ABSTRACT
If the first two agents responsible for the transformation of the postwar Italian party system were the judges and the Northern League, the third was the referendum movement. This consisted of a variety of cross-party organizations which, from the end of the 1980s onwards, had sought to use the referendum instrument as a means of forcing fundamental change on an unwilling political establishment. This chapter traces the sequence of events responsible for bringing about the electoral reform of 1993, and considers its immediate consequences in the period leading up to the general election of 1994. Institutional and constitutional reform had been on the agenda of Italian politics for a very long time before 1993. Article 75 of the Italian Constitution makes it possible to hold referenda in order to decide on the partial or total abolition of laws when such referenda are requested either by 500,000 electors or five regional councils.
