Italy
The dissolution of the Italian parliament (which last, according to the 1948 Constitution, 5 years) and the calling of new general election is made by the President of the Republic, although the parliament may be extended by ordinary legislation. Since the Italian President is not legally responsible, the actual power of dissolution is in practice in the hand of the Government (for example in 2005 the former president of the Council of Ministes, Silvio Berlusconi decided the date of elections instead of the president of the Republic).
Read more about this topic: Dissolution Of Parliament
Famous quotes containing the word italy:
“When intimacy followed love in Italy there were no longer any vain pretensions between two lovers.”
—Stendhal [Marie Henri Beyle] (1783–1842)
“Everything in Italy that is particularly elegant and grand ... borders upon insanity and absurdity—or at least is reminiscent of childhood.”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed—they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock!”
—Orson Welles (1915–84)