Measures of the amending power of government and parliament. The case of Italy 1988-2002

On the basis of a unique data set consisting of all the amendments to the Italian financial laws from 1988 to 2002, we empirically test whether and how the amending power is an instrument of the parliament or of the government and whether the use of this power was modified by the change of the electoral system in 1994.We show that, in both electoral systems, governments controlled the agenda and parliaments never exploited this power to increase the deficits beyond the planned value. The structural break of the Italian budgetary policy was determined by the Maastricht fiscal rules.