The cycles of decrees: evidence from the Italian Parliament

We empirically test the predictions of the Political Legislation Cycle (PLC) theory about decrees using official disaggregated data about five types of decrees of the Italian legal system: law-decrees (decreti legge), legislative decrees (decreti legislativi), DPR (decrees of the President of the Republic), implementing decrees (decreti attuativi) and independent decrees (decreti indipendenti). The sample period includes the first 17 legislatures of the parliament of the Italian Republic. The estimates of the counts of decrees are conducted through a a multilevel negative binomial regression model—plus other estimating techniques adopted for robustness checks. The results broadly confirm the theory’s prediction that decrees tend to be approved in the earlier stages of the legislature or of the life of a government; this prediction receives stronger support the more the institutional characteristics of each type of decree resemble the theoretical variable. A battery of placebo and robustness checks confirms the result, showing the heuristic importance of combining the knowledge of specific legislative institutions coming from studies of constitutional law to the analytics provided by economics. The estimates also reveal that, while the government’s ideology has a limted impact on the production of decrees, the “legislative practices” of the single governments of the Italian Second Republic affect it in a more noticeable way. Finally, the analysis confirms the prediction of the PLC theory about the legislators’ choice of the legislative instruments through which they satisfy the conflicting interests of special interest groups and voters, shedding light on the timing of activity and the legislative preferences of lobbies.