And Mussolini Is Still Dead. For Now.

FOTP Monday

Continuing our alphabetic tour of the great nations of Europe, we head this week to Italy, which, since 1945, the end of World War II, has had 70 different governments.

That’s almost as many times as Donald Trump has been sued.

I kid, of course. Trump has been sued a lot more than that — 3,930 more times since he and his father refused to rent to blacks in 1973 in Brooklyn.

The reasons for the number of governments in Italy was mostly by design. After the war, a new constitution was enacted to a) Account for the country’s regional differences, and b) Make sure someone like Mussolini didn’t come to power again. This tends to play havoc, though, and bring down governments every time someone in a fragile coalition feels slighted because someone else in the coalition doesn’t greet them warmly enough in the Senato della Repubblica dining room.

The number of governments, at least according to those aims, is working as planned, even if the country has to print new letterhead for its prime ministers every 11 months or so.

From theweek.com

“Both of these wishes pointed towards a constitutional system with a weak executive, which is what Italy got,” The Economist adds. “The prime minister needs a majority in both the House of Deputies and the Senate to govern. In a system filled with small parties, this is hard to do.”

According to The Week, for example, in 2013 during its national election, Italian voters had to choose among 169 parties.

The reason for Trump’s lawsuits is because he’s a racist and a crook.

But I digress.