ABSTRACT. Philosopher Karl Popper believes that the most serious Italian political problem is the proportional electoral system, by which the government is lead not by the people, but by parties; that Parliament reflects not the people but propaganda and the lobbies of the parties; that the single member of parliament feels the need not to represent the electors, but to be faithful to the party that enabled him to get his seat. And that this way parties increase in number, with the formation of coalition governments in which nobody is responsible for anything.

(La Repubblica, "Mercurio" of the 3rd of March 1990)

"Democracy", Popper says, literally means "government of the people", but the literal meaning of the term is not much help because, in fact, nowhere do the people govern. In the whole of the world it is the governments that govern, and at the most, what can be asked is that the governments govern in the best possible way.

The crucial point, in such a situation, is that there are only two forms of State: that in which it is possible to get rid of a government in a peaceful way, and that in which it is not possible. The best way to bring about the fall of a government is through vote: direct vote of the representatives or parliamentary vote. Each government knows that it can collapse, and will do all it can to satisfy the greatest number of people possible.

Let's examine - Popper adds - the way in which the people elect their representatives. In Great Britain, for example, each constituency sends only one representative in Parliament: the one who has received the greatest number of votes. It doesn't matter which party he belong to, or if he belongs only to one party. His duty is that of representing his constituency and the whole of his constituency, both the supporters of his (eventual) party and the others.

What happens in Italy, instead? It occurs - according to the proportional system - that each party sends to Parliament a number of representatives equivalent to the number of votes received. This way, each member of Parliament knows, "feels", that he is sitting in that bench in Parliament first of all as a member of a party, and therefore feels above all his loyalty to the party that enabled him to sit in that bench.

Of course, parties are necessary, Popper adds. All the more necessary in a country like Italy, very young and of complex cultural cohesion. Almost all the alleged "democracies" are in fact governments not of the people but of the parties, or rather - to be more precise - of the leader of a party.

The point is however another one: the conviction that a Parliament elected according to the proportional system is the best possible reflection of the people, is false. Parliament reflects not the people, but the propaganda (or lobbies) that the parties have managed to spread in the country.

The disadvantages of the proportional system are others as well. Everyone knows that the more parties there are, the more difficult it is to form a government. The proportional system, moreover, on the one hand tends to make the number of parties increase, on the other hand gives the smaller parties a power of influence not adequate to their real weight. The consequence will be a tendency to form coalition governments, as is the case in Italy, that is, a form of government in which it is not clear who is really responsible for what. This way, the trend will be not to hold responsible of the decisions of the government any political party or any of their leaders. This creates a state of diffidence and mistrust towards politics. The people, in the name of which governments should in theory rule, know that the most than can be hoped is a new coalition government more or less equivalent to the previous.

An excessive symbolic weight must not be given to the word "democracy", because, Popper says, there is the risk of repealing its meaning. In a modern country with many different activities, the word democracy means, in fact, the existence of a reasonable amount of public control on the activities of those who are governing. There are two fundamental points on which the concept of democracy is centred: the first is that the money of the tax-payers cannot be stolen all that easily, like for example in East Germany or in Rumania. In Rumania tax money was stolen almost entirely from the government gang.

The second point is that it is possible to get rid of a government which does no longer correspond to the needs of the people in a peaceful way.