REVERSE LOG ROLLING IN GREECE AND ITALY. I wondered in this post from six weeks ago about the difficulties of putting together legislative coalitions in the United States to share the pain of cutting the deficit. Complicated bills are often passed by adding special provisions to attract individual legislators, whereas, I said: “Here, on the whole, there are no popular provisions to carry along less popular ones.” What has happened with efforts of the European Union to get Italy and Greece to reduce their deficits and to carry out economic reforms illustrates the difficulties. These are not British governments with two (or three) parties and strong whips. Instead, actions seem to require a balancing of patronage and ministerial appointments. I have wondered about the eagerness on the part of outsiders to remove the former prime ministers. I can imagine a technocrat creating a successful unified “war cabinet” government, but there are a lot of other possible scenarios. In the Financial Times for November 16, Guy Dinmore and Giulia Segreti quote the president of the European Union as saying that the new Italian technocrat prime minister is a “brilliant person”, but that: “This signifies nothing if he does not have a majority in parliament to support him.”
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