Since government is one of the most central actors providing political directions to the society, the analysis of its challenges concerns the core of contemporary democracies and their institutional pillars. This is increasingly relevant in the light of the recent developments of the Italian politics with the rise of power from new populist parties. The book ‘Il governo in Italia. Profili costituzionali e dinamiche politiche’, edited by Fortunato Musella, Professor of Political Science at the University of Naples Federico II, is a rather timely publication. Besides, it represents one of the first attempts to merge constitutional law scholarship and political science becoming also a stimulating cultural operation. As underlined (p. 30) in the book, ‘constitutionalists and political scientists lose contact with one of the dimensions whose consideration is necessary to understand the fundamental features of the political organization of the State: the former lose contact with the party dimension; the latter lose contact with the legal-regulatory dimension’.

Indeed, thanks to contributions from leading scholars from political science and constitutional law, the book provides a comprehensive study of the Italian government by focusing on the institutional framework and political dynamics. It investigates the structure and mechanisms of legitimization of the Italian executive by highlighting the challenges of the Italian form of government from the beginning of the Republic until today. Moreover, the book identifies and explores the reasons that led the government to become the driving force of Italian politics and the impact of the personalization of politics on the Italian political regime.

This work – rich in useful data and interpretations – is divided into 11 chapters and it is structured in three sections: structure of government, current events, and challenges. First, by adopting a realist approach, the book bypasses the classical distinction between parliamentarism and presidentialism by including the Italian party system among the institutional variables. Then, it analyses the influence of the evolution of the relationship between political forces in shaping the Italian form of government. At the same time, it focuses on the role of Constitutional court case law and jurisprudence by highlighting the increased opportunity for the Constitutional Court to influence policymaking and to address the Italian political regime. Yet, in a phase of personalized politics and less structured parties, the Constitutional court adopts a ‘quasi constitutive’ role (p. 161). This phenomenon becomes clear when considering the recent judgements (1/2014 and 35/2017) which have struck down two electoral laws (p. 114). Moreover, several decisions of the Constitutional court have regulated the relationship between central government and regions with the reform of the Title V of the Italian Constitutional charter.

Second, the book focuses also on executive law-making, which represents a useful tool to measure the relationship between government and parliament. Executives use more and more legislative decrees and decree-laws bypassing the constitutional provision of ‘extraordinary necessity and urgency’ (art. 76 and 77) and forcing the parliamentary debate, thanks to increasing the use of vote of confidence (p. 88). Then, the book investigates the crisis of the relationship of confidence between government and parliament and ‘the reversal of roles, where the controlled (Government) has ended up exercising power and decision on the controller (Parliament)’ (p. 163). Moreover, the analysis of the ‘core executive’, namely the actors and offices responsible for coordinating and defining executive decisions, shows that personal leaders became the main decision-making driving force (p. 220). As noted, over the last few years ‘the Prime Minister addresses the executive decision- making process to the extent that he is a leader, meaning, he is able to attract personal consensus’ (p. 241).

Third, the book explores the challenges that the Italian Republic will face in the next future and that can be at least partially explained by the ongoing process of personalization of politics, which constitutes then the independent variable used in this section of the book. Hence, the future of Italian democracy seems to follow a pattern of ‘monocratization of politics’, because of a significant change in executive power dynamics, due to the shift from a collegial form to a monocratic one. This phenomenon represents an agenda for future researches. It finds its constitutive feature in the direct relationship between monocratic leadership and citizens, their increasing weight both inside the executive and party, and the strict relationship between public and private sphere (as clearly evidenced by the growing phenomenon of ‘presidents in business’) (p. 259). Moreover, in the era of personalized politics, we need to pay attention to the risks of ‘autocratic involution’, which may challenge the Italian form of State, but also to the chronic fragmentation of the party system. As noted, the weakness of parties is leading to larger decision-making circuits and therefore also the normative production, in a new balance between meta-state constitutional bodies and between technocratic agencies and private poles, undermining democratic legitimacy and accountability (p. 321).

In summary, as the book clearly shows, the process of personalization of politics strongly impacts the form of government. Personal leaders have gained a strong influence on politics, administration, and economy, and they achieved the role of the main governmental driving force and became the focal point of mass expectations. At the same time, when personalization becomes a common trait to both democratic and authoritarian regimes, the question of how to elude the autocratic involution of contemporary political systems is still on the stake. Moreover, it would be interesting to consider the role of new technologies, digital media, and big data in both supporting political activities and decision-making at the governmental level and transforming the relationship with citizens.

In conclusion, starting from the analysis of the ‘Italian laboratory’, the book ‘Il governo in Italia. Profili costituzionali e dinamiche politiche’ represents a crucial contribution to the field which could increase our knowledge about how democratic political systems are changing. In this way, it will be useful to social scientists, constitutional law scholars, students, and people interested in the development of contemporary democracies. Additionally, it will help to reason not on abstract models but on concrete political phenomena in a rigorous way, which seems to be essential in the tumultuous challenging of our time.