive support of the Italian Social Movement, fell after just 123 days, overwhelmed by the street protests of the summer of 1960: a case that has remained famous as an example of a "beach" government, created to manage the summer and dead before the autumn. The crises of the 1950s and 1960s, with governments that lasted a few weeks or a few months, marked the political calendar with almost seasonal regularity. In the 1990s, the systemic crisis triggered by Tangentopoli led first to the Amato government and then, in 1993, to the Ciampi government, while in 2011 the sovereign debt crisis, with the spread rising and the markets no longer believing in the Berlusconi IV government, paved the way for the Monti government. More recently, in July 2022, the split between the parties of the National Unity majority led to the resignation of the Draghi government and the early dissolution of the Chambers.

The role of the President of the Republic in crises

When a government falls, the President of the Republic takes center stage . The Constitution grants him the power to appoint the Prime Minister (Article 92) and dissolve the Chambers (Article 88), but it does not dictate how to manage a crisis. In the silence of the written rules, a complex process has developed, consisting of consultations, mandates, and exploratory mandates, which over time has made the Quirinale the true center of gravity of Italian politics in times of transition.

The first step is consultations : the head of state listens to the presidents of both chambers, former presidents of the Republic, parliamentary group leaders, and party leaders to determine whether there is a majority capable of supporting a new government. Depending on the outcome, he opens the way to one of several possible solutions: sending the outgoing government back to the chambers for a formal vote of confidence, the so-called parliamentarization of the crisis ; forming a second government with the same prime minister and a new coalition; appointing a new appointee from within the same majority; entrusting an exploratory mandate to an institutional figure, often the president of one of the two chambers, to test the waters when the situation is unclear; or, as a last resort, dissolving the chambers and returning to the polls.

The history of the Republic offers examples of all these tools. In 1993, swept away by the Tangentopoli scandal, President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro appointed Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, former governor of the Bank of Italy, to lead the government. It was the first time a non-parliamentarian led the government, and the choice ushered in the era of "technical" governments. In November 2011, with Italy under attack from the markets, Giorgio Napolitano appointed Mario Monti, a former European Commissioner, to lead the country out of the sovereign debt crisis. In 2013, after elections without a clear winner, Napolitano accepted re-election to unblock the situation and appointed Enrico Letta to the post. In 2018, Sergio Mattarella imposed a coalition government between the Five Star Movement and the League, the Conte I government, also known as the "president's government" due to the decisive role of the Quirinale in its formation. In 2021, in the midst of the pandemic, Mattarella called on Mario Draghi to lead a national unity government; in 2022, after Draghi's fall, he dissolved Parliament and led the country to the elections that led to the Meloni government.

The President of the Republic, in short, does not choose the government he wants, but the one Parliament can support. In moments of acute crisis, however, his leeway expands to the point of becoming decisive, so much so that scholars have described him, in those phases, as a sort of "ruler of the state": a figure who holds the system together when the parties fail. This is a de facto power, built piece by piece through practice, and it is one of the most original features of the Italian constitutional system.

Technical governments, when parties fail to govern

One of the most debated solutions to Italian crises is the technical government : a government led by individuals with specialized expertise, chosen outside of active politics, tasked with addressing an emergency without incurring cross-party vetoes. The most rigorous definition, developed by scholars Duncan McDonnell and Marco Valbruzzi in a celebrated 2014 essay, requires three conditions: a non-politician prime minister, a majority of non-politician ministers, and a mandate to change the status quo. According to this classification, "technical" governments in the strict sense of the term have been very few in the history of the European Union, and two out of four are Italian.

The first Italian government, the Ciampi government (April 29, 1993–May 11, 1994, 377 days), was actually a political government led by a technocrat: the Prime Minister, a former governor of the Bank of Italy, was a non-parliamentarian, but the ministerial team was largely composed of politicians. The first true technocratic government in Italian history was the Dini government (January 17, 1995–May 18, 1996, 487 days), led by Lamberto Dini, former director general of the Bank of Italy and outgoing minister, with ministers largely non-party members. It was formed to manage the crisis of the first Berlusconi government and lead the country to new elections.

