Italian parliamentary elections deadlocked

...giving Italians temporary reprieve from corrupt, ineffectual government leadership.

Great job w/the whole Amanda Knox thing, Italy. Maybe you can have trouble w/another easy brain buster.

Deadlocked politics in Italy? I'm fucking shocked.

Italian politics has always been very fractious, with government's frequently collapsing, this is but another chapter in that long history. Indeed, Italian politics over the past few years has become even more fragmented, with no more than 25 political parties vying for power. Basically, the country has two parliamentary chambers--the Chamber of Deputies (the lower chamber, equivalent to our House) and the Senate. They have equal power but different electoral systems, modified by a new election law that passed in 2005. Even the authors of that law defined it as "junk". According to this new electoral system, the Chamber of Deputies is elected on a national basis, while the Senate is elected on a regional basis. Some recent history: former PM Berlusconi resigned in late-2011, when he realized that he did not have a parliamentary majority. Italy's president, Giorgio Napolitano selected Mario Monti, a neo-liberal economist popular with the European bureaucracy to be Prime Minister. ... Read more