Italy speaks out on new constitution

Italian voters decide in a binding referendum Sunday whether the constitution is undergoing a major overhaul.

Embracing the package of proposals includes more the powerful Senate of 315 seats goes back a hundred. The senators also receive less direct power. They can no longer send the government home with a confidence vote. The power is almost entirely in the hands of the Chamber of Deputies, which can approve or reject bills. The Senate decides now on with that, but losing that power.

The aim of the reform is to break the eternally recurrent deadlocks in Italian politics. In the seventy-year-old Republic of Italy with its 62 million people since it came to the war countless times to an impasse in politics. Italy is considered champion of the short cabinets, where on average once a new government takes office each year.