The most well-known case is the Monti government (November 16, 2011–April 28, 2013, 529 days). Formed after the fall of the Berlusconi IV government at the height of the sovereign debt crisis, with the BTP-Bund spread above 500 basis points, it was supported by a majority that ranged from the center-right to the center-left and implemented far-reaching corrective measures. Mario Monti, a former European Commissioner and later senator for life, was a true technocrat, and his experience has remained the reference model for the debate on technocratic governments, a topic closely linked to the sustainability of public finances, which we discussed in our in-depth analysis of Italian public debt.

The latest case is the Draghi government (February 13, 2021–October 22, 2022, 616 days): led by Mario Draghi, former President of the European Central Bank, it was a hybrid between a caretaker government and a government of national unity, supported by almost all political forces in Parliament. It was formed in the midst of the pandemic to manage the recovery and the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, and fell in the summer of 2022 when a portion of the majority withdrew its support. Its history clearly demonstrates both the merits of caretaker governments—efficiency and international credibility—as well as their limitations: lacking a dedicated electoral base, they remain in power as long as their political parties allow them to, and their democratic legitimacy, while constitutionally impeccable (the Constitution does not require the Prime Minister to be a member of Parliament), remains an open issue in political debate.

Is Italy an exception? Comparison with other democracies

To understand how anomalous the Italian situation is, a comparison with other major parliamentary democracies is enough. In the United Kingdom , since 1945, there have been 19 prime ministers : an average of about four years per government, with the majority of governments lasting the entire legislature. In Germany , since the birth of the Federal Republic in 1949, there have been 9 chancellors and about 25 governments , with an average duration of around three years. Even in Spain , since the 1978 Constitution, governments have typically lasted more than three years. In Italy, the average is just over a year: a gap unmatched among major European countries.

The reasons for this exceptionality are institutional, electoral, and cultural at once. The first factor is the electoral system : from 1946 to 1993, Italy voted with a purely proportional system, which rewarded party fragmentation and necessitated broad, heterogeneous coalitions. The second factor is the so-called conventio ad excludendum : throughout the First Republic, the Italian Communist Party, the country's second-largest party, was excluded from governing majorities, which therefore revolved around the Christian Democrats. This created a situation that political science has described with famous formulas: Giorgio Galli's imperfect two-party system and blocked democracy , and Giovanni Sartori's polarized pluralism , according to which the competition between a dominant center and two excluded extremes produced weak governments but a surprisingly stable system.

The third factor is the lack of stabilization mechanisms that exist elsewhere. Germany, for example, has a constructive vote of no confidence , provided for by Article 67 of the Basic Law: a chancellor can be ousted only if the Bundestag simultaneously elects a successor, which makes "empty" crises almost impossible and forces parties to reach an agreement before breaking up. Italy has nothing similar: a government can fall simply because one coalition party declares the experience over, without the need for a vote or a ready successor. In the United Kingdom and Spain, political culture and majoritarian or corrective majorities have historically produced much more cohesive single-party or bipolar majorities.

Gianfranco Pasquino, one of the most attentive scholars of the Italian political system, has repeatedly emphasized how governmental instability has been the price paid for the stability of the system as a whole: governments change, but regimes endure. This reading helps us understand the underlying paradox: Italy has had 68 governments in eighty years without ever calling democracy into question, while other countries with more stable governments have endured far deeper crises. Italy's exceptionalism, in short, is real, but must be carefully considered: it is not a national anomaly, but the result of rules and practices that history has shaped and that only institutional reforms could change.

From 1994 to today: longer governments, but more fragile parties.

Since 1994, something has changed, and the numbers confirm it: the average duration of governments has more than doubled, from 11,5 months during the First Republic to approximately 21 months . This shift is linked to the transition to a bipolar system: with the new electoral laws, first the Mattarellum of 1993, then the Porcellum of 2005, the Italicum of 2015, and the Rosatellum of 2017, voters began to choose between two alternative coalitions, and governments have been able to count on more homogeneous majorities, even if they were built with often heterogeneous coalitions within them.

The symbol of this phase is Silvio Berlusconi : four governments between 1994 and 2011, for a total of 3.339 days in office, making him the longest-serving prime minister in the history of the Republic. However, his experience also demonstrates the limits of Italian bipolarism: extremely broad coalitions, allies who come and go, electoral laws rewritten with each legislature, and, ultimately, a government crisis triggered by market pressure in 2011. The center-left has also experienced the same dynamic: the two Prodi governments, formed from extremely broad coalitions, are the only ones in the history of the Republic to fall with a single vote in Parliament, in 1998 and 2008.

After 2011, a third phase began, marked by the coexistence of "non-electoral" governments and longer-lasting political executives. The Monti and Draghi governments alternated with political governments that lasted well beyond the historical average: Renzi with 1.024 days, Gentiloni with 536, Conte I with 461, Conte II with 527. The Meloni government, in office since October 2022 and supported by a center-right coalition, is the first government led by a woman in Italian history and, as already mentioned, is already the second longest-lasting of the Republic. At the same time, however, Italian politics has remained fragile: constant splits, parties changing names and alliances, parliamentarians switching groups with unusual frequency, and electoral volatility among the highest in Europe.

Making the picture even more complex are the challenges every government faces: managing public finances and debt, slow wage growth, the energy transition, and migratory pressure. None of these issues, as we discuss in our in-depth articles on the link between inflation and wages and government action during the pandemic , can be resolved in a few months, yet the average time available to an Italian government is dramatically short. The average length of governments, in short, is not a curiosity from a history textbook: it is one of the variables that explains why certain reforms in Italy start and fail to materialize, why government action is often intermittent, and why political debate ends up focusing on the survival of governments rather than their agenda.

The system, despite everything, continues to function, thanks to a flexible Constitution, a head of state capable of holding the reins, and a society that has learned to live with changing governments. But the numbers remain, like a warning bell: 68 governments in eighty years, an average of 14 months, nearly one in two executives doesn't last a year. As long as the debate on institutional reform remains taboo, it's hard to imagine the next chapter of this story being very different from the last.

FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions about Italian Governments

What is the average length of an Italian government?
Considering the 67 republican governments concluded since 1946, the average duration is approximately 416 days, just under 14 months. Nearly one government in two (31 out of 67) does not last more than a year, and only six concluded executives have lasted more than two years.

How many governments has Italy had since the birth of the Republic?
68 governments, led by 31 Prime Ministers, from the De Gasperi II government of July 1946 to the current Meloni government. In the First Republic (1946-1994), 52 governments succeeded one another, and in the Second (since 1994), 16.

What was the longest-lasting government in the history of the Republic?
The Berlusconi II government, in office from June 11, 2001 to April 23, 2005, lasted 1.412 days. It was followed by Berlusconi IV (1.287 days), Craxi I (1.093), Renzi (1.024), and Prodi I (886). The Meloni government, still in office, is already the second longest-serving.

And the shortest government?
The Fanfani I government, which lasted 22 days in January-February 1954, never received a vote of confidence from Parliament. It was followed by the De Gasperi VIII government, which lasted 32 days and also never received a vote of confidence. Among the governments that did receive a vote of confidence, the shortest was the Spadolini II government, which lasted 100 days in 1982.

How many times has Parliament passed a no-confidence vote on a government?
Only once in the history of the Republic: in January 2008, when the Senate approved the motion of no confidence that brought down the second Prodi government. In all other cases, government crises have been extraparliamentary, that is, triggered by the voluntary resignation of the executive after the withdrawal of party support, without any vote.

What happens when a government resigns?
The outgoing government remains in office for ordinary administration until its successor is sworn in. The President of the Republic opens consultations and can choose between several solutions: referral to Parliament, a second government, a new appointee, an exploratory mandate, a caretaker government, or dissolution of Parliament with new elections.

Are technical governments provided for by the Constitution?
The Constitution does not mention technocratic governments, but it does not require the Prime Minister or ministers to be members of parliament: they are therefore fully legitimate. Throughout the history of the Republic, they have been led by Carlo Azeglio Ciampi (1993), Lamberto Dini (1995), Mario Monti (2011), and Mario Draghi (2021), with different characteristics. Their main limitation is the lack of a proper electoral base.

Why do governments last so much longer in Germany?
For three main reasons: constructive no-confidence, which allows a chancellor to be removed only by simultaneously electing another; an electoral system that discourages fragmentation; and a political culture that has historically favored stable coalitions. Since 1949, Germany has had nine chancellors and approximately 25 governments, compared to 68 in Italy.