An afterword, but not the last word : epilogue

The articles included in this issue display a healthy scepticism towards any naı¨ve parallelism between the changes in the party system, the electoral rules or political communication, and the changes that have taken place in the legislative process. The former are linked to the evolution of the legislative process in indirect, complicated ways which merit a more in-depth examination. All articles do share a common view of what the Italian political system is not: Montecitorio is clearly still quite some distance from Westminster. From the legislative perspective, the Italian political system during the second republic still appears to be a moving ‘target’. The comparison between rough legislative figures for the 15th legislature and the equivalent information for previous legislatures does not really help understand in which direction that system is heading.