Economic Crisis and Lawmaking. The Impact of Crisis on Legislative Agenda in Italy (2008-2013)

Major economic crises are focal events that often drive changes in various aspects of the political system. Although extensive work has been done to investigate the effect of exogenous shocks on political phenomena such as government termination or public opinion, the impact of major crises on the process of policymaking has so far received scarce attention. Building on existing literature on policy agendas and legislative organization, this paper explores how the Eurozone crisis has affected the legislative agenda of the Italian parliament. The data used include information on the 1,123 bills submitted to parliament during the 16th Legislature (2008-2013). Our analysis shows that, with the worsening of the crisis, bill proposals related to macroeconomic issues become increasingly more likely to enter the legislative agenda, displacing legislation dealing with other topics. Main findings survive to a check on a pre-crisis legislature (2001-2006) that does not present the same trend